Face-Lift 1438

Guess the Plot

The Invader's Snare

1. A home invader kills a woman and hides the body in this intense and suspenseful story, told from the perspective of a spider.

2. Having conducted extensive research of Earth through its various transmissions, invaders inoculate themselves, disguise themselves, train themselves until they're indistinguishable from other oddballs in minimum wage jobs trolling the internet . . . Wait, what was it they were here to do again?

3. Jim Beurel wants to be a professional drummer so badly he's even willing to join The Invaders, despite the unexplained disappearances of their previous four drummers. His new bandmates turn out to be living-impaired, and on the witchy geek-a-tron, but hey, offering blood on the moon's cycles still beats living in mom's basement and serving fries at the diner.

4. Amalia has just concluded her med school studies, and is preparing to take a position as the king's royal healer, when her country is invaded and conquered by a brutal empire. Luckily (or not), the new emperor is also in the market for a good healer.

5. Diana is a bit naive, so her mom has drilled into her the mantra "It's a trap!", which she is to repeat aloud anytime anyone says anything to her. This leads to some comical situations, like when someone asks her if she wants paper or plastic bags. But it's also saved her life three times.

6. As a ruthless invading army builds a 40-foot-tall wall around their village, planning to starve them, the residents of Melford lose all hope . . . until one stalwart carpenter comes up with a plan . . . And sets to work building 45-foot-tall ladders.

7. The Marching Bandits have been very successful robbing banks, playing it cool with a steady beat on the way in and getting out before the rising tempo signals the arrival of police. But when their M.O. suddenly changes to home invasion and murder, homicide detective Zach Martinez knows two things: going undercover may be his only chance to change the music, and three humiliating years as a high school band geek are about to pay off.

Original Version

Dear Mr. Evil Editor,

Set in a world inspired by the Age of Enlightenment, THE INVADER’S SNARE (107,000 words) is an adult fantasy novel written in the style of a wartime memoir. It will resonate with readers who crave slow burn romantic subplots like Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree and the gritty Machiavellian overtones found in Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. [Technically, you're calling The Priory of the Orange Tree a romantic subplot. You could add "those found in" after "subplots like". If you don't like using "found in" twice in the same sentence, one of them could be "featured in" or "present in." Or just "of" would work with the overtones .] Given your interest in strong female voices and unique settings, I believe this story will [might] be a good fit for your list. [I think this paragraph would work better after the plot summary.]

Amalia makes no apologies for preferring the company of books over people. [I'm the same way. I also prefer dogs and Cherry Garcia over people.] Her self-study alone earns her a spot at the Academy of Healing. [where,] At twenty-seven, she masters a technique that plucks the mortally wounded from the clutches of death.  [But] Before she can assume her position as Calderon’s royal healer, the notoriously brutal Malant Empire conquers her country.  [It feels like this conquering happened awfully fast. One minute you're walking across the stage to get your diploma, and when you reach the other side of the stage your new evil overlord is waiting for you with shackles. How long have these countries been at war?] [Presumably, every time a brutal empire conquers a country, there are a lot of people in that country who recently submitted job applications or sent manuscripts to a literary agent. How do you know whether it's too soon to nudge a prospective employer or agent for a response when, for all you know, they've been enslaved by the Malants?] [Although, it's hard to imagine the Malants enslaving literary agents, who have no skills that would be useful to the Malants. Or to anyone else, for that matter.] [But enough about all the agents who don't want to read my novel.]

Now a prisoner inside the Academy, Amalia must conceal her coveted ability or risk being shipped off to serve the tyrannical emperor. A guardian arrives in the form of an enigmatic Malant warden, Captain Valens. [Once you've declared this a fantasy novel, that sentence is likely to convince some readers that the guardian is a shapeshifter. Maybe: An enigmatic warden, Captain Valens, arrives, ostensibly to . . . guard the Academy? Guard Amalia? What does he claim  he's here for?] Valens renounces torture, quotes poetry, and shares a love of philosophy.  The pair forms [form] an unlikely bond as Valens challenges Amalia’s cynical nature while edging closer to discovering her secret. 

