Face-Lift 219

Guess the Plot

Touch

1. Ernie Friks is a champion swordsman. Now if he could just learn enough French to sound good during a match.

2. Men and women try to touch and be touched by each other through the sparks of connection all humans long for. Also, a birdman.

3. In 2012, wearable computers communicate by passing pulses across the skin's ambient electronic field. When Tiffany and LaTis'ua bump in the crowded train, they accidentally switch identities

4. As the Martin family continues their cross country trip, the dreaded cry sounds out from the back seat for the fiftieth time that day: "Mom, Billy's touching me!"

5. Homicide investigator Jill Akron has a secret: she can sense an item's history just by touching it, a skill she has always found useful. Until, that is, she borrows her boss's pen and uncovers a conspiracy that could endanger everyone she loves.

6. A collection of essays about babies and their effect on their single parents. Also, a panda.


Original Version

Dear_________

I am seeking representation for my ten thematically linked collection of short stories, TOUCH. [If you're going to get rejected after only one sentence, you want it to be because of the phrase "collection of short stories," and not because the sentence makes no sense. Move "collection of" in front of "ten."]

Most of the offbeat stories are set in California and feature men and women struggling to find a sense of place and belonging: fitting in, finding roles, and connecting with others and the natural world. [In other words, there is no common theme, but I think the book will sell better if I declare one, so I'll make one up that's so general it could apply to just about any story ever written.] In “Animal Rescue,” a young man examines his commitment to his aging gay parents who are showing signs of mental illness. [Eventually he calls in the animal rescue squad, claims there are two lemurs in his basement, and has them transported to the zoo.] In “Birdman,” a woman struggles with the choice of raising her autistic son alone or remaining in a dysfunctional relationship [with her husband, a salmon-crested cockatoo]. In the title story, a woman receives the remains of her MIA husband and tries to connect to her daughter. It is a collection of experiences, roads not taken, and the intense and unforeseen sparks of connection we all hope for.

I also have a novel nearly completed. [I call it Smell. It's about people struggling to find a sense of place and belonging: fitting in, finding roles, and connecting with others and the natural world. But instead of touching each other, they smell each other.]

Most of the stories have previously appeared in literary journals including: “Lynx Eye,” “Del Sol Review,” “Prism,” “South Dakota Review,” “North Atlantic Review,” and “Isotope Literary Journal of Nature and Science Writing,” among others. [Good strategy, mentioning only the big guns, and not the obscure ones.] In addition, I have attended the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, and participated in classes offered by Gotham Writers Workshops.

[Cost to attend Santa Barbara Conference, including lodging: $2000
Cost for a Gotham Writers Workshop: $400
Income for selling stories to literary journals: $200
Potential income for selling this collection of stories: $100
No wonder everyone wants to be a writer.]


Notes

If you're going to provide one sentence per story, you have room to describe more than three stories. If you're going to describe only three stories, you have room to go into more depth with each of them. As it is, we don't know enough about what's in the book.

Face-Lift 203

Guess the Plot

Calamity: This is How the World Ends

1. A giant squid wakes from its million year slumber cranky and hungry. Can Stouffer avert disaster and transform this calamity into calamari before its too late? Also: a vampire.

2. The year is 2036 and President Paris Hilton faces a dilemma: deal with pesky North Korea or make an appearance at the MTV Music Video Awards. Also: a CD.

3. A valley girl learns her father isn't rich, and she must get a job. The only job she qualifies for is cosmetic salesgirl at the mall's biggest department store. Her world ends when her friends discover her fall from snobbery. Also: perfume.

4. The noise is deafening, from machines gone haywire to dogs yapping through the night. Vince decides to end it all with a toothbrush and some lamp oil, McGyver-style. Also: a computer game.

5. The large-scale consequences of any potential natural disaster are compared with more localized hazards such as dying in a car wreck, through a single number: the Calamity Quotient. Also: short stories.

6. On Zignoid Elevtwo, a band of runaway emus spark debate that leads to conflagration and galactic catastrophe. Also: Bird flu.


Original Version

Dear Mr. Evil:

A supervolcano explodes setting off a millennium of severe cold. Soon humanity is starving and dying en masse until only one small band of forty people is left. The fate of our species depends on their survival. [They all said the cockroaches would be the one species that survived; turns out it's the penguins.] [Tell me the 40 people left alive aren't the Oakland Raiders.]

