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.

The Fall of the House of Erie is a contemporary fantasy aimed at young adults. A teenage witch hunter investigates a murder, discovers her best friend is a witch, and uncovers a plot to ruin a prominent magical family. It is complete at 62,000 words and has series potential. I know there is advice out there that says to put the title, genre, and word count first, but I have always felt like it's best to start with your hook. Everyone has a title, genre, and word count. What have you got that sets you apart? Your hook.

Sixteen year-old Jordyn Mielzynski longs for a typical summer following in the footsteps of the legendary Van Helsing as a Vatican monster hunter. Is it supposed to be tongue in cheek that you're using the word typical here? Instead, she has to survive summer school. Why is she in summer school? Isn't that typically a punishment? What did she do? Until the police ask Jordyn’s adoptive father to investigate the drowning of two boys in the city park during a summer heat wave. I'd combine these two previous sentences into one, for flow. When the Lex Legati, the wizard police, show up, it confirms her suspicions. These aren’t ordinary deaths. Then, Ted Erie, the only witness, runs away, becoming the prime suspect. Unfortunately, Ted is the younger brother of Jordyn’s best friend, Stephanie. Who Jordyn didn’t know was a witch. Getting a bit murky here. You don't need all the names -- When the only witness (who happens to be her best friend's brother) disappears, he becomes the main suspect. To make matters worse... then do the best-friend-is-a-witch-reveal). Now, Jordyn’s caught in-between helping Stephanie save her brother and bringing a murderer to justice. Unfortunately, justice doesn’t have best friends. Love the last line here.

Couple of things - is Jordyn operating in an official capacity? Is she a junior witch hunter of some sort? Is she trying to earn a badge? It also raises questions about how good she is at this if she doesn't know her BFF is a witch. More importantly - how does it make her feel? There's no real allusion above to whether she feels betrayed or foolish, or anything like that, just that she's torn between helping her friend and bringing the murderer to justice. Just a touch more emotion on how that reveal affects her would be good.

Overall, you get murky once you start throwing too many character names in, and you need a little more info on Jordyn's offical / unofficial involvement. Is she being encouraged to do this investigation? Or is she operating under the radar?

I studied at Wittenberg University, majoring in creative writing. The short story I wrote for my grandfather about his time in a POW camp during WWII is in the Library of Congress alongside his interview about the experience as part of the Veterans History Project. I currently write two weekly blogs.

Decent bio. If you have good traffic / followers on the blogs you should mention that. Also, what are their topics? Are they relevant to what you're querying? If the answer to both these questions is no, I wouldn't bother mentioning them.

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.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit my query for ANA, a character-driven young adult realistic contemporary about finding self-worth and family, of first love, and of friendships, broken and then rebuilt. ANA is complete at 75,000 words, and is in the vein of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, and Netflix’s To the Bone. So far, so good. This is very professional and tight and it could earn you the eyes to move on to the next para. But, at the same time, it's a little generic. Lift this description and ask yourself how many other YA's this could describe.

At eighteen, Kristen Hall has an imagery imaginary? friend—Ana, the personification of her eating disorder; that negative voice inside her head that tells her she isn’t good enough. Oh my goodness, this is your hook. I can't name a single other book that this describes. Put this para first. Your comp titles and everything above are a great "in sum" para. This is your hook, put it first. Ana is everything that Kristen loathes How? Of course she loathes her if she's constantly deriding her, but by saying Ana is everything she loathes, how do you mean? Her personality? Her attribures? What are those? —but three years after her parents divorce, moving to Sedona, Arizona, from Phoenix to live with her sister, her dad remarrying, and her mother’s abandonment, she is the only one who understands, especially when she, begrudgingly, agrees to meet with her mother, to try and reconcile. Wow, okay things just got confusing - and long winded. Try something more like "after a string of major life changes like..." and don't bother mentioning them all. The point is, Kristen feels isolated enough that her only "friend" is the personification of her eating disorder. That's all we need to know. Details get sticky. Rationally, Kristen knows that Ana isn’t good for her, but the thought of letting her go is unimaginable.