[Amalia: Your evil empire is going to enslave us all. Just a matter of time.

Valens: Don't be so cynical. Let's continue our discussion of Kierkegaard and his view that keeping secrets is sinister, if not evil.]

A Malant viceroy shatters the momentary peace and challenges Valens’[s] unconventional methods. [His methods of uncovering her secret? I still don't know if that's his mission.] Amalia knows better than to cross the ruthless viceroy, who offers her a choice: betray her budding feelings and kill the warden or languish in eternal captivity. [Hmm. Kill one officer of the brutal empire that just conquered my country, denying me the future I worked so hard for, or spend eternity in captivity. I'll need time to reach a decision. Okay, got it.] As Amalia grapples with her principles as a healer, she unearths a dark past that plunges her into uncertainty over who she can consider ally or foe.

Thanks for your consideration. May I share my full manuscript with you?

Notes

Despite all the blue words, this was a decent query. It might be worth answering any serious questions I had, or getting rid of whatever inspired me to ask them. 

No way could this Valens guy rise to the rank of warden in the notoriously brutal Malant empire. I assume he's putting on an act in order to discover Amalia's secret. How does he know she has a secret? Does he suspect she's a healer? Didn't the Academy of Healing keep records of which students mastered the art of plucking the mortally wounded from the clutches of death?

Speaking of which, some editors might read "a technique that plucks the mortally wounded from the clutches of death," and think, Nice word choice, colorful, and other agents might think, No wonder the novel is 107,000 words, why not just say a technique for healing the mortally wounded? It's your agent's job to know which editors are which.

It sounds like Valens is the invader in the title. And the snare is the trickery being used to get Amalia to reveal her secret? And the viceroy is in on it? (Surely if the ruthless viceroy wanted Valens dead, he'd just kill him.) Whether or not any of that is true, it's hard to believe that soon after conquering a country, an evil empire would devote time and personnel to trying to learn a nebulous secret they think a 27-year-old recent graduate might be keeping. Are they trying to find out what secrets other people have? Don't they have better things to do, like dealing with the inevitable Rebel Underground?

Face-Lift 1437

Guess the Plot

Jacob's Monster

1. His friends all have puppies and kittens, but Jacob has . . . well, he doesn't know what it is. What he does know is that at the rate it's growing, they're gonna need a much bigger house.

2. When a massive iron door appears in his house, 13-year-old Jacob is tempted to open it, releasing the monster imprisoned behind it. Sure, it could turn out bad, but let's face it: that monster can't be any worse than Jacob's father.

3. Jacob found a monster under his bed. He fed it dust bunnies, liver, spinach, and his homework. He convinced it to do his chores and go to school in his place while he hid in his closet and played video games. That was three years ago, and Jacob just beat level 86452.

4. Jacob never tidied under the bed or in the closet; Why should he? No one ever went there anyway. But when a game of hide and seek ends up with two of his friends missing for good, can he come up with an explanation that their parents will buy?

5. It starts with a graveyard, but involves more earthly clay than mortal. And lightning is dangerous, so Jacob makes do with the house current and a few dozen stripped wires. Does he get life? This isn't a philosophy text. He does get lots of death though. Lots and lots.

6. All hell breaks loose--literally--on Bring Your Pet to School Day, when 7-year-old Jacob brings in his monster: an actual demon from the bowels of hell.

Original Version

Dear [Agent],

I hope you’re doing well. [Who are you writing to, your aunt? The agent is doing well enough that she's decided to slog into her pile of query letters for the first time in months, a rare window of opportunity for you. Get going.]

Like most children of addicts, 13-year-old Jacob learned early on how to monitor his alcoholic father’s moods and shape his life around them. Jacob's father was an everyday monster wearing a beloved face.

