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.

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Meili Bai hates humanity with a passion. Good hook!

Humanity disowned Mogwai You sure you want to use Mogwai? I immediately think of Gizmo and from the description that follows, I'd say that's not accurate like her for their red eyes, black nails, and the way their feet hovered inches above the ground. Humanity embraced the Mogwai-hating empire that stormed the City and the corrupt government officials who let it happen. I would just refer to them as humans after the first hook.

Worst of all, humanity tore Meili’s little brother Rin from her side. Meili will do anything to find him, even if that means clashing with a dangerous police state.

Then, Meili discovers her first ray of hope: a brash fugitive who can track Rin’s nervous signals. Chul Kim does not hate humanity, but he does hate dying. If he’s going to help Meili find Rin, it’s going to be on his terms, whether Meili likes it or not. You're leaning a little heavily on the hate theme. It's getting repititive. Hate is not necessarily a sustainable emoiton, so I'd rethink using it often in the query. While it might be an accurate reflection of the character, it's also the only trait we're getting about her - HATE. What else? Are the red eyes and black nails just for show? Can she fly, or just hover? Tell us more than hate. The same is true of Chul - of course he hates dying. That's an assumed. What else?

Political turmoil brews in the City. The commander of the invading empire So the City is a bad place anyway, and they hate Mogwai. But there's somebody worse at the gates? wants total control—a fate that will prove disastrous to Meili and her fellow Mogwai. Isn't it already disastrous? Would this really change things? But little does Meili know that Rin is the key to the City’s downfall. How? Why? Bullets spray. Blood spills. With each passing day, the City creeps closer and closer to complete submission. Meili must overcome the blind hatred in her veins as Rin edges further and further from her grasp. Why does she have to overcome her hate? Is she going to help the City? Why is Rin moving further from her grasp if he was already lost?

Someone is bound to yield, and something is bound to break. Great last line!

Cyberpunk Mulan meets RED QUEEN by Victoria Aveyard in GHOSTHEART, a 93,000-word YA science fiction novel featuring #ownvoices Asian representation and key components of Taiwanese culture. It will appeal to fans drawn to the futuristic landscape of Marie Lu's WILDCARD and the political intrigue of Victoria Lee's THE FEVER KING. Great comp titles. However, from the description this feels way more like fantasy than Sci-Fi.

I am a high school senior in Central California. When I’m not writing, I’m bingeing anime at late hours and listening to BTS. I wouldn't reveal your age in the query. Of course, don't lie about it, but let the story stand for itself and if the query garners you a phone call, be honest and share a more detailed bio.

Indie Author Len Joy On Publishing Later In Life

Len Joy, author of Everyone Dies Famous, talks about delaying the publishing journey until arriving in his 60s, after being dissuaded in his teens. Also covered: parallels between endurance athleticism and novel writing.

Listen to the Episode Now

Flor Salcedo and Joanna Truman on Community Born from Creativity

This experience of a community coming together is best told by the voices that are part of it, thirteen voices blended together into one harmony. One book of short stories that came to be through this opportunity to unite and be something bigger together. 

Shadowing the tone of the girls in RISK by Rachel Hylton, we are the authors of the FORESHADOW YA Anthology: Joanna, Flor, Rachel, Mayra, Desiree, Linda, Gina, Maya, Sophie, Adriana, Tanvi, Nora, Tanya. One amazing opportunity to experience and celebrate the magic of reading and writing YA.

Foreshadow anthology was born out of the love of storytelling. It’s just that simple. We have always known a project like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and not just for the writers—the readers, too.

The most amazing thing about Foreshadow is that it’s not simply the experience of reading the stories. It’s a peek into what makes the stories—and by nature, their authors—tick. Snippets of the author’s inspiration, what propels them, word over word, into the next crescendo and the soft fall into a valley. The rise to the ending, a bright, sometimes violent crash, and the yawn afterwards, sinking into what you’ve just experienced. 

And then, even more. Discussion on story building, craft, and writing prompts. All in one nice little packaging of a book.

The editors of this anthology, Emily X.R. Pan and Nova Ren Suma, had a vision to lift emerging writers, to showcase underrepresented voices. The result of this journey is a creation that unguards a writer’s heart and builds a community. When we read the stories that aren’t ours, we find something new to love about writing every time. And that feeling, that love? We need to hold onto it, now more than ever.

Because writing is hard. Living is hard. But together, they make something amazing.

