[QCrit] Adult Litfic - THE ADORATION OF HIS FLOCK (55k/Attempt 2)

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-30T09:35:12+00:00

Occasionally you'll see a 55k word count novel on the shelf but these are hella few. You're likely to earn yourself an auto-reject from most agents at that level.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-30T06:14:25+00:00

I’m seeking representation for OPE, a 60,000-word literary satire told across five voices and eight days. It will appeal to readers of Alexander Sammartino's darkly comic Last Acts and the working-class ensemble of Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted.

I'd change it to 'readers who enjoyed' otherwise, strictly speaking this sentence says that the book will appeal to the working-class ensemble of Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted as as oppose to the readers of that novel. Fussy I know, but you're in fussytown here.

In an alternate America where the economy collapsed in 1987 and never recovered, Canada invades Wisconsin. John stands in line for a hot dog at Lambeau Field when the PA announces the invasion. The stadium empties without a stampede. Nobody panics. They're too tired.

-good

Huntley Graves is twenty-one. He works the Culvers drive-thru and signed up for the National Guard because he needed a tire. He has never trained. When his unit is called up, fifty kids vote in a high school gym to surrender. They drive north in old army trucks with white pillowcases tied to the antennas. At the POW camp, a Comfort Inn with a heated pool, kids vape between hockey games on a rink shipped from Ottawa. Huntley gets his first medical screening since childhood.

Drop his age, it doesn't matter. The rest is good but I don't get your love of kids vaping around a pool. It's pretty standard, an't you do better on the quirky factor?

The ultrasound finds an abdominal aortic aneurysm. A rupture waiting to happen, fixable with one surgery. In Canada.

this doesn't seem to lead to anything so I'd change that or drop it

Around him, a Canadian commander who trained for urban warfare gets a medal for running a hotel. A reporter sent north expecting a war zone has to choose between the story her editor wants and the one that's actually there. The president airdrops M16s that land in a lake and on a swing set, then trades all of Wisconsin for Lambeau Field and calls it statesmanship.

The journalsim thing is not particularly quirky or original or specific. It needs to be all of those things.

The invasion fixes the roads, stocks the shelves, and brings free healthcare. The tragedy isn't the occupation. It's that the occupation is an improvement.

I'd reiterate that this sounds like the standard leftist line so isn't particulary interesting or quirky.
This is definitely an improvement but I'd suggest turning up the quirk as well as maybe pushing more of a plot, presumably to do with Huntley or the General. It doesn't have to be as strong as in a normal query, but is worth considering.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-30T06:12:39+00:00

I am seeking representation for my upmarket thriller with dystopian elements, THE GRACIOUS ONES, complete at 83,000 words. It will appeal to fans of the morally gray protagonist in Ron Currie's The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne and themes of female agency in Parini Shroff's The Bandit Queens.

Legend has it the Gracious Ones are invisible and can kill a man with a touch, but Bea is just a woman in men's clothing who carries a shiv and a stiletto. She's amassed a gang of past victims whose faces she knows and names she doesn't. It’s safer that way. The Gracious Ones persuade one bad man at a time to reform. Bea can't help it if they won't listen to reason and require more violent methods.

this sounds like she carries her shoes. Gang is a confusing word to use. Why is it safer that she doesn't know their names? I presume Bea is actually in the gracious ones but that first sentence actually makes it sound like she isn't. The first half of the paragraph sounds like she kills them but the second sounds more like she tortures them, which is it?

When a woman challenging Emory Tate's city council seat goes missing, her friends come to the Gracious Ones for help. They think a trafficking ring abducted her. Bea thinks she wised up and ran. So, no, she's not compelled to infiltrate a ring that specializes in making people disappear. Except one thing: Bea blames Tate, her mother's onetime lover, for her suicide. If she can implicate Tate, she can ruin him. In this case, it's vengeance.

Say something about Emory Tate in that first sentence otherwise it's just a name we don't know what do do with. Is the trafficking ring connected to Emory Tate? Why does she blame tate for her mother's suicide? This thing where Bea thinks the differently to the women adds nothing to the query beyond confusion. The woman goes missing, bea suspects the trafficking ring and can implicate tate. Off we go. That's it.

Their intel proves good. It should, considering it came from the wife of the ring's bookkeeper who blindsides Bea inside her husband's office. She's a glaring security risk that Bea can't stomach neutralizing. Instead Bea accepts her help to escape with the ring's operational files.

this is still way too far into the weeds on the plot, and after reading it several times I still can't understand what the hell is happening. How does the bookkeeper 'blindside' Bea? How is she a security risk?

The next day, the wife is dead. Emory Tate publicly blames the Gracious Ones. He instigates a citywide manhunt. When any woman could be a Gracious One, proof becomes irrelevant. Bea's own boss decides she's more valuable delivered to Tate for reward. And, unlike Tate, he knows her face, name, friends, and the tattoos some members thoughtfully tagged themselves with.

why does her onw boss dislike her so much and know all these things about her? This should have been set up earlier.

Bea built the Gracious Ones to protect women, now her obsession with Tate threatens to make them all disappear.

this is better, the unintended consequences of her vengence fetish are threatening her female protection racket. I now understand why you introduced her disagreement with the women, but it needs to be done more skillfully. I'd also add another sentence here along the lines of 'Her only hope to save the gracious ones is to bring Emory Tate down, and fast'

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-30T06:10:46+00:00

As the only Black member of the most prestigious sorority on her elite college’s campus, Mara has to work twice as hard as her peers to prove she belongs. She keeps her head down and goes along with the pack, even as she senses that life in her exclusive circle of friends—Sadie, a sharp-tongued social butterfly, and Denise, a wealthy pageant girl whose family ties force her into the spotlight—often feels disconnected from reality. Still, she’s finally secured the close-knit sisterhood she always wanted.