Jacob’s life changed in the summer of ‘74 when his grandfather died and the house violently shook, revealing a massive iron door covered in strange symbols and an unfamiliar language. [It didn't take long for the genre to go from litfic to Lara Croft: Tomb Raider sequel.] Something sinister lay behind the door, a hateful thing that saw into Jacob’s heart and offered him what he truly desired, a way to have power over his life in exchange for its freedom. 

Driven by anger fueled by feeling powerless in his life, Jacob was a ripe target. And [But] while tempted to drink of forbidden things, [What things are forbidden?] he had an unsettling feeling that to give entry would be to give up everything he was. [On the other hand, he would have what he truly desired, and what he was was a powerless kid with a drunk for a father, so he said, "Screw it," and opened the door.] [Right?]  [The last three sentences have included "Something sinister," "hateful thing," "forbidden things," and "everything he was." The word "thing" is vague, and adding a descriptor to it doesn't make it much more specific. Also, two consecutive sentences have the words "power over his life" and "powerless in his life." Either is sufficient to convey the idea.]

Quickly the stakes rose when he heard the monster make the same offer to his father and Jacob knew it would be just a matter of time before his father, in the bottom of a can [bottle?] and soaked with rage about the unfairness of life, would accept. [A matter of time? It wouldn't take any time.

Jacob's Monster: Open the iron door, and I'll give you a pint of tequila.

Jacob's father: Deal.] 

Armed with vague clues in a box of artifacts left to him by his grandfather, he sets out to find a way to stop the monster and save his family. [At last we've switched to the present tense, the default for query letter plot summaries. I can see the paragraph that starts "Like most children of addicts" in past tense, but I'd change the rest to present.] [Also, is the monster just a threat to Jacob's family? To the town? To the whole world?] [Does Jacob's family consist of more than him and his father?] Jacob finds unlikely allies in a bully, the unusual new kid at school, a librarian, and a rabbi. [These are not the people you recruit to take on a monster. You need a wizard, a computer expert (preferably in a wheelchair), a giant, and . . . ok, the unusual new kid at school.]

The story culminates with a desperate journey into a world inspired by Dante’s Inferno [or at least what I know about Dante's Inferno from watching Supernatural.] and an epic confrontation with the monster to save the soul of his father. [His father, the everyday monster soaked with rage who made Jacob's life miserable is now a sympathetic character?]

I’m currently seeking representation for my debut Adult Horror novel,  [Wait, this is for adults? Your main character is 13. While plenty of adults have read and enjoyed the Harry Potter books, I'm pretty sure they were marketed to agents and editors as kids' books.] Jacob’s Monster, a novel of a little over (86,500 words), the first in a planned series following the protagonist over his life.  [Book 2 will feature Jacob at the age of 14, going on 15.] Inspired by a lifetime of experience with my alcoholic father, it combines the emotional grit of the film STAND BY ME, a STRANGER THINGS vibe, and a dose of the supernatural. 

I live and write in Phoenix, Arizona where I live with my wife, son, and daughter. I’ve been working on my writing for the last 33 years, sidetracked by many things but always hearing the voices of my characters, begging for their stories to be told. 

Thank you for your consideration,

Notes

I'm imagining myself at the age of 13 battling Godzilla. It doesn't go well for me.

Then I add a librarian and a rabbi. Same result. Maybe we need more information about what those artifacts do. 

Are you sure you don't have two books here, a memoir and a middle grade horror/adventure? Neither of which is quite long enough to interest an agent, but when combined, just might?

Face-Lift 1436

Guess the Plot

 Dark Lord's Daughter

1. She doesn't want to be known as a conquest, a rival, a bitter ex, and especially not as her father's daughter. Journey with Eliza as she finds her own path, even one as a hero.

2. In a country where a dead king is succeeded by whichever heir gets to the throne first, the race is on. Princess Tia would make the best monarch, but can she outwit her evil sisters' saboteurs and reach the capital before either of them?

3. What became of Dracula's daughter? She had the castle in Transylvania remodeled, started her own real estate company, and sold cosmetics on the side. Blood red lipstick was her biggest seller.

