Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.
I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.
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My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
Cassidy Quinn didn’t mean to find herself in the center of a missing persons investigation. She’s no detective like her mother, and she’s not trying to be anything other than a regular teenage witch. I think you might have your hook buried here at the end of the opening para. I'd switch these thoughts around - Cassidy never wanted to be a detective like her mother, she just wants to be a regular teenage witch. But when she finds herself...
When Cassidy heads off to another year at Orawick Academy, a place that’s already notorious in the Magical Realm for being the only school that allows different types of creatures to study together under the same roof, she isn’t expecting to get caught up in the infamous school’s biggest scandal yet. As students start mysteriously disappearing from Orawick’s campus, Cassidy’s mother is sent to investigate. But when she also vanishes, Cassidy becomes is determined to figure out who is behind the abductions and why before it’s too late to save the only family that she has left.
With the help of her unconventional group of friends, including her potions-obsessed roommate and her charming childhood crush, Cassidy must unravel the clues that will lead her to the truth before her worst fear is realized. After she discovers the heinous actions that are being done to the kidnapper’s victims, Awkward sentence, but also a query is not the place to tease. Tell us what the heinous things are Cassidy realizes that continuing down this dangerous path could lead to her putting her own life on the line. But earlier you said she was determined... it doesn't feel like determination if at the first sign of danger she seriously considers bailing Cassidy must then decide how far she is willing to go in order to save the people that she loves most, even if it could mean losing herself along the way.
Orawick is a YA Fantasy novel complete at 88K words and will be my debut novel. My background is in screenwriting and working as a director, producer, and actress in the film industry, and my life overall revolves around storytelling. This book could be a standalone novel but has been written as the first in a series where the self-discovering journey found in Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson meets the dark mysteries of the underworld like in Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco.
Good bio and comp titles! The trick here is going to be showing what it is about your book that makes it stand out. Magical academies are old news. So is a mysterious bad force and saving someone you love, even though you could get hurt. This is all a plot that's been done a million times. What makes yours different? If it's the heinous thing being done to the kidnapping victims, tell us what that is.