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’m seeking representation for my multi-POV YA Urban Fantasy THE TRIALS OF EVAN BLAINE with series potential complete at 115,000 words. You probably already know this but being over 100k isn't going to do you a lot of favors. Any sub genre of fantasy is completely saturated right now, so you need to remove any speed bumps in your way, one of which could be word count. It blends the ardent urge to pursue one’s own destiny despite a detestably secret double life in ICARUS with the fraught, more-or-less neurodivergent intellectual personalities shoved in the same room like THE ATLAS SIX. I have pretty much removed myself from pop culture and the internet in general, so I can't say if your comps are appropriate or not. What I can say is that they are so specific as to be confusing. I don't know what it means to pursue your destiny while having a detestable secret double life, and the sentence in general just becomes quite long and unwieldly.

Evan Blaine has been called the Firebringer his entire life. Unfortunately neither his Academy teachers nor the prophecy his parents received at his birth can tell him what that means. He is by far the top of his cohort at the Academy, where young magicians called luminaries learn to fight dark beasts called embreings. But living up to what everyone expects him to become means that Evan will never be “normal.” How does he feel about this? What is the actual fallout in his day to day life?

Evan’s (ex) best friend Noah Clark has the opposite problem: he would do anything to feel like he's actually good at something. Why are they ex best friends? Jealousy? Competition?

Evan and Noah only agree on one thing: they've got to keep the embreing trail they’ve found in their yards a secret. Confused on the use of the word yards. Do they live at this Academy? Is this private homes that are next to each other? If the Phosocracy knows its there, Evan and Noah will get in trouble for keeping the beast lying in their neighborhood a secret. Never mind the unrefined “memory healing” supposed to be used on anyone that’s seen its magic. The logic here is really cyclical and doesn't make sense - we have to keep this a secret because if the powers that be find out we're keeping a secret we'll be punished. Why would they want to keep it a secret? How do they benefit from this? Why would they take this risk? And if everyone who sees the magic of an embreing is "memory healed" why is it their entire job and training to fight them? Woudln't that entail being exposed to their magic?

When classmate Sarah Avalon discovers the trail, Noah and Evan agree that they must handle it themselves so the Phosocracy won’t come and mess with Sarah’s mind. This sounds odd b/c handling it themselves sounds vaguely threatening but they're doing it to protect her. So what does handling it themselves actually mean? And why wouldn't Sarah just report the creature, either? What's her benefit to keeping this secret?

Meanwhile, they compete in trials to determine their Academy futures. When it becomes clear Sarah and her friends are going to find an embreing, Evan, to Noah’s dissent, befriends Sarah, vowing to use his power to protect her against any dark magic without alerting the Phosocracy or revealing his secrets. Noah, to Evan’s dissent, tries to stop the quest all together. But if Evan can’t face Noah and his growing powers, Evan might lose his new friends. Lots of questions here. All of the ones from above still carry over - why keep it a secret at all, etc? But also Noah now has growing powers? What are they? How is he using them? Can't Sarah just defend herself from black magic? Why does Noah want to stop the quest altogether? What's the quest in the first place? What does any of this have to do with Evan being the Firebringer?

The job of a query is to establish what the main character wants, what stands in their way of getting it, what they must do to overcome those obstacles, and what is at stake if they fail? Right now I'm not sure what the answer to any of those questions is, but it seems like the "what's at stake" is losing his new friends, which is a pretty big difference from the opening line being about his destiny as a chosen one. Right now this is all over the place. Focus on getting the answers to the main questions that a query should address in there.

THE TRIALS OF EVAN BLAINE is about growing up while trying to live up to the unrelenting potential you (allegedly) hold, the constant questioning that surrounds growing up “gifted”; and the urge to prove your aptitude in a narrow, world-prescribed definition of what makes someone special. I don't really see any of the second part of that reflected in the query, and I'm also not seeing the detestable second life or neurodivergence referenced in your comp titles and opening paragaph.

I am on the reading committee for the nonfiction literary magazine Hippocampus Magazine and have served on viewing committees for several film festivals. I received my Biology degree from the University of Scranton with a minor in English. [

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.

UNTIL THE SUN FADES is a young adult romance with speculative elements at 95,000 words. I am submitting this to you because I read on your MSWL that you enjoy PERSONALIZATION.

Seventeen-year-old Ophelia Sun has everything mapped out: get into her dream college, become valedictorian, and prove herself as a scholarship kid amidst students used to luxury. Fine, it makes her a burnt-out perfectionist, but at least she has the validation she thrives on. This is a good start, you've set up the worldbuilding and character goals from the beginning. I think my only question is this - is she looking to become valedictorian of her high school class? And proving herself a scholarship kid has me a little confused - is she going to a private high school and she's on scholarship there? Or is she planning on being a scholarship student proving herself at an elite college? It's a little muddled.</span?

