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.

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.

PC Noah Jones is traumatized by his failure to save the twins What twins? There's an assumed knowledge here that the reader doesn't have. from Nessie—a river monster that may or may not exist. Is this Nessie, as in the Loch Ness Monster? If so, I would clarify. It also does raise the question of genre - you're opening with a supernatural hook. It's working, but it's reading like Noah isn't questioning Nessie's existence Throughout the past year, he has blamed the village butcher for not letting him enter the river So... not Loch Ness? Again - clarify that day. When the same butcher is brutally murdered and the senior detectives are busy on a different, high-profile case, Noah knows that it’s up to him to not fail the village of Marybeth again. Unfortunately, he begins by mishandling a vital clue, which—if submitted for fingerprinting—would implicate him in the crime.

As Noah struggles to explain the perplexing mutilation of the butcher inside a locked room, he must also grapple with the return of his former friend, Jason. It is evident that Jason—a struggling author—has only returned to fictionalize the case and not to apologize for the childhood prank that left Noah with crushing PTSD. Good so far!

However, it’s the whispers that bother Noah the most. The whispers of Marybeth’s cursed past, sullied by a horrifying witch hunt and a tortured architect. What's the witch hunt? What does the architect have to do with anything? More here. The whispers of strange howls on full-moon nights, residents who speak to the Devil, and Nessie…

Next, a local fisherman is found dead next to the bloody inscription ‘Satan,’ the lost bodies of the twins appear in the butcher’s grave, and Noah is stabbed. To solve the murder,Which one? Noah must figure out which of his suspects—the abused widow, the possessed son, the unscrupulous doctor, or the adulterous vicar—committed the crime. And he must ensure that the conniving locksmith doesn’t report his psychiatric episodes Noah's? and hatred for the victim which victim? to his superiors.

But Noah just cannot get Nessie out of his mind. Afterall, he saw the monster’s tawny, purple hide with his own eyes… You'll need to clarify this from the beginning - Noah does believe that Nessie is real. How is this affecting his investigation?

Oscillating between the points of views of the wrong and the wronged, IF THEY WRONG US deals with how little secrets masquerade as big monsters. A murder mystery of 90,000 words, it should appeal to readers who enjoyed the ingenious whodunnit in Anthony Horowitz’s Close to Death and the preternatural happenings in Stuart Turton’s The Devil and the Dark Water.

Really great comp titles here, and it sounds like a good setup. We just need clarity - first, this is set in the UK b/c Noah is a PC and the Nessie reference makes me think this is Scotland, but you mention a river and not the Loch, so that's confusing. The fact that this opens with a supernatural bent - and the MC is sold on it - is fine, but we need to see what kind of tension that creates in the plot, especially since Satan is getting tossed around as well. What does his mishandling of evidence have to do with the plot? How does Jason tie into the larger picture? What does his PTSD have to do with anything? Is it Nessie related? There's more than one murder here, so you'll have to clarify which victim / murder you're talking about at different points. Overall, this sounds really interesting, you just need to tie all the disparate elements together and clarify some things.

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.

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.

I am seeking representation for “Bennie’s House,” an 80,800-word You can just round this to 80k YA/adult It can't be YA/adult. It's YA or it's adult. It can be upper YA, but it can't be both. gay romantasy comparable to They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera, Yesterday Is History, by Kosoko Jackson, and We Are the Ants, by Shaun David Hutchinson.

In 2024, fifteen-year-old Dylan is in love with Gavin, but is too shy to tell him. Hoping to enlighten him, Dylan takes him to his Uncle Henry’s house to hear “the coolest story ever told”… I have a hard time imaagining a teen boy being into going to someone elses' uncle's house to hear a cool story

…which is the inner story, set in 1976 when Henry is an insecure and bookish fourteen year old with a pretty girlfriend. On his first day of tenth grade, he meets Jack, a handsome, amiable new student, and is flooded with confusing and contradictory thoughts and sensations that he can’t acknowledge, let alone understand. Not coincidentally, on the same day, to avoid a bully on the bus, Henry walks home through a wood and happens upon a strange old house and Bennie, the eccentric old man who lives there. Bookended stories (a story within a story) can work or not work, depending up on how necessary the bookends are. Also, the 1976 story feels like it's following the 2024 story a little too closely - closeted gay teen / an empathetic person's house

From the moment Henry meets Bennie, everything about him and his house feels comfortable and familiar, from the things Bennie says to the furniture and photos on the walls to all of his favorite snacks in Bennie’s kitchen, and Bennie seems to know things about Henry that he couldn’t possibly know. With Bennie as confidante, Henry asks the secret questions he has about himself and why he can’t stop thinking about Jack. Unfortunately, this is coming off as creepy instead of sweet. A fourteen year old boy hanging out with an eccentric, older stranger gives weird vibes.