4. Evila is tired of smuggling would-be heroes into the castle only to have to mop up their remains a few minutes later. It's time to set up a tourney and a series of tasks to prove they've got a chance. And well past time to hire a cleaning staff.

5. Think Romeo and Juliet--if Romeo were a tantrum-throwing narcissist and rebellious Juliet were a monster hunter from a clan of pharmaceutically-inclined hippies--until the end which is more The Road to Bob Hope meets Lord of the Flies.

6. Everyone cheered when the Dark Lord was killed. They'd been under his thumb for decades. What they didn't know was that the Dark Lord was a pussycat compared to the . . . Dark Lord's Daughter.

7. When Lucy's mother remarried someone tall, dark, and handsome, Lucy thought she'd only need to deal with racism, not a parallel world with people declaring war after she wears the wrong colors to a party. After a crash course in etiquette leads to another declaration of war, she suspects step-daddy may be using her. But, hey, whatever the price to bring peace to a unified world.

Original Version

 Dear [agent]:

The princess was abandoned as a child at the Dark Lord's dungeon. Ten years later, someone has finally come looking for her. 

Twenty-year-old princess Tiamat just wants to teach and learn magic, but when the king is dying, Tia has no choice but to begin traveling to the capital to take the throne. If she doesn't take it before her older sisters, the country will descend into war. [I don't see why the only way to keep the country from descending into war is if a twenty-year-old woman who's been in a dungeon since she was ten takes the throne. How does anyone on either side of this potential war know what any of the daughters' reign would be like?] [If the king and the Dark Lord are not the same person how can Tia be called a princess if she isn't the king's daughter? If they are the same person, wouldn't his dungeon be under his castle, rather than a long way away? Has Tia been a prisoner in the dungeon for ten years? Or just living there to learn from the Dark Lord? Could she have traveled to the capital any time she wanted? Or did someone have to break her out of the dungeon when the king was dying? Very kind of them, though even kinder would have been to break her out years ago, even if the king was in good health.] 

As Tia travels the country with a paladin, a huntress, and a criminal, she gets a better look at the world outside the dungeon. Her magic and leadership are both put to the test when every town seems to have [has] its own problem she needs to solve. ["It has or has not. There is no seems."--Yoda] With one of her sisters already in the country, [If the king has even a mild cold, I would expect the evil sisters to be hanging around the throne 24/7, not off in another country.] fighting against her, she has to defeat her sister's spies and saboteurs, or watch everything fall to pieces around her. [I get the impression if she doesn't defeat the spies and saboteurs, she won't won't be watching anything.]

Complete at 109,000 words, DARK LORD'S DAUGHTER is an adult fantasy set in The Kingdom of the Valley, a magical version of Mesopotamia reaching the Industrial Revolution. [If this is the Industrial Revolution, I think Tia would hop a train to the capital instead of wandering from town to town solving people's trivial problems. Time is of the essence, and you can bet her sister is on her way to the nearest train station as we speak.] It will appeal to readers of the Cradle Series and Fullmetal Alchemist. Dark Lord’s Daughter has potential for a sequel following Tia's story as she continues to deal with her other two sisters.

[reason why submitting to this agent]

I have been reading for as long as I can remember, and started writing when I was nine years old, when I wrote a story with an entirely too-competent main character who looked suspiciously like me. Thankfully, I have improved as a writer since then. [Let the agent decide for herself whether you've improved since then.]

Per your submission guidelines, I have included [requested amount of the manuscript]. Thank you for your consideration.

Notes

The king's daughter was abandoned at the Dark Lord's dungeon. This suggests you're talking about two different guys. The title of the book convinces me they're the same guy, because how can the Dark Lord's daughter be a princess and become the monarch when the king dies? But you don't mention the title until after the plot summary. So when your reader finally gets to the title, they think, Who's this Dark Lord guy and why doesn't he do anything in the query? Then the reader thinks, The queen must have had an affair with the Dark Lord twenty years ago, resulting in the birth of Tia, and the queen confessed this to the king ten years ago, and that's why the king murdered the queen and ordered Tia dropped off at the Dark Lord's dungeon. Wait, have I stumbled onto the actual plot of your book? Because my version sounds a lot better than what I thought was the plot.