She certainly did not plan to fall in love with Atlas Cai, her academic rival. Nor did she plan for him to suddenly die. Or for him to come back as a ghost right before winter break that only she can see. Awkward phrasing here - it sounds like winter break is the thing that only she can see, not Atlas Determined to stay on track and not fall in love with him again, Ophelia must help Atlas complete his bucket list to find peace in the afterlife. Why must she? Why her? Can't she just refuse?

Atlas’s list takes them from bookstores to snowy fields to a vacation in Japan, and their adventures force Ophelia to reconsider everything she’s planned. This raises the question of how any of this is affordable to her if he's a ghost and she's a scholarship kid. As the weeks pass, she finds freedom in her life away from academics, and for the first time, she’s faced with a choice—the security of the life she wants, or the love and joy she’s felt with Atlas, even if she can’t keep him forever. But she only has one month to complete his bucket list before she must return to school, and a month might not be enough to say goodbye a second time. Again - why? Why does she only have one month? Is this all taking place over winter break?

UNTIL THE SUN FADES is a dual timeline story split between Ophelia’s adventure with Atlas, and her experiences during the five years prior. My book appeals to fans of Ann Liang’s If You Could See the Sun and Dustin Thao's You’ve Reached Sam.

Overall, this is intersting but the big questions remain - why does she have to do this? Also, when you say he's her academic rival, it sets up this "enemies to lovers" feel, which I don't think is what you actually want here. I think we need to know more about their dynamic while he was alive. Was this a good natured rivalry? Was it full of friction? I think knowing more about that will help pack a little more punch 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.

Kiara Silverthorne is no savior. She’s a thief who steals from heretics in the forest with her brother to keep her starving family alive. This sentence is absolutely packed with nouns. It's not necessarily bad, but it makes me brain do some parsing, and also raises some questions - who are the heretics? Why target them? Honestly it just kind of made me pull back and have to re-read, which isn't a great attribute in the first paragraph As a human born amongst magical valen, she knows it’s only a matter of time before they kill her out of spite, but she’s determined to prove her worth. I honestly don't know what valen are, so that may be more of a fantasy term that an agent or editor would know offhand, but for me it just raised questions. And why would they kill her out of spite? If she was born among magical folk and she steals in order to feed them and keep them alive, why would they kill her? Is proving her worth by keeping them fed not enough? I'm just not totally clear on why they would hate her, or what the motivation is here.

When an attack from Selaeria destroys her home, an ancient sisterhood returns and reveals a dark prophecy, plunging the lands into a war the valen king wants her to stop by killing the Selaerian king. But if she fails, he’ll slaughter her family. Why is she the one that's got to do this? Her skills as a thief don't make her an assassin. And again, the question of her family - are they magical, but not her? Or are they a non-magical family among valen?

Dragged into enemy lands after the raid, while Kiara fights to complete her mission and survive their brutal mines, she learns of the real world where one mustn’t fight for acceptance, but survival. Not really sure what this means, since it felt like she was fighting for survival before. Meanwhile, her brother charms his way into enemy courts and forges an alliance with their king against the valen—and against Kiara herself. As a spy? Or is he really switching sides?

When she escapes the mines, the sisterhood finds her. Inducting her to be their messiah, they entrust her with the key to destroy Selaeria and change the valen eternally. But the Selaerian king’s determined to bring her down. Driven by a prophecy she doesn’t understand and a loyalty to her people that’s becoming a cage, Kiara must decide if she’s the savior the valen need, the monster they’ve made her into, or the sister of a boy who’s turned himself against her. So, overall this starts to read like a synopsis by the time we get to the last paragraph, not a query. You're walking through the plot. The ending line isn't a bad way to set up tension, but I'm truly not understanding the dynamics and motivations here, on just about anyone's side. Right now there's not much here that looks like original fantasy - you've got a chosen one, warring kingdoms, a thwarted assassination - which are all pretty common. Fantasy is absolutely flooded right now, so you'll need to get your query drilled down to what makes this different from any other of the tens of thousands of fantasty books currently available. What are you bringing to the table that is new?

THE FALLEN ANGEL, complete at 105,000 words, is my NA Fantasy with series potential. Perfect for fans of Sara Hashem's THE JASAD HEIR and Shen Tao's THE POET EMPRESS, it’s the origin story of the fae and a feminist retelling of the Greco-Persian Wars. I had literally no clue that this was a feminist retelling of the Greco-Persian wars. That's the most interesting thing in the query - lead with it.

I’m a Canadian author who studied storytelling and scriptwriting for five years. When not ensconced in my blankets dreaming about my characters, I’m working toward a B.S. in aerospace engineering.