Kristen thinks that she can fly under the radar Whose radar? What radar? School? until she goes to college in the fall, but her budding relationship with Alex Taylor—thoughtful, selfless, and charming—threatens her connection with Ana. In Alex, Kristen sees everything that she could be—selfless, repeated word independent, and more in control of the chaos surrounding her—and she knows that to keep one, she has to lose the other. I think this is good, but it also makes me kind of go - well, duh. Obviously, it's going to be way better for her both mentally and emotionally to lose the personification of her eating disorder. Maybe just a touch more of why she's so dependent on Ana. Right now it reads like Ana is her Tyler Durden. We need a little more of a nod as to why losing her would actually be painful, rather than just a relief. Does Ana have any better moments? Good qualities?

I began writing this novel as a Dietetics student, and recently completed it after earning a degree in Journalism / Public Relations. I believe that my time studying nutrition, as well as having overcome my own struggles with body image, makes me the right person to tell these characters’ stories.

Great bio para here. Again, I suggest getting your 2nd para to the top, adjusting the current first para to serve as a summary, and then round off with your bio. Overall, this looks pretty good!

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.

As the daughter of a doomsday prepper, Mara has alwayscut always been raised to prepare for the end of the world. Brought up with a basement full of canned goods and an exit strategy, Mara has retreated into herself, friendless and anxiety-ridden. She is in the midst of planning her escape from her family when tragedy strikes and her father is killed in an accident. I feel like there's the smallest bit of disconnect b/w her anxiety, and retreat into self and a plan to escape from her family. Wouldn't the anxiety be worse if she were out in the world on her own? Maybe some more about what is the inciting incident that drives her to make the decision to leave her family would help explain this.

Clinging to her remaining parent, Mara agrees to one of her mother’s crazy plans--to move to a luxury survivalist condo, 100 feet below ground. So, they're rich? While Mara only promises a month’s trial, she is surprised to find a place to belong there. Welcomed by a religious youth group and a close new friend, Mara acclimates to her surroundings, but still feels the pull of the real world above ground. In what way? Again, I feel like the idea of this girl who has lived such an alienated life doesn't parse with a pull from above. What about the real world calls to her?

After a terror attack, the leaders of the bunker prepare to seal off permanently from society--Mara continues to contend reads awkward with her anxiety while trying to figure out how to get out. same comment But there are secrets lurking above the surface that threaten her family and everyone else underground. I think we need to know more about what those secrets are, and how an isolated Mara would become aware of them. This last line might be too much of a tease.

With the complicated questions of faith and fabulism of A PSALM FOR LOST GIRLS and the survivalist family dynamics of EDUCATED, GIRL UNDERGROUND is a 67,000 word contemporary YA novel that explores faith, mental illness, American extremism, and the need for belonging with a touch of magical realism. See, I never would have guessed there was any magical realism involved at all. How does it fit in? Mara’s journey will resonate with readers looking for an unconventional heroine and a setting they may have never seen before (unless they read this article:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich).

I am currently the head librarian at an independent school in northern New Jersey and a former intern for the Bent Agency. I belong to and am an active member of a large network of independent school librarians who I see as an ideal marketing opportunity for this book. My writing on my personal experiences with mental illness has been published on The Toast and School Library Journal, and other work on parenting has appeared on LitHub and the Washington Post. I look forward to sending you the manuscript upon request. Absolutely dead bang-on bio. Nice.

I think your story sounds great and that Mara sounds like a fabulous character, but some of the bridges need to be built in the query yet, such as why she wants to leave her family and what is drawing her to the real world. Also - is she attending school and leading a somewhat normal life in the midst of prepping? Or is she entirely hermiting with the family? Knowing this might help answer my first question. Also, I wouldn't have guessed that the family was super rich, until I got to the line indicating that. It might be good to allude to sooner.