Face-Lift 363

Guess the Plot

The Postcard

1. After Jerry Thompkins blows up his Chevy van, the ruins are sifted, and a scribbled postcard addressed to Santa Claus is discovered. Could this be what homicide detective Jane Ramirez needs to solve the intractable Case of the Toddler's Tantrum?

2. The post card was addressed to his deceased father, the return address from a place called Fantasaria. Soon, Steven finds himself in a magical realm full of talking plants, evil flesh-eating clouds, and unicorns. Also, Irish hitmen.

3. Sara gets a postcard from Morocco dated 1913 and addressed to her great-grandfather. So where was it all those years? And why did she get it now?

4. A harmless looking postcard arrives mixed with the rest of the junk mail offering the lucky recipient a choice of prizes. But the prize turns out to be the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse. Now it's up to FBI agent Harry Grimes to solve the baffling case. Also, hypnotism.

5. Yvette Richardson needs some time away after her divorce. Even after extensive research on the Internet, she still can't decide between Mexico or Puerto Rico. Mysterious mail sent from a travel agency she's never heard of helps her decide, but will she meet the tight-abbed hunk on the front of the postcard, as promised?

6. Feisty literary agent Cara tells her best friend Sue, "If I get one more query on pink unicorn paper, I'll blow up Grand Central." As a joke, Sue drops that very thing in Cara's box the next morning. Now Grand Central is nothing but ashes, Cara has disappeared, and Sue has received a mysterious postcard saying "I didn't do it" in red lipstick. But it's not Cara's color.


Original Version

I have just completed The Postcard, a work of crime fiction. The novel runs 220 pages, [Or 880 postcards.] a little more than 61k words.

A harmless looking postcard arrives mixed with the rest of the junk mail. The postcard offers the lucky recipient a choice of prizes absolutely free. When the prize turns out to be the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse, [I would have gone with the Orlando vacation, but the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse would have been my second choice.] the local police are called in. [Does the prizewinner call the police to report the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse, or to complain about not getting his prize?] [By the way, what's the difference between a dismembered corpse and the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse? They're both pretty grisly. I'm guessing with one all the members are there, albeit scattered about, and with the other, all that remains are the parts the killer didn't eat.] [Wait, the parts he didn't eat wouldn't be the grisly remains--they'd be the gristly remains.] [How did whoever shipped the prize handle it?

Customer: Yes, I'd like to ship this crate.

Postal clerk: Anything liquid, fragile or perishable?

Customer: Ah, I guess it's perishable.

Postal clerk: Fruit? Vegetable? Cheese?

Customer: No, no, just the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse.

Postal clerk: Okay, you'll have to fill out shipper's declaration 326B.]

When a second card sends the locals into a booby trapped house, killing seven policemen, the outmatched local officials call in the FBI. The Bureau relies on Special Agent Harry Grimes to solve its most puzzling cases and Harry has his work cut out for him. The innocent looking postcard is packed with anagrams, palindromes and number puzzles. [Taunting the cops is cruel, but making them play Jumble, the scrambled word game, in order to decipher your taunts is truly diabolical.] Harry, a crossword puzzle fan himself, gets a thorough grounding in the myth and mystery surrounding ordinary numbers. It soon becomes increasingly difficult to know what is a clue and what a red herring. Harry's persistence leads him from an amateur crossword puzzle competition to a curious church deep in a Florida swamp. [Okefenokee Orthodox.] Harry also stumbles on a suspicious motorcycle gang and a string of missing Iraq war veterans [There's a little something for everyone in this book.] whose disappearance is linked to a malignant government sponsored experiment in mind control. The story delves into man's relation to numbers and word games and explores the history of hypnotism

[1790: Mesmer becomes the first to hypnotize someone into clucking like a chicken.
1850: Riechenbach is the first to employ the revolutionary dangling pocket watch.
1910: Svengali discovers hypnosis can be used to get babes.
1917: Rasputin engineers the Russian revolution through mass hypnosis of 80 million peasants.
1979: Candy Goes to Hollywood hits porn theaters.]

and the government's efforts at developing a mind control weapon.The reader follows Harry's evolving knowledge in these arcane subjects as well as changes in his personal life, his budding romance with Aviva (a palindromic name), [Is he in love with Aviva or her name? Lose the parenthetical phrase.] his separation from his wife and daughter, [Hannah and Lil,] pressures from his boss and team mates. Running throughout the book are numerous anagrams, palindromes and the relationship of numbers on the human mind. [ Incredible! I just realized--this entire query letter is a palindrome.] The mystery deepens and is not resolved until the very last twist on the last page [, a page that has been encoded into the Navajo language].

I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know when you get around to reviewing it.

Thanks


Notes

If you anagram every word in the query letter, any agent who figures out the entire text would have put so much effort into your work already, she'll have no choice but to represent you.

Wait, make the entire book a giant cryptogram! And it comes with the reader's choice of a Scrabble game or a Sudoku book.

"Harry Grimes" sounds too much like porn star Harry Reems.

As you don't bother to even name the prize recipient, I assume the story starts when Harry Grimes is called in. Thus we can reduce the backstory:

The winner of the latest Publishers Clearinghouse contest was expecting a million dollars a year for life, and all he got was the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse. Clerical error? Maybe, but FBI agent Harry Grimes doesn't think so.

To me this falls apart when you start listing all the disparate elements covered in the book. Is the mind control experimentation related to the grisly remains of a dismembered corpse? Is this a mystery about Harry and a serial killer who leaves clever puzzle clues? If so, stick with that thread in the query and leave the history of hypnotism and the missing war veterans for the book.

And use paragraphs. Your plot is too long to be one paragraph.

And there's too much about word games: "packed with anagrams, palindromes and number puzzles," "man's relation to numbers and word games," "throughout the book are numerous anagrams, palindromes and the relationship of numbers on the human mind." We get it. If you play up the word game aspect too much, people will think the games are a bigger part of the book than the characters and plot. People buy novels to read about the grisly remains of dismembered corpses, not to solve cryptic crosswords. You might want to remove a few of the puzzles "running throughout the book" and save them for the sequel.

Old New Beginnings

Those who've purchased Novel Deviations, volumes 1 and 2, have a more convenient means of revisiting the better New Beginnings than scrolling through the blog. But at least a dozen authors of openings decided they didn't want excerpts from their works appearing in a book. Which means those who own the books might never see these again, unless I make it easy by labeling my favorites so that you can simply click on the label below.

New Beginning 301

An old bar at the docks. Noisy but dirty, not an inviting place anymore. Once upon a time, years ago I mean, men would come here after a hard day's work on the docks. But that was before they shipped everything in containers and a single crane could load or offload a whole ship.

They didn't need so many workers any more, and the companies didn't bother keeping workers on the payroll for old times' sake. They turfed the workers and docks became a loenly place.

So the bar hadda look for new customers. Lowlifes took over. You know what I mean: criminals, werewolves, zombies, vampires, editors. Lowlifes.

Didn't used to be that way. Then some punks thought they'd desecrate some graves. Wasn't quite the case of picking on somebody who couldn't fight back that they thought. First, they were being filmed on a mobile phone camera. Second, the zombies got pissed.

Punks were torn to pieces from the ground up. No one could deny the existence of the undead any more. So like every group of immigrants the this great country they get to start at the bottom.

I steel myself and enter. The room looks me over just as much as I look it over. I go to the bar and hope the bartender will co-operate.

"What'll you have?"

"I'm looking for someone. Here's his picture. Seen 'im?"

"You kidding me, pal?"

The bartender shakes his head, dislodging a few maggots from the pits where his eyes used to be. Zombies, the labor force the multinational corporations always thought they wanted.

That's when I see him.

Scraggly gray hair, shrubby eyebrows, mutton chops ... he looks like someone who should have died a century ago. Come to think of it, he probably did. So there he is drinking with a table of zombies and werevamps. And God knows what that thing with cleavage and slinky scales draped around his neck and wiggling in his lap is. Him hanging with the lowlifes, acting like he's one of them. And them eating it up. Redliner bedliners, the lot of them. Thinking they can claim even a part of his fame by buying him a drink and laughing at his lame jokes.

I stare at the guy who'd made it all happen. Him and his zombie crusade that had reformed a country's way of thinking. And now look where we are. No more immigrants. A workforce of native-grown sons and daughters. No drain on healthcare, education or housing. Liberals and conservatives alike calling him hero. Independents hailing him an emancipist.

Me, I see him for what he really is. Satan incarnate. Forcing men like me out of the unions and into corporate hell.

Yeah, someone's gotta destroy the Evil in the world. Might as well be me.


Opening: D Jason Cooper.....Continuation: Phoenix

Face-Lift 362

Guess the Plot

If Only for a Season

1. Jeremiah Clark rises from penniless plowhand to millionaire Gold Club Member, almost overnight. He's at the peak of high society. Then, just as fast, he loses everything. Oh well, it was nice being on top of the world . . . if only for a season.

