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.

I’m hoping you will consider my 95,000-word YA historical adventure novel, THE VICTORIAN TRAVESTY, which I believe will appeal to fans of Meg Cabot’s PRINCESS DIARIES and Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER. What you have here is great in terms of comp titles and description. However, I usually advise to put this information at the bottom of the query. They know you're querying hoping that they'll represent you. It's an assumed. I personally think it's better to jump in wtih a strong hook.

What if there was a secret kingdom in modern-day that lived as if it was the Victorian era? Rhetorical questions aren't a good start. What if it was ruled by an evil queen, bent on keeping her people in the dark about modernity? What if there was only one girl with the birthright to dethrone the queen, but she was raised in the outside world? You need to strike this entire first para and get these elements Victorian enclave in modern day world, evil ruler, lost royalty, into the query in a different way.

Alair has never had to answer any of these questions until a mysterious uncle arrives and invites her to reunite with her estranged father in Penvellyn Quarter. Hidden deep in the lush Bavarian Alps, Penvellyn Quarter is a small kingdom that chooses to live as if it is in the Victorian era—in fashion, in manners, and in everyday simplicity. Decent, but we know nothing about Alair. Is she nice, mean, cute, ugly, sporty, proper? What's her life like before this happens? Is she bored, or invested in what she already has?

As if that wasn’t mindboggling enough, Alair’s father just so happens to be the king.

Alair’s uncle ushers her through a bustling Victorian town to a magnificent castle to reunite with her father. She arrives just in time to witness the unimaginable: her father is murdered by his wife, Queen Fidelia. His dying words: Dethrone Queen Fidelia. Now the sole ruler, Queen Fidelia is free to implement her evil vision for the kingdom. Right now this is reading more like a synopsis than a query. You're walking us through the setup when what we really need is to know the meat of the story.

Now-Princess Alair is overwhelmed by the dated and often backward mores of Victorian culture. There's no way she can remember the difference between fifteen kinds of spoons or learn the language of flowers. Her royal cousins won’t speak to her, and soldiers study her every move, as if they know just how many secret passageways she’s already found. So she can't go back? Why not?

Reeling from culture shock and grief, Alair is ready to flee for home. It’s only after she makes some friends, realizes the beauty, whimsy, and fun of this strange place, and comes to care about the dire danger it faces under Queen Fidelia that Alair commits to fulfilling her father’s wish—she commits to dethroning Queen Fidelia. Don't use Fidelia's name so much, it's muddying up the query. You also have an echo with "commits."

To do that, she must out Queen Fidelia’s secret that she killed the king. Luckily, the popular and cunning Fidelia has one hamartia not going to lie, I had to Google this. Better to stick with words the agent will know: she’s hidden proof of her crime somewhere in the castle. But why would she do that? It doesn't make sense. Alair just has to find it—before one of Fidelia’s attempts on Alair’s life succeeds.

If she fails to defeat her father’s killer, Alair, her new friends, and all of Penvellyn Quarter will be Queen Fidelia’s next victims.

THE VICTORIAN TRAVESTY is my first novel. I graduated with a BA in English from the University of Georgia, and I currently work as a freelance copywriter and editor. You don't need to state that it's your first novel, but everything else in the bio looks good.

Overall - don't start with the questions, open with something stronger. The idea of a modern girl being uprooted and tossed into Victorian life is a good hook. Don't cripple it with the rhetorical questions. The Uncle seems to disappear after serving his purpose, so does he really need to be in the query?

You infer earlier on that the queen keeps the secret of modern life from her kingdom, and that is part of her evilness. But that is dropped later on when Alair only seems to want to reveal the murder - not usher everyone into the 21st Century. So what's the real goal here? Move the people into the modern life? Or dethrone the queen for murder?

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.

Carson’s plans to spend the summer inside and alone are dashed against the rocks by a single word—divorce. This is a good hook in that we immediately understand a few different things - Carson's personality (a summer inside and alone?) and what the obstacle is. My only caveat is that we'll need to see what change is occuring within him as a result.

While his parents sort everything out, thirteen-year-old Carson and his little sister are sent to live with their eccentric grandmother in the Florida Keys. Next thing he knows, he’s reluctantly snorkeling with sharks and saving his harebrained sister from being swept out to sea. So here is a good example - how is this different from his normal life of being inside and alone? It clearly IS, but what kind of change is taking place and how does he feel about it?