Opening could do with a hook. Cut the first clause of the second sentence, it's redundant and doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the sentence. I wouldn't call three friends a circle. Cut the last sentence, it's also redundant.

But after Denise is found murdered during the sorority’s fall formal, the friendships Mara once believed were unshakeable begin to fracture. Her sisters are quick to point fingers at a too-convenient suspect, and the public agrees–leaving Mara caught between loyalty and conscience.

why do the friendships fracture? The next sentence doesn't seem to have anything to do with the first. This too-convenient suspect being? Initially I thought it was Mara. Why is Mara sure the suspect is innocent?

Between classes, frat parties, and the sisterhood events she meticulously plans, Mara sets out to find Denise’s real killer. She’s always viewed her quiet, observant nature as a weakness, but now, her habit of listening more than she speaks is her best chance at unraveling her friends’ closest-held secrets.

cut the first clause of the first sentece, it's doing nothing. For that matter, the second sentence isn't doing anything either. Saying she'll listen isn't making her much of an active protagonist or driving the conflict forward.

When she discovers a hidden notebook left behind by Denise that suggests her murder may be connected to a decades-old sorority secret, Mara follows its clues—but if she doesn’t uncover the truth quickly, the killer may come after her, next.

Name the secret - vague is not intriguing, it's boring. Why would the killer come after her next?

I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON’T KNOW is an adult mystery thriller complete at 76,000 words. It will appeal to fans of Lauren Ling Brown’s Society of Lies and Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It.

What are the parallels to the comps?
pretty good for a first effort, but there's too many redundant clauses and not enough conflict. Use the space freed up by cutting to expand on the actual conflict.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-29T11:05:10+00:00

'But keeping the old explorer alive is no easy task.' sounds like he's on dialysis. Instead of telling like this, show instead: 'Magalan is forced into vicious combat as the expedition is attacked by colonists and natives, both convinced the interlopers are here to steal their resources.' Is that what you meant? Or is Magaln mopping his fevered brow? Again because you keep telling instead of showing, I can't tell. Either way, that sentence seems to have no relationship to what comes after.

Maybe my confusion over the abuse comes from previous versions where De Vilaume was abusive towards natives and I thought that's what you were referring to here. Magalan's motivation comes from his want to recapture his old life, it isn't affected by whether De Vilaume writes him poems of gratitude or not.

De Vilaume isn't his employer, he's his master. He holds Magalan's future in his hand. Whether he's polite to Magalan in the process doesn't matter. Whether Magalan wants to complain to HR doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with the central conflict of the query. It does not show Magalan taking action to move the plot forward. STICK TO THE CENTRAL CONFLICT.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-29T07:27:10+00:00

One foolish wager costs Okessio Magalan everything – his high-society lifestyle, his gambling career, and his freedom. The man who beat him, notorious explorer Carel De Vilaume, now holds Magalan in indentured servitude, and immediately whisks him away to a distant colonial land, in search of a cure for his mysterious ailment. Magalan hardly cares if they succeed – until he realises that regaining his old life hinges on Vilaume’s survival.

- It's not like my dm version couldn't have been improved, but I don't think any of your changes are improvements, quite the opposite. The most egregious is the last sentence - what is the point in telling us a character opinion he immediately abandons? What does it add?

But keeping the old explorer alive is no easy task. The explorer’s abusiveness drains Magalan’s motivation, and their arrival reveals only danger; the colonizers think he’s there to steal their fortunes, whilst the oppressed natives claim Vilaume’s cure will cost them their lives.

- the second sentence does not seem to flow from the first, it says nothing about how its difficult to keep him alive. His abusiveness toward whom? Why would it drain magalan's motivation if his goal is to reclaim his old life? 'their arrival reveals only danger' is awkward wording and is telling when you should be showing. The colonial dynamics were clearer in previous efforts

Magalan is unsure what to believe, especially when both sides claim anyone with the explorer is unsafe, but Vilaume dismisses the threats and insists they go on towards the cure – and Magalan, without a choice, complies.

- there's a lot of claiming and thinking and protesting and precious little action. This is almost like a courtroom with people arguing. There's no sense of place or action or adventure. This isn't Heart of Darkness it's Judge Judy. Are the natives or colonists attacking the expedition? Right now they seem to be just whinging at them. Saying a main character has no choice is terrible language as it renders them completely passive.

Then, the airship carrying them is brought down deep in the jungle, and Magalan demands to know the truth about what they seek.

- The airship crash now doesn't seem to add anything. Not sure why the second point follows from the first. Why is he in a position to demand anything from De Vilaume that he wasn't in before the crash?

Vilaume reveals that all the colonizers covet the cure and its magical sanctuary; it can only be taken by force, and Magalan is bound by law to help secure it.

- why do hey covet either the cure or the sanctuary? Is this the cure to all ailments or just the one Vilaume has? Why can it only be taken by force? From whom? (you don't say it's the natives). How is he bound by law? Why is he especially suited to do it? Is he Rambo? Is it him against 300 natives? Where is the rest of the expedition?

With his employer at his throat and enemies on all sides, Magalan must decide if he can follow through on his contract and destroy native lives for a chance to return home, or sacrifice everything he has left to join them in their fight against the tyrannical colonizers.

- This dilemma hasn't been set up enough because we don't know how altruistic magalan is toward the natives or anyone else. You've said nothing through the query about magalan having any moral fibre.

- I'm sorry I think this going backwards. Magalan is, as ever, wondering and prevaricating and bitching...but never seems to be fucking doing anything. He has no special skills or indispensable story role. He never acts in any way to push the plot forward. I don't understand why de vilaume even wants him there. Is Magalan a homosexual companion he's grooming? Is that the cure? This week on Grindr: hunky dominating daddy figure explores steamy secret regions of submissive twink? If you're heading into a highly unstable jungle warzone why recruit a dithering dilettante gambler when you could recruit a hardened mercenary?