2. For Master Chef Burl Evers, a final exam turns into tragedy when several of his students are murdered. Beautiful detective Lucy Burns must sift through the clues to discover which student used arsenic to season the duck.

3. Bob thought he was going to get a prize buck this year, but when he gets to the woods, they’re empty. Turns out - for one season only - the deer have licenses to hunt us.

4. It's summer break and Manly tells Chastity his girl is gone until fall. Chastity planned on saving herself for Mr. Right, but when she sees Manly's rippling abs and cherry red convertible, she decides she'll give up her virginity . . . if only for a season.

5. Coach Mike Flannagan thinks he can handle any player, no matter how wild or tough. But when former cheerleader Chrissy Watkins beats the boys at tryouts, he knows he's in for a rough badminton season.

6. Tiffy and Biff go gaga the first day of summer school and it looks like they'll be blissed forever, but alas --their Chemistry professor is an imposter: notorious criminal Octopus McGee. Will Mae Wong and her acrobatic sidekicks arrive in time? Or will McGee's explosive laboratory homework blow the Alpha Beta Beta house clear to the moon?


Original Version

Based on a true story, Jeremiah Clark turns from $2 a week sharecropper to Victorian millionaire practically overnight. But his wealth and position are disrupted by Molly Maguire-style violence in a contest for control of the booming gold camp.

In 1895, Clark flees the poverty-stricken South for the gold fields of Cripple Creek, landing in camp with a grubstake of $128. [I don't know what a grubstake is, but I once had a grubsteak. I didn't actually know it was a grubsteak until I turned it over and found a bunch of pulsating beetle larvae. That's the last time I eat at the Coleoptera Sizzler.] Will it last six months, time enough to get established? Not likely. But with determination and a series of lucky gold strikes, [especially the series of lucky gold strikes,] he rises from plowhand to Gold Coin Club member. [Which means he can pick up his rental covered wagons directly from the lot. No paperwork.] He is among powerful friends at the top of high-society. But success is short-lived, when union bosses engage in political insurrection and violence, touching off a labor war involving the Colorado militia and citizen mobs. [Damn. I can't get the song "Up On Cripple Creek" out of my head now.] Men are beaten and killed, malefactors detained and deported, and the chaos is edging Clark’s operation close to financial instability. In an attempt to control the violence, he engages the political backing of the state of Colorado, including the state militia. But the ugly results of anarchy and military despotism bring the once-rich region into deep depression. Within eighteen months of his millionaire status, Clark can no longer maintain profitable production levels and descends into insolvency. [I feel like I'm back in Econ 101. I couldn't stay awake there, either.] Three steamer trunks hold his last remaining possessions, [a pair of socks, a wooden nickel, a harmonica and 3700 pounds of gold.] and he takes the only work available, a slag worker in the mine he built with his own hands. It was true greatness, if only for a season. [I'm no economist, but let's say my blog is a gold mine that has made me millions of dollars, and then people stop reading it. I shut down the gold mine, but I still have my millions, which I use to start a carpet shampooing franchise. What happened to Clark's money?]

I am the founder of a Colorado Springs software company, and responsible for all written and verbal marketing communications. [No one else in the department is allowed to speak or write, but they may nod at each other suggestively.] My writing experience has developed from creating marketing materials, web pages, and whitepapers. I have climbed twenty seven Colorado mountains over 14,000’ and personally visited the remains of these gold camps.

Regards,


Notes

It's customary to report the length of a book when trying to sell it. Even more customary is to reveal the book's title. Fortunately I was able to ascertain the apparent title from the attachment,

Why a season? Wouldn't eighteen months be six seasons?

The first paragraph is unnecessary. All it has that isn't in the second paragraph is Clark's first name, which you can put in the second paragraph, and the fact that it's based on a true story, which you can put in your last paragraph (with the word count and title) in place of your marketing credentials. Then divide your big paragraph into three paragraphs with appropriate transitions.

Now you have a well-written standard query. But is it an interesting, well-written standard query? I'd like to hear more about the human effects of the turmoil and Clark's losses than the financial effects. Phrases like "labor war," "political insurrection," "malefactors" "financial instability," "anarchy and military despotism," "maintain profitable production levels," "political backing," and "descends into insolvency" make my eyes glaze over. Does Clark have family and employees counting on him? Does he learn any valuable lessons? Why should we care about Jeremiah Clark? Your story is about the man, not his mine.

New Beginning 300!!

I was weary and sore when I came to the great house of the Mackays. In my state, nothing seemed very grand, not the Church, not the village with its rock beach, and not the dark, dark house anchored on the hill above the choppy loch.

The coach had been on the road for days coming up from Edinburgh, and even for a young man, or a boy as my father would type it, it was weary business on the hard seat, swaying and lurching back and forth. Mostly though, I was tired of the coach, tired of rain, tired of the views from the open windows, and tired of my timorous fear. Fear - Perhaps it could not really be called a fear, but I had been tense and shaky for days as I came alone to this place where all things would be new to me.

In the door, the wind tugged at me, but was fresh and salt and welcome, as I came down out of the coach. At that second, after the smells of the carriage, I was ready to smile in relief and look forward to – whatever came. Ignobly, I fell on the last step and dropped to my knees in the mud.

It was then, at the lowest point in this wretched journey, that I first met McNulty. His strong hands brought me to my feet as he told me, “Ach man, yer mucktle’s feckled twix moar ’n’ broar. Gin yon hoose ’n’ fettle fer m’ tock.”

No doubt, I thought, he's offering to carry my bags to the house. “I am grateful, sir, for your assistance,” I told him.

“Ahh,” he said as we passed through the massive doorway, “twas nicht mer ’n’ enny mon ’t’ twickle in laird ’d’dee.”

I assumed he was asking me to remove my muddied breeches and my other too-long-worn clothes so that he might wash them. I had not expected to encounter such gentle hospitality in this northern wilderness.

McNulty led me to the kitchen, where the range filled the room with warmth--enough so that I had no need to request a blanket while waiting for the return of my garments and undergarments, which lay on the floor, McNulty having thus far neglected to commence laundering them.

Being Sunday evening, the Mackays were still at chapel, but I was grateful for the company of this honest, working chap as he fed me and had me drink fine whisky. We talked for hours, and eventually I asked him in good humor, “So, tell me sir: do all the working men in these parts wear lady’s clothing?”

“’n’ dw awl thewme bee haylin’ frome tha souythe sytt ’round thir hostes’ kytchings naickit?” he replied. “Woar widja mean ta skuttle tha mittie ’n’ morah y’sassenach shithead.” Strangely his tone seemed colder than before.


Opening: Scott Jones.....Continuation: ril

Face-Lift 361

Guess the Plot

Cruise Control

1. After watching their leading man ruin Oprah's sofa, ridicule depressed people, and give his wife a pacifier during labor, movie executives decide it's time to take action.

2. Nicole has had it with her ex-husband, so she has a voodoo doll made. Now, when he appears live on TV, the world will know what she put up with.

3. The story of a Hollywood publicist, Damaj Controlle, whose desperate attempts to rein in an egomaniacal client result in Damaj's firing. The client's outrageous behavior includes jumping on couches, impregnating a brainwashed youth, and frequently using the word "glib."

4. Tom is being blackmailed into leading a religious cult, and decides the only way to end the extortion is to smear his own reputation and become hated by all. But will televised conniptions and tirades against squirt gun microphone pranksters be enough?

5. Being a Hollywood "star wrangler" is Evie's job, one she excels at. But what can even she do with a certifiably insane Scientologist?

6. Katie'd had enough. No more sofa dancing. No more weird sci-fi mumbo jumbo religion. No more hunching over in public just to appease his enormous little-man ego. She wanted her life back. So she fitted Tom with a subcutaneous behavior-modifying microchip. Now if she could only remember where she left the remote.

7. The seas are afloat with blue-haired old ladies and wannabe professional gamblers. Captain Stubing and Gopher are not at all pleased with the current demographics, believing the new crop of cruise goers are destroying the romance of moonlight strolls and heart-throbbing love trysts. So Stubing and Gopher form a committee to ban sunglasses, baseball caps and Fixodent aboard their cruise line.

8. It doesn't take long for Sadara Obi to decide what to do when he finds a time portal in the basement of his bullying friend, Fang Woo. He travels to 1945 and changes the course of history by installing cruise control on the dashboard of the Enola Gay. Welcome Back, Hiroshima, and Goodbye Shanghai!

9. When dastardly mechanic Cheesy Adams wires his remote controller into the navigational circuitry of a cruise ship, hilarity ensues. But what will happen when a boatload of angry geezers and crones arrives in Haiti?

