Eight Days of Halloween Films Dredged Up from the Vault

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Eight Days of Halloween Films Dredged Up from the Vault

#2 Trick or Treat

Eight Days of Halloween Films Dredged Up from the Vault

1. Campfire Tales

New Beginning 1049

The darkness was overwhelming. It made his entire world. There was no way to anticipate where the next pain, probe or pinch would come from.

His attacker never spoke, except through actions. Caresses ended with pain. Bite marks covered his entire body but were then covered with kisses.

Love and hate combined as one; becoming neither.

His world of darkness hides a bundle of rags for a bed and a couple of dishes for food and water, similar to a dog’s. They were always full of fresh food and water; yet no one appeared to fill them. There were four walls and what felt like a door that had no handle on this side of the room. No matter how high he reached or jumped, he could not touch a ceiling or window.

He knew of these from his last life, when he had a family, or so he imagined in the darkest moments.

He seems to remember a mother; all loving and warm with kisses and hugs and peanut butter cookies and pushing him high on the swing. He remembers or imagines being tucked into bed and cuddled with stories of dragons and knights in shining armour who conquer all evil. THEY WERE LIES!

"Excuse me!" He shouted. "Can anybody hear me?" No one replied.

"A blanket," he said. "I just need a blanket! It's so, so cold in here." But his pleas went unnoticed as the room hummed and shook around him.

He brought his knees up to his chin, tried to make himself as small as possible, tried to ignore the pain. It was to no avail. There was to be no release, until... Until the journey was over.

And as though this were not punishment enough, he'd had to pay $30 to check his suitcase.


Opening: DW.....Continuation: ril

Face-Lift 1280

Guess the Plot

Winter's Queen

1. Handsome rapscallion Robin Winter has been commissioned by the Darklings to capture Queen Eldyrianaleselore of the Outerlands so they can take possession of the Opal Dragon Charm and rule the world. He captures her all right -- but she captures his heart.

2. Teenager Arial is kidnapped by the Winter Prince, who demands that she marry him and become his queen. Or die. If she marries him she'll become immortal, which is kind of the opposite of dying. But dying might be better than being married to this clown for eternity.

3. Seventeen-year-old Winter Hayes falls hard for the beautiful Phoebe Jackson, only to find that "she" is actually a gay drag queen whose real name is Jason. When hilarity ensues, can love conquer all?

4. Adrian Winters is famous for elaborate sacrifices that win chess tournaments across the globe. But when his wife becomes terminally ill, can Winters make one last sacrifice, donating his heart so his queen might live?

5. Experimental musician Edgar Winter, of Frankenstein fame, decides it's time for a resurgence. He decides to focus his next hit on the Bride of Frankenstein, but falls in love with his subject along the way. Then he decides to pen an ode to Freddy Mercury. Same problem.

6. Ilyenna is fatally wounded when a neighboring clan attacks her village. Instead of letting her die, the winter fairies heal her and make her their queen...but it comes at a price. Her humanity, her emotions, her memories, her family...her love.

7. Moscow, May 1876. A talented young student from a wealthy family commits suicide out of decadence and boredom. Or does he? Young sleuth Erast Fandorin is on the case.

8. Kevin Bixter just wants to be a drag queen. But he arrives in San Francisco the day a hyper-conservative congress passes a law forbidding his new lifestyle. Now he receives a cold reception from the once welcoming community. Kevin is the last drag queen in a new frozen culture. He is . . .  Winter's Queen.

9. This years Gay Pride march has a Four Seasons theme...and the competition for the title of Winter's Queen is really heating up.

10. Young, virile King Winter III wants nothing more than to play the field, sampling girls without marrying until he's in his 40's. But he needs an heir. When his friends take him to a drag show in the capital, he suddenly finds himself longing for a very different kind of Queen.

11. The untold story of Snow White's mother, once a foundling child lost in the snow, who rose in power and ruled a kingdom with an icy fist. Also, blue dwarves.

12. Queen Fione hates being depicted as a crone just because winter is considered the end of the year. So she starts a decades-long sulk that results in global warming. The queens of spring, summer, and fall don't care--but it's a good excuse for a tourney. 

13. On a world where the four continents are known as Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring,  Winter's queen is tired of ruling a land that's always so freaking cold. Especially now that most of her subjects have moved to one of the other lands. Can she get to Spring when her only form of transportation is a snowmobile?



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Sixteen-year-old Ariel Hawk doesn't simply believe in the Fae—she knows full well they exist. They’re not the sweet, sparkly little pixies most people imagine: they’re dark and decadent, proud and powerful, capricious and cruel. [They're the Republican Party.] So when their Winter Prince kidnaps Ariel to the realm of Faerie, she's not shocked or confused. She's pissed. [More suitable would be "incensed."]

Ariel’s abductor—His Royal Smugness, Prince Fiachra—wants nothing more than to marry her. He won’t tell her why he needs a wife so badly, [Does the wife have to be Ariel?] nor will he take no for an answer. But for Ariel, a fairytale wedding is [would be] a waking nightmare, not a dream come true. [A three-cliche string! Impressive. I'm told someone once managed four, but I never saw the evidence.] Living in Faerie would eventually make Ariel part-Fae herself—as inhuman, immortal and amoral as her husband-to-be. [I can live with amoral and inhuman if you're throwing in immortal.] [If she's just as amoral, immortal and inhuman as Fiachra, why is she considered part-Fae? What aspect of Fae-ness is she lacking?] Returning to Earth [The realm of Faerie isn't on Earth?] after that, with or without Fiachra’s consent, would kill her. [How come going to Earth to kidnap Ariel didn't kill Fiachra?]

