The Saturday Slash

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.

When her sister becomes possessed by the ghost of a powerful witch, Luna is forced to become the strong twin and find a way to save Aurora before she is consumed completely (to eliminate "witch" echo.) the witch consumes her completely. Overall, good hook!

Thirteen-year-old twins Luna and Aurora are as different as night and day, but have always shared a special bond. Now Luna fears they are growing apart, with different interests and friendship groups. When they travel with their mother to remote Orkney to bury their grandmother and clear out her little cottage overlooking Eynhallow Sound, Luna is sad, but relieved to have her sister all to herself again. Good setup, but clarify - why is Luna sad? The death of her grandmother? The growing divide between the sisters? Both? Clarity would be good. Also, you infer that Luna is the "weaker" of the two, so maybe illustrate that here. Do you mean she's less popular? Not as assertive? How is she the "weaker" of the two?

However, Luna soon becomes aware of something that threatens to take her sister away from her forever. Aurora, who has never feared anything, is haunted by owls and tormented by frightening dreams. She seems to have acquired some magical power, able to weave her fingers and call up a violent storm. Aurora is terrified and extremely unwell How? Mentally? Physically? Emotionally? and Luna realises their roles have become reversed, and she must be the one to comfort and protect her twin. She discovers their grandmother accidently disturbed an ancient stone, releasing the ghost of a powerful weather witch who is determined to take over her sister’s life-force so she can come back into the world.

Every day the witch grows stronger and Rory I would just stick to her full name. I had to wonder who Rory was for a second fades. With the guidance of the last few witches left in Orkney, who use their powers to protect and nurture the land and its heritage, Luna searches for the identity of the ancient witch, and the secrets of her binding, so she can try to replicate it. I don't know what this means, or why she would want to replicate something that sounds bad / dangerous But time is running out, the witch is wary and will not fall for the same trick twice. This infers that she's fallen for something before. From someone else? From Luna? She lashes out with power, anger and a thirst for revenge, creating ferocious storms and floods which injure the girls’ mother and put the whole community in danger. When every other possibility has been exhausted, Luna must find the courage to look in the mirror which was the object of binding, and connect with the witch’s memories, even though she may not be able to pull free again and the witch might come for her as well.

THE WITCH OF EYNHALLOW SOUND is a Middle Grade Paranormal Fantasy set in Orkney, complete at 30,000 words, which should appeal to readers who enjoyed the sinister darkness of The Night Gardener, the ghostly presences in The Forgotten Girl and the lyrical magical setting of The Storm Keeper’s Island.

I have published a number of literary travel articles, mainly in Good Reading Magazine (Australia), about visiting the places that inspired my favourite authors.

Good comp titles and bio. I feel like your word count might be a touch light for a fantastical MG that will need worldbuilding. Reference: http://literaticat.blogspot.com/2011/05/wordcount-dracula.html I don't know that it will kill you in the query process, but it made me question whether the story, setting, and characters are fully fleshed out.

Why World War II Fiction Is More Popular Than WWI Fiction

by Lecia Cornwall

At the moment, novels set during the Second World War (1939-1945) are hugely popular. Many books use dual timelines that include events from the war-torn past and secrets left behind that must be uncovered by a modern character in the novel, offering two stories in one.

People often ask why I chose to write about the First World War (1914-1918), a far less familiar setting for many readers. World War I was the jerky black-and-white war, our great-grandparents’ war, the ugly war fought in the mud-filled trenches of France and Belgium in a combination of modern, mechanized weaponry, and older hand-to-hand fighting techniques. It was a war of terrible wounds, endless stalemates, mud, rats, lice, horror, and misery.  And those are just the first things that spring to mind when the First World War is mentioned. So why would anyone want to create a story set amid all that? How could anyone make all that worth reading about?

For me, I grew up learning that World War I was Canada’s war. Robert Greenwell, my grandfather, was an Englishman who arrived in Canada as a boy, and when war was declared, he was eager to do his bit for King and Empire. He served as a gunner, and his older brother Matthew joined the infantry. They were both at the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. Robert was behind the lines with the artillery, and Matthew was at the front, where he was killed in the earliest hours of fighting.