10. Even though prostitution is legal in the desert town of Tatterville, Police Chief Roy Beauregard is sickened by the hookers strolling Venter Avenue, because that’s where the Dairy Queen is, and Roy’s daughter Lila loves Butterfinger Blizzards. Roy begs Mayor Ernie to erect “No Cruising” signs, but when Mayor Ernie refuses, Roy concocts his own plan and has all the sidewalks replaced with metal grates, the archenemy of stiletto heels!


Original Version

Dear EE,

Tom has it all; money, fame, power. He used to be a person people cheered and revered, until that fateful night. That night he found himself in the company of a peculiar science fiction writer by the name of L. Ron Hubbard, or as Tom had previously known him, Dr. L.

Dr. L knew all about Tom's crime, the crime he had worked so hard to cover up, the crime he could not let anyone ever find out about. But Dr. L's presence proved his cover-up had failed, and now he was thrown at the mercy of a deranged lunatic. Blackmailed by Dr. L into leading a religious cult, Tom's fame becomes his Achilles heal. Hew devises a plan to end his extortion. If he can smear his reputation and become hated by all, he may be set free of his cult duty. Through explosions of feeling on Oprah, tirades against squirt-gun microphone pranksters, and two divorces and marriages, Tom sets out to ruin his name, but will it be enough??????

Cruise Control is a 171-word thriller. Thanks you for your consideration and I hope to hear from you soon.


Notes

I gotta start reading these things when they come in, instead of waiting till the minions have put hours of thought into composing their GTPs, at which point I don't have the heart to ditch the query.

Face-Lift 360

Guess the Plot

The Waterhouse

1. Okay, straw, wood, even bricks had already been used. But the Fourth Little Pig had a new idea. Let's see that wolf blow this one down!

2. Their lives have been ruined by violence, shattered marriages and prison. But these three men haven't forgotten the pact they made long ago as teenagers: to one day live out their fantasy of endless water fights in . . . The Waterhouse.

3. Not content with his 800-square-foot master bathroom, lottery winner Sven Olafsson decides to build a two-story, seven-room outhouse. Now he enjoys directing his guests there when they ask for the water closet.

4. How can young architect Colleen Tiblet convince land developers that water is a viable home building material? She has experimented with all sorts of ecology-friendly substances, and water is the best solution to global warming. But when Colleen actually constructs a house made of water, she is arrested and sentenced to burn at the stake.

5. The gas heater's drenched, the ceiling lights are zapping everyone within three blocks, and Bob Jameson is starting to think maybe a house made entirely of waterbeds filled with green Jell-O and '63 Red Burgundy wasn't such a bright idea after all.

6. Fabulous Twinky Waterhouse, sorority "princess," always uses the royal "we" in conversations on campus and is soooo popular--until her hometown nemesis arrives and blabs about "The Waterhouse" and her scandalous past. That's when Twinky realizes: Angel Jackson must die.


Original Version

Dear Evil:

Jimmy Timberlake is the idealist, Marcus Gayle, the arrogant misogynist, and Copper, Marcus’s younger brother, lost, looking for a role model. [Together they form the supervillain organization known as . . . The Cult of Injustice.] As young teenagers, they form a pact: the first one to make a million dollars will purchase The Waterhouse, a place to live out their adolescent fantasy of endless water fights.

But much happens between water fights and adulthood -- shattered marriages, violence, and sexual abuse. As Timberlake deals with the death of his mother, and a difficult decision about putting down his mother’s ill horse, Copper tries to define himself as a DJ in Colorado, coming to grips with his older brother’s violence and his own guilt over a rape he witnessed his brother commit and did nothing about. Marcus, who’s in and out of jail, continues his ritual abuse of women with little respect for his wife and child. Finally, in an attempt to find himself, Marcus attends a Promise-Keepers rally, but ends up twisting their message until it fits his own destructive views of manhood. [This is a list of events connected to each other only by the fact that each happens to one of the Cult of Injustice. We need more than an outline, we need the connections.]

Since receiving my Ph.D. in creative writing from [That's it? You're done with the plot? That's a few events, but what happens? Do these guys still know each other as adults? Does Jimmy make a million dollars by inventing the Super Soaker Water Bazooka and buy the Waterhouse, only to discover Copper drowned while failing to save Marcus from being eaten by sharks? What ties this together after they're adults?] Oklahoma State University, I have published sections of this novel-in-stories in The Florida Review, Puerto del Sol, The Baltimore Review, Oxford Magazine, Weber Studies: Voices and Viewpoints of the Contemporary West, Midland Review, Unbound, The Jabberwock Review, and Moonshine Review. The manuscript itself placed in the top 25 out of 423 manuscripts in the James Jones First Novel Fellowship in 2001. [The query would be more impressive if James Earl Jones were reading it aloud.]

Follow these young men’s lives as they weave together through failed relationships, death, jail, adopted children, ritualistic basketball games, and life-affirming love on their journey to manhood and The Waterhouse. [Another list of stuff, mostly depressing. I need a better reason to follow these men's lives than the prospect of seeing them have a water fight in chapter 28.]

Enclosed for your consideration are three sample chapters (stories) and a synopsis. Thank you for your consideration.

Best,


Notes

Take out the shattered marriages, jail, rape, ritual abuse, death, and horse, and you've got a great middle grade book. Seriously. The mean and sinister neighbor, Mr. Grimball, goes on vacation. The Cult of Injustice break into his house and have water fights for two weeks. Squirt guns, hoses, water balloons. The carpeting, floorboards and walls are all waterlogged and rotting away. Eventually Grimball comes home, opens his front door, and whoooosh! Washed down the street on a tidal wave of his possessions.

Which came first? The novel or the stories? If the agent thinks you wrote a bunch of stories, realized novels sell better, and tacked the opening with the teenagers onto the front to connect the characters, she's not going to be optimistic. Is there a connection that runs through the entire book? Do the story/chapters include all three men, or have they gone their separate ways?

I would limit my credits to the two or three most impressive, and call them excerpts, rather than stories/chapters. If you want to offer this as a novel you may have to rewrite the book to give it the feel of a novel rather than a collection of stories. And if you've already done so, just rewrite the query to give that impression by concentrating on the thread that unites the whole book. Possibly this will mean sticking with one main character (the most likable one) and how his life is affected by the others.

New Beginning 299

"Shit! What did you do that for!?"

"I'm sorry, Daddy, I didn't mean to."

"Well, sorry doesn't help me. I'm still dead."

Carol looked at the ghost of her father as it hovered above his body. She had come into the house all excited and without thinking had flipped on the light. Her father had been working on the lights - without a license - and had caught the full brunt of the renewed electricity. He fried, he fell, and then he floated above himself.

A strange sense that this was violating some aspect of reality washed over her.

"Why are you a ghost?"

"Never mind that right now. The first thing wee have to do is cover this up. There's no way my daughter is going to jail for manslaughter."

"But Daddy, I did kill you."

"So? Besides, manslaughter is the best you can hope for. You'll be lucky if some jumped up little turnip of an ADA doesn't nail you for murder."


That was when I walked in. As soon as I got the whole story, I knew exactly what to do: I called Bucky Merriwether at 1-555-LAW-GUYZ. Within the hour, one of their planes was overhead and a few minutes later, a paralegal was at the door.

They went into action straight away. With one of the most extensive law libraries in the South-East, they were soon able to prove my husband was at fault: it’s common knowledge it takes three accountants to change a light bulb.

Carol was acquitted, I got to keep the insurance money (less their twenty per cent), and they even got a restraining order on the ghost. It couldn’t have gone better. If you’re in an improbable fix, call LAW-GUYZ.


Low income? No credit? No problem! We accept food stamps, automobiles and sexual favors.

1-555-LAW-GUYZ. Because nothing’s indefensible.


Opening: D Jason Cooper.....Continuation: Anonymous

New Beginning 298

Lady Sophia sauntered through market square. She usually sent her servants to shop for her, but on this day she didn't know what she was looking for, only that she needed a distraction. That morning a letter had arrived, bearing the news that her husband was lost at sea. She didn't understand how he could leave her – the most beautiful lady in the land – in the first place. She placed a hand on her swollen stomach. Had he found her pregnant form ungainly? She shook her head in disgust. She carried his burden alone.

A glint of gold caught her eye. A merchant from the Outer Isles was setting up his wares. His dark hands held an elaborate golden frame of a mirror. He turned and the mirror faced her directly. In her reflection from the front you could hardly tell she was pregnant. She flushed, pleased at her still apparent beauty. She had to have the mirror. The only ones in the manor were small or handheld. This full-length one would do justice to her glory.

The merchant took her money and watched her saunter away, then picked up a much smaller mirror and fiddled with the curious nobs set around its frame.

"Lord Orris . . . come in, Lord Orris," he whispered into it.

The mirror brightened suddenly, and a man's face came into view. "You called?" he said.