Loathing all that Fiachra is and what he would have her become, Ariel resists his fickle attempts to woo and subdue her by turns. He tries to force-feed her enchanted fruit, and she spits it back in his face; [That's some pretty lame force-feeding if the food is still in her mouth and spittable.] he proposes with a beautiful silver ring, and she drops it into her chamber-pot. Even an icy dungeon can’t hold Ariel for longer than it takes to hack her way out with a stolen knife. [She should have stolen an ice pick.] [So she hacks the ice away from the door and it's unlocked?]

As Fiachra’s patience crumbles, Ariel’s desperation mounts. If she marries Fiachra and becomes the Winter Queen, she’ll be bound to her kidnapper and tormentor for eternity. But if she refuses him or fails to escape, she’ll be killed. [I'd go with "and" rather than "or." Better yet, "if she tries and fails to escape..." She has, after all refused him several times already without being killed.]

WINTER'S QUEEN is a YA fantasy of 81,000 words. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

Does anyone know why Fiachra insists on marrying Ariel, but won't tell her? For instance, do you know? If so, I see no reason to leave it out of the query. For instance, if he must convince her to marry him without telling her why or everyone in Faerie will die, I wouldn't be too hard on him. His reason seems to be a key point. If not marrying him has dire consequences for anyone else, she has a difficult choice. Otherwise, she obviously would try to escape and either die or make it home.

If Faerie isn't on planet Earth, I'm not sure where she hopes to escape to. How can she get to Earth?

The query causes me to ask questions that you presumably know the answers to. Answer those that you need to, and reword it so the others don't arise.

Face-Lift 1279

Guess the Plot

The Blood Blade

1. Eduardo Rodriguez has had it. Starting tomorrow he's trashing his razor and getting an electric shaver.

2.As the king lies on his deathbed, his youngest son slays his older brother and marries his widow. Then the Bahari tribe forms an alliance with the nobles to overthrow the ghostlings. Oh, and everyone wants . . . the blood blade.

3. 14-year-old Jacob Moonbright is destined save his hometown of Ivaline from the armies of Shadowguard, and he needs the Blood Blade to do it. There's just one problem: the blade is in the clutches of the over 5000 members of the American Pawnbrokers Association.

4. A scientist, stricken mad by the loss of his lover, goes on a quest for a mythical weapon fabled to raise the dead. But when he finds the Blood Blade and uses it to resurrect his gigolo lover, he unleashes an ancient evil on a modern college campus.

5. The prince of Troander is driven from his kingdom by monsters and mercenaries who don't realize that in the dead of night the prince will magically transform into a deadly assassin, wielder of . . . the blood blade.

6. A surgeon. A scalpel. An appendectomy gone horribly wrong. Can Detective Mary Dunning find the murder weapon before the mad doctor turns his attention on her? 



Original Version

Dear EE,

Seventeen-year-old Arek Pa’Gorin, the orphaned prince of the Kingdom of Troander, is oblivious he has an alter ego- an infamous assassin named Rykter. [I recommend changing his name to Rhektum. It's appropriate for a guy whose occupation includes the word "ass" twice.] [Also, I can tell already this story needs a little comic relief.]

Wielding the mystical vampiric Blood Blade and bent on ridding the world of evil men, the assassin only manifests while Arek is sleeping. [It sounds like "virtuous" would be a better description of the assassin than "infamous" if his goal is to get rid of evil.] Though they inhabit the same body, neither is aware of the other. [You already said Arek is oblivious, so this doesn't add much.] That is, until the Lord Regent hires the assassin Rykter to kill Prince Arek. [Is Prince Arek evil? Or does Rhektum take jobs on the side to pay the bills?] [Not clear how being hired to kill his alter-ego makes him aware he has an alter-ego.]

Prince Arek flees the kingdom, but danger continues to stalk him. [It sounds like he's fleeing because the Lord Regent hired an assassin, but it also sounds like he now knows he doesn't have to worry about the assassin. So why's he fleeing?] Not only are the Lord Regent’s mercenaries on his trail, [Usually you hire a hitman because if you send your mercenaries to do the dirty work you'll be blamed. Usually if you don't care about being blamed, and you've got mercenaries on your payroll, you don't spend money on an infamous assassin. That would be like the president, despite being surrounded by Secret Service agents all the time, hiring The Jackal to protect him.] but he is also pursued by a horde of mutated creatures known as the Dragonspawn. [Not only that, but no matter how fast and far he goes, he can't seem to get this Rhektum dude off his tail.] Now that Prince Arek has left the protection of the castle walls, the Dragonspawn see their opportunity to recover what was once theirs. [Which is what? The castle? The kingdom? The throne? Maybe the Dragonspawn will kill the Lord Regent when they attack the castle, solving Arek's problems.]

With a mage’s apprentice, an assassin and a handful of King’s Guardsmen to protect him, Prince Arek must travel to seek the sanctuary of family he has never known. [I'd feel safer with the assassin and the guardsmen than with family I've never known. Why must he do this?] On his journey he wonders if killing people as Rykter makes him a bad person. [Of course it doesn't. Didn't he ever watch Dexter?] Worse yet, he worries that he will wake and find all of his protectors brutally massacred. By him. [Isn't he aware that his alter-ego kills only evil men?]