I don't think you need that first paragraph. You don't ever say who abandoned the princess or why, or who came looking for her or if they found her. You do mention that there's a character who goes by "Dark Lord" and he has a dungeon, but that's the only time you mention Dark Lord except when you reveal the title. 

As the king apparently has three daughters, maybe the title should be The Dark Lord's Daughters. Was Chekhov's play Three Sisters titled Sister? Was the sitcom My Three Sons titled My Son? Did you leave the other two sisters out of the title because they weren't nice people? That would be like Dracula being titled Jonathan Harker. Kramer vs. Kramer would be Kramer. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be Snow White and the Six Dwarfs, because Grumpy was . . . grumpy.

You can't answer all my questions in this query, but if we assume there are a few facts that you've kept from us that would miraculously clear everything up, and that do clear it all up in the book, you need to write a query that doesn't inspire all these questions. A fairly general example:

Twenty-year-old princess Tiamat wants nothing more than to teach and learn magic, but when she hears that the king is dying, she abandons her studies and heads for the capital. She knows if she can reach the capital before either of her malicious sisters, she can take the throne and avert a disastrous war for the country. But getting there won't be easy, as her sisters' spies and saboteurs are out to stop her at any cost. 

Luckily, Tia has three companions traveling with her: a scarecrow, a tin man and a  paladin, a huntress, and a criminal. Together, thanks in no small part to Tia's leadership and magic, the foursome are able to thwart their enemies as they make their way toward the Emerald City. Little do they know their problems are just beginning.

 [Final obstacle/decision/plan]

Face-Lift 1435

Guess the Plot 

Vitality Discovered

1. You, yes YOU can sprightly JUMP out of bed in the mornings, keep those bright eyes OPEN, and get UP every other part of you that needs getting UP. Buy this book and everything but your bank account will be REVITALIZED!!!!!!!!!!

2. In a world where people can steal the vitality of others, siphoning their lives from them, is it immoral for Lucy Fellows, a woman whose body is riddled with leukemia, to steal the vitality . . . of her own children?! This and other questions of ethics.

3. Failed software-pirate-cum-barista Lon Zebos reaps billions through pinpoint targeting of a susceptible demographic: people who still use email. Yes, old people. Thanks to his uncanny ability to devise irresistible email subject lines, the over-70 set respond by the millions with the numbers of their bank accounts and credit cards.

4. The planet Fertile was colonized to let the Children of the Plenty do what comes naturally. When a virus attacks the ability to create the Seed, women exile the infected to a remote island, and kill any men who attempt to escape the island. But the joke's on them, because a plant found only on the island is making the infected virile again.

5. Olivia is suffering. Call it apathy, inertia, melancholy, sluggishness. She mopes all day every day, the weight of the world on her shoulders. But that all changes the day her secret crush, 15-year-old Bradley, while passing her in the hallway between classes, nods at her.

6. When Lauren complains that she's lost her "get up and go," her doctor prescribes the same remedy doctors prescribed a century ago: cocaine. It works, and if it begins Lauren's long plummet into the depths of addiction, homelessness, crime, and an early death, so be it. 

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Eighteen-year-old Emily Fellows has lived with debilitating lethargy throughout high school. [That describes every high school girl.] [Or boy.] [Or teacher.] Tracking her healthy times leads to a disturbing link: she only has energy when her mother, Lucy, is away. [What teenaged girl doesn't have her energy drained by her mother? On the bright side, she's 18; time to move out and go to college or get a job. Problem solved.] [Does she mention this link to her mother?] And worse, her precocious thirteen-year-old sister Kayla is starting to experience the same symptoms. 