"She bought it! My servant is bringing it to your house right now."

The man's face creased in a grim smile. "Did you direct him to set it up opposite her bed?"

"Of course, milord."

"Excellent. I'm sure we'll know who the father is inside of a week."


Opening: Mary.....Continuation: Marissa Doyle

Face-Lift 359

Guess the Plot

A Cold, Dark Place

1. Painfully shy Norbin Wartly gets a part time job as a custodian in the Coroner's Office. But will his quest for love lead him to . . . A Cold, Dark Place?

2. The coldest, darkest place Lester Hobbs can imagine is the deep freeze in the basement. That’s where he keeps donor sperm samples after he collects them from drugged patients at the Harris Gloams mental hospital. Maybe the deep freeze isn’t the coldest, darkest place after all.

3. When a rival mold colony threatens to destroy their own, Spanky Spore and a ragtag group of misfits embark on a quest to the outer reaches of Hvacia to find help. If they can survive the high winds and lethal UV lighting, Spanky and his companions just might be able to convince the legendary Elder Warriors of the Evaporator Coil to join their cause.

4. A trail of clues has Laurel and Jackie chasing the sick bastard who killed a boy and drained his blood. But as they break down the last door, will they be capturing a killer, or entering the cold, dark lair of a vampire? Also, another vampire.

5. When he’s bad, Tommy has to take his “timeouts” in the old root cellar. His dad thinks spending time in a cold, dark place will make Tommy think before he misbehaves. Maybe so, but Tommy has tunneled to Marcie Stellar’s house next door where they play “doctor” and “house” and “guess the body part in the dark.” Needless to say, Tommy can take all the hard time his old man can dish out.

6. Two mice named Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, trapped in a refrigerator, debate the merits of Swiss Cheese versus Cheddar, whether rats really are as bad as people say, and why it gets very bright for brief periods of time. Also, a fly in the mayonnaise and an elite squad of militant cockroaches.


Original Version

I am looking for representation for my paranormal suspense manuscript which is complete at 118,000 words. A bit on the dark side, with emotionally troubled characters, and a different play on what it means to be a vampire, A Cold, Dark Place should appeal to mystery, suspense, and vampire novel readers alike. I read that you are currently looking for this kind of story.

FBI agent Jackie Rutledge has a dead boy on her hands. Some sick bastard had drained him of his blood. [Let me guess. The conversation goes:

Jackie: The victim has no blood.

C. Chan: Two possibilities. Possibility one: After murdering boy, killer risked discovery by hanging around another hour to drain victim's blood into large bucket through tiny puncture marks on neck.

Jackie: And possibility two?

C. Chan: Vampire.

Jackie: Don't be ridiculous. I'll tell the boys to be on the lookout for a sick bastard carrying a giant bucket of human blood.]

PI Nick Anderson was the sick bastard that Jackie and her psychic partner, Laurel suspected of killing the boy. [Do they suspect him because he's a sick bastard? Or is he a sick bastard only if he's guilty?] [I don't think I've ever received a query letter in which the term "sick bastard" was used so often so early . . . Though I do seem to receive more than my share of personal letters in which the phrase is tossed around more freely than I'd like.] Only, he knows who the real killer is, and knows that the FBI is no match for him. Nick knows because he has the same need of the killer; the need for blood. [We all need blood. The difference is that for some of us it's a life force, carrying oxygen to our brain cells, fighting off infection, supplying nutrients, and disposing of waste. For others it's a refreshing beverage.]

Jackie has spent her ten years in the bureau catching sociopaths, poor substitutes for the one she was never able to catch as a child. Laurel is the only agent who knows her past, and has enabled Jackie to keep it from boiling over into her current life. Nick has been chasing the killer for 140 years now, riddled with guilt over the death of his family and what he allowed himself to become in order to catch him. [Or rather, to not catch him.] [If you've spent 140 years at something with nothing to show for it, perhaps it's time to try a less-demanding task.] He refuses to be the one thing that will allow him to catch [the sick bastard named] Cornelius Drake. [You just said he allowed himself to become something in order to catch him. Now you say he refuses to become what will allow him to catch him.]

When Drake makes Laurel one of his victims, [The psychic gets killed? Shouldn't she have seen that coming? (Sometimes my job is just too easy.)] Jackie’s life begins to fall apart, and despite his best efforts to push her away, Nick finds that he needs her help if Drake is going to be caught. [In the beginning you claim Nick knows the entire FBI is no match for the killer. In the end, you claim he needs the help of only one agent to capture Drake.] Their trust for one another is pushed to the ultimate limit when they are trapped by the killer and only one option for survival remains. He must accept what he is and take them both over to the world of the dead where Drake has even more power than in the realm of the living.

Notes

So for the 140 years Nick has been chasing Drake, he hasn't accepted what he is?

The plot sounds interesting, but it's hard to tell, as the description is too general in places. Give us more specifics.

The plot might be more clear if there were fewer pronouns. Those last two paragraphs have so many his's, her's, him's, he's, she's, their's etc., it becomes work trying to figure out who's who.

Normally a murder isn't enough to bring in the FBI. But with paranormal aspects and a sociopath hunter, this is like The X-Files meets Criminal Minds. Jackie is Dana Sculley and Nick is Jason Gideon. At the beginning of each chapter Nick quotes a famous historical figure he actually knew, and Jackie refuses to believe what is painfully obvious.

New Beginning 297

Until she looked through Rebecca's front window, Tabitha had only seen three dead bodies in her life. Shifting from foot to foot, she struggled to get a better view through the crack in the curtains.

"Is she coming?"

Turning her head, Tabitha called over her shoulder, "Call 911."

"What?"

"Now, Anna. There's . . . there's something wrong with Rebecca."

Not waiting for a reply, she tried the front door, which opened soundlessly. Tabitha took several reluctant steps past the door that Rebecca always kept locked and into the house. The antique mahogany hall table that Rebecca had bragged about bringing back from France lay overturned, the crystal bowl where she kept her keys in shards beneath it. Beyond that . . .

"Tabitha?"

Tabitha spun around to see Anna hovering on the front steps. "Did you call?"

Anna nodded. "They said three minutes. What's--" She froze, mouth open. "Is . . . is she . . . "

Tabitha forced herself to crouch down and look at Rebecca. One look was all she needed. It was just like her dream. She stood, raced past Anna, and threw up in the bushes by the front door as the sound of sirens began to swell.

Never again, she vowed to herself. Never again will I eat anchovies after midnight. Not only did they give her frightful nightmares in which her friends died violent deaths -- nightmares that came true the next day -- but her delicate stomach just couldn't handle them.


Opening: HW.....Continuation: Bump in the Night

Face-Lift 358

Guess the Plot

Crossing Broad

1. Six foot, 300 pound Wilma Spittle has finally found the job of her dreams. Outside Herman Wooster Middle School, she rules supreme with her whistle and stop sign as . . . the Crossing Broad.

2. Mickey Spillane meets Danielle Steele meets Lon Chaney meets Mitt Romney meets Paris Hilton in this crime-romance-thriller based on the famous Sharon Stone scene in Basic Instinct.

3. Concerned for the darling kindergartners, Elsa Sykes becomes Maple Hill Elementary's first crossing guard, but she can't fit her ample bosom in the vest. No one slows down. After little Fanny Turtle is driven over like a speed bump, Elsa strips down to her birthday suit. This not only stops traffic, it earns Elsa the name that will follow her to her grave: "Crossing Broad."

4. Dirk takes his job seriously, as do all the traffic management specialists. They all agree: Busy school intersections are no place for a woman. Then along comes Priscilla Cody, fresh from Australia, with orange hair and spandex biker shorts. But Dirk’s not willing to let any broad weaken “the guard.” He has a plan, one that may permanently stop the flow of her traffic!

5. Broad Street is more than the border between Middletown and Portland. It's a socioeconomic and cultural barrier dividing the upscale WASPs on the north side from the adult book shops, massage parlors, and liquor stores on the south side. When Portland's working girls start showing up murdered, though, homicide detective Zack Martinez learns that a lot of people have something to hide, on both sides of the street.

6. You don't mess with the law when you're passing through the town of Broad. One day you're a comic strip character, the next day you've been thrown in jail for baby snatching. Cora Mae wishes she'd just stayed in the Sunday funnies, instead of . . . Crossing Broad.


Original Version

Bedlam, broken laws, and romance ensue in small-town Broad when an abandoned infant is rescued by a skateboarder, pursued by a cartoon character and stolen by a disco-diva nurse. At 57,000 words, Crossing Broad is a completed adult novel. With fantastic elements, it occupies a tidy, yet cozy, space near Christopher Moore and Darby Conley (Get Fuzzy). [Trying to get authors to quit comparing themselves to other authors is clearly a lost cause. But Get Fuzzy? The comic strip? My book should appeal to fans of Charles Dickens and Charles M. Schulz. Think of it as a cross between Catch 22 and Garfield.]