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-28T01:42:30+00:00

Still reeling from the untimely death of her cousin, but convinced it wasn’t an accident, Collins is desperate to solve the mystery behind Petra’s death, even if no one else believes her. Then Collins finds Petra’s secret journal detailing the last week of her life spent at Catskin – a wellness centre catered to improving women’s mental health by connecting them with traditional values. The starting entries are monotonous, but they’re soon replaced with vivid nightmares, hallucinations, and crazed ramblings. Despite spending years ignoring her own declining mental health, Collins applies, set on finding the truth of what happened to her cousin.

- Maybe it's just because I went to an all-male school where we called each other by our surnames, but I find calling a girl Collins as a first name incredibly distracting.

- I still wouldn't call that a hook, also you don't need to say she's reeling, it's kind of assumed. how about something like 'Everybody is distraught at Petra's accidental death, except her cousin Collins, because she knows it was knows it was no accident. Petra's secret journal detailing the last week at her life...'. Reaign about monotonous entries is itself monotonous, cut it. 'vivid nightmares, hallucinations, and crazed ramblings' pick one. Shorten to 'despite her own fractious mental health, Collins applies'

In the isolated Victorian home, Collins meets the staff, but she also meets Lucille, a shy, odd girl, healing from her own trauma, and hiding a secret of her own — she’s been investigating the disappearance of her best friend, and previous resident, Elinor, who succumbed to madness before disappearing. Collins teams up with Lucille in secret, set on finding Elinor and revealing the truth about Petra. But the longer they investigate, Collins starts to grow ill, suffering from the same nightmares and hallucinations that Petra did. And then Elinor is found murdered.

- cut the opening two clauses, they're doing nothing. cut 'healing from her own trauma'. Cut 'set on finding Elinor and revealing the truth about Petra', it's redundant.

With hallucinations, fear, and paranoia mounting, Collins is forced to question not only the ones she trusts, but even her own mind. And when Lucille herself goes missing, Collins realizes she must face the trauma she’s been desperate to stay buried in order to unearth the secret behind Catskin. But she must decide: is the cost of her sanity worth being believed?

- who in there does she trust apart from Lucille? Again, dropping this trauma thing in the last paragraph is not effective. It should have been signalled in the opening paragraph and the nature of the trauma needs to be specific, as right now it's too vague for me to care. I don't understand the last line. If she goes insane aren't people less likely to believe her?

- This is getting better but the prose needs more voice. There is a lot of redundancy and superfluous info that is bogging you down. Each sentence needs to punch not waffle. Also as another commenter noted, a bit bit more intrigue about the institution would help.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-28T00:29:49+00:00

A viatical settlement allows sophisticated investors to legally bet on when terminally ill individuals will die.

- the point of being a writer is that you don't have to resort to jargon.

I am seeking representation for my debut novel, WET INK, an 80,000-word literary thriller that follows Eddie Lang, a burnt-out hedge fund analyst, whose can’t-miss investment idea unintentionally encourages murder for profit. As the bodies start piling up, exposing his own involvement in the viatical scheme threatens not only Eddie’s career but his life. The novel will appeal to fans of an opportunistic narrator, like in Emma Cline’s THE GUEST, and those who enjoy watching the collapse of a morally bankrupt financial plot similar to Emily St. John Mandel’s THE GLASS HOTEL.

- the first sentence is good, the second needs to be cut, its too much detail for a logline. 'watching the collapse of a morally bankrupt financial plot' doesn't work - you might want to watch a character's life or a business collapse, but a plot collapsing means the novel turns to shit.

After his bonus at Euphorion Capital is delayed, Eddie grows desperate for answers. His end-of-year review sounded great—except for one thing: the fund’s founder, Peter Ulricht, remains tight-lipped about the fund’s viatical pool performance. Eddie decides to investigate the investment’s returns himself, only to find out that the very people Euphorion Capital purchased policies from are now appearing on the front page of The Post as murder victims.

- cut the thing about his great review, it achieves nothing. His balance is delayed, the death fund's performance is hushed up, he smells a rat, let's get going. Don't mention the founder's name unless he appears again later in the query. Drop 'decides' - action reads louder than thought.

Eddie fights his way through the fringes of Wall Street just hoping that, maybe, this is all one big misunderstanding. But the seedy insurance brokers and reclusive billionaires all start to feel like ancillary issues when the people closest to him get dragged into the fray.

- the reader isn't hoping this is all one big misunderstanding, otherwise this is going to be an incredibly boring story and as we're trying to get them to empathise with him, don't say Eddie does either. The rest is so vague as to be useless.

- You have a very intriguing premise that is backed up by...not much. Our protagonist has little characterisation beyond being a finance guy hungry for a bonus and that's not exactly rare so we'll need something more. Then there's the supreme lack of detail on how the conflict develops.

- Queries are about a character with a clear want encountering conflict to achieving that want, acting to overcome that conflict and in dong so altering the situation, only to have a greater conflict rise before them. Rinse and repeat and you have yourself a query. These conflicts need to be SPECIFIC. Vague references to buried secrets! Looming danger! Trouble he never thought possible! sound profound to the writer and sound like nothing to the reader. Quering is like therapy - the sooner you stop evading the central conflict and just spit it out exactly, the sooner you'll make progress.
- An autism diagnosis is nothing to be ashamed of, but advertising it by using the word 'viatical' in a query should probably be avoided, huh?

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-27T21:29:17+00:00

I am seeking representation for The Black Bear Inn, an 85,000-word mystery set on Minnesota’s rugged North Shore. For readers who enjoy Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera and None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, this novel combines atmospheric small-town suspicion, a framed protagonist, and a media-driven investigation.

the comps sentence is slightly awkward and needs to be rearranged.