Dealing with his assassin alter ego and avoiding the pursuit of both men and monsters, Prince Arek must live long enough to reach his eighteenth birthday so he can return to Troander and claim his throne. [Yes, those men who drove him away and want him dead and the monsters on his trail will all suddenly relent and welcome him home with open arms when he turns eighteen.]

The BLOOD BLADE, complete at 83,000 words, is the first installment of an epic fantasy series. [If the book has a satisfying ending and can stand on its own, say so. The reader will want to know how many books you expect them to invest in.] Thank you for taking the time to consider representing my work.


Notes

I assume the Lord Regent wants Arek dead so he can rule over the kingdom. If Arek turns eighteen and then gets killed, who rules? If it's the Lord Regent, then I'm not sure turning eighteen makes Arek any safer.

It seems like the idea of being hired to kill someone and that someone is, unknown to you and the person who hired you, yourself, is the most interesting aspect (I found it cool in A Scanner Darkly), but your character somehow immediately knows he's after himself. Did you consider leaving it that he thinks Rhektum is always right behind him?

Combine the first two paragraphs. The fourth paragraph doesn't have much of interest. If you dump it you might have room to tell us why characters do what they do. 

Henceforth, until further notice, the more than 5000 members of the American Pawnbrokers Association must make at least one appearance in the fake plots of each query critique. 

Story Day 2

Here's a story that appeared in a now-defunct British magazine called Farthing (May, 2006). I don't have it in my current computer, so I made copies of the pages. You can click on each page to enlarge it. Sorry, too lazy to retype it into Blogger.

Family Time

by Evil Editor

Story Day

As the query and opening queues are empty, here's something to pass the time, a story I contributed to the Autumn, 2008 issue of GUD magazine. Not sure if they still exist. They still have a website, but it doesn't seem to have been updated lately.

Benkelstein and the Time Warp

by Evil Editor

Benkelstein, trying to recall the lyrics to a Rice Krispies jingle while driving eastward on Highway 70, almost missed the new sign.  It was green, with white lettering.  “To I-40,” it read, with an arrow pointing to the right.  Benkelstein hit the brakes, just hard enough to slow to twenty-five miles per hour, and pulled off at the new exit.  “It’s about time!” he said to his wife.  “I was beginning to think they’d never get this road finished.”

“Hmm?”  Mrs. Benkelstein said, looking up from her book.

“Why, this’ll cut a full ten minutes off our trip easily,” he went on.  “Let's see, that’s twenty minutes round trip, and since we visit your mother once a month, twelve times a year--twelve too many, I might add--we should--”

“I’m not listening,” Mrs. Benkelstein said.  She went back to reading 101 Ways to Slice a Batard.

Benkelstein pressed on the accelerator as he mentally calculated the number of years it would take this new short cut to save him a full twenty-four hours behind the wheel. 

Fifty yards in, Benkelstein passed the new road’s first sign.  “840,” it read, and below that, the word “Future.”  “That’s interesting,” he said to Mrs. Benkelstein.

“What's that?” she said, mildly irritated.  She was reading about the diagonal crosshatch heel slice.

“Apparently this is the road to the future,” he told her.  He checked the speedometer, which had reached 60.  “Hmm, 840 miles. At this speed, we’ll be there in fourteen hours.”

"Be where?" she asked him.

"In the future," he replied.

“What are you babbling about?” she asked, looking up.

“That sign we just went past.  It said, 840, Future.”

“What about it?”

“I think I know what it means,” Benkelstein answered.  Already he had discarded his original theory and formulated a new one.  “We’re in the future,” he said.  “Don’t ask me how; we must have passed through some kind of time warp.  And while this is the year 2006 in the present, it’s the year 840 in the future.”

Mrs. Benkelstein rolled her eyes.  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “but if this is the year 840--which it most certainly is not--then this would be the past, not the future.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Benkelstein said.  “There were no asphalt highways in the year 840.”

“As Columbus didn’t reach the new world until 1492,” Mrs. Benkelstein countered, “who’s to say what was here in the year 840?”

“A valid point," Benkelstein acknowledged.  "But you’ll at least have to admit that there were no road signs printed in the English language in central North Carolina in the year 840.”

“There were no cars, either," his wife noted.  "And as we’ve seen no other cars since you pulled onto this road, I persist in claiming this could as easily be the past as the future.  Or are you saying that cars no longer exist in the future?”

“Not at all,” Benkelstein said.  “I was merely suggesting that you think outside the box for a change.”

“Darling, I was so far outside the box, I almost fell out of the car,” she told him.

“Keep in mind,” Benkelstein said, “that time did not begin with the birth of Christ; only the calendar does.  And before the birth of Christ, they didn’t refer to the year as, say, 250 B.C.”

“What did they do?” his wife asked.  

“They undoubtedly measured time from some local historical event.  The year 52 since the end of the first Punic War, or The year 6 since Moscovicz got his tunic caught in the water wheel.”

“Uh huh.  So what, exactly, is your point about the calendar?”

“Just this: for all we know, some momentous event takes place in the year . . . oh, say 2340, and they decide to start a new calendar, start it with the year zero.  And now it’s 840 years later.  That would make it the year 840 to them, but the year . . . 3180 to us, which means--”

“Which means you’re a very old, very senile man.  Did you forget to take your pill this morning?”