Ruby Jenkins, seductive Head Nurse of E.R. doesn’t know why she finds this particular infant so bewitching, but when cartoon character Cora Mae slips out of the comics and onto the pavement with adoption in mind, [Does she want to adopt or be adopted?] Ruby finishes her shift, conceals the infant in her tote-bag and struts headlong out of the hospital. [This makes it sound like she takes the baby because Cora Mae has slipped out of the comics. If there's any connection between the events, establish it. If there isn't, put them in different sentences.] It is not Ruby, however, who is in line as prime suspect, it is the even more flagrant in presentation, Cora Mae, [Even more flagrant in presentation? That's a lot of words to say . . . what? She's dressed more ostentatiously than a nurse?] who steps into her first dose of reality, when based on appearance, she is arrested, booked, and sent to the slammer for baby snatching. [Even though she has no baby?] With the ingenuous Cora Mae behind bars and the town befuddled into inaction, Ruby is able to fly far enough under the radar to dodge local law enforcement and a host of Broad’s most vocal citizenry. But, as her options become limited, [You can only walk around so long before someone says, "Excuse me, ma'am, but your tote bag is bawling."] Ruby is finally forced to make a decision, which ultimately proves that rules are sometimes better broken than followed, especially in a town called Broad. [What decision? What rules? Why "especially"?]


Notes

I assume Ruby was able to get access to the baby because she was a nurse. What is it about Cora Mae's appearance that makes her a suspect? Is she dressed like a nurse? Does she look like a comic strip character in reality? Olive Oyl? Broom Hilda? Mammy Yokum?

More plot would be helpful. All we have is that a nurse takes a baby from the hospital, and another woman, who used to be a comic strip character, is accused. The rest is vague. Both women seem to want a baby. Do they want the same baby?

You mentioned bedlam and romance in the opening sentence. Yet the town is befuddled into inaction--hardly bedlam--and there's not even a hint of any romance.

Maybe Cora Mae can hire Lionel Hutz* as her attorney.


*Lionel Hutz: Cartoon lawyer on The Simpsons, who once said:

He's had it in for me ever since I kinda ran over his dog . . . Well, replace the word "kinda" with the word "repeatedly," and the word "dog" with "son."

New Beginning 296

"Shoot it again." Ben said.

"Can't. That last one was our last round." I replied.

"Well we have to do something."

"I know." I threw the gun at it. It missed. "Well that didn't work."

"You idiot we might need that later."

He was right, we would need it later, and would very much miss having it. How did the saying go, better to have a gun and not need it than not have one when you do. I was pretty stupid to throw it away but at the time, it seemed like a good idea. You would think that someone who constantly gets bit in the ass for not thinking ahead would eventually start but I was a slow learner.

"Well, I'm outta here."

"But that guy on TV said to stay indoors."

"I don't think he meant for us to stay and keep that thing company. But do whatever you want." Ben was my friend, but I could care less for his opinion at the time, I was getting the hell out of there.

"Fine go, you little bitch."

"You're a bitch." I started to walk away. The silence that ensued told me that Ben was thinking hard about what to do.

"Wait up."

"What?"

Ben pointed at my sneakers. "Take off your shoes."

The guy was unbelievable. "No way. If I can't hit it with a gun, there's no way I can get it with my shoes."

"No, I have an idea. Take them off." He could be real exasperating sometimes, but his idea was one more than I had, so I began to unlace my sneakers.

"Someone has to get help. They're Nikes, right?"

"Top of the line." I handed them over. "Three hundred a pair." He threw off his own loafers and began to put on my Nikes. "But there's no way you'll out run that thing, even in my . . . "

He looked at me. "Doesn't matter. So long as I can outrun you."

* * *

Ril's fingers hovered over the keys. There was no way the minions would go for such a hackneyed punchline, surely? Or would they? It is Monday, he thought. What the hell . . . He keyed in the word verification -- dntgdit -- and pressed "Publish."


Opening: Anonymous.....Continuation: ril

Face-Lift 357

Guess the Plot

The Ivory Tower

1. An actual tower made of ivory looms metaphorically over a dying land in which zombies and an ice goddess try to keep a young wizard and a guy named Harold from saving the world from a mysterious plague. Also, gnomes.

2. After years of planning, Jason finally opens his upscale BDSM club 'The Ivory Tower'. But when the mayor dies in the dungeon, Jason and his clientele are branded immoral killers. How will he prove he's really the town's whipping boy?

3. The world outside her window beckoned, and Professor Horn fled The Ivory Tower to experience another way of life. Now that she knows people have to work hard out there and no one is impressed with her credentials, she can't wait to go back to her cluttered office in the Economics Department.

4. Big game hunter Dirk "Blowgun" Pratt spends a year trying to poach the elephants of the savanna armed with an empty toilet paper roll and a supply of licorice jelly beans. But the gentle animals lose patience with Dirk's shenanigans and impale him upon their tusks for a ride on . . . The Ivory Tower.

5. Ivory Tower is the hottest thing to hit Triple-X since Busty Bundtcakes. Everyone thinks Ms. Tower’s name is due to her pale Scandinavian skin and her phenomenal height, until they see her perform! It seems that Ivory is equipped for every occasion.

6. Homicide detective Zack Martinez loathed the conceited professors at the local university. And not just because he lost his ex-wife, Marie, to Marcus Denethen, head of the History department. When Marie and Marcus are discovered naked and drained of their blood in the stacks of the school library, suddenly Zack becomes a suspect.


Original Version

All David wanted was a simple life and time to grieve. When his mother died and his sister ran away, there wasn't time for such self-indulgence; the same plague claimed his uncle Merric—the town's priest and David's magical instructor. [Whattaya mean "the same plague"? You haven't mentioned a plague.] From the age of ten, he worked night and day to shield his hometown from sickness and famine.

Five years later, life has settled down, and he wants nothing more than to settle down with it, spending his days chatting with local farmers [I can buy into a world in which magic is real, but a fifteen-year-old kid who wants nothing more than to chat with farmers? Come on.] and honoring local gods. It is not to be.

His coming-of-age ceremony is interrupted by Harold, a traveler who claims to have known Merric. He confirms David's suspicion that Merric was not a hedge-mage [Hedge-mage: a gardener who's a wizard with pruning shears.] but a full wizard, and reveals what Merric never had the chance to: a prophecy that holds only David can heal the spreading wasteland in the east. David protests, but when he learns that the plague was actually spell sent by his enemies, [David has enemies? He's a kid; how did he get enemies?] David realizes he has no choice but to leave home.

Soon he's headed east to unearth the Book of Life, a spellbook with which he is meant to heal the land. Adventuring life isn't easy. He is attacked repeatedly by bandits, gnomes, and undead. [Undead?! There's your hook, right there, and you've buried it in the middle of paragraph 4. You've also left it somewhat vague. The reader can't tell from the word "undead" whether you're referring to people who are vampires, people who are zombies, or people who are alive. Just as a science fiction author will refer to normal people as "humans," hoping the agent will think, Ooh, humans, I wonder what they're like, and request the manuscript, a fantasy/horror author will refer to normal people as "undead," hoping the agent will think, Ooh, undead, could be zombies, and request the manuscript. It's a ploy as old as the hills, but it continues to pay dividends.] To save a friend, he must risk his soul confronting [Hillary,] the Ice Goddess herself. When he finally reaches a safe haven, he learns that he has been challenged to a duel [He learns this? If you're gonna challenge someone to a duel, etiquette demands you do so in person, not place a personal ad.] and has two months to make up for five years of missed training. [Two months?

I challenge you to a duel.

Accepted. When?

Let's see, my inlaws 'll be here the rest of the week, and I'm already dueling Rodriguez next Friday . . .

I've got two weddings the week after that.

Now we're running into the holiday season.

Gimme a call in a couple months, I'll see if I can clear some time.

You're on.]

David learns to deal with physical assault, but the real dangers aren't physical. [I beg to differ. The dangers are always physical when there are zombies around.] He soon discovers that everyone has secrets, and he doesn't know where to turn.

Harold, the leader, [The leader of what?] is secretly the eastern prince—and even more secretly, adopted. [More secretly than secretly? ]

Raven, the bitter sorceress, is in fact his lost sister, transformed beyond recognition by her lust for power.

David was raised to mistrust wizards and hate kings, [I was raised to trust Mr. Wizard and to love Elvis.] but is on his way to becoming both. Neither Raven nor Harold told him that the Book is not just a tool of healing—it's the weapon with which he must unify the continent.

None of this prepares him for the greatest betrayal of all. When he finally reaches the ancient spellbook, he meets the writer's ghost and learns the final secret. The prophecy was a fraud, penned only to coerce him into service. [Is this a betrayal of David or of the reader?]