The mangrove swamp around his grandmother’s house serves as a refuge for juvenile wildlife much like his grandmother’s home is a refuge from Carson’s battling parents. good comparison here, but the sentence itself is a little awkward. You can use "her home" without repeating "grandmother" but find other ways to tigthen this up a bit. Outside the safety of the swamp, an invasive species of starfish is devouring the reef and steadily creeping closer to the one place that was supposed to keep Carson and his sister safe. but the threat isn't to them, is it? It's to the wildlife... maybe link the thoughts by illustrating his growing connection to nature, which can also serve as an opportunity to note his further growth and change.

Like the stars are eating away at the reef, Carson’s doubts what kind of doubts? Is it more like just anxiety or sadness? about his family eat away at him. So he decides to put all of his energy into saving the reef. Which is a good thing, because, in the end, Carson, his sister, and their newfound friends are the only ones capable of saving the mangroves from destruction. Why? It's good to see them at center stage, but what about them is so special that they're the only ones that can do this?

Summer of the Sea and Stars is a contemporary middle-grade novel complete at 42,000 words. It will appeal to fans of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish and Celia C. Pérez’s Strange Birds. The book utilizes a unique setting and a cast of LGBT, neurodiverse, and BIPOC characters to showcase a myriad of family structures and the urgent effects of climate change. This is great, but I think the friends might need more than just a one line shout out if you want to illustrate the diversity fo the cast. Even one line about meeting new people would be good.

My writing won national awards for young writers from YoungArts and Bluefire in 2019. I have written for both literary and environmental magazines and won the national Kay Snow Prize for Nonfiction. Additionally, my passion for the outdoors and time working for the National Parks and Forest Service makes me uniquely suited to write about an invasive species and how to combat it. Absolutely fantastic bio. You need a few tweaks here and there, but this is looking 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.

It’s dangerous to be a sorceress in a place where magic is a crime. Good hook! 15-year-old Tatiana (Tana) Definitely pick one name and go with it has never seen the world beyond her village on the island of Kisiwa. Her past is a giant question mark, her parents are lost to her memory, and her only link to them is a strange amulet she’s had since birth. Though Tana longs to run away to the distant mainland, far from her drunken uncle and their decrepit farm, she can't risk losing her only home. But when an assassin murders her uncle, Tana flees the island and finds herself at the center of a crazed sorcerer’s insidious plan. With a bounty on her head, she scrambles to uncover the ugly truth about her amulet and save the only people she trusts.

While this is well-written, you're suffering from the same issue that an earlier Slash had - you're being too vague. You've got a name and an island, but there is nothing else here to differentiate this story from any other number of fantasies that deal with a lost past, a found hero, and a villain. Why is her uncle murdered? What is the ugly truth about the amulet? Why is magic a crime here? A query needs to not be a tease. You're not trying to get an agent to wonder what will happen next - that's for a reader. For an agent, you want to show them why they want to represent this book. In other words, what make this different and unique from every other fantasy query they had in their inbox this week that deal with these same tropes - a lost, special child, a murky past, and a destiny that can't be avoided.

The Lost Heir is book one of a YA fantasy series, complete at 70,000 words. This novel would interest readers who loved J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and John Flanagan’s The Ranger’s Apprentice.For comp titles, it's better not to use really big names. Everyone wants to think that they will be the next Harry Potter, so it's overused. I’m 16, and I live in Santa Barbara, CA where I am a student at Laguna Blanca Highschool. For the last five years, I’ve written various versions of this novel, though I’ve never submitted it for publication. I also review YA books for the Santa Barbara Independent; for example, this is my most recent review (https://www.independent.com/2020/07/20/review-hafsah-faizals-we-hunt-the-flame/). Also, I participated in a Stanford Pre-Collegiate creative writing course in the summer of 2019.

It's great that you are serious enough to pursue a pre-collegiate program, but I don't know that I would share your specific age, or student status. I would instead let the work stand for itself, and see if it garners interest. Of course, if they should request to see pages, or a full manuscript, you should be up front about your age. I don't think it can necessarily hurt or help you either way, but I don't know that it merits mention in a query.