Robert died at the age of 96, and was buried in his Legion uniform, proud of his service until the end. When I was fifteen, he made me promise to go to France and find Matthew’s war grave near Vimy Ridge, which I did, with my own children in 2009 (my daughter was also fifteen that summer). Being immersed in the places where the war was fought, standing on the steps of the magnificent Vimy monument, and most importantly, finding my great-uncle’s grave, our soldier, an ancestor with a face and a name we knew, surrounded by thousands of others remembered only by their grave markers, was a striking moment. I knew then that I wanted to write a book about my grandfather’s war.

America’s experience of the first World War is different from that of Britain and Canada, where the First World War began in 1914. In Canada, immigrants with British roots signed up enthusiastically to answer the call from their mother country to join the fight for King and Empire. The United States resisted a fight that wasn’t their own, and didn’t enter the war until 1917, when German U-boats began targeting American merchant ships. American troops arrived in Europe in force in early 1918, the last year of the war, bringing fresh and much-needed manpower and materials to the exhausted armies that had been fighting for four years. For the Americans, active participation in the First World War was of a much shorter duration.

The precise causes of the First World War are murky to most people. By contrast, World War II offered a defined menace in the Nazis, a solid, understandable reason to fight, a battle of good versus evil. Thanks to front-line reporting, and Hollywood, war propaganda reached into every corner of popular culture and created a strong home front awareness of the events of the war, which was far more extensive than was the case in World War I. We know the names of the heroes and villains of the Second World War far more readily than we know those of the first war.

Women played wider roles in World War II—they served as reporters, nurses, doctors, mechanics, pilots, worked in factories, and were among the most resourceful and courageous resistance fighters. While women did most of those things in World War I as well, far less is said about them. Many World War II stories are about the diverse and courageous roles of women.

The Second World War, while no less brutal (in fact the death toll in World War II, including civilians, was far, far, higher), was far more technologically advanced. Aircraft had played an increasingly important role in the World War I, and by the end of that conflict, it was recognized that future wars would largely be decided by attacks deployed from high above the battlefields. Aircraft offered a new way of fighting, certainly less hand-to-hand, yet even more deadly than trench warfare.

For me, there are many interesting aspects of World War I, in addition to my family history. I have a fascination for war medicine in every time period from the Napoleonic Wars to Viet Nam. I also wanted to tell my story from a female point of view, so I began to research nurses. That changed when  discovered that while women were allowed to serve in France as nurses, ambulance drivers, and volunteers, female doctors were not permitted to work at military posts on the Western Front by the British. There was the germ of my story, the hook. My protagonist became a female doctor who breaks the mould, goes to France, and experiences the war from the front lines. Yes, there’s mud and blood and misery, but there’s also love, and hope, and courage.  

Researching the medical services of World War I was fascinating. Mechanized warfare led to many advancements. There were no antibiotics available in World War I. Fighting on ground that had once been farmer’s fields, the manure used to fertilize those fields left deadly bacteria in the soil which invaded wounds and cause gas gangrene. Doctors had to find new ways to deal with the infections. They pioneered new antiseptics and anesthetics, improved surgical techniques, and developed plastic surgery methods to restore damaged faces. Nurses found better ways to treat shock. The war led to a new understanding of shell shock. Nobel-winning scientist Marie Curie designed mobile X-ray trucks that saved time, limbs, and lives. Stretcher bearers went from being mere porters to the first army medics, with advanced first aid training that ensured more casualties survived.

Both wars changed the entire world. One led directly to the other, and civilization failed to learn the lessons of the first war. Both eras have their heroes and villains and shining examples of innovation, courage, and love. It’s those stories that fascinate me. In any war, heroes are needed, and they reveal themselves in fascinating ways. Storytellers are lucky enough to be able to bring those stories and those ordinary and extraordinary people to life for our readers.

Originally from Ontario, Lecia Cornwall now calls the foothills of Canada’s Rocky Mountains her home. She is the author of fifteen novels. The Woman at the Front (October 2021) is her first historical fiction title. She writes full time, loves gardening (though many plants come to her house just to die), knit (and purl!), adopt stray creatures (usually cats), and create magical worlds from cardboard, paint, and glue.