The Ivory Tower is a 120,000 word humorous fantasy that addresses the question: "What happens when the prophecy isn't true? When the unlikely hero is really is unlikely?" [Come again?] It's a broad satire of quest stories—the Smalltown Savior, the Thing of Power, and the Lost Heir are all here, and all tweaked so as to reveal their underlying absurdity. Comic relief comes in the form of David's sardonic first-person narration, [If you need to put comic relief into a comedy, it's not funny enough.] but the story is not simply a big joke. It's also a coming-of-age tale about the value of choosing one's own goals and making one's own way.


[Title Note: The Ivory Tower is an actual tower, made of Ivory, that existed long ago. Although they never visit the site, the tower looms metaphorically over the characters. To Raven, who has spent years searching for it, it represents magical knowledge. To Harold, the adoptive prince, it represents his nation's fallen grandeur. [To me it represents 250,000 dead elephants.] Most tellingly, it was both built and destroyed by the Book, and serves David as a symbol of the dangers of power.]


Notes

I'm not in the camp of those who believe a humorous book demands a humorous query. But it should at least describe situations in which the reader can see the potential for humor. The book you describe sounds like the book you're supposedly satirizing. I'm more interested in how the plot's been tweaked to reveal the underlying absurdity.

To make the query funnier, always refer to Harold as "a guy named Harold."

It's too long, and it has so many paragraphs, you'll end up skipping about ten lines. Combine some of the short paragraphs. And don't bring in so many plot elements.

The third paragraph was well developed, each sentence following logically from the last. The fourth paragraph is a list of events, no development, and less interesting. Two or three well-developed paragraphs makes a more impressive query than a lot of underdeveloped ones.

New Beginning 295

“Mom, there’s nothing to do in this tiny town,” I said for the third time that day. I plopped my head in my hands and stared as Mom chopped up vegetables for dinner. I let out a long, loud sigh.

Mom didn’t even look up. She decapitated the celery stalks in one quick thunk and said, “Christopher, there’s a lot to do in Midfield. Even more now than when I grew up here. You just have to look around.”

“But Mommm. This town is so smalll. And I don’t know aaanybodyyy.”

She paused from mutilating a helpless pile of carrots and looked up. It was working! She had that same worried look on her face as she did last month when I ate eight pieces of fried chicken and threw up all night. Maybe now she’d let us move back to the city.

"Christopher," Mom said wearily. "Do you remember your sister, Sadie? No, of course you don't, you would have been too young."

"I have a sister?"

"She used to talk a lot, just like you. It was 'Mommmm' this and 'Mommmm' that."

"How come I didn't know--"

"The last thing I remember her saying was, 'Helllppp! Agghhhhhh!' as I chopped her up, just like this eggplant." She sliced the eggplant in half with one stroke for emphasis.

"Mom?!"

"Go play, honey. Dinner'll be ready soon."


Opening: Spooge26.....Continuation: Pacatrue

Writing Exercise Results

The task was to write a scene that began:

Evil Editor showed Jessica Biel out of his penthouse condo. His birthday party, attended by numerous celebrities and his minions, had finally ended. Never again, he thought, will I stage this event in my own place. What a mess. Animals, all of them. He stepped into his bedroom.

"You're still here?!" he exclaimed.

1. Miss Snark extended a languid hand from the velvet-clad bed. "Why, of course I am, darling. You've made it clear that you'll never forget about me - making me the star of your writing exercises two weeks in a row. So I thought, why shouldn't I haunt your bed as well as your blog? Now, sweetie, show me the gin pail and then I'll show you what 'omniscient' really means."

--McKoala


2. “Of course she’s still here,” answered a voice from under the bed. “She’s drunk on her ass again and singing the theme songs from the Oceans movies.”

“I told you hours ago to take her home.”

“Did you want me to carry her or drag her?” he said as he emerged from his resting place. “Hello! I’m a poodle you nitwit! She’s a quivering mass of uncoordinated jello and she refuses to take off her stilettos. Plus she outweighs me by--”

“Shut up Yapp,” she hissed. She sat on the floor with her back to the wall, disheveled, clutching an empty quart of gin. “Great party, EE. I need a refill and more olives.”

He looked down at her and sighed. Things had been rough for her lately. He shook his head and smiled, then pulled a pillow and blanket out of the linen closet and threw them on the floor next to her. “Come on KY," he said, turning out the lights. "Talk to me while I do some damage control out here . . . You know, she never should have stopped blogging.”

--The Anti-Wife


3. "You said she'd be here, Evil. You promised."

"Well she wasn't. Now go home."

"I'm not going home. I don't want to be alone."

"Look, George, I don't give a flying fuck what you want. But you're not going to not be alone by being with me. Now leave."

"All right. All right. I'm going. I got what I came for, anyway."

"You did? What?"

"This glass stiletto I found under your bed. All I have to do is find its mate."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." EE showed George to the door and triple-bolted it behind him. Three locks should be enough for tonight. Thinking better of it, he turned back and locked the rest.

He returned to the bedroom and stepped into his walk-in closet. Sprawled beneath the rack of trousers, clad only in a single glass stiletto and stinking of gin, was the last straggler.

There's always one.

--Dick Margulis


4. EE contemplated the giggling, wriggling mass of arms and legs and glistening bodies. He noted, with profound resignation, the peculiar location of some heads.

"All right," he said, after a long pause. "How many minions did it take to change the lightbulb?"

--Bernita


5. “Yeah, I’m just turning on my Ipod.” Kristen took off her bra and flung it at Evil Editor. “What’s playing now, you ask? 'Can’t touch this.'” She shimmied out the door, boobs flopping to and fro.

“And you? What are you doing here?” Evil Editor looked at the tall, Canadian beauty.

“I’m replacing your artwork. It’s atrocious.” Bernita winked at EE. “Your bedroom needs a touch of magic realism.”

“What about you?” EE twisted around and faced Ray. “You and your fancy comma rules and one-inch margins. Get outta here!”

Ray started to utter something about the door being compelling, but stopped himself and left.

“How about me, EE? We got a history, you know.” The Queen of Nitwits held a 42 inch semi-automatic clue-gun at EE’s heart.

“Okay. You can stay.” One last blogger remained, in the corner, laptop open, brows furrowed, furiously typing away.

“What in the world can be so important, Nate?”

“Everything, EE. Everything. I gotta tell my readers everything that happened this week in publishing. And let's face it, your party's the biggest thing going. So, what’s your blog going to have on it today?”

EE picked up the cheeky blogger and tossed him into the hall with all the others. Save one, who still had a gun pointed at his heart.

--Takoda


6. Red, gold, orange and purple fabrics created a tent-like structure in the bedroom -- a plush love nest, a bubble of kitsch, and a hidey-hole of bad taste that left the average for the utterly unhinged. Two men lay entwined on the silken pillows, genitals pressed together, DNA-stained silken towels draping their muscular bodies, both dressed in scarlet-red lace bras and matching crotchless panties, garter belts and fishnet nylons. They stirred. Vito woke and opened his eyes, startled. He grabbed a lacy silk cloth to cover his crotch as he sat up.

"We decided to spend the night here, EE." Vito tucked the silk into the front of his panties.

"Looks like it was quite a party, Vito, did you have fireworks or just get your rocks off?" EE asked.

Cold, Shawn grabbed his body without opening his eyes.

"Stay, lover-boy." Shawn grabbed the towel from Vito's waist, pulling it around his face like a blindfold, leaving Vito's genitals dangling. His well-defined physique rippled.

"You have to get up and get dressed, my dear." Vito shook Shawn, again.

"But it's our wedding night. We delivered Biels to the Best Man, maybe he'll serve us breakfast in bed."

--Dave


7. “I, I thought you’d passed out!” sputtered Snark from the satin sheets of the waterbed. The pink rosettes of her nipples disappeared from view as she reached for the Beretta on the bedside table. “I want your blog and I’m willing to kill for it.”

But EE was quicker. The Walther was in his hands, a wisp of smoke swirling from the tip before he knew what he was doing. With lightning reflexes, he whirled around, shooting George Clooney dead in his tracks as he emerged from the bathroom. He pumped two more rounds as the closet door squeaked open, and Killer Yapp lay dead at his feet: crimson stained his fluffy fur like syrup on a sno-cone. His clip, heart and soul empty, EE stood in shock and didn’t hear the rustle of the minor minion from behind the velvet draperies. It was the last thing he didn’t hear.

# # #

I shoved the .38 into my pants, grabbed EE’s laptop and “Blog Codes” from beneath a generous pile of prophylactics. Silicon was leaking from Snark’s left breast; I was surprised to notice that Clooney’s butt was just as tanned as the rest of him. “Farewell, EE. Maybe in your next life you’ll realize that grammar is the only thing that matters, the only thing that lasts,” I said, grabbing the Tanqueray on my way out.