“I don’t think--”

“By the way, even if we have gone forward in time, and this is the year 3180, it’s the future only to us.  To everyone who's already living here, it’s the present.  So your road sign should have read, ‘840, Present.’  Case closed.  Now may I go back to reading my--”

“Not so fast, dear," Benkelstein said.  "Maybe this road itself is the time warp, and is seen only by those traveling to the future--”

“The past.”

“And when we reach the end of the road--and our destination year--the road will vanish from sight.”

“It’ll vanish, all right, because you’ll pull off of the future 840 bypass, and onto Interstate 40, leaving your so-called time warp behind.  And I don’t mean a thousand years behind.”

“Oh my God!”  Benkelstein’s eyes grew wide.  “I just thought of something.  What if the entire population of the Earth is dying out sometime in our future?  What if the last few scientists still alive created this time warp as a means to bring a few people forward in time, beyond the year of the comet or the plague or whatever was threatening to kill everyone?  What if the road sign was there just to let us know we’ve come forward 840 years, so we won’t freak out when we see all the changes?”

“What if, what if, what if.  What if you keep your eyes on the road and your mind in reality?” Mrs. Benkelstein suggested.  "You're scaring me."

“If my theory’s correct," Benkelstein continued, "it would mean that the current year is actually 2846.  It would mean that by pulling onto this road, we’ve randomly been given the responsibility to maintain the human species, so that--”

“It would also mean that we are among the few people now on the planet,” Mrs. Benkelstein said.  “Possibly the only ones.”  Apparently she had given up on reading, and had decided to humor Benkelstein.

“Until we pass another car, I’m afraid we must assume that to be the case,” Benkelstein conceded.

“Passing another car won't prove anything,” Mrs. Benkelstein said.  “If this is the future, the driver of the other car could be one of the aliens trying to destroy all human life.”

“Aliens?" Benkelstein said.  "Yes, of course.  That’s one possibility, an intergalactic fleet of war birds.  Scientists knew they were coming and built this time warp so a few of us could escape to the future before the aliens wiped out humanity.  And now ground forces are no doubt driving around, looking for any survivors.”

“What kind of car would an alien drive?” Mrs. Benkelstein asked him.

“Klingons would drive SUV’s,” he replied confidently.  “And the Ferengi would drive PT Cruisers.”

“Vulcans, with their logical minds, would probably drive one of those cute hybrids,” Mrs. Benkelstein said.

“Wrong,” Benkelstein told her.  “Sports cars are the one weakness of Vulcan men.  Not only would they drive Porsches, they’d be leaning out the window half the time, hooting and whistling at Vulcan babes.”

Mrs. Benkelstein laughed at the image.  “Do the Vulcan women have a weakness as well?” she asked.

“Karaoke,” Benkelstein said.

“I see.”  She looked out the rear window.  “You know, it does seem odd that we’ve seen no other cars.”

“Yes,” Benkelstein agreed.  “Whether this is the future or the past or the time warp or even the present, you’d think someone else would find his way onto this road.  Perhaps we are the only remaining--”

“Aha!” Mrs. Benkelstein exclaimed, pointing ahead.  A bus was approaching on the other side of the median.  “What does that do to your theory?” she asked her husband.

“A bus,” he said.  “Hmm.  Interesting.  The Borg would need a vehicle that size, in order to house their . . . ”

“I can see that trying to get you to drop this routine is futile,” she said as the bus went past, moving at high speed.

“The Borg,” Benkelstein said.  “They’re going in the opposite direction.  If this road is a time warp, they’re heading for the past!  Possibly for 2006!  We’ve got to stop them!”  He swung the steering wheel to the left, veering onto the median.

“What are you doing?!!”  Mrs. Benkelstein shouted.  “Have you lost your mind?  Stop this instant!”  The car was bumping down a grassy embankment.  It reached the lowest point and started up the other side, tires spinning in the grass, Benkelstein ignoring his wife’s hysterical screaming.

Eventually Benkelstein eased the car onto the pavement and headed back toward highway 70.  The bus was no longer in sight.

“This has gone too far,” Mrs. Benkelstein said.  “Enough is enough.”

Benkelstein drove on, his eyes locked on the road ahead.

“What are you trying to do, catch up with that bus?” Mrs. Benkelstein said.  “That bus is long gone.  And even if you’ve gone so far off the deep end that you’ve convinced yourself the Borg really are in that bus, what are you planning to do if you catch up to them?  The Borg would absorb you so fast--”

“Assimilate,” Benkelstein corrected her.  It was the first word he’d spoken since he’d turned the car around.

“I know what’s happening here,” Mrs. Benkelstein said.  “You knew we were about to reach Interstate 40.  You knew we’d see the usual heavy traffic, knew we wouldn’t see some fantastic futuristic world of rocket cars, or some devastated lifeless shell of a planet . . . ”

Benkelstein kept his eyes on the road.

“You knew we’d find ourselves not in the year 3180, not in the year 2846, not in 840, but in good old 2006.  So to save face, you turned around, on the flimsiest of excuses, just so I could never have the satisfaction of saying, ‘I told you we weren’t driving down a time-warp to the future.’  Well, thanks to your childishness, instead of saving ten minutes, we’ve lost ten minutes.  Maybe twenty.”  She sank back in her seat.  “The Borg, riding in a bus,” she muttered.  “That’ll be the day.  The Borg have their pride, you know.”

