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.
If the Saturday Slash has been helpful to you in the past, or if you’d like for me to take a look at your query please consider making a donation, if you are able.
If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.
My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.
SIGHT UNSEEN, my 87,000 word YA Fantasy novel, will appeal to readers of V.E. Schwab and Brigid Kemmerer. It is the character-driven portal quest of Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow married to the world-building, poetic adventure of Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. I tell everyone to start with a hook, not their data. Everyone who is querying has a title, word, count, genre, and comp titles. Start strong with what only your have - the hook for your book!
In SIGHT UNSEEN, Maya Delporte is an 18-year-old California teenager who can practically taste her independence as a college student and marine biology intern when an accident rips away her sight and future, forcing her to navigate a new path as a blind teenager. This is a long and unnecessarily complicated intro - get her new blindness front and center. Your word count is already pretty high, and you can trim this down quite a bit. When college-bound senior Maya Delporte suddenly loses her vision... etc
Doctors give Maya a BrainPort device to train her to see without her eyes using different pathways to the brain by shocking the tongue with electrodes. This is probably abit too much explanation of the device. For one thing, I don't understand at all how the tongue could help you see, and the query isn't the place to illustrate it. While using the device, she accidentally opens a portal What does this mean, really? Can she go there physically, mentally, or only visually? to a magical realm with five half-human, half-oceanic clans whose kingdom and environment are in peril. The king was murdered and his killer, Drezden, fled, but plots to attack the throne and gains strength by sapping Rhine’s ancient forest magic into his tentacles. The forest and its mighty trade resources are dying, and Prince Ari and his guard need Maya’s scientific skills to save their environment and her immunity to the strange curse befalling Rhine’s clans. Again, way too much detail for a query. ...a magical realm with a murdered king, political unrest, and an assasin who plans to use... Maya can help by...
They have something no one else can offer her—in Rhine, she gets her sight back. In California, she’s blind again. On Earth, Maya is powerless and reminded of it every time she bangs her head on an open cabinet door and fails her Braille tests. In Rhine, she’s useful and essential to save their environment; it’s a relief to fight for something greater than herself where she can see straight. Maya must not only straddle youth and adulthood but sight and blindness as she navigates her complicated relationship with her best friend (and maybe boyfriend), Sam. Though she loves Sam, Rhine offers her an escape from the painful rebuilding of her real life, so she runs further into a fantasy world and away from herself, risking her own destruction and ripping herself out of her own life. Again, way too much detail for a query. We're really deep into the query for a boyfriend to suddenly make an appearance. Right now, this reads as only pros for staying in Rhine. What are the cons? Beyond Sam?
Drezden is gaining ground in his quest to take the throne, and Maya must stop him before he enslaves the clans of Rhine, who she’s grown to love. Drezden won’t stop at Rhine. If he succeeds, he plans to take over the human world and use Maya as his weapon. The stakes just changed. We were worried about Rhine and Maya having to make a decision about which place to stay in, but now the two are overlapping and what's at risk changed entirely - now Maya can be a weapon in her own world. It muddies the plot quite a bit.
I studied at the University of Iowa undergraduate writers’ workshop under Carmen Maria Machado and Ayana Mathis. I work in tech marketing and am excited to offer eight years of marketing experience to help launch and sell my book. I have been published in trade marketing magazines and won a Nine Dot Arts writing contest. This is my debut novel. Really, really good bio! Everything here is great. Just get this trimmed up with only the essentials for a query!