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When Animals Submit

 

 

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Motivation

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Car Trouble

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Evil Editor Teaches Summer School

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Evil Editor Eats Out

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June: Wedding Month

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If the Great Masters Had Lived in the Age of Advertising.

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 Summer Is Here

 

Book "Sale"

Blurb Books, which prints Evil Editor's 8 by 10 full-color books, is running a sale offering 25% off on orders of $100.00 or more. Which means I can order three or more copies of my graphic novel Schliegelman Saves the Universe, which stars Evil Editor as Schliegelman, for $30 each instead of $40. As I have to pay to have them shipped to me and to then ship one to you, I up the price to $40 (including shipping). The book is available only in my store because Amazon is a bunch of mean bullies. Just click on BOOKS in the sidebar. (Also available in hardcover for an extra $10.) (If you're outside the US, email me.)

Face-Lift 1206

Guess the Plot

The Nexus

1. Time, spirit, space, and temperature have no meaning in . . . The Nexus! Neither do characterization, voice, grammar or spelling.

2. In this multiversial scifi literary romance thriller, a man falls out of a spaceship and is sucked into . . . the Nexus.

3. Only teenager Cole can prevent the genocide of all unintelligent humans. All he has going for him is his own intelligence and a secret weapon known as . . . The Nexus!

4. All across the land, human beings of all stripes are being drawn inexorably from their dwellings to transfer points where they're shifted to other realms. Yes, it's the History of Railroad Stations, but nobody'd buy a book with that title.

5. Seemingly random online strangers find themselves on a serial killer’s potential victim list. Will they discover in time that the  killer is a Grammar Nazi trying to eliminate the biggest online offenders of the English language?

6. Mick and the other sales staff place bets on how many times the jargon-spewing Communications Manager will babble "the nexus" in her weekly seminar. After the seminar, controversy breaks out over whether her use of nexus as a verb counted, and what the hell nexus means anyway.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Seventeen-year-old Cole has a rare gift—intelligence. The Malkum, a former think tank gone rogue, jealously guards their position of power by killing those who might pose a challenge. Cole avoids detection by living among the unintelligent humans, the Indignis. [Over whom do the Malkum have power? What kind of power?]

Cole narrowly escapes death when the Malkum targets him and murders his people. [Who are his people? His family? The people he's hiding among?] He learns of a clandestine rebellion seeking to overthrow the Malkum, and discovers that his intelligence was not an accident of evolution. The rebellion bred him to lead their army against the enemy, sending him to live among the Indignis so he could learn to love those he must later fight to protect. [If the rebellion were intelligent enough to figure out how to breed one really intelligent person, why not breed thousands?]

Resolved to prevent the genocide of the Indignis, [He was originally trying to keep from being killed by hiding among the Indignis. Which makes little sense if there's a genocide of Indignis underway.] [Wait, the Malkum are trying to kill all the intelligent humans and all the unintelligent humans?

Malkum 1: Anyone smart enough to challenge our power must be killed.

Malkum 2: Yes. Then it'll be just us and all the idiots.

Malkum 1: Yes, the idiots . . . The idiots can be so annoying.] he must overcome his self-doubt, escape the crosshairs of the enemy, and convince an unwilling army [If he's counting on the Iraqi army, he's in trouble.] to follow him to the enemy’s gate. [Is only thing protecting this former think tank from the rebellion army a gate? Lucky for them the rebel army are all idiots.]

The rebellion has given Cole a secret weapon, the scope of which must remain hidden from even Cole—the Nexus, a psychological weapon that hides one’s memories from one’s self.

Complete at 95,000 words, THE NEXUS (Science Fiction) combines the empathetic leadership of Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggin with mind-altering weaponry reminiscent of Total Recall.


Notes

The Malkum is sort of stuck between the intelligent and the unintelligent. Maybe you should call the book Malkum in the Middle.

Have they been waiting 17 years for Cole to be ready to take down the Malkum?

What is the setting? A planet? A country? A city? One former think tank is going to have a limited area it can control, I would think. Do they have an army of their own, or secret weapons?

So this secret weapon will rob the enemy of their memories? And once they forget they're trying to kill everyone, all will be well?

Is Cole's intelligence greater than that of the Malkum? Is he like a superhero, and his superpower is intelligence? Most of the super brains choose to be criminals: Moriarty, Doctor Doom, Brainiac, Lex Luthor, Goldfinger.

Maybe we should lose the setup and start: Seventeen-year-old Cole has been bred as the savior of the Indignis, idiots ruled by the super-intelligent Malkum. That leaves plenty of room to tell us what Cole's plan is, what obstacles cause his plan to go awry, what he does about it, what will happen if he fails. In other words, we want the story, not the situation.