Benkelstein refused to waver from his mission.  He pulled off at the Highway 70 exit and slowed as he approached the stop sign.  Suddenly Mrs. Benkelstein popped back upright.  “Quick, turn to the right,” she said.  “The Borg are above us; they’re trying to get us in a tractor beam!”


Benkelstein looked at her quizzically.

“Do it!” she said.  “This is no time for indecision.”

“But--”

“Okay,” she said.  “You would have figured it out sooner or later.  I took your wife’s place three months ago.  I’ve been surgically altered to look like her.  I’m Captain Janeway.  Now Hurry, Benkelstein!”

Benkelstein was about to speak, but his passenger stopped him.  “Focus on the road!” she said.  “I’m counting on you.  We all are.” 

Benkelstein turned onto highway 70 and floored the accelerator.  His eyes were shifting wildly, his face taut with stress.  Janeway? he thought.  How could--?

“Janeway” rolled down her window, stuck her head out and looked to the sky.  “They’re still back there!” she said.  Slow down; we can’t afford to call attention to ourselves.”

“Where are we going?” Benkelstein asked.  He could barely breathe.

“The Borg have set up headquarters at the Butner Psychiatric Hospital.  Do you know where that is?”

Benkelstein nodded.

“Then get me there.  Your life depends on it.  All of our lives do.”

Benkelstein gripped the steering wheel and flew eastward down highway 70, his blood racing, and his heart fluttering.  And the slightest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Face-Lift 1278

Guess the Plot

Vagabonder

1. It's 1947, and former WAC Jill Avery has a rather adventurous plan for financing her trip from NYC to LA.

2. When Priscilla Porcupine's wood is lost in a forest fire, she narrowly escapes. But that is just the beginning of her odyssey. She must find another home-wood. She deals with rabid skunks, venomous snakes, ravenous coyotes, and clumsy bears in her desperate search for a safe home.

3. High-flying marketing exec Alex Stone has girlfriends all over the world. He's got a name for his habit: vagabonding. (Get it? He "bonds" with them, although it's always temporary.) When a freak accident leaves him in a state of amnesia, he has nothing but his little black book and a stack of travel records to piece together his identity. Hilarity ensues.

4. Dr K has a great idea for stopping sexual violence: A spray-on foam called vagabonder. Once the BDSM scene discovers it, though, it's used in all sorts of unintended ways. Porn shoots become...extended, as do honeymoons and date nights. Dr K will be rich . . . or will some lawyer claim a share?

5. After 23 years in captivity, a slave returns to his home in Uruguay and finds his father and sister were killed by robots. So he sets out on a journey to Kenya where he can take the space elevator to the moon and lead his people in rebellion against the mega-corporation that rules Earth.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

In 2238, Caen was removed from his childhood home in Uruguay as a member of OnyxCorp’s slave workforce. He doesn’t want to be a slave, but what choice does he have? He is Dua, a new species of hominid, the result of a worldwide plague that killed 80% of Earth’s population more than a century ago. While humans enjoy a life free from labor, [I'm sick of all these dystopian books; finally a book where humans are free from labor. And I'm not saying that just because I'm human.] the docile and easily manipulated Dua mine what remains of rapidly declining Earth and moon resources. [Moon resources: dust, rocks, golf balls, fast food wrappers, green cheese, one large monolith, three Lunar Roving Vehicles, and an abandoned potato farm.] In the absence of any real government, OnyxCorp reigns supreme, relentlessly pursuing power and profit at the expense of an entire species.

Twenty-three years later, Caen returns home [Slaves are entitled to two weeks unpaid vacation every 23 years. Hey, OnyxCorp isn't without heart.] to find his mother broken and terrified. She reveals his father and sister are dead, killed by Authority, OnyxCorp’s robotic military arm. What’s more, he’s in danger as well. For Caen is a Vagabonder, a legendary group of Dua who are smarter, stronger, and more humane than the humans who govern them. And OnyxCorp wants them eradicated. [He's smarter and stronger, but OnyxCorp never noticed this in the past 23 years?] 

The solution? Journey to the moon. Find the Vagabonders. Destroy OnyxCorp.

[The problem? There's no air on the moon. Or water. At least there's a Starbucks.]

Caen begins a perilous odyssey that will take him to Mombasa, where he can access the Vine, the space elevator that will transport him to moon. [To moon? So we finally decided, after naming the other 150+ moons in our solar system, to name our own, and the best name we could come up with was "moon"?] [Also, a 239,000-mile elevator ride? With a bunch of people who don't want to make any eye contact, so they just stare at the lights up above the door? And there's one guy who keeps farting?]

Buttons in space elevator

[It would be a drag to be running for the space elevator yelling, "Hold the elevator!" and the passengers just let the doors close and now you have to wait for it to go all the way to moon and back. Or if you miss your floor and have to get off at the next one, which is Mars.] [I hope the space elevator is faster than the one in my building, or by the time it reaches moon there'll be nothing inside but skeletons.] There, he will seek his ancestors, who are said to possess knowledge and wisdom that will end OnyxCorp’s repression of both human and Dua. [Knowledge that they have been keeping to themselves for decades.] [They are said to possess this knowledge and wisdom? What is it, a rumor? A myth? That's like finding out NASA spent trillions to put astronauts on moon just because they heard there was a really smart man up there.]