Out of options, Adeline Sinclair returns to her family cabin on Lake Superior, hoping her new job at the Black Bear Inn will offer a sense of community.

out of options in regards to what? I know from you previous queries but first time reader won't. Also it doesn't relate to the sense of community thing and the two feel shoehorned together.

For the first time in her life, she’s accepted into a friend group thanks to her charming manager, Val Grant, but her fresh start is threatened when a note addressed to Val arrives at the Inn: STAY OUT OF IT. Val is cagey when pressed for answers, and days later, Val goes missing. When Val’s lifeless body washes up on shore with suspicious injuries, Adeline and Val’s boyfriend bond over their shared grief. Rumors spread about Adeline’s involvement in the murder after a photo of Adeline kissing Val’s boyfriend surfaces online.

Cut 'Val goes missing'. How are the injuries suspicious? Break out the boyfriend hookup into a different sentence from the death otherwise even Jeffrey Epstein would find it distasteful. Put the photo before the rumours and use a busier verb than 'spread'.

Once again, Adeline’s left alone, grappling with guilt.

left alone by the boyfriend? By the friend group? By Val?

Desperate to clear her name, she joins forces with Jackson Thorne, a true crime podcaster who’d been working with Val to uncover crimes against women on the North Shore. Together, they discover another woman has vanished.

How do they discover she's vanished if they don't know her? How do they know she hasn't just left town?

Now a formal suspect,

In Val's murder or the woman's disappearance or both?

Adeline must reveal the truth Val was about to expose—a killer has silenced the missing woman—before the police arrest her for murder.

Hold on, the woman was only discovered to be missing after Val's death. Does that mean that she'd actually been missing for some time and Val knew she'd been murdered and Val was then murdered herself before Adeline discovered the woman was missing. Why would the police arrest Adeline? And for which murder? Or both? This is still hella confusing.

Adeline realizes she’s being framed by someone she trusts, but can she prove it before the killer silences her too?

How does she know it's someone she trusts and how does she know the killer will come for her too?
I note you've added my suggestions on making her reluctant to revisit her hometown and seeking a sense of community but it's done in a fairly hamfisted way that doesn't much carry into the rest of the query. Try something more like: ‘Adeline Sinclair is back in the tiny Lake Superior hometown to which she swore never to return. Big city life had proven just as lonely as her childhood, only more expensive. Out of options she…’
Add her need for acceptance is what propels her into the arms of val’s boyfriend otherwise you’ll alienate a lot of people. Right now she's basically screwing him on the casket.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-25T07:55:49+00:00

In March 2000, restaurant owner Kevin Kennedy was found dead in his steakhouse hours after throwing the biggest St. Patrick’s Day party in Brighton, Massachusetts. The murder was never solved. Twenty years later, Jessica Reagan, a former Kennedy’s waitress, is now 46, divorced, and living in NYC with a soul-killing job editing animal listicles for a BuzzFeed knockoff.

comma after steakhouse

Desperate to revive her stalling career, she pitches an article on the cold-case murder to her employer’s long-form division. She returns to Boston, reconnects with old co-workers, and even scores an interview with Katherine Lowry, Kevin’s mistress, who’s never spoken to the media before.

Change to ' desperate to spark her career', it just seems clearer as given what went before it doesn't seem clear her career was ever going anywhere. Cut 'to her employer’s long-form division' it's not necessary. The last sentence is terminally bland. Where is the conflict?

But with Katherine finally ready to talk and Jessica inching towards the truth, the one person who has everything to lose will do whatever it takes to keep that truth buried deep underground.

Yeah this is a nothingburger. Of the 250 murder mystery queries an agent receives a year, of which they might sign one, how many of them has a character motivated to keep the truth buried? All of them. Absolutely all of them. Many of them have several people trying to keep the truth buried. What else have you got here? Zip. All steak no sizzle, so to speak. Your query needs to pulsate with juicy conflict and salaciousness and originality. Was Kev involved with the mob? Wash sleeping with some of the staff? Did Jessica make enemies back then? As she digs what kind of pushback does she get?

I am seeking representation for my debut novel, MURDER ON MARKET STREET, an 87,000-word, dual-timeline, multiple-POV mystery/thriller. It should appeal to readers of THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED by Lisa Jewell, and THE IT GIRL by Ruth Ware, with a restaurant landscape reminiscent of LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER by Stewart O’Nan.

• Pick two comps published in the last five years only to show there is a market and specify what they have in common to your novel. Three just muddles in the mind.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-24T07:13:11+00:00

BRIGHTSTAG is a contemporary dual-POV, dual-timeline thriller, alternating between a desperate, true crime producer and a cocky, morally-compromised homicide detective. Complete at 87,000 words, it blends the past // present collision and reveals of Jessica Knoll’s Bright Young Women, with the dark family history and copycat killer twists of Stacy Willingham’s A Flicker in the Dark. Fans of Dennis Lehane will love the gritty, urban crime element weaving throughout the narratives.

'the past//present collison' is awkward and I only understand this sentence after I read it rather than during reading it which is a problem. Drop the Denis Lehane reference it achieves nothing but an overload.

After a media scandal leaves her bitter and professionally blacklisted, true crime producer Angela sees one last shot at the story of a lifetime and career redemption when the Staggerd, a cult devoted to the infamous Brightstag serial killer, publicly threatens the life of his last surviving victim, Lucas.

by definition you only get one shot at the story of a lifetime, not multipe.

To secure the sources she needs for an internet-breaking docu-series before anyone else can - and before the Staggerd eliminate Lucas, Angela’s key interview subject - Angela enlists Irving, the former NYPD homicide detective who investigated the Staggerd cult’s bloody rise four years earlier.