[Dr. Cuddy: House, I have a case for you. Two teenaged sisters who are lethargic whenever their mother is around.

Dr. House: This sounds serious. Lock down the hospital. I'll drop all my other cases and get my team right on it. Are the girls in quarantine? 

Dr. Cuddy: That's sarcasm, right?]

For sixteen-year-old Justin Fellows, breaking his leg at soccer is amazing. [That would be amazing. Make him a parkour racer] inner sight blossoms and he sees sparkling energy coursing along his blood, as well as in an overarching pool. 

[Now I'm lost. Does "inner sight" mean he sees his blood coursing through his veins?] [Or did he break his leg so badly that his femoral artery is spewing blood all over the place?] [I don't think "overarching" is a good adjective for any kind of pool.] [If you break your leg, you would be screaming in pain, the game would stop, other players would gather around you, and someone would call for an ambulance. Instead, everyone ignores Justin while he gazes at his blood and thinks, Wow, pretty sparkles! Maybe he should just skin his knee. That's at least as likely to draw blood as a broken leg.] [I hope the kid who broke Justin's leg at least got a yellow card.] And he can influence this network of vitality to heal himself. [Just in time to get back in the game and score the winning goal! This is just like The Karate Kid!] Seeing the same vitality configuration within his sisters, he is delighted-- until he realizes that he's stealing from them. Self-blame spikes: Emily doesn't have an energy problem; she has a Justin problem. [Every teen girl with a younger brother has a Justin problem.]

Despite Justin's doubts and self-recriminations, the youths investigate their abilities. Vitality networks seem unique to them, and Justin learns how to heal minor injuries in others [and immediately opens a highly profitable orthopedic clinic.], while Emily and Kayla gain some control over how they share vitality. It's a wonderful secret adventure until they learn that healing can go wrong, and sharing can be deadly. They see a special spider quite literally sucking the life out of a special butterfly. [Spiders suck the life out of butterflies all the time. It's called lunch.] And during a campus tour, a creepy boy calls Emily his Chosen and starts draining vitality from her. [Can you tell when someone's draining your vitality? If so, does Emily say, Whoa, whoa, GTF away from me? Does she call the campus police?] Childhood stories from their great aunt spring to mind... Stories in which they have powers, and the dangerous Chosen suck the life out of special people just like them. [If the bad guys call the people they suck the life out of their Chosen, and the good guys call the bad guys the Chosen, all of your characters are Chosen.] [And if everyone's Chosen, suddenly being Chosen isn't such a big deal. It's like if everyone could talk to fish, Aquaman would be just another guy.]

Lucy returns from a long trip exhausted and horribly gaunt. Her system desperately needs energy, and she unknowingly siphons vitality from her daughters. [I've been wondering about the mechanics of the transfer of vitality from one person to another. So it's a siphon? Presumably a metaphorical siphon, as it would be impossible to unknowingly siphon anything out of anyone using a hose.] The Chosen may be a scary reality, but a more immediate and terrifying danger confronts them.

Leukemia is killing their mother. [Finally, the genre is revealed: literary fiction.]

Vitality Discovered is my debut novel and is complete at 99,000 words. It shares difficult discoveries and the mystery of hidden powers found in The Light Through The Leaves by Glendy Vanderah, and the exploration of rare genes and the importance of relationships in Alice Sabo's Children of a Change World series.

Fifteen years abroad, mostly in Asia, help me set the scene for several important chapters in this book. Now permanently resettled in Toronto, my wife and I enjoy travel and the theatre, and I try to stay young by playing old-guy recreational sports.

Thank you for your consideration.

Notes

I don't see why Emily's and Kayla's lethargy would abate when their mom is away, if Justin also unknowingly steals their vitality.

If Emily is two years older than Justin, why hasn't she noticed sparkling energy in her blood? Pretty much every 18-year-old girl has seen her blood. With regularity. 