Sounds easy enough, but OnyxCorp will do anything to keep its malleable workforce intact. Lying, manipulation, subterfuge, murder: These are standard operating procedures. Even genocide. [Fortunately, Caen is strong, smart and humane, so he should have no trouble taking down an evil worldwide megacorporation.]

VAGABONDER is my debut science fiction novel of 160,000 words.


Notes

This is all backstory, setup. Condense the whole thing into one three-sentence paragraph, and then give us two more paragraphs about your actual story, which is how Caen plans to succeed, what goes wrong, what will happen if he can't overcome this obstacle.

Vagabonder means to wander (in French). Is that the title because Caen wanders around looking for Mombasa? I'd look for a title people will understand, like Moon Slaves vs the Robot Army.

160,000 words is two books. If you don't have two books, try cutting about 60,000 words of backstory and unimportant detail from your one book.

Here's a link to Dion singing his hit "The Wanderer," which is known as "Vagabonder" in France. Check out the people in the audience.

Face-Lift 1277

Guess the Plot

Illusion

1. Not really a manuscript. Nothing to see here. Move along.

2. Stage magician Harry "Whodunnit" must prove his assistant's live beheading was suicide, not murder, or his next escape act will be from death row.

3. Kate has her summer all planned out, until she's kidnapped by an organization of good magicians from another world. Then an evil band of magicians shows up, and it's up to Kate to thwart their diabolical plan to make human beings less creative.

4. When magician Kris Angle dies in an onstage stunt, it's considered an accident by Las Vegas PD. But LA homicide detective Zack Martinez was there, and he knows two things. One, a simple disappearing stunt shouldn't kill anyone, and two, 'Cirque de Soleil' puts out a better show anyway.

5. Life got you down? Truth hurts? Ask your doctor about Illusion (TM). Congressman Charlie Hahn has, and even though his fiance is cheating on him, his subordinates hate him, and he's five shades greyer and 15 pounds heavier than the guy being groomed to replace him, life is great. But what happens when he develops a tolerance for Illusion and his prescription runs out?

6. When Tom Bradley wakes up with a bloody knife in his hand and a dead clown in his bed, he's got a mess to clean up. But a witness comes forward and Detective Sophie Lamb is on the case. It's not the first time a hunky suspect claimed it was all an illusion. But will she fall for that again?

7. Debra Loughlin married too young. At least, that's her excuse why her husband is cheating, her kids hate her, and she just got fired from her job. But now she's got a plan. One evil magician, one deadly illusion, and her life will take a new turn.

8. Rupturio is a stage magician with a stage like no other, but when shapeshifting mobsters sieze his illusory platform and tweak it for their own nefarious purposes, rabbits gotta be pulled from hats. Big rabbits. Fluffy. Some of 'em babies.

9. Joey is a high functioning autistic savant. He sees things that aren't there, then shouts things these things at strangers. They all come true in some odd way. One day he tells a mob boss that he’s going fall to his death. Now Joey must run for his life because the boss’s henchmen try to kill Joey. Also voices in his head.

10. When Jonathan Holmes meets Cherry Lane, he projects his best possible image: Tall, dark, and handsome with just a touch of scoundrel. She buys it, of course, as have most women who've fallen under his magical spell. But when Jonathan realizes he actually loves her, he must decide whether to keep up the illusion, or reveal that he is, in fact, a troll. 


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Sixteen-year-old Kate Stillwell has her summer organized into a tidy list of bullet points and subheaders—until she’s abducted by Idina, her best friend.

Kate is taken to the headquarters of the Celestian Guard, an organization of magicians from another world. While at the Guard, Kate learns that she is the daughter of a Celestian and a human, which gifts her with a rare form of magic: her words can become reality. [They can? Or they do? Anyone's words can become reality. For instance, a while ago I said I was going to publish this blog post. Hey, I'm a magician!] [Has she ever noticed that her words become reality? Or did she think it was a coincidence that even her most outlandish words actually happened?] [If she says, Justin Bieber will walk into my bedroom, does she have to do something special to make it happen, or does it just happen?]

She also discovers that the magicians were commissioned to protect the delicate balance between humanity’s magic—creativity—and real magic, a task the magicians fulfilled effectively until an enemy band of magicians called Berserkers severed the pathway to Celestus. [I thought the Celestian Guard lived on Celestia, and the Celestusian Guard lived on Celestus. Guess I had that backwards.] 

Now the Berserkers are hunting for a lost sword that could be used to free their leader from his prison in the center of the earth. Intent on protecting creativity, Kate volunteers to join a hunt to find and destroy the sword—but if they can’t, then creativity will fall. [It seems like all Kate has to do is say, "The sword is in Mt. Doom." Problem solved. That would be too easy. What can make Kate's words not become reality?]

ILLUSION is a YA contemporary fantasy complete at 54,000 words that could be pitched as National Treasure meets The Kane Chronicles. ILLUSION does have series potential, but can stand on its own.

I am a member of the Florida Writers Association. ILLUSION is currently a finalist for the Royal Palm Literary Award (winners to be announced in October).

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

A sword doesn't sound like the best tool to free someone from a prison. Although even if it is, the hard part will be getting to the center of the Earth. Of course Kate can prevent the Berserkers from bringing the sword to the center of the Earth to rescue their leader by simply saying  The Berserkers' leader is now imprisoned in the center of Uranus.

If creativity exists on Earth and magic exists on Celestus, why are the magicians charged with keeping a balance? It's really hot on Mercury and cold on Neptune, but it wouldn't make sense to tell someone to keep a balance between their temperatures.

