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.

Scottsdale 2008—The Great Recession roars across the country like an avenging angel on crack. As long as this statement fits with the tone / voice of the book, it's fine. But this is coming off as humorous and I don't know if that's where you want to go or not. The housing market crashes, businesses fail, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go belly-up. And Interior Designer Soleil O'Connor faces foreclosure. Technically not a complete sentence. I'd smash it together with the one before. After surviving a hardscrabble childhood and soul-crushing marriage, she’ll do anything to save her house.<span data-preserve-html-node="true" style="color:blue> I'd cut the previous line. When she’s offered a job in Mexico, she jumps at the chance—even though the client, Viktor, is an arrogant bully. (She can handle him—this isn’t her first rodeo.); even though she has to fly to Mexico in two days. (Travel is fun.); even though the first designer died on the job. (People die every day.) After some serious arm-twisting, her BFF, Molly agrees to join her. I'm seeing that the voice probably does fit with the first line. I do think you can do some condensing though, get her into Mexico - and to his line about the first designer dying - in there sooner. That's the crux of the plot, and it's at the bottom of you explaining that the recession caused a problem for an interior designer, which is kind of an assumed.

Once in Mexico, Soleil learns Viktor founded the town’s orphanage twenty years ago and is revered as the Patron Saint of San Miguel. Surprised and impressed, she decides to cut him some slack. Until she discovers a cache of AK-47s stashed in the orphanage’s garage. The designers rush back to their casita to pack. But who can they trust to drive them ninety miles to the airport? Viktor owns the town and everyone in it. They guess wrong and land in the Inquisition Jail. You definitely need to give us something else here. Is the goal simply to get back home? Or are they trying to save the day? Or maybe the orphans? What's the gist of the plot other than save their own asses?

Five Days in San Miguel, a suspense novel of 71,000 words, will appeal to fans of Mary Higgins Clark, Romancing the Stone, and HGTV. Again, Romancing the Stone has a very strong thru-line of humor, as does this query. Make sure that fits the voice of the book, if that's what you're leading with.

I was an Interior Designer for thirty years and wrote design articles for The Chicago-Sun Times (Diana Manley Catlin). My publications include short stories: “The Favorite”, runner-up in the WOW (Women On Writing) Contest, published online; and “Checkmate”, included in the Desert Sleuths Sisters in Crime Anthology, How Not to Survive a Vacation. The Chicago Tribune printed two of my letters in their Letters to the Editor section. Great bio!

Overall I think you need to rearrange your elements here so that the first designer dying is your lead. Secondly, you spend so much time getting the MC to Mexico, that I'm not sure what her goal is once she's there, other than just to survive. You'll need more than that. Lastly, what's the point of Molly? In this query, she's serving almost no purpose, which will make agents wonder if the same is true of the book.

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.

Kilroy’s a rowdy junkie living out of his car and Mary’s a stoic widow with a sword. A literal one? It's not mentioned again so I'm confused on this point. They were never designed to like each other. I think you can kill the line before this. After finding Mary’s husband overdosed in an alley, Kilroy’s life becomes violently chaotic as they both end up searching for the same dealer: the Funnyman. Kilroy’s looking for his next fix while Mary’s more interested in revenge. The pair can’t seem to avoid each other, despite their mutual contempt. Are they teamed up, or just running into each other occasionally?

After Mary kills the Funnyman’s goons, he mistakenly blames Kilroy and holds him prisoner in an asylum. When Mary discovers Kilroy’s been accused and tortured for her crimes, she feels guilty and tries rescuing him. Despite rescuing Kilroy and bonding over similar goals, Mary realizes the Funnyman’s fled. He might’ve been able to elude them when divided, but the dealer’s never experienced their combined wrath. Piling into Kilroy’s car, the pair drives out to confront the Funnyman one last time. Drives out to where? Right now this is reading like a synopsis, not a query.