Both stories and life are made of moments; short stories, even more so. A single moment captured forever. Like in Joanna Truman’s story, anything can spark a story, the GLOW of a memory, long drives on the highway in the middle of the night. In Flor Salcedo’s thrilling ride, something as innocent as the sweet scent of PAN DULCE can carry you across time to a distinct place over borders where danger and excitement lurk at every corner—but you have to see it for yourself. These moments tend to do something to you, and Desiree Evans captures this something perfectly, growing a feeling deep in your BELLY that’s like a river’s powerful innards.

Mayra Cuevas shows us what it is like to have a deep longing for a sunny home you left—a Puerto Rico that has just been pummeled by a hurricane—but you keep it in your heart. Just so, there was a pull inside the Foreshadow authors that wanted the world to be there with us, our experiences, where we come from, our gravitas, quirkiness, and poise—what makes us the writers we are. But it’s just not possible to pocket readers and take them with us (sadly). Just like in Cueva’s story, we were RESILIENT and dug deep to put a piece of ourselves in our stories and took ourselves to the reader. 

With determination and a dash of vulnerability we leapt. Knowing our friends and family and strangers will read our work, that they might recognize flashes of faces or places or events. They might wonder, is that what she thinks of me? Is that what they remember from that night? Are those what their demons look like? 

Tanvi Berwah’s look into inner demons illustrates how some are like secrets, ones that pull you in and lock you up in a pochette without an ESCAPE. In Nora Elghazzawi’s piece, inner demons look like a stopped clock that the world has not waited for them to catch up, and SOLACE does not come easily. Or like Gina Chen puts it, what haunts us within sometimes show up like FOOLS simply in their own skin, feathered and smiling, and who’s to know if you can trust them or not?

When you’re writing, you are spilling your soul, swirling around the effervescent feelings inside and trying to siphon them into something that makes sense. It can be lonesome. Isolating. 

But like the protagonists in all these stories—when there’s no escape, we change and create one. When we can’t find solace, we grow it. When we’re faced with a demon, we make it our own.

We are the ones who have been told that our stories are unrelatable. Or perhaps the excuse that no one wants to read about girls who make other girls’ hearts rumble, and who needs to delve into realistic violence that rips through communities and steals a chunk of teens’ innocence. Maya Prasad’s story contemplates on what makes us human and imagines artificial intelligence that yearns to take a PRINCESS for itself in digital immortality. But not before being told her art is not needed. These types of words can cinch around your neck like a leash allowing self-doubt to creep in.

But then.

But then, you find someone like you. You’re surrounded by other writers and their stories, arms around one another forming an impenetrable wall. Others read your words and marvel and support you. They hold your hand as you make your way through the darkest part of the woods. It is as if you’ve been trapped inside the wrong skin and now that you’ve found the right one, you are ready to take FLIGHT, as Tanya Aydelott demonstrates. 

You feel— 

Invincible.

Like in Adriana Marachlian’s story, when you see your reflection in the dark tunnels and look for the light, you aren’t facing the MONSTERS alone anymore. When you slip underwater and reach out for someone, you don’t have to be afraid of drowning. You do the same as in Linda Cheng’s piece, push out of the shell that binds you. You are no longer SWEETMEATS to those who want to eat you alive and watch you fail. 

And that changes everything.

We know that the world does want our stories. Our voices are important.

Like in Sophie Meridien’s BREAK, we are here to break the streak of letting the skeptics dictate the worth of our voices. We are made because we write our stories anyway.

Rachel put it well, we are all lobsters. We simply are. Beautifully strange, fierce, horrific, amazing creators of our worlds who cherish and support each other. And we won’t unlobster.

And to you, reading this, our fellow storytellers—because you don’t need to be a writer to tell your story—let this be a letter to you from your community, as we gather around you and peer over your shoulder at all you have to give. No matter what the world tries to say to you, your story is needed, in all its pain and glory, wonder and weirdness. You? You are needed.

So come on in, and tell us a story.

Flor Salcedo was born and raised in the border town of El Paso, Texas. She currently resides in Austin, Texas with her husband and five cats. She has always been fascinated with anything tech and as a result, gravitated toward software which she’s been programming for over a decade.

When she isn’t doing writerly or programmer things, she is curling up with her cats and catching up on sleep, dreaming of the day she can become a full-time writer. Find Flor on Twitter: @FlorSPower

Joanna Truman is a writer, filmmaker, and photographer based in Los Angeles. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the FSU College of Motion Picture Arts and is the creative director at Soapbox Films, where she was a writer on season one of Muppets Now on Disney Plus. She has published speculative fiction in Apex Magazine and Luna Station Quarterly and has been featured in the nationally broadcast NPR program To the Best of Our Knowledge. She also enjoys streaming video games and various shenanigans on Twitch. Find Joanna online at joannatruman.com, on Twitch @nimblefizz, and on Twitter and Instagram: @joannatruman.

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