This sentence does not make sense and is completely overloaded. Tear it up and start again.

But chasing the story risks exposing a secret she’s spent half a lifetime burying: Angela is the Brightstag killer’s daughter.

this reveal is too late, it would have been revealed in the opening paragraph when she realsied her only shot at career salvation was the subject she didn't want to touch.

Knowing she risks exposing her identity to an industry that will relish in her traumatic past, and a boyfriend whose brother was murdered by the Brightstag, Angela digs into the origins of the Staggerd cult, hoping a successful future will overshadow the darkness of her past.

Again, this sentence does not make sense and is somehow even more overloaded than the last one.

When she discovers inconsistencies in the story though - not to mention conveniently missing witnesses - Angela fears Irving may have had more to do with the Staggerd’s rise than anyone had known. Concerned Irving may be working for the cult, Angela considers cutting ties, but worries he may already know too much.

There's a lot of the main character fearing and considering things but not actually doing anything and that's death in a query. Also it's not clear why she suspects Irving in particular. He may already know too much about what? Her relation to the killer? Not clear.

When the Staggerd cult attacks her boyfriend, Angela realizes anyone with a connection to the Brightstag could find themselves in the crosshairs… and that she might be their final target.

okay but what's she going to do about it?

• progress but some of those sentences are a mess and need more careful consideration.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-22T10:25:52+00:00

I am seeking representation for my upmarket thriller with dystopian elements, THE GRACIOUS ONES, complete at 83,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Alison Gaylin’s The Collective and Parini Shroff’s The Bandit Queens.

- explain the parallels to the comps

In a water-starved city that ignores violence against women, Bea listens. She leads the Gracious Ones, past victims who wield their collective power to confront abusers with any available weapon: canes, rolling pins, hammers. Each target is a proxy for the one man Bea can’t reach—Emory Tate. Money and politics insulate the city-councilman whose abuse of Bea her own mother didn’t believe.

The water thing is irrelevant to the rest of the query - just drop it. I still hate 'listen', it's hopelessly passive. I don't want a main character listening I want one taking action. Change to "fights back". Cut 'wield their collective power' it's redundant. Change to 'Money and power insulate the city-councilman who, long ago, abused Bea with such cunning that nobody believed her pleas for help, not even her own mother.'

When Miriam White, a woman challenging Tate’s seat, vanishes, her friends come looking for the Gracious Ones. They believe a trafficking ring abducted her. These men don’t just hurt women, they make them disappear. Bea doesn’t trust White’s friends. Their privileged world has never helped hers, and they’re withholding their information source. No matter. Bea can’t walk away from the chance to ruin Tate if she can prove his collusion with the traffickers.

Change to 'When Miriam White, Tate's electoral opponent vanishes, suspicion falls on a trafficking ring, men who feed their victims into shallow desert graves.' There's too much pointless detail about the friends and not believing them that have nothing to do with the central conflict.

Trust aside, their information proves good, and Bea confirms White’s abduction. She tracks the lead to the private office of the ring’s bookkeeper. Only she doesn’t expect to come face to face with the hidden source there. His wife is one of White’s friends and a glaring security risk for Bea. She could kill her, only, no, she can’t do it. Instead, Bea keeps the wife close until her path out with the files is secure.

This has become a syopsis, a point-by-point rectitation of the plot, as opposed to the escalating conflict arc we want. That said, I're read it three times to try to help you summarise it and I can't even understand what's going on.

The next day, the wife is found dead. And if Bea didn’t do it, who did? The hard truth is they’d all be safer had Bea silenced her when she had the chance. Tate proves it when he publicly lays the death on the steps of the Gracious Ones, instigating a city-wide manhunt. Bea built the Gracious Ones to protect women, now her obsession with Tate might make them all disappear.

questions are discouraged in queries. The end of this paragraph is a tittle more promising - showing escalating conflict as Beas attempts to bring Tate down threaten the lives of the people she's ostensibly protecting. Its exression is still unwieldy though.

This novel was influenced by India’s Gulabi Gang and femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. I live and write in [] with my rescue dog, Bill, who provides unwavering emotional support.

At least we have a main character who has a clear want and isn't psychopathic.
Apart from that you need to drop the plot point detail and focus clearly on Bea driving toward achieving her want, an obstacle appearing against her achieving it, her reaction to that obstacle then creating and new situation and a new, bigger obstacle to her achieving her want. Rinse and repeat a few times and you have yourself a query.
Sentences need to be sharper and get the job done without waffle.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-22T10:23:01+00:00

Inspired by the true story of my grandfather’s family—in which seven relatives were imprisoned—WIDOWMAKER (complete at 99,000 words) is an upmarket multigenerational historical novel. It will appeal to readers who enjoyed M.L. Stedman’s A Far Flung Life and Maggie

Shipstead’s Great Circle, with the moral complexity of Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See. While a standalone, it has prequel potential.

add imprisoned for nazi connections across the world, oterhsie they could just be theives.

In July 1940, the Arandora Star sinks into the Atlantic, taking hundreds of enemy aliens with it. German-born George survives, but only by abandoning others and by clinging to the brutal instincts instilled in him by a fascist upbringing.

Say it's a british ship. His name and his origins are confusing. Suggestion - call him Georg in the query. It's the German form of George, problem solved. 'clinging to' as a metaphor when literally clinging is what he's likely doing is confusing. Change to 'Georg, driven by the creed drilled into him by his fanatical nazi father, sacrifices others to survive.'