--ME


8. "We're your birthday present," they said in unison.

EE scanned the bed. His old flames. Julia Roberts. Angelina Jolie. Amanda Peet. Miss Snark. Eva Longoria. Hallie Berry. And Maria Sharapova. "Listen," EE said. "I'm another year older. "There's no way I can handle seven women anymore."

"Well then, you're just going to have to choose," Eva said, fluttering her eyelashes.

EE looked them over, each set of eyes more hopeful than the next. Finally he said, "Okay, okay, I choose . . . Angelina. Sorry, kid . . . you're the one who'll have to leave."

--EE

Face-Lift 356

Guess the Plot

Eleasa's Trap

1. It was just a large, rusty leg trap originally used for bears, and outlawed by environmentalists and animal rights activists years ago. But to Eleasa, it was the only way to land Mr. Right.

2. Her captain often wondered why Eleasa would volunteer for the graveyard shift: solo patrols on remote country roads. Although he's happy her radar gun catches speeders like a spider catches flies, he gets concerned when her abandoned vehicle reports match up with the missing persons reports. When vampire hunter Dusty McClain drifts into town, the pieces start falling into place.

3. When 14-year-old Bl'ino discovers the mystical Stone of Aardon, he thinks it's his ticket out of the most boring town on Stegrus. No more curfew, no more gym class, no more stupid math homework. Only after he activates the portal, only to find his homeroom nemesis waiting for him on the other side, does he realize he's fallen into . . . Eleasa's Trap.

4. Can a pregnant fishwife find happiness with the earl who knocked her up one drunken evening? Cara decides to toss the Goddess of Fate, Eleasa, for her unborn child's future, and wins the chance to make her dreams come true. Or does she? There's always a catch when you gamble against Eleasa.

5. Marvin Spalunky, henpecked husband of Eleasa The Gossip Queen, finds a map which points to pirate treasure buried somewhere in their subdivision. But soon his neighbors are digging holes in their yards. Eyeing his grandfather’s WWI rifle hanging over the fireplace, Marvin realizes if he wants the treasure, he’ll have to permanently shut . . . Eleasa’s Trap.

6. When a mysterious probe from outer space lands, Eleasa gets moles and prairie dogs to dig a deep hole underneath it. When the trap door opens, the probe falls in, and Eleasa kills the occupant. Oops. Turns out the occupant was one of her distant relations. And now Eleasa's in big trouble.


Original Version

Dear Agent

Eleasa's Trap is an 86,000 word science fiction novel.

Eleasa's life is finally settled. She has a loving husband and has proven her skills by creating unparalleled intelligent life forms. On her planet, Adeen, specialized animals, plants and microbes rather than machines are created to meet human needs. [Ah, like on The Flintstones.]There are people that think she's gone too far, threatening human control. [One minute you say her life is finally settled. The next minute you imply that mobs of torch-bearing villagers are out to lynch her.]

An alien spacecraft is spotted in orbit around Adeen [through the giraffe-o-scope]. When her old mentor, Icron, declines the job of leading the defense, the job is offered to Eleasa. She accepts in spite of the danger and quickly organizes people around the planet. [Shouldn't she be organizing the plants and animals and microbes? Especially the microbes? Hasn't she read War of the Worlds?] She's successful at killing the occupant of a probe sent down from the orbiting craft but discovers that the occupant was a distantly related human. Long ago Eleasa's ancestors also came from another planet but they lost the technology for space flight. [Actually, they didn't lose it; all the giant winged space camels died out.]

[Commander, I'm afraid we can no longer explore space.
Why not?
We lost the technology.
Damn. Did you check behind the couch cushions?]

Eleasa orders that if another probe lands, they must make contact with the visitors and that no more are to be killed. Her enemies still see the visitors as a threat. Her husband Acalon is killed when he uncovers a plot to kill Eleasa and any future visitors. [I'm beginning to see why Icron declined this job.]

Peter comes down from the spacecraft hoping to rescue his best friend who was in the first probe. Now Eleasa must get both herself and Peter to safety before they are the next victims. [Your best friend? Oh, that guy. I murdered him. Now come with me; I'll get you to safety.] First she has to figure out how to communicate with him, [She has to figure it out? He's the one with the space ship. Doesn't he have a universal translator?] and then get him to help even though she's the one who killed his best friend. Together they fight off attempts on their lives and uncover Acalon's killer. They prove to the ruling council that Peter and his shipmates should be allowed to stay on Adeen.

The book is complete by itself but is intended to be the first book of a series. Thank you for reading my query. I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely,

[The title comes from the way Eleasa kills the first person. She has small animals create a trap under the probe. [Hamsters driving little tiny backhoes.] The door opens suddenly dropping the probe a long distance and breaking it open. The door shuts before the people in orbit get any clue as to what happened. A combination of methods are used to kill every living thing in the probe, before Eleasa investigates what is inside.]


Notes

First of all, it feels listy. It's not a list of characters or themes, it's a list of stuff that happens. It's a bare-bones synopsis without much elaboration. Which, by its very nature, feels boring and simplistic. If you're writing for an adult science fiction audience, they're going to expect more sophisticated writing, and the agent is going to be worried that the book sounds like the query. The query is your first shot at showing your writing ability.

The query will sound less listy if each sentence follows logically from the previous one. To you they may do so, but you know the story. We need smoother transitions between ideas. Choose the main ideas you want to stress and develop them. You don't have to tell us the whole plot.

I assume you'd have said so if this were for middle graders. Would kids enjoy it?

Face-Lift 355

Guess the Plot

Suffer the Witch

1. A theology student who's also a sorcerer is in danger of being expelled--unless he can find a way to bring peace between the Christian God and the old Roman gods.

2. The Democratic National Committee Chairman had earned his place at the top of the food chain. There was no burden he wouldn't bear, no company he couldn't force himself to keep. That is, until he found himself trapped on a Lear jet with the Democratic frontrunner.

3. Bitsy Binter finds a magic book and decides to become a witch. Will her garden club friends still want her around when they see the size of her dahlias? Or will what she can do for their husbands make up for everything?

4. "My mother's coming to visit!"
"Can't you get a decent job?"
"Aren't those storm shutters up yet?"
"When I think of all the men I could have married!"
Mort Gumpler's wife, Pootsie, is an irritation, but she's worth six million, so he's willing to . . . Suffer the Witch.

5. Winters were long and hard, but it turns out that witches burn even longer than oak wood in the fires of Turner Hall. The villagers will survive until Spring!

6. If there were ever a time to keep her mouth shut, Beryl knew this should be it. But she can't resist telling her mother-in-law what she really thinks of her while she's lying in a coma. Then she learns her MIL was faking it for the insurance. And Beryl will pay for what she said. Oh yes.

Original Version

Dear Agent:

SUFFER THE WITCH, set in the Roman Empire in 304 AD, is an historical fantasy with romance elements.

To save his church when Emperor Diocletian's Praetorian Guard marches against it, Tory, a 17-year-old theology student, exposes a secret that turns the Church against him: He is a FireMage, a sorcerer. [He immediately turns the hypocritical, ungrateful Church elders into goats.] Absolution may be had -- for a price: by fostering peace between followers of the old Roman gods and the new Christian one.

Tory: "Okay, you followers of the Roman gods, line up over here on my right. And you Christian God followers, get on my left. Good, now I want you all to walk toward each other and shake hands. Good, good . . . Hold it, three pumps only, then release . . . Whoa, no wrestling, just . . . Hey, what's with the swords?! No Swords! People! Shit."

Tory's accomplice is Jerel, a 20-year-old mercenary who cares little for religion or politics. They meet in the aftermath of battle, in the Persian legion where Tory takes refuge after fleeing the Church. [Is it the Church that offered him absolution if he mended the Roman/Christian dispute? If so, shouldn't The Church be letting him get on with it instead of hunting him? And if not, how does he know absolution is available?] Neither expect the searing soul-bond that ignites between them, but Tory quickly embraces it, desperately needing the security it promises. Unable to deny the emotional connection, Jerel agrees to join Tory's crusade. Old prejudices, however, keep him from fulfilling the physical commitment Tory so clearly desires. [I'd hardly call being into babes a prejudice.]

Their path leads them deep into the catacombs of Rome where Christian refugees plot their own retaliations against Emperor Diocletian and his caesar, Galerius. [Unfortunately, Diocletian and Galerius are also plotting the refugees' deaths, in the arena--and they've got lions.] To the Sibyl of Apollo who lays an impossible prophecy at their feet. And to a waking Mount Vesuvius where the WorldFire burns, FireHounds await release, and pagan prophecy and Christian canon converge.

Their success hangs on sacrifice. On Jerel's ability to surrender soul and self to Tory. On Tory giving up craft and soul to the gods both old and new. On Diocletian abdicating the imperial throne, and Galerius ceding control of a divided empire. Only then can a new age in Rome begin. [It'll be a miracle if even one of those things happens.]