Face-Lift 1205

Guess the Plot

Battleground: Jet

1. The last thing Jerry expects when he books his flight to Vegas is that two different terrorist groups will have teams aboard the plane trying to bring it down. Or that the winners of the national mixed martial arts championships would also be aboard, heading home from their White House visit.

2. Klarissa thinks her jet black eyeliner is sexier than Marissa's kohl eyeliner. When Marissa shows up at the school dance with the new jet kohl eyeliner, and Klarissa's crush, the fight is on! And where did all the werewolves wearing the newest jet black kohl eyeliner come from?

3. Jason has big hopes for his new game, Battleground:Jet. Dreaming of millions and a life of leisure, he releases it to adoring fans who swoon with joy over the high-tech game. But there's just one problem: All his fans are girls. Girls playing an air combat game? Yuck! Now what will he do? And will he have to leave the basement to do it?

4. Fourteen-year-old Jet enters the BattleGround Games hoping to become champion of the solar system. If he wins, he gets fame and fortune. If he loses, billions of people die; and you don't even want to know what happens to Uranus.

5. Hades' Devilspawniest EVUH gather to argue the toss over PERSONAL EVIL. Only one will make Apocalypse Academy. And RULE. Will Yellerpants Kindasatany Lite make the grade? Or will the "Jet Black Persona" Clause precipitate foiled fiend oblivion?




Original Version

(Hi, thank you for doing this! In addition to the query, I'm concerned about whether such an anime-style plot is sellable to the Western market. Can I get away with a story like this?) [I can't tell if you're afraid Westerners are too sophisticated to buy into the plot, or too stupid to get it. Guess we're about to find out.]


Dear Agent,

The BattleGround Games are the solar system's most popular sport. Competitors use advanced technological and magical "upgrades" to fight their opponents [It's like the Olympics, except you can cheat.] on areas that vary from abandoned cities to entire planets on the edge of the system. [Is this our solar system?] [If so, the planets on the edge of the system are Neptune and Uranus. No one cares about Neptune, but I hope the technological upgrades allowed to competitors from Uranus don't include noxious gas bombs.]

Fourteen-year-old Jet dreams of competing in the Games, and after a chance encounter with a disgraced former Battler, [He was disgraced for using advanced technological upgrades that were a little too advanced. I mean it's one thing for Oscar Pistorius to wear springy blades, but this guy blew the field away in the marathon by using a motorcycle.] [It would be cool to see an Olympic high jumper come out wearing a jet pack. There may not be a rule specifically prohibiting jet packs.] [I still can't believe they let Michael Phelps get away with wearing swim fins in the London Olympics.] it seems he might just get his chance. He does well in his first few games, and befriends a cheerful mechanic named Caera, who agrees to help him [A mechanic? Wait, is Jet a robot?] [How did he do so well before he had a mechanic? A Battler without a mechanic is like a Torturer without a thumbscrew, as the old saying goes.] during what she expects to be a short Battler career.

Jet finds a rival in the mysterious Lancer, an earth-born girl who doesn't seem to care for the fame and fortune that motivates most of the players. [Is Jet earth-born?] While investigating her origins, [To confirm that she wasn't actually born on Krypton.] Jet discovers a plot to rig the games -- a plot that would destroy several planets and kill billions of people, all live on TV. [To put that on a smaller scale, it's like the Jamaican bobsled team nuking every other bobsledding country so they can win Olympic gold.] In order to save the solar system, Jet has to win the Games and expose the cheaters. ["Cheaters" is a rather mild term to use for those plotting to kill billions of people.] But that's easier said than done, especially when he realizes that everyone around him has secrets, and no one is completely trustworthy.

BATTLEGROUND: JET is a YA science fantasy novel complete at 60,000 words. It is a self-contained novel, but has potential for a series. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

I would label this Middle Grade rather than YA. Jet's a bit young for YA, and while you could make him 17 instead of 14, I think you'll find most people would rather the fate of the solar system were in the hands of Ender Wiggin than Ferris Bueller.

I would like a better idea of what the BattleGround Games are. If it's one sport, like the World Cup, what's it like? If it's more like the Olympics, what's Jet's event? A query for The Hunger Games would tell more about the games than that competitors can use a variety of weapons.

Are the villains willing to destroy planets and kill billions just to win the Games? Or is there an ulterior motive?

Is it normal for Battlers to investigate their opponents' origins? If so, why?

I'm not sure what makes this plot "anime-style," but I can see it appealing to kids.

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