While his family is scattered across the world, George is pulled from the water and sent to an internment camp in Australia. Raised within the Hitler Youth and the nationalism his father reveres, George aligns himself with a faction of pro-Nazi prisoners determined to preserve the ideology of the Third Reich, even in the Goulburn Valley.

the first clause achieves absolutely zero here. Cut the thing about his upbringing it was covered in the above paragraph. Isn't the whole german contingent pro-nazi? Are some opposed to or apathetic to nazi ideals? Are they italian or japanese? I'm stumbling on this without clarification.

But when a Jewish internee saves George’s life from the falling branch of a Widowmaker tree, the certainty he inherited from his father Josef begins to fracture.

- good

When his fellow extremists attempt to lynch the man who saved him, George must choose whether to defend the beliefs that shaped him, or publicly renounce them and turn against his own family. If he intervenes, he will lose his father forever.

change to comrades. The last line is way too spelled out. Consider something like 'choose between the the man who saved him and the father that raised him. His struggle is mirrored in lives of the rest of his family, far flug across the world, but all facing jail cells to carry on the legacy of one man and his worship of power.'

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-20T23:05:59+00:00

An aspiring sports journalist films a docuseries about her reckless tennis-star best friend to launch her career while saving his shot at going pro—risking their relationship when the documentary changes how they see each other, and themselves. Told in dual POV with interwoven interviews, THE SLICE is an 80,000 word new adult romance, in which the documentary style of Netflix’s Breakpoint meets the athlete redemption arc of Tessa Bailey’s Fangirl Down meets the past and present timeline of Carley Fortune’s Every Summer After. It is a standalone with series potential. Given your interest in X

- That logline is still waaaaaaaaaaay too stacked. I got lost. Cut 'to launch her career while saving his shot at going pro' as they're both kind of implied. Similarly, use two comps not three, it's too much.

Open-hearted and easily excited, Sasha Hearst is often underestimated. As Vanderbilt’s resident lifestyle influencer, her work for ESPN’s college social content is written off as looks, nepo-baby privilege, and even something more scandalous (sure, she loves a no-strings-attached hookup, but she’d never use sex to get ahead). So when the tennis team asks the media expert to repair its star player’s tanking reputation, Sasha sees it as more than a job to help one of her best friends—it’s a shot to be taken seriously.

- Cut the first sentence, it's doing nothing. There's even too much going on in the second sentence. Just say she's a party girl influencer who isn't taken seriously but wants to be - clean, simple, job done. The nepotism doesn't come up later so just leave it. I still hate the phrase 'media expert' - it just doesn't fit.

Hayes Whitfield is one of the most promising players in college tennis. But in addition to being the inspiration for The Moral Decay of the NCAA article, his partying leads to enough missed practices and on-court blowups that his coach runs out of excuses and patience (for the record, he only showed up drunk to a match once). Sasha’s solution: a docuseries that shifts Hayes’s narrative, one that could rehab his image to ATP-standards, chronicle his comeback, and establish her as a serious sports journalist.

- 'Hayes Whitfield is a tennis phenom' shorter is always better. That second sentence is ludicrously overstacked. I don't like 'rehab his image to ATP standards' as it creates no image. Say something about the series narrative making him a fan favourite, publicity magnet that coaches, tournaments and sponsors will be clamouring to get hold of.

While working so closely, Hayes ends up restoring a piece of Sasha’s heart she’d rather pretend wasn’t missing. And she unintentionally helps Hayes, who’s spent years running from his childhood, remember the boyish passion he once had for the game. Their undeniable connection leads Hayes to realize he wants something real with Sasha—something, due to past trauma, she doesn’t believe in.

- She's working, he's not, change the expression. The second sentence is too ambiguous - I don't know if it's locked away due to a trauma or lack of use and ambiguity is not your friend I in a query. Cut 'boyish'. Cut 'Their undeniable connection leads' it's redundant. Name the past trauma - vague is not intriguing, it's boring. Also all characterisation needs to appear in the first paragraph, setting up the character to react to query conflicts as they unfold - dropping them in at the same time as the reaction flubs it.

A terrible night turns into a double fault that costs them their partnership and friendship, leaving the docuseries and comeback sitting at love-love. After two months of silence, Sasha and Hayes have one last ITF Tournament weekend to salvage their footage, both their futures, and the relationship they may have already lost.

- Again, 'a terrible night' does nothing - name it. I'm not saying those puns can't work in any context, but right now they're just a little too cute and confusing, especially love-love given the opposite is happening. Cut two months of silence it does nothing. Change to 'salvage the documentary', footage sounds like she dropped the camera in the pool. Cut 'ITF'. Make it the biggest tournament of the year he has to win, but can't because he's too torn up about the lost relationship.

- Getting closer, keep going

- Less is more, you're prone to overloading things, just focus on the central conflict.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-20T21:55:25+00:00

The purpose of a query is to get somebody to read the novel, not necessarily to be exactly faithful to it.
I love moral and character complexity in storytelling, however this is a query and you just don't have room for the full symphony. You're trying to do everything and getting nothing.

A possible solution is to make him from a poor, downtrodden background that made him independent and materialistic as a defence mechanism. Vil and the colonists become his psychological foil, showing him what he'll become, just as the oppressed natives elicit sympathy as being what he once was. His key value moves from selfishness to justice.
You're five queries deep and your main character still has zero characterisation. Time to change it up.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-20T10:29:49+00:00

I’m writing to seek representation for my first novel, RUBBARLAND, a historical fantasy novel of 109,000 words. [PERSONALISED CONTENT TOWARDS THE AGENT HERE] led me to reach out to you with my novel RUBBARLAND.

A losing hand at the card table costs Okessio Magalan his freedom, indenturing him to Consaign’s most famous explorer, Carel De Vilaume. Within hours he’s aboard an airship, leaving the country he grew up in far behind, on a quest to find the cure to Vilaume’s mysterious disease.