My favorite stories are those whose endings are so shocking and unforeseeable that I want to consume them again once I know what’s really happening, like The Fight Club and The Sixth Sense. This story provides that experience for all readers, and also happens to be a trivia mystery game for those who remember the 1970’s and how hard it was to come out. But I have absolutely no idea what the plot of this story is, which makes me not curious at all about what the shocking and unforseeable ending is. A query absolutely cannot tease. An agent needs to know what the ending is, how either of these stories connect, why in the world this would be labeled romantasy, as well as the basic questions that all queries need to address, and this one unfortunately, is not -- what does the main character want, what stands in their way of getting it, what do they have to do to overcome it, and what's at stake if they do not? You're the author, so of course you think that this has elements of "the coolest story ever told," or "a shocking and unforseeable" ending." You've got to convince the agent of that, and this query isn't doing that.

I am an American writer, playwright, ESL teacher, editor, and copywriter with a BA in English. I have spent more than forty years working professionally with children and adolescents in a variety of capacities, and this story about a gay teenager in 1976 is somewhat autobiographical. Good bio that illustrates your connection to the material, but the plot needs to get into the query.

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.

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.

Since you are looking for more stories with a dark, twisty edge, and a bit of humor, I am thrilled to present LOVING LUCY LAKE, my own take at a YA mystery/gothic romance novel, complete at 72,000 words. The Scream franchise meets the complicated character dynamics in Mindy McGinnis’s The Female of the Species, with an added romance that I’ve longed to see in more horror media. Well, I'm intruged, and not just because you're using me as a comp. This is an interesting mashup!

It is her senior year of high school and Lucy Lake feels like her life is going nowhere. All her friends are college-bound and making plans to leave their dead-end town, her boyfriend is pressuring her for sex, and her grandfather’s once reassuring concern is starting to feel suffocating. Lucy knows deep down that she will never escape Rosedale, nor her grim connection to the town’s only serial killer: The Reaper. Good intro, but we need to know what her connection is. A relative was one of the victims? A relative was the killer? Or suspected of being the killer?

Tragedy strikes when one of Lucy’s classmates is found gruesomely killed at the Halloween carnival, kickstarting a series of murders that leaves Rosedale reeling—and remembering. And it’s not just the journalists drawing comparisons between the Reaper’s victims and the most recent murders; so is the town commissioner who closed the Reaper’s case more than a decade ago. And how does this affect Lucy? Is she suffering socially b/c of it? Was she already an outcast? What changes is this causing in her life?

Then, Dorian Evers steps back into Lucy’s life. After suffering a tragedy of his own over the summer, her once childhood friend has returned more mysterious, lonely, and dangerous than ever. He’s terribly handsome and asks questions that Lucy doesn’t have answers for (like why they stopped talking all those years ago). But why is Dorian approaching her now? Why does he hate her friends so much? And what does all this have anything to do with the copycat killings? As the would-be Reaper cuts a bloody swathe through town, Lucy realizes that the only way to save her loved ones is by digging deeper into a past that refuses, even now, to let her go. Basically, the questions you present within this paragraph are my own questions as well. What does Dorian have to do with anything? How does he tie into the larger story?

I am living in Montréal, Québec. I have a BA in Fine Arts, Film Production, and a minor in Creative Writing from Concordia University. Currently, I am writing my second novel, a YA romantasy interwoven with horror elements.

Overall, I think you have something interesting here, but you're missing some key elements. A query needs to establish - what the MC wants, what stands in their way, what do they need to do to overcome the obstacles, and what's at stake if they don't? Those elements aren't here right now, but if you can write them in, I think your elements are interesting.