SUFFER THE WITCH, complete at 90,000 words, is my first novel-length fantasy, although several of my fantasy/SF short stories have been published in royalty-producing anthologies and for-pay magazines.

Thank you for your consideration.


Notes

Is Tory the witch in the title? Is he called a witch in the book? Can a guy be a witch? If not, who's the witch?

The last two plot paragraphs are lists. Consecutively, it's annoying. Change one so it has some elaboration or just dump the second one.

It's not clear what the plan is, or how success depends on all those occurrences. How exactly do they intend to unite followers of Roman and Christian Gods? If the key lies in the Vesuvius/pagan prophecy/Christian canon reference, perhaps devote that paragraph to that alone, and leave out the catacombs and Sibyl.

New Beginning 294

At 2:42 am, Officer Robert Burchard telephoned for back-up. He stood in Mrs. Hillen’s living room, looking at the first dead body of his career. He tried to walk around without stepping in anything. Blood pooled along the wooden floor, seeping through last month’s issue of Watchtower, ‘Are You Afraid of the Future.’ No Siree, Bob. Not anymore. I got a gun. I got a car. And in a few minutes, I’m gonna get a head start.

I watched the prick tiptoe around the room, spasmodically looking over his shoulder. He’ll be writing his report later. Single gunshot to the heart. Through and through. Time of death, shortly before midnight. No witnesses. Person of interest--Kenneth Jackman.

I’m close enough to eighteen he’ll want to pin murder on me. First, he’ll have to catch me.

"Kenneth Jackman, I can hear you mumbling there. It's very rude. I'm not completely deaf, you know."

"Sorry, Mrs. Hillen."

"I don't ask the church to send you kids round to keep me company. You should show some respect."

"Sorry, Mrs. Hillen."

"If you ask me, kids today need to--"

"Yes, Mrs. Hillen."

She put her magazine back on the coffee table. "More cake?"

"Thank you, Mrs. Hillen."

Detective Robert Burchard was stumped. Although it looked like cake, it was many times harder than any substance he had come across and had cleaved through her skull like a sharpened ax. Only a criminal mastermind like Kenneth Jackman could have come up with something this diabolical, but--

"Kenneth!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Hillen."


Opening: Takoda.....Continuation: Anonymous

Point of View

Some people seem convinced the opening to New Beginning 293 is told from an omniscient point of view. There are many interpretations of "limited" POV, and mine is apparently more lenient than some. Here's the way I see it: Each scene of the story is related by someone who was present as the scene unfolded, and who remains present until the scene ends. That person can tell us anything he sees, hears, thinks, knows, or imagines. When a book's first scene opens in the middle of some action or dialogue, we don't know exactly what preceded it, and can't be sure what anyone knows. In the scene in question, can we be in Haruna's POV?

Raucous laughter pealed from the cockpit at shorter and shorter intervals as the Liberia Airways 747 knifed through the darkness seven miles above the Atlantic. Captain Ibrahim stood in the center of the flight deck with Fadi Haruna, both men hunched over almost-empty glasses of Scotch from the first-class cabinet.

I'm thinking Haruna, like everyone on the plane, knows it's night and they're over the Atlantic. He can hear how loud the laughter is. Is there reason to believe Haruna couldn't possibly know the plane's altitude? For all we know, the pilot just announced the altitude to the entire plane. Or the men in the cockpit were just discussing the altitude. Or Haruna can see the altimeter from where he's standing. Any reason to believe Haruna couldn't know where the Scotch came from?

We never hear the thoughts of any character other than Haruna. We never see anything he couldn't possibly see. We never learn anything he couldn't possibly know. A book with an omniscient POV could begin this way, but I'm not prepared to declare it omniscient based on the first sentence.

Haruna leaves the cockpit, but we stay there for the next scene (see the comments for the next 150 words), so we switch to the POV of one of the characters still in the cockpit.

Face-Lift 354

Guess the Plot

Murder in the Cards

1. In a suspense-filled Pokemon game, 9-year-old Sammy realizes that 8-year-old Jeff has the rare Dark Pikachu that he's wanted for months. Now Sammy must decide how far he's willing to go to complete his deck.

2. Fake psychic Lorna Lipschitz gets a tarot card reading gig at the wedding of her ex-fiance, Jack Ready. But it doesn't take a psychic to see something is very wrong when Jack's new wife is found dead with the Death card stapled to her bludgeoned forehead. Can Lorna clear herself of suspicion and rekindle the fire with Jack? Or will the hunky homicide detective give her a different fortune?

3. Madame Moodra knew her part: deal the Burning Tower to Professor Green and tell him his wife is dancing in Vegas with gym rat Todd Sparks. But whoa! Violent reaction! Good thing Moodra's pistol was loaded. Although now that Green is dead and her cards are all bloody, she's wondering -- was it all a set-up?

4. Geraldine Plick is the reigning canasta player at the Sunset Manor Retirement Home until a challenge from newcomer Betty Drupe leaves her doubting her abilities. When Betty is found dead in the hydrangeas, it's up to Geraldine to find the murderer before she lands in a freecell.

5. Dulci Ash is on the trail of a killer. A Machiavellian medicine man and an octogenarian madman are her chief suspects, but the authorities have arrested songwriter Josh Burnett. Can Dulci use her psychic abilities to clear Josh, or is a murder conviction . . . in the cards?

6. Alice never expected to see poor Jack lying dead outside the little house. When the Queen arrives and orders Alice beheaded for the murder, Alice's only chance at proving her innocence lies in a magical mushroom, a taciturn lobster, and an unfortunate lizard named Bill. Also, a white rabbit.


Original Version

Dear Editor:

I have recently completed a 100,000 word regional mystery novel set in and around the White Mountain Apache Reservation, titled Murder in the Cards. The story combines historical events from the late 1800s with a recent murder that propels part-time psychic and full-time single mom Dulci Ash reluctantly out of her shell and onto the trail of a supernatural killer in the White Mountains of Arizona. [A wordy opening; eliminate the word "regional," since you tell us the region, eliminate the setting in the second sentence, as we already have it, and eliminate "reluctantly," which is assumed of anyone in a shell. Do we need to know she's a single mom in the query?]

Along with way, she meets Josh Burnett, the all too human singer/songwriter who is accused of the crime, [Look Josh, I'm not saying I want to date a monster or a space alien; but you . . . you're just a little . . . too human.] his father Vince Burnett, an Apache medicine man who's Machiavellian politics make the prince look like a dabbler, [Which explains why cunning, unscrupulous politicians who were once called Machiavellian are now described as "a little like Vince."] and a pumped-up octogenarian madman [, Jack LaLanne,] who has been possessed by the spirit of Coyote, the Native American trickster and meddler.

Historical elements of the story center around the fictionalized account of a famous Apache Medicine Man, Goyani (Apache for The Wise One), [And whose letters can be used to spell "yin," "yang," "yogi," and "Nagy."] ["Nagy"? I include "Nagy" only to explain why I was suddenly reminded of the incident with my Jon Nagy art kit, which included a clear plastic sheet that you put over your television screen so that you could learn to draw like Jon Nagy. One Saturday morning I forgot to put the plastic on the TV, and drew all over the actual screen. Turned out the crayon wiped off the plastic sheet much more easily than off the TV. Mom was not amused. But enough about me.] who was apprehended by local soldiers for inciting an insurrection among the Apache people. Goyani had promised to resurrect four dead Apache War Chiefs to lead the people. [I was about to say, If the best leaders you can come up with are four dead guys, you're in trouble. Then I realized how much better off we'd be today if we had elected the Marx Brothers.] A terrible battle ensued between the soldiers who had come to arrest him and the people of Cibecue, which is widely recognized as the last major battle of the Indian Wars. Goyani ended up being murdered, hands tied behind his back, during the fight. No one knows how history might have changed if he had remained alive long enough to complete the resurrection ceremony. [For starters, the Washington Redskins would be known as the Washington Aryans; the Cleveland Indians would be the Cleveland Crackers; and the Florida State Seminoles would be the Florida State Rhythmless White Guys.]

I have worked as a psychologist on the Apache Reservation for approximately eight years, and am able to combine a thorough understanding of modern Apache culture with fastidious historical research – I worked in the editorial department of a weekly newspaper in Detroit for nearly 10 years before deciding to return to school for my PhD.

I would be glad to send you sample chapters or the full manuscript on your request. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

If this is Dulci's story, we need to know what happens to her. All we get is that she's after a killer. There's more of Goyani's story here than Dulci's, and while I have no doubt that Goyani's story is told in the book, this is a present-day murder mystery, so concentrate on the present-day plot. Who's dead? Who had motive? Why is Josh locked up? Why is Dulci involved?