Dear agents name,
Mother of Pearl sits in the paranormal/romance/suspense genre and can be described as Charmed meets True Blood – Pearl, a homesick Liverpudlian student in Monterey Bay suffers from paranormal shock when a ghostly pendant falls into her possession, and a sexy but petulant gypsy is hot on her trail.
Pearl Kizzy left the comforts of her home town Liverpool to study art in The Monterey Peninsula. She’s entertained by her vivacious roommate named Celeste, and spends her spare time searching for links to her long departed mother who grew up in the area…all whilst trying to balance studies with her love life and avoid a stalker, who’s hot on her trail.
Pearl’s frolicking sees her thrown, head first, into a paranormal world when she stumbles upon a mysterious book shop. It’s here that she’s given a ruby pendant and an old book – problem, the book doesn’t exist and the pendant is linked to an apparition that is screaming for attention.
Enter Luka (the stalker); an erratic gypsy that knows more about her predicament than she does. With Lukas help, spooky séances, psychic art and telepathy become all but pieces in the paranormal jigsaw puzzle, which point to a hidden family secret connected to Pearl’s mum.
Mother of Pearl is my first novel and is complete at around 70,000 words and 350 pages; the full manuscript is available upon request. I am currently working on the sequel, String of Pearls; Pearl Drop will be the third in the series. I have several other unwritten manuscripts awaiting my future attention. My non-fiction feature articles have been published in various spiritual magazines, covering subjects such as Psychic Art, Meditation and Color Therapy.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind Regards,
my name
#QueryVote 
Looks good.I really like the premise and the setting is sexy. Very clever title too.
My only suggestion….and this is being very picky… would be to clarify a bit what “paranormal shock” means. That particular term conjures up various possibilites. I’m being nit-picky. I really do like it and look forward to reading it…when you are published…because you indeed will be.
Comment by Sara Taney Humphreys — April 29, 2009 @ 1:19 am |
1. The formatting is weird. Check out Writer’s Market for help. It’s worth investing in.
2. The plot doesn’t seem centralized… because you have too many plot threads.
“Pearl’s frolicking sees her thrown, head first, into a paranormal world when she stumbles upon a mysterious book shop. It’s here that she’s given a ruby pendant and an old book – problem, the book doesn’t exist and the pendant is linked to an apparition that is screaming for attention.”
If you clean this paragraph up, this seems to be your premise. *build* on that. You don’t need to introduce your book, just get people to want to read it. That means, what problems does Pearl face, conflicts, etc. (Who, what where, when, why and how) Remember, every sentence you are fighting with the agent not to put your query down. You want to engage that agent. Every single sentence is precious to you. Every word. So for a hook, start with a hook sentence.
Your main idea seems to be… Pearl finds a ruby pendant which enables her to find contact with the paranormal world. (I’m not sure how the book relates.) Boil down the premise to the basic parts. Premise made you write the book in the first place and keep writing it. Stick to that as your hook.
The stalker, is fine as a subplot, and maybe something to humanize the character, but you don’t need her roommate unless she’s critical to the main plot. And I’m not currently sure how the stalker could “help” Pearl, which instead of intriguing me makes me confused. Because one, it raises questions for me about gypsy real world v. Hollywood Gypsy… (Honestly, I know the real-life gypsy life better, but that’s my cultural readings stuff) which may be problematic in this ever-more PC world… and 2. Stalker usually means a bad and terrifying thing, so I don’t see a bad and terrifying thing as being able to help.
Disconnected events in hooks usually don’t work unless they go around a centralized idea, such as a murder. For example, Inspector Lacey found a sewing needle, a Wizard of OZ DVD, and a book in Russian at the scene of the crime… that type of disconnect is fine, what ties them? The scene of the crime. (This works for suspense too… I did this for a hook on Nanowrimo…)
But yours jumps too much because I can’t find the grounding central idea. You have so far: roommate, book shop, pendant in book shop, book, gypsy (not sure of what flavor–Romani or not..), stalker, an apparition, psychic art, telepathy, jigsaw puzzle, and a family hidden secret. To me, from *just* the hook it looks like you don’t know what the book is about and that the whole book is scattered. (Also the adjectives to describe characters and events is killing things such as “vivacious” roommate, “Sexy” “Petulant” gypsy, “mysterious” bookshop (which sounds cliché…) “Spooky” séances, etc. Also some pure telling. “Screaming for attention” how? How does this bother the character? (which will give more sense of who the character is.)
Your author biography is problematic like the previous comments on author biographies.
1. You don’t need to tell the agent that this is your first novel. They’ll find out.
2. You don’t need to say that the manuscript is available upon request (this one came up at least 2 times in previous queryvotes.)
3. Don’t mention the sequels. (this came up at least 1 time before).
4. Don’t mention other manuscripts. You are selling this one. (This came up at least 1 time before on queryvote).
5. Page count doesn’t matter, stick to word count.
6. The publications will help, but it will be minor compared to a fiction sale. (That’s Miss Snark.)
EVERYONE- It’s worth reading past critiques before posting your own query. I sooo feel for agents. I understand the need for form rejections.
Even investing in Writer’s Market would give a boost…
Comment by Rachel Udin — April 29, 2009 @ 1:28 am |
Fantastic! Let me just say a huge thank you for taking the time out of your evening to share such valid and constructive comments. They will be no end of help – I was absolutely aware that the query I’d ‘attempted’ to write was awful, which was why I posted here. It’s my first one, and with there being such conflicting advice out there, I didn’t want to send the agents to run for cover – or the rejection stamp! I wanted to get it right.
This is such an invaluable site, and I hope many more authors benefit :o)
Cheers Sara and Rachel!
Comment by Jo — April 29, 2009 @ 12:51 pm |