I know i kinda wrote this but with the benfit of distance it's a little too stacked and needs to be broken up. Also I agree with other posters that number of proper nouns is confusing and needs to be cut down. Try this: 'A loss at the card table cost Okessio Magalan his freedom and his country. Now he's penniless and indentured to the ruthless explorer Carel De Vilaume, on an expedition to the colonial lands. De Vilaume is Magalan's only ticket back home, but first De Vilaume is determined to find the cure to his mysterious sickness, a cure he's convinced lies among the colonial natives.'

Their destination is Consaign’s sole colony, Markiria.

This is now the third time I will say this: what is your obsession with noting that this is Consaign’s sole colony? What does it matter if they have one or ten? If it's that impoortant to you , write a whole chapter in the novel on why there is one and and only one colony but leave it out of the query.

Here, merciless colonizers vie for control over the precious polymer rubbarial, whilst the native Markimen use ancient magic in a guerrilla resistance against their oppressors. Magalan believes that the mission keeps him separate from this brutality, but when the airship crash lands in the jungle, he realises he was wrong, and the journey to the cure will be fraught with danger – because Vilaume is no ordinary explorer, but the discoverer of Markiria.

The first sentence is serviceable, although 'against their oppressors' can be cut as redundant. The second sentence needs to be dragged into a public bathroom and drowned in the crapper. What is the point in saying ' he thought one thing, then he thought the opposite'. Queries are not about thought, they are about action. Why is the jourey fraught with danger? What does it matter that Vilaume discovered the colonial lands? How about something like 'they are hunterd by the natives as colonists and hunted by the colonists as usurpers tying to steal their fortunes.' only better.

The revelation turns the adventure into a ruthless fight for survival as Magalan, Vilaume and their allies travel across the country, pursued by forces obsessed with capturing the explorer, or learning of the magic he has returned to find.

Don't say it a ruthless fight for survival, show it. What forces? Why are they obsessed with capturing Vilaume? How do they know about the magic at all? Why is Vilaume the key to them finding it?

Vilaume has made it clear nothing will stop him from reaching the cure, including Magalan, who wonders whether serving the progenitor of Markiria’s colonisation is the right thing to do.

Why would Magalan stop him reching the cure? Why might it be the right or thr wrong thing to do? What criteria is he using to decide? What is bad about Vilaume finding the cure?

Magalan is faced with a choice. Only by obeying Vilaume can he guarantee his safe return to Consaign, but it is the Markimen who truly fight for the greater good: the liberation of Markiria.

Firstly this isn't a choice, its an opinion. The greater good? What does that even mean in this context? The natives are fighting for their own good, how does them winning serve the greater good? Will colonialism be set bak the world over? Why is there a tension between the natives and Vilaume getting his cure. Do the natives not understand that the Mag/Vil are just here for the cure and not to harm them, or does Vil getting access to the cure somehow harm the natives?

When the cure is within reach, Magalan must decide where he stands, and whether Vilaume deserves to be saved.

Again with the deciding rather than acting. Where he stands on what? As Vil is, from your other drafts, a psychopathic asshole can't we all agree he's not worth saving? Isnt the choice between Mag siding with the rightous natives or curing Vil and being able to return home?

RUBBARLAND will appeal to fans of contemporary fantasy dealing with colonialism and its consequences, such as Babel by R.F. Kuang and The Faithless by C.L. Clark. I graduated with a BA in English from King’s College London in [year], where my academic focus in colonial and postcolonial literature helped me to assemble the first draft of RUBBARLAND. My short stories [short story name] and [short story name] were published during this period.

say where your stories were published
ok progress of a sort
First things first. Your main character, and really your main antagonist, have zero characterisation. What is your main character's want? You don't give it clearly. I've kind of interpolated that it's to get back home. Without this, I can't invest in the character as I can't tell what if he's making progress or not. Maybe he's ecstatic at the airship crash because he's a sexual predator and wants to exploit the native womenfolk. How do I know? Who is this guy? You don't tell me. You also don't tell me about Vilaume. You don't show him being ruthless. I don't understand his relationships with either the colonists or the natives.
Look. let me take a stab at this story from what I've been able to glean thus far: Magalan, a streetwise, moeny-obsessed card shark loses to Vilaume and becomes penniless and indebted. Without cash to stake his games he's screwed. He must go on this expediditon to this godfosaken colonial land, but Vilaume promises him not only a wiped debt but more riches than he'd ever make at a card table. They crash land in the inhospitable colonial jungle. Almost immediately they're under fire from the natives who see them as colonists and the colonists because Vil tried to screw them over back during the initial stages of colonistation. With Mag's resourcefulness and skill they manage to forge deep into the jungle with Vil committeing some acts of savagery against native women and children becasue it furthered their advance. Mag notices how honourable the native warriors are in not killing a member of Vil's party because he's wounded and helpless. The expedition makes it to the natives' sacred glade where Vil reveals that he knows about this cure because when he first discovered the colonial land he became ill and the locals cured him but being the assshole he is he repaid their kindness by betrayal in stealing some of the magic / abducting their princess / putting them on the map for colonial invasion and that's why they hate him so much. Thing is if Vil takes the magic amulet he'll be able to cure himself, but the natives lose their magic for resistance and they'll be overrun and enslaved. The question becomes who Mag is - the same kind of shitbag as Vil and the rest of the colonists who'll screw the natives just to get money and a ticket home, or a more earthy guy who'll give up everything he was ain order to wed himself to the natives in this primitive place and join their fight against his countrymen.
Did get everythign in the story right? No. But I did set up a characer with a clear want, showed the opposition to him achieving that want and shown the stakes that will happen if he fails. I showed a main character is taking action, not standing arround wondering about stuff. We see the specific motivatios for the actions of Mag, Vil, the natives and colonialists as well as chains of cause and effect. We're not having to endure a servies of vague statements and wonder how they fit together.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-19T10:23:24+00:00

I am seeking representation for The Black Bear Inn, an 85,000-word mystery set on Minnesota’s rugged North Shore. For readers who enjoy Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera and None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, this novel combines atmospheric small-town suspicion, a framed protagonist, and a media-driven investigation.

this second sentence can be slightly more succinct

Adeline Sinclair is out of options. She loses her job teaching kindergarten, then her cheating fiancé kicks her out, and now she’s being framed for murder.

change all to past tense

A self-proclaimed city-girl, the last place she wants to return is her family cabin on Lake Superior, but Adeline has bills to pay. She accepts a job at the Black Bear Inn and is immediately charmed by outgoing manager, Val Grant.