Kate has an unstoppable super power. We need to know her limitations.

As Idina is never mentioned again, do we really need to know she's involved in the abduction? Do you really need to abduct your best friend? Can't you just say Come with me to a magical world.? I'd go.
  

Face-Lift 1276

Guess the Plot

Me Against the World

1. When a black market deal goes bad, Perry Barker tries to run for his life. But no one can escape the over 5000 members of the nefarious American Pawnbrokers Association.

2. My husband is cheating, the kids are delinquents, and I'm getting laid off next week. Plus, I'm turning 40 and can't fit into my size 10 pants. I dare you to say you won't represent my book.

3. Mom channels the spirit of Sarah Bernhardt. Dad invents things. Rocky crawled into the pantry last week and covered himself with flour and red food coloring. Ten-year-old Dusti Rhoades (her real name!!!) secretly plans to win the Kidtastic Writing Contest and tells you all about her life in... Me Against The World.

4. I shot my old man to save my little sis from the drunk bastard. Now they'll probably throw me in juvie. No way I'm letting that happen, not when I can just pack up my pjs and my Gameboy and blend into the cutthroat streets of Bed-Stuy.

5. My parents suck and school sux and I totally wish I had never been born. All my clothes are sooo last year!!!! Like, should I just get a tattoo saying "I'm lame" on my forehead? And my car. My car!!!! It's brown!!! It is like soooo embarrassing. My parents must really hate me buying such a piece of sh*t like that.

6. Jason Poe Jr has accidentally unleashed a curse that turns nature itself against him. It's him against the world... he attacks at midnight.

7. The planet Earth has shrunk down to human size and now it's looking for a fight. It's up to Big Brad Little to give Earth an ass-whupping so severe it'll go back to big and quiet. But can he administer the beating before the oxygen runs out?




Original Version

Dear [Agent Name]

Tony will do anything to protect his little sister Leslie—shooting their father included. When the drunk bastard attempts to choke Leslie to death, that’s just what Tony does. [Luckily Tony's father keeps his loaded gun on a table in the same room where he's choking Leslie, so Tony doesn't have to go get it, which would take way longer than it would take a man to strangle a girl.]

Sirens sound in the distance, which means the police are on their way. If Tony doesn’t do something, the police find two orphan minors and report the incident to Child Protective Services. Tony will most likely end up in a juvenile facility and Leslie in a foster home. But CPS has to find them first. And [no one is better at hide and seek than Tony and Leslie.] CPS be damned. Tony will not let the government split them up.

Hiding out and blending in with others seems to be the only way to avoid separation. The question is where. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many places to go with no money—except the streets. However, running the streets of cutthroat northeast Bed-Stuy is just asking for trouble—trouble they certainly don’t need.

Tony has not one, but two lives to think about. He doesn’t have much time to decide. CPS is coming. And they won’t leave empty-handed. [Actually, it's the cops who are coming, and they're gonna find a bloody corpse and start looking for a shooter, so it'll be a while before CPS is coming. My guess is the kids would be taken to CPS.]

Me Against the World is YA fiction, complete at 78,000 words. [Shouldn't it be Us Against the World? Surely Leslie is going to be useful in the quest for survival.]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,


Notes

This could be pretty funny if you put it in first person present and tell it like a film noir:

I walk into the kitchen in my pjs hoping my kid sister Leslie hasn't finished off the Froot Loops. And there's the old man, trying to choke Les to death. Lucky I'm packing heat. I pull out my 44 and blast the drunk bastard to kingdom come.

Sirens. Shit, already? Gotta move fast or they'll throw me into juvie for saving Leslie's life, and I'll never see her again. But where can we go? Maybe the brutal, merciless streets of northeast Bed-Stuy? Nah, that's just asking for trouble. But we got no moolah. Wait, I've got my gat. We can rob a Chucky Cheese.


The trouble with my version is the same as the trouble with yours. It could all take place on page one of the book. You need to tell us a story, not just describe the situation the main character is in when the story begins. So instead of just deleting the parts I colored red, condense the setup into one short paragraph, something like:

After Tony shoots his father to stop the drunk bastard from choking Tony's sister Leslie to death, he realizes Child Protective Services will soon swoop in and separate the siblings. No way he's letting that happen, not when he and Les can just blend into the streets. But how long can an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl survive in cutthroat northeast Bed-Stuy?


That leaves room to tell us about the plot: what they plan to do, who stands in their way, what big decision they face, what will happen if they choose badly . . .

Success Story

Carrie Ryan's book The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Book Chat 46) is, at long last, being made into a movie. It'll star, from Game of Thrones,  . . . Well you can read about it here.

Two Short Films for Talk Like a Pirate Day

Face-Lift 1275

Guess the Plot

Mission of Terror

1. It's gonna be scary, but if it means being free once and for all of diapers, Bobby's gonna use the big people's toilet.

2. Sixteen-year-old Faye has a mother who's a spy and a father who's a chemist. Both of them are missing and Faye is the only one who seems to be looking for them. Her clues lead her to Disney World and one ride that may be her last clue: Mission of Terror. But does she have the chops to take on that rollercoaster to find her parents?

3. While fourteen-year-old Bryan trains in outer space for mankind's first interstellar colonization mission, fundamentalist terrorists launch an attack on the flagship in order to gain positive publicity for their anti-genetic engineering agenda. 

