The Saturday Slash

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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.

In a cryptic world, the biggest stranger Estelle meets is herself. Decent hook! I don't know what a cryptic world looks like, though. Hopefully clarified below.

Living with her guarded foster mother in Montreal, she flounders in a tangled web of unraveled mysteries, disconnected from the outer world she thinks she knows. This is pretty vague. What is the nature of these mysteries? Estelle pursues for need to strike "for" a life full of possibilities but unaware of the lurking threat of a sinister network of manipulation and villainy called Apex who’s in the hunt to exploit the innocent to destroy order. I don't know what this means, or why Estelle would be targeted. Your wording here is very vague so I feel like I don't have a good grasp on what the actual threat is. When she runs into her menace in the open far from safety, Estelle quickly realizes she is being hunted.

Fleeing for her life, Estelle escapes to her forgotten home of Auria, a fantastical world hidden in the shadows, where traces of her mysterious past linger. How aware was she of this mysterious past? Had she entirely forgotten this world? Or was just unable to access it? Realizing she is unknowingly gifted and powerful in her own ways, she is vulnerable to the various advances of Apex and the trials that await her, challenging her insecurity and her trust in others—including herself. What connection does Apex have to Auria?

When betrayal leads Estelle and her friends When did friends come into this? to a spiraling downhill of no return, it takes the power of self-sacrifice, confidence, and community to battle against Apex’s reign of evil and rescue all those who are captured. Even though Estelle saves Auria and finds salvation in herself with her new family, the mastermind behind Apex is still on the run and ready to retaliate with revenge.

THE CRYPTIC WORLD is a YA contemporary fantasy thriller of 87,000 words, the first in a planned series with the sequel currently in the works. I am a psychology student at Arizona State University with a creative passion of building enchanting worlds and challenging controversial ideas. I believe my book will appeal to young readers with its themes of confidence and innocence along with thought-provoking ideas embedded in the plot that will leave the reader questioning their reality and how they are represented and used in society.

This ending para is great, I really like it. However, you are too vague in your paragraphs above. All I know is that there's a girl with some abilities from a foreign world who never quite fit into reality, there's a bad force after her, and she isn't terribly confident in her new role. That plot that I just described could fit any hundreds of magical or fantastical novels. You need to get details into this to illustrate what makes your novel different from the hundreds of others that fit that mold. Also, you definitley need to find a way to make this a standalone with sequel possibility. Fantasy is a very tight market now in YA and pitching a debut fantasy series would be difficult.

The Saturday Slash

Slash+6.06.46+PM.png

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.

Amateur jewel thief Lisette Colbert suffers a string of bad luck starting with a heist gone wrong that leaves her injured and unable to make rent. A decent beginning here, but because you mention a string and then backtrack to an earlier event it feels a little awkward. I'd try something more like - "After a heist gone wrong leaves amaetur jewel thief LC unable to make rent...". She stumbles across a haunted house Stumbles across how? Like this is online bait? Or she stumbles upon the actual house? that offers $1,000 to anyone who can make it all the way I'd strike "all the way" through on Halloween night. How scary could it possibly be? Little does Lisette realize, not everyone who enters the 13th Realm of Hell makes it out.

You need more here. I know what she wants and how she's going to try to get it, but where does the humor come in? Is she in this house alone or are there other contenders? I'm confused because the para above reads like straight up thriller or horror but then you mention humor below. You'll need to create a second body paragraph here where you tell us more about the actual house plot. Above, you basically just gave us setup.

The twists and turns and tongue-in-cheek humor of Mind Like a Diamond will appeal to fans of Sara Shepherd and Lev Grossman.

Mind Like a Diamond could stand alone or become part of a series.

A little about me: I perform standup comedy and also showcase my humor on GulfCoastMomsBlog.com where my nonfiction has been shared across the country.

Good bio! Just make sure that you are giving enough info about your actual story.

The Saturday Slash

Slash+6.06.46+PM.png

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.

Uma is a young astrophysicist in New York City, eager to leave behind her early modeling career and to prove she finally converted into a true scientist. Good intro. We can infer a lot about Uma from this single sentence. However maybe a different word than "converted?" That implies a change, whereas Uma was likely intelligent all along. She knows she hit missing "the?"jackpot when she detects a new extrasolar planet with good potentials for terraformation. Maybe an explanation of what terraformation means. Does that mean it can support human life? The problem is, she soon realizes that what she has found is in fact not a planet: its orbit around its companion star follows an unnatural pattern, and the only logical conclusion is that it is actually an artificial object. Uma had discovered, for the first time in human history, an alien megastructure. Great so far! I understand our main character's need to prover herself, the magnitude of what she's discovered, and can infer the genre without you stating it. With the support of her senior mentor Paula, an accomplished physicist with Martian heritage, Screech of brakes. So is having Maritan heritage just a normal, unquestioned thing in this ficitonal world? You just kind of throw it in there as an aside. Is Paula's DNA a secret? Uma gradually unveils a mysterious mathematical sequence hidden in the pattern of the megastructure’s orbits. Is "unveils" the right word? That implies sharing it with others, usually quite a few. Does this need to be kept secret? What's the tension here? What are the ramifications of the exitence of this thing? Meanwhile, the reader meets Abdo, I would get rid of "the reader meets" an agronomist in the North-West territories of the African Federation. He balances his life between programming his agro-bots working in the crop fields and his girlfriend Aisha, who is working in a large company contracted to develop bots for an international mission to Titan, one of Saturn’s moon.Missing "s" on moons. When the discovery of the alien megastructure hits the news, the global scientific priorities shift and the Titan program is canceled. Abdo and Aisha’s lives are shaken and paranoia creeps in. They will end up hacking the raw data, digging into the true nature of the signal from the megastructure and traveling to New York to meet Uma. What they discover is beyond their most cynical imagination, and their next actions will change Uma’s future for ever, again.

Right now this is in pretty good shape as far as conveying information, but you're not setting up any kind of struggle, beyond Uma's need to prove herself as more than just a pretty face. Are there people trying to keep this information hidden? Is there a danger somewhere? What is actually at stake here? I don't know. I'm sure there's something, but right now this just seems to read like a series of discoveries with no real fallout.

PUSHING PLANETS (83,600 words) is my debut novel: an adult science fiction story in the close future, split between New York City, Africa and Mars, and with two POVs. Developed as a stand-alone, Pushing Planets contains many hooks for a potential sequel. It will appeal to readers of hard science fiction’s authors such as Asimov and Sagan, although the ending will surprise most of them.

Good info here, but if there's a Mars setting that should probably be made clear in the query. I'm not seeing it here, currently.

I am an academic at a prestigious university in London (UK), with a background in physics and biology. I have published a good number of research papers in scientific journals and written about science for most of my career. Before moving to London I lived for 15 years in NYC, where some of the inspiration for the book comes from. I have always been a sci-fi fan, and I finally decided to write the story I always wanted to read.

Great bio! You're clearly qualified to write this story. Get the tension into the query and some clarification about setting, such as the Mars element, and Paula's DNA.