Fiction? No. As CALAMITY: THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS explains, the exceptionally limited genetic diversity of Homo sapiens along with other evidence tells us such a disaster happened in the recent past. [Not to argue a minor point of semantics, but to you, the recent past is a million years ago; to me, it's Thursday.] A single group of individuals did survive, and we are all their descendents. [This confirms what Evil Editor has long suspected: that he's related to Einstein, Springsteen, and Clooney.]

This is just one of the little-known devastations my 75,000-word popular science book recounts. All chapters except the first open with 1000-word short stories depicting real events [Real fictional events, that is.] to more effectively convey important concepts and facts. My book also introduces the Calamity Quotient or CQ, a number derived from a simple equation that allows the large-scale consequences of any potential disaster to be compared with more localized hazards such as dying in a car wreck. [For instance, to determine how many people would die if a tsunami struck North Dakota, multiply the number of people who die in skydiving accidents by the CQ, which in this case would be 417, and there's your answer.] Calamity is the first book about natural disasters in thirty years to combine authoritative scholarship with a captivating easy-to-read style. [Plus, it has the CQ.] Unlike the speculation and hyperbole common in competing titles, [I'm more concerned with the hyperbole common in your previous sentence.] I include only natural calamities known to have occurred in the past. [As the CQ is used to compare "potential disasters" to something, it would seem you also include disasters that could occur in the future.]

In addition to the millions of adults who are increasingly apprehensive about natural disasters according to recent polling, I suggest marketing Calamity to the three million students taking earth science and beginning geology each year through direct mailings to their instructors. [If there are three million students, I'd hate to be the one charged with gathering the mailing addresses of all their instructors.]

I am an internationally known PhD geologist [I found this most impressive, until I realized that I'm an internationally known blogger.] with more than forty published professional articles. I have presented at international conferences and chaired conference sessions. I also enjoy teaching science to non-specialists and have led seminars and workshops for high school teachers, spoken to civic groups and was featured on a statewide TV program discussing geologic catastrophes. Well received, the program was repeated several times. I have long been interested in the numerous world-shaking calamities that have occurred during the Earth’s long history and have gathered a trove of information to use in writing this book. [Not sure "trove" is the best word there. "Oodles" is closer, but probably not the tone you're looking for. "Abundance?"] I also write fiction. The literary magazine Lynx Eye published one of my stories and the electronic magazine Nth Degree another. My first novel is available as an ebook and my second is being revised.

Thank you for your consideration. I have enclosed a mini proposal. A complete proposal including two 9,000-word sample chapters is available upon request.

Best regards,


Notes

I'd drop the CQ from the query. You haven't made it clear what good it is.

Declaring as fact that a volcano once left forty humans alive seems awfully specific, and had me thinking, Yeah, right. If there's hard evidence of this, maybe your credits (which were the best part) should come first; people are more likely to think you know what you're talking about. With the forty humans and the CQ up front, they'll think you're a mad scientist.

Choose a "for example" disaster and elaborate on it, while leaving out the hyperbole, the marketing plan, and the CQ, and you might have something. People do like to read about other people dying.

Face-Lift 159

Guess the Plot

American Standards

1. After 7 years with the KGB, Vladimir finds his true calling as a lounge singer at a resort on the Black Sea. When competition arrives in the form of a blonde American expat from Vegas, Vlady must decide whether to use his training to knock her off or to fall in love.

2. Expat Putney Greel lives in the tiny English village of Boat Hole on Swip. He longs for a girlfriend who will meet his needs, but all the British girls have impossibly high standards. Will a visit back home bring him happiness?

3. The Westminster Kennel Club opened its doors to the press and public for its annual show, announcing a new breed of dog known as the American Standard. They were much talked about, but no one could find them.

4. Classic American songs like "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Our Love is Here to Stay" are set to erotic prose that explores such American standards as hot sex and nachos.

5. When Lionel Goldstream is diagnosed with a terminal urinary tract infection, he quits his job at the porcelain firing plant and goes on a quest to visit every rest-stop urinal along Route 66.

6. Charged with finding an effective slogan to sell their cars overseas, an intern in the General Motors advertising department suggests "Built to American Standards," and dooms her future.


Original Version

Dear Evil Overlord of the Universe who Is a Scourge Unto Howard le Duck,

American Standards is a collection of four stories with a total length of 80,000 words. Each story has an emotional connection to a classic American song, and together they explore the role of physical intimacy in establishing and maintaining relationships.