4. For Janella, it looks like junior year is going to be another loser -- until the dark new boy summons her to the life she didn't know was hers. It turns out that she's actually a spirit from the Nightmare Realm, where human nightmares are hatched and delivered into people's brains every night. Janella isn't sure she wants to go there. But dang, that boy is cute.

5. Conlynn "Corky" Smith is at a Ugandan Christian mission school for girls when terrorists attack. Can she use her martial arts training, hunting skills, and psychic connection to Jaunty the Leopard to get her and her girls to safety? Also, crazy, drunken chimps.



Original Version


Dear Evil Editor,

Fourteen-year-old Brian thinks nothing could be worse than moving just before starting high school. Then he wakes up in the hospital after a bullying incident. [There's bullying, and then there's assault with intent to kill.] [The first sentence has me thinking he hasn't moved yet. The second sentence has me wondering if the bullying happened before or after he moved (If you change "thinks" to "thought" it might help, assuming the move already happened.). The third and fourth sentences make me wonder if we're in the same book.] He learns his rare Cryosleep genetic modifications, developed for the first interstellar colonization mission, saved him from drowning. He’s stunned to learn that his mother was killed eight years ago in a bombing by fundamentalist terrorists opposed to genmods. [Then he discovers that his father is a cyborg from a planet in the Sombrero Galaxy and his siblings are super villains named Beetlegirl and Creep.] [I'm starting to think the plot about the Nightmare Realm was the real one.] [Wait, he's fourteen, his mother was killed when he was six, and he's stunned to learn this? Or is he just stunned to learn how she died? As in: He’s stunned to learn that his mother's death eight years ago was caused by fundamentalist terrorists opposed to genmods.] [Bad enough that the American infidels don't give us the respect we deserve, now they're genetically modifying themselves so they can sleep hundreds of years in space. We must destroy them all.] [Now that I've read the whole query, I'm wondering if we shouldn't just start with paragraph 2.] 

Brian has always been fascinated by the 300-year-long, 20 light-year mission and he’s happy to join it, although the anti-genmod prejudices the terrorist’s [terrorists'] propaganda has created worries him. When he learns the mission is critically short of pilots for its Dragonfly one-person support spacecraft, he and some new friends work hard to qualify for Dragonfly pilot training. Their teenage adaptability helps them do well, despite attempts of jealous older cadets to discredit them. But the terrorists, angry over the positive publicity surrounding the teenagers, attempt to kidnap and eliminate them [These teenagers are getting too much positive press; we must eliminate them.] – which they barely escape.

Their parents are worried, but the teenagers are more determined than ever, and go into space to finish their training at the starships nearing completion in the Earth-Moon L5 Lagrange point. [Even if that sentence makes sense to you, (changing "at" to "on" would help) I'd cut it off after "training" to accommodate idiots like me.] But while they’re drilling in their Dragonflies, the terrorists launch an attack to destroy the flagship. [These fundamentalist terrorists have spacecraft? Just so they can attack other spacecraft?] Brian and his friends are the only ones in a position to stop it, although the attempt could cost them their lives. But if the flagship and everyone on it are lost, it will be the end of humanity’s first attempt to reach the stars – and all their hard work and sacrifice will have been in vain. [How much hard work and sacrifice are we talking about? Their first semester of high school?]

Mission of Terror is a young adult science fiction novel with series potential, complete at 95,000 words. Its use of human genetic engineering for frozen sleep, and fundamentalist terrorist opposition to genetic engineering, are unique elements that drive much of the stories’ conflict.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Notes

Most of this is setup. If you limit the setup to one paragraph, you'll have more room to tell us what actually happens. A paragraph similar to this:

When fourteen-year-old Brian Smith learns that Earth's first interstellar colonization mission needs Dragonfly pilots, he and some of his friends enlist. Their teenage adaptability helps them excel, and soon they go into space to complete their training with the mission starships. But fundamentalist terrorists, opposed to the genetic modifications needed for Cryosleep, will do anything to sabotage the mission--including launching an attack on the flagship.


I tend to think of terrorists opposed to genetic engineering blowing up Monsanto factories, not starships. They should be happy we're sending our genetically engineered humans off to some other planet where they can't destroy planet Earth.

Our fleet of starships being unable to squash an attack by some tree-hugging environmentalists is like (choose one):

a. The starship Enterprise being vulnerable to the Goodyear blimp

b. The Death Star being vulnerable to a puny X-wing.

Inconceivable.

Evil Editor to Not Appear on Dancing with the Stars...Again

The new Dancing with the Stars Cast has been announced, and once again Evil Editor is not among them. The cast includes four people I've heard of: Chaka Khan and Gary Busey, who are both so old they couldn't do a slow dance without needing to crawl inside an oxygen tent: Paula Dean, who agreed to appear only if they didn't stick her with an African-American partner; and seventeen-year-old Mindi Erwin, whose claim to stardom is that her father was killed by a sting ray about a decade ago.

The other eight cast members I won't bother naming. Trust me, they aren't as famous as Evil Editor. I know this because I've never heard of them and I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of Evil Editor. So what gives? Do they just not want to risk that an editor wins the mirror ball trophy instead of a no-talent celebrity? Not a problem. There's little chance I would even make it to the final four, and if I did, I'd throw the match and let someone who actually needs the publicity win. Screw 'em. If they don't want me, I know someone who will: American Ninja Warrior.