When does unknowingly siphoning someone's vitality happen? Anytime you're near someone with more vitality than you? That wouldn't explain why Justin was unknowingly stealing from Emily. Or why lethargic Emily wasn't unknowingly stealing from Justin.

I think it would be better to focus on one person as your main character. I was gonna say drop Justin from the query, but now I'm thinking, drop him from the book, and make Kayla the 16-year-old soccer player. This is America, where girls are better at soccer than boys anyway. Not only would you have one fewer character to manage, but you'd cut a lot of words, which is a good thing.

Your characters are teenagers. You should declare the book YA.

Can Emily heal minor injuries? Or is everyone affected differently by their network of vitality? Speaking of which, the terms "network of vitality" and "vitality configuration" may be clearly explained in the book, but leave them out of the query. 

It seems unknowingly siphoning vitality is a genetic trait that runs in the family (apparently the great aunt is familiar with it), yet it seems Lucy knows nothing about it, as she would have told her children it was coming. And taken steps to avoid stealing their vitality.

There was a Star Trek episode called The Empath, in which the empath could absorb other characters injuries and pain. She was handy to have around if you'd been tortured, but she could take only so much. Is Justin an empath?

Start over. Paragraph 1: Pick a main character. Tell us who they are, including any super powers they have. Tell us what their overarching situation is, including whatever goal they hope to accomplish. Possibly that's saving their mother. If so, don't wait until the last sentence to mention it.

Paragraph 2: What obstacle must they overcome to succeed? Possibly that's the fact that to provide vitality to their mother requires losing so much of their own vitality they'll die. Or maybe it's these annoying Chosen people. What's their plan to deal with this obstacle?

Paragraph 3: Presumably their plan fails. What went wrong? Do they have a plan B? Is there a crucial make-or-break decision they must now make that will determine the outcome?

Possibly that organization will need some tweaking. You don't want the query raising lots of questions that you don't have room to answer. 

Face-Lift 1434

Guess the Plot

Eyes of the Starry Jewel

1. A rock band solves their slight audience-petrification problem with a sunglass advertisement contract. But when the high notes hit shattering frequency, gorgon slayers become the least of their problems. Also rabbits.

2. The Starry Jewel is the most beautiful life-like doll the Emperor commissioned. The only thing the artisan is missing is the perfect eyes. Beatrice happens to have the perfect pair, her own. Can she escape before becoming a work of art?

3. Nahim and Shamika Mahmoud are a brother-sister archaeology duo sent to the planet Coiter by the Inter-Dimensional Global Acquisitions Federation (IDGAF) to find the hidden tomb of Queen Pen-in-senas. The tomb is believed to contain jewels which could restore power to the planet, and allow for the construction of a new space port.

4. Once again the fate of mankind rests with one human, but this time it's a monk who lives in a monastery called Eyes of the Starry Jewel. He believes all he has to do to end the apocalypse is decipher the secret clues he's sure are hidden in a book that he's not allowed to read.

5. To the naked eye it's just a big sapphire. But magnified, it's a 3-D map of the galaxy and NASA, the Vatican, and the military all want it. Jody, who found it on his farm, is willing to sell it. Bidding starts at seventeen million.

6. The government calls it the Starry Jewel, a giant telescope launched into space to seek out life in distant solar systems. But conspiracy theorist Donald knows the truth: the telescope is trained on Earth, and is capable of zooming in on individual people. Can he convince the media to take him seriously? I mean besides FOX news. 

7. When you're a witch and a spy, you obviously need to run a high-price jewelry store to get your bespelled gems into clandestine government meetings so you can take a peek at who's planning what. Most days, though, it's just more soap-opera reality tv.

8. It has eyes. It follows you home. Now it has your eyes. And you will be its in finding more eyes. More and more and more and more and more eyes.

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Centuries after a cataclysm, only the monastery known as the Eyes of the Starry Jewel offers protection from the pox, and the mindless creatures it afflicts. Inside, an historian monk risks expulsion and exile when he succumbs to an irresistible compulsion to study a banned book of stories hidden deep in the archives. [Are there women in this monastery? Making babies? That would seem to be the highest priority in the only place protected from the pox.]

