Good morning, RU Crew and welcome to Query Writing 101.  Our resident query guru, C.J. Redwine, has chosen Wilma Howe-Bennett’s letter to critique.  As always, feel free to ask questions.

Dear:

Being a vet with a rural practice isn’t an easy job for a woman, and R. E. O’Higgins (I’m not going to tell you how to name your characters. Just going to point out that this is a difficult name to say aloud and I stumbled on it while reading.) knows that all too well (How? Why isn’t it easy for a woman? Is it easy for a man?). When the practice is in the process of being rebuilt after a devastating hurricane, it’s harder, and when the practice is equally owned by a gay man and his husband, and her wife is an engineer with secrets, it’s even harder. (Two issues here. One, that sentence is so long, we get lost as we read it. The other is that it isn’t clear who “her wife” is. R.E.’s wife? And why would co-owning a vet practice with a gay couple make it harder to do? As it reads now, your saying the fact they’re gay makes it hard. Is that true in the story or is who they are as people or how the community responds to them that adds the difficulty?) Add in that there are strange creatures showing up all over the place, and interesting times are ahead for all concerned. (Okay, you’ve got plenty of vague details here when what you really need are specifics. Specifics instantly draw us into the characters and the situation and give us a stake in the outcome. Without a stake in the outcome, why read on? We need to know who R.E. is. What kind of woman is she? Give us a way to connect with her. I have no idea what it takes to run a rural vet practice and I don’t care. BUT I do know what it’s like to feel like I have to fight for everything I get in the workplace. And if there are “strange creatures showing up all over the place”, don’t hold back on us. Strange creatures could refer to anything from vampires to Richard Simmons impersonators. WHAT is showing up, where, and how is that her problem?)

When RE and Henry (Who is Henry? And shouldn’t R.E. have periods after the initials?) get a hysterical call from one of the few remaining ranchers on the peninsula claiming that he’s shot something that he’s never seen before, they go down to meet him and encounter something that has never been seen in this world. (They live on a peninsula? That doesn’t say “rural” to me. I guess because I grew up in a “rural” area and it was nothing but farms and dairies. Can you clarify in the first paragraph? And why is he one of the few remaining ranchers? What’s driving them off? How can R.E. run a successful business if there aren’t enough clients? You’ll want to revise to delete the repetition of “never been seen.” Maybe the rancher can report something unusual or strange?) It’s a feathered lizard, something out of legend and nightmare, and they don’t know where it came from or what to do about finding it and its mates. (A feathered lizard COULD be something out of legend and nightmare if it’s big enough or dangerous enough. You might clarify by giving us something to help us put it in context. Sounds like a cool concept! And why is it their responsibility to find out where it came from or find its mates? What pushes them to action? You need to give us your inciting incident here.)

In the meantime, there’s the perfect retired schoolteacher’s perfect new boyfriend, a physics problem that might be causing problems with temporal rifts, and more of the strange creatures showing up and wreaking havoc among the livestock. When the two human-appearing cross-temporal agents reveal themselves and they and the vets start trying to round up both the creatures and their eggs, things get even more interesting. (1. Get rid of the repetition of “perfect” and “problem.” You like long sentences. J Think about interspersing shorter sentences to give your paragraph more punch and power. 2. I have NO idea how a retired school teacher’s perfect new boyfriend could possibly cause problems for a vet. This comes out of the blue. Either tell us what problem he’s causing or don’t mention him. 3. Temporal rifts? What are those? How would a vet recognize and/or understand them? How do they relate to this story? This is a huge jump for the reader. I feel like we’re missing a key sentence showing us how R.E. stumbles upon temporal rifts and how she figures out what they are. 4. Your last sentence assumes we already know there are two human-appearing cross-temporal agents on the scene. We don’t. Instead, try something like “When two strangers arrive, claiming to be cross-temporal agents (And what does that even mean? Give me a clue because it sounds cool and I really want to go with you on this.) and insisting the creatures must be caught at any cost, R.E. finds herself __insert the above and beyond behavior/situation R.E. is in__.” Naturally, I’m taking some liberties and you’ll want to use what works and toss the rest.)

The vets and the cross-temporal agents, not to mention the two physics engineers (You’re assuming we have prior knowledge that two physic engineers are on the scene. If you must mention them, give them to us when you show us how R.E. knows about temporal rifts. I’m assuming these are the two who explain it. And why are two physic engineers on a nearly deserted peninsula?), are in for even more interesting times as the two worlds try to interact without people finding out about the temporal holes and the creatures that are crossing through them. All of them are searching for solutions in this 100,000 word science fiction/fantasy novel, DARK QUEEN OF THE PENINSULA. (No more use of the word “interesting” in a query for you.J It’s vague and gives us absolutely no sense of the stakes. Things don’t get interesting at the climax of a book. They get intense. Dangerous. Impossible. Deadly. Heart-breaking. Give us the true, specific STAKES so we care enough to find out if R.E. will succeed. I think it’s an awesome idea to have temporal holes between two universes with deadly little creatures coming through. That idea is cool and original and needs to be center-stage. It isn’t. I’d make the entire focus of this query that another world exists and it’s most deadly predators have found a way into ours. Then you give us R.E. and how she stumbles upon the problem, nearly gets killed or whatever scary awful thing pushes her into taking personal responsibility for solving the problem and compound her situation by giving us other-worldly agents who may not have her best interest at heart or whatever complication they throw in her path and finish up with the nearly-impossible task of sealing off the holes. They aren’t “searching for solutions,” they are __fill in the blank with whatever awesome, fantastic, difficult task is in front of them.)

I’ve been writing an online blog for several years, have had several articles published on E-How and won an award for best traditional poem while still in college. This is my first fiction novel. (You need to move your book title, genre, and word count to the beginning of this paragraph instead. And you don’t need to tell an agent this is your first novel. Also (and don’t feel bad because I did something SO MUCH WORSE when I first started talking about my work to agents.) a novel is, by definition, fiction so you don’t say “fiction novel.”)

Thank you for both your time and your consideration.

Sincerely,

Wilma Howe-Bennett

***

Thank you C.J. and a special thanks to Wilma for allowing us to use her letter. Wilma, please, let us know how these suggestions work for you.  We’d love to hear from you.  For our readers, if you have a letter you would like C.J. to critique, go to our Labs page and click the link or send the letter to QueryWriting101@romanceuniversity.org.   C.J. will also take questions if you would like to send them.  We will post a letter on the first Monday of each month so be sure to check back.

Join us on Wednesday when the guys on our Man Panel enlighten us on the part of a woman’s body men like best.

C.J.’s Bio:  C.J. Redwine fears goats, loves stilettos and frequently lets her imagination run away with her. She writes edgy urban fantasy with a side of comic relief. You can learn more about her at www.C.J.redwine.blogspot.com and read samples of her writing, which is full of imagination and the occasional stiletto but is noticeably lacking in goats.

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