In "Nothing Between Us" Jake has abandoned his college study at Cornell to work at home supporting his mother. When his neighbor, Thuy, [Thuy? How do you pronounce that? Thigh? Chewie?] returns from Yale for Spring Break, the inseparable friends [Who've been separated since they began college.] immediately fall together again. As they munch on nachos, they recount their faltering attempts at physical contact with girlfriends and boyfriends until the hidden question finally arises, "why are we always just friends?" [Possibly because your nacho habits have left you overweight, greasy-fingered, fiery-breathed untouchables.] Through the weekend, they begin to break the barriers down that have kept them apart, [Clearly we've got to get rid of that description of them as inseparable.] cracking jokes most of the way. This story is infused with the spirit of the song Ain't Misbehavin' by Fats Waller as sung by Dinah Washington. [Unless the book comes with a CD, we probably don't need to know who's singing the songs.]

In "North Shore" Ashleigh has been happily married for six years to Kenji when she has an amusing fantasy of the Hawaiian tradewinds forming into a kiss on the back of her neck – a kiss from another woman. The amusement turns to alarm, however, when the months go by and the fantasies continue and grow, becoming a need that she fears she can no longer contain. [Kenji, you lucky . . . Why doesn't this ever happen to Evil Editor?] She finally tells Kenji of her dreams, and the pair understand that they must either understand [They understand that they must understand, but do they understand that they understand that they must understand?] what's happening or simply fall apart, something neither is willing to do without a fight.

[Ashleigh: The Hawaiian trade winds continue to kiss me with the lips of a woman.

Kenji: But we've been back in Tennessee three weeks now.

Ashleigh: We need to understand this, or we'll fall apart.

Kenji: Screw understanding, babe, let's roll with it.]

Clueless, they decide to employ Gui-Feng, a high-class escort [and part-time Sumo wrestler] in Las Vegas. This story prominently features Gershwin's Our Love is Here to Stay as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. [I was thinking more along the lines of "Two Ladies," from Cabaret.]

In "What a Difference a Day Makes" (as sung by Dinah Washington) Curt has done an impressive job of being handsome, intelligent, and imminently practical, yet oh so fired from his dream job and oh so alone after dumping any man he ever spent a night with. Then Owen smiles at him from across the gym locker room. Curt starts his usual seduction but Owen isn't playing the same game. Owen isn't playing a game at all. [Owen is a serial killer.] Can Curt change himself in 24 hours? The final story "Kicks" is inspired by Dolly Parton's bluegrass version of Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You." It stars Amy and Heather Lynn and, like the song, is a little country, a little classy, and a hell of a lot of fun. [The plots could be summarized more briefly, allowing you to expand on how the songs come into play. Am I supposed to put "Ain't Misbehavin'" on "repeat" and listen to it for an hour and a half while I read "Nothing Between Us?" Are the characters always listening to the songs? Thinking of a song title that applies to a romantic plot isn't especially difficult, so I assume there's more to it than that. Were the songs chosen first, and then the stories written? Do I need to know the lyrics to appreciate how the story is infused with the spirit of the song?]

Earlier versions of the stories "North Shore" and "Nothing Between Us" have been available on an erotic story web site, where "Nothing Between Us" has been the highest rated First Time story for 6 months so far and is narrowing in on 200,000 hits. Each has been heavily revised and can be removed from the web site as needed. All stories are erotic and romantic, but fit more solidly in literary fiction as a genre.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,


Notes

Now that I've read the whole thing, I realize that it's not clear whether Thuy is male or female. Same with Kenji, for that matter. You might work in a pronoun here or there to avoid misunderstandings.

Even if you want to give "Kicks" less air time, if the other stories get separate paragraphs, so should that one.

It might be worth looking at organizing it not by story, but by clumping the plots together in a bulleted list, and keeping the musical aspect separate.

Two long-time friends return home from their colleges and discover they want more than friendship.

A happily married couple contends with the wife's sudden infatuation with the wind.

A gym rat learns that exercise is healthier if you get it more often.

Two women abandon Nashville for careers as kickboxers.

Together these romantic and erotic stories explore the role of physical intimacy in establishing and maintaining relationships. Separately, each is infused with the spirit of a classic American song that . . .