The stories within tell of people long ago whose fates were tied to an evil empire [Like the stories of Anton Chekhov, which tell of people long ago whose fates were tied to Russia.] thought to have caused the pox. A vigilante held captive by a tyrannical fairy struggles through torture and isolation to protect his comrades. A wounded soldier ekes out his days in poverty and humiliation until he's offered one last chance to serve his country -  as the assassin of a foreign leader. A young giantess and a scientist from opposing sides of a great war team up to protect magical butterflies from a power hungry priest. A woman striving to find a place amidst the unforgiving expectations of nobility is instead lost in a hidden world of espionage and prophecy. A philosopher, grieving the tragic loss of his family, seeks purpose on an empire’s colonizing mission to a mysterious island where a god dwells. [I should have just used this list as my fake plots.] [These plots all sound better than your plot.]

 

As the monk reads the tales, he becomes convinced that together, they hold hidden secrets that may be key to ending the world's nightmare. But he will need to convince his brothers who see his work as heresy, while defending the monastery from the monsters he one day hopes to save. Yet the book is more than he knows, and as events unfold, he finds that written in its ancient ink may be the story of his own destiny. 

Eyes of the Starry Jewel is a 129,000 word piece of adult fantasy comprising seven stories that take place over several hundred years. [ Those must be some pretty long short stories if they add up to 129,000 words.] While this is my first novel, I have had four short stories published in independent anthologies. Two such stories, “The Aurelians’ Chronicle” and “The Godmother” appear in Eyes as tales that the monk encounters in the forbidden book. 

Thank you for your consideration.

Notes

A well-written query. And timely, what with its theme that banning books will lead to the end of civilization.

Let me see if I've got this straight. Long ago the pox almost wiped out humanity, but a few geniuses found a way to beat the pox and decided they should record how they did it so that if the pox ever returned it could be stopped from devastating the world. But they decided that instead of just publishing their findings in a medical journal, they would sprinkle enigmatic clues to their pox-beating method into a book of short stories (not unlike how da Vinci hid clues about Jesus's marriage in The Last Supper). But they didn't stop there, no, just in case someone was smart enough to decipher the clues in the book, they banned anyone from even reading the book. To read it was heresy, punishable by exile and certain death. So now the pox is back, it's wiping us out again, and only one brave monk can save us all--if he's able to find and solve a bunch of mind-boggling puzzles hidden in the banned book before his brothers throw him to the mindless monsters.

I was being facetious, but now that I think about it, my summary of your plot isn't half bad. Your list of short story log-lines featuring torture, isolation, poverty, assassination, war, and tragic loss is kinda depressing. You do have magical butterflies, which are cool, but then you add a power-hungry priest who, I assume, kills them all or uses them as weapons of mass destruction.

One could get the impression you realized you weren't gonna find a publisher for a short story collection, but if you disguised your stories as a novel by having a character from one of the stories, as part of the plot, read all the other stories out loud . . . 

This might work best if all the stories were tied together by something stronger than they all take place over a period of several hundred years in an empire "thought to have caused the pox." Like, if they all took place during the original pox outbreak in the empire that definitely caused the pox (China) and you worked the pox, at least tangentially, into each story. Wait, is the monastery in every story? If so, mention that. If not, maybe make the title of the banned book, instead of the name of the monastery, be the title of your book. Assuming you can come up with a cool title for the banned book. 

I think you'd have a better query if you eliminate paragraph 2, and expand a bit on the last sentence of paragraph 3 while making it less vague. What is the book, really? What is the most important event that unfolds, leading to the monk's eureka realization that it's all about him?

Are all seven stories necessary? Actually, I don't know if the stories are all pretty short and only 5% of the book, or really long, and 90% of the book. But this is awfully long for a first novel. 

Does the monk have a name, or is he just referred to as "the monk" throughout the book?