Kilroy doesn’t realize Mary enjoys the killing, but Mary has no idea Kilroy’s still just looking for another fix. So they are deceiving each other, to some extent. They hope their lies can survive till this one job’s over. Why? How important is it that they like each other, when they have a shared goal? But the Funnyman’s too clever; he sees both of their inner desires, and he’s just itching to expose them at the worst possible moment.

NEON (112,000 words) is an offbeat cyberpunk story set in a futuristic version of the 1990s. Mary and Kilroy might hate each other, but they’ll have to work together to stand a chance at finding the Funnyman.

You wander too far into synopsizing in the second para. The agent doesn't need the details in the query, just the feel - which you do have, mostly. Biggest question for me is, to what extent does this relationship go? Are they the "odd duo" that ends up together? Is there an attraction? Or is this just "lets put up with each other for now, then we're quits." That needs clarified.

Also, how important is it that they get along? It sounds like the Funnyman is going to reveal their weaknesses, each to the other, but why does that matter? If they really don't like each other, how is that a threat? Lastly, (and this may seem simplistic) but why can't Kilroy just get his next fix somewhere else? Surely the Funnyman isn't the only dealer around.

And - why is he called the Funnyman? It's an odd moniker for a drug dealer. Is he a practical joker? Flesh him out a little bit more and get the relationship between Kilroy and Mary clarified a bit more, since it's the meat of the story.

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.

Eighteen-year-old Maki Hosoya didn't enter her first year of college expecting to be a friend-for-hire. Unlike her rich peers, however, she knows that getting the money for her tuition isn't as easy as calling up mommy and daddy and asking for their credit card verification value. My immediate reaction to this is that you're writing a YA, but it's set in college. That's tricky territory, and something that's apt to turn off an agent from the beginning. If there's a chance of setting this in an elite boarding school, or something similar, that's your better bet. Don't hobble yourself right out of the gate by pushing a YA with a freshman in colleg as your protag. As far as the pitch itself, your opening hook is good.

Not that she's jealous or anything.

Besides, even if she were, she knows that she should be counting her blessings. Her classmates may be party-obsessed and unacquainted with the real world, but they hand out money like it's candy. If they need a responsible “friend” for when their parents visit, a fake girlfriend to make an ex jealous, or a sober sitter, Maki is there. There are just two rules: Pay up, and don’t get too attached. Whose rules are these? Maki's? Or her clients? Pay up seems like a rule for a client, whereas don't get too attached could go either way.

Unfortunately, repeat client Elise Haines doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. Which part of the memo? Again, knowing whose rules these are will help. She invites Maki to parties and asks her to hang out, and before Maki knows what's happening, Elise has convinced her to join the Japanese Club, actually talk to her roommate, and start working as a rave mom. Everything before rave mom sounds social, but rave mom sounds like something that fits her job description, so the waters are muddied a bit here.

But Maki knows that she isn't here to make friends; she's here to make money. Even if it means taking on as many requests as possible to keep herself busy and pushing away everyone else. She doesn't need anyone, least of all a girl who seems hellbent on befriending her. She's just fine on her own. Just fine. I think it might be more beneficial to get Maki's personality in there sooner. This para is good where it is, but the opening makes it sound like we should have pity for Maki, yet she's entirely mercenary about this... or at least, that's the goal. Maybe one sentence earlier to clarify where Maki stands.

BY REQUEST's connection to Asian culture will appeal to fans of Emily X.R. Pan's THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, and its disconnected and often socially clueless narrator may remind readers of Colin from John Green's AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES. Complete at 83,000 words, this contemporary YA novel weaves together Japanese and party culture, the struggles that come with the first semester of college, and the fear of forming attachments—or more accurately, the fear of breaking them.

Again, this is a great wrap-up down here at the bottom, but I feel like you might be giving us some mixed signals far as Maki's personality. Disonnected? Yes, that fits with what you've given us so far. Socially clueless? Eh... if she's getting paid to pretend to be a girlfriend, the "good girl" friend, or other social step-ins, then she can't be socially clueless. It would make her bad at her job - which she clearly isn't. Overall, what you have here is good, but setting it in a college could kill it.