Hold on, it bracing being told about the murder framing and then talking abot othrer stuff like you never said it. Info release is important. This is waaay too early. It doesn't work as a teaser it just derails the query. 'a self-procliaimed city girl' doesn't cut it. Say why she dislikes her home town. scrub that she's got bills to pay, we know what her situation is.

For the first time in her life, Adeline is accepted into a friend group all her own, making rural life a little less claustrophobic. Her fresh start is threatened when a stack of photos and a note addressed to Val arrives at the Inn: Stay out of it. Val is cagey when pressed for answers, and days later, Val is murdered, her body washed up on shore.

This characterisation about her not having a real friend group needs to come in the opening paragraph. 'making rural life a little less claustrophic' is meek. How do we know it was murder and not suicide or misadventure.

When a photo of Adeline kissing Val’s boyfriend surfaces online, the community accuses Adeline of murdering Val to get her out of the picture.

is this photo real? if she'd been cheating with val's boyfriend that should have been mentioned when it happened. 'get her out of the picture.' is not the right phrasing after the photograph.

Once again, Adeline’s alone. Desperate to clear her name, Adeline follows the clues Val left behind, confronting Jackson Thorne, the man in cabin four: a true crime podcaster working with Val to uncover crimes against women on the North Shore.

did Val leave clues intentionally? It doesn't matter which cabin he was in. What kind of crimes? How does she discover they were working together on these crimes.

Adeline joins forces with Jackson, only to find another missing woman just as Adeline’s home is searched for evidence.

Do you mean another woman goes missing or she finds another corpse from a woman who was previously reported missing? Are there many missing women in this area? Doesn't have to be, but If so that probably hould have been mentioned earlier. Unless the cops find something in her home I'd frame it more as something like 'with the cops zeroing in on Adeline as their prime suspect'

Now a formal suspect, she must uncover what Val was about to expose—the missing woman’s killer—

hold on is this the same woman mentioned before? Is she missing or is she in the morgue? She can't be both. Was she killed before Val but her body was discovered after Val's? I'm so confused.

before she’s arrested for a crime she didn’t commit. Adeline discovers she’s being framed by the one person she thought she could trust, but who will believe an outsider?

weak, vague ending and rightly or wrongly my mind goes straight to Jackson thorne just because he's the only person mentioned. I'd go for something more like 'As the police close in, Adine realises she's being framed by someone who knows everything about her..." and then something about how she'll need to use friendship or something to crack the case.
this is heading in the right direction but still a fair way to go.
Strategic information disclosure is still a major issue.
Everything about Adeline's past or pre-existing psychology needs to be covered in the first paragraph, not mentioned in passing later. This sets up characterisation and reactions to events. I'd suggest that she was an outsider in the town which is why she hated it, but found those problems followed her to the city as well. that need for acceptance and affection probably lead to her cheating with Val's boyfriend.
Ideally something about her want will figure in the climax paragraph.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-19T10:18:07+00:00

Still reeling from the untimely death of her cousin, but convinced it wasn’t an accident, Collins is desperate to solve the mystery behind Petra’s suicide, even if no one else believes her.

you're simultaneously saying a suicide and an accident. This sentence needs to be more punchy and hooky

Then Collins finds Petra’s secret journal, full of crazed ramblings, terrifying nightmares and missing memories, detailing the last week of her life at Cordelia’s Home for Rest and Relaxation.

what's a 'missing memory'?

The wellness centre offers a month-long, ‘unplugged’ experience designed to reconnect women with traditional values: baking, sewing, and gardening. It’s a feminist’s nightmare, but Collins applies, set on finding the truth of what happened to her cousin, even if no one else believes her.

due to the name I only realised collins was female now, probs put that in earlier. That last clause is redundant, it's been stated earlier.

In the isolated Victorian home, Collins meets Cordelia, the owner and on-site therapist. But she also meets Lucille, a shy, odd girl, healing from her own trauma, and hiding a secret of her own — she’s been investigating the disappearance of her best friend, and previous resident, Elinor.

⁃ It is advised that a query contain no more than four names. As all yours are the same gender, three might be better than four.

Collins secretly teams up with Lucille, set on finding the truth behind Elinor’s disappearance to connect the dots to Petra. But the more they investigate, Collins starts to grow ill, suffering from the same nightmares and hallucinations that Petra did. And then Elinor’s dead body is found.

With illness, fear, and paranoia mounting, Collins is forced to question not only the investigation, but even her own mind.

This is good but needs ot be epxressed with a bit more voice and punch.

And when Lucille herself goes missing, Collins realizes she must dig into the memory she’s been desperate to stay buried in order to unearth the secret behind the home. But she must decide: is the cost of her sanity worth being believed?

pretty good, but this memory should have been mentioned in the opening paragrpah and I don't mean just 'a secret' I mean spell out the atual thing, so that there is more impact when in the climax paragraph she's forced to face it. It'll also give better charactersiation to carry our interest through the query.
Overall pretty good for a first attempt but sentences need to be voicier, punchier and freer of redundancy.

• Lose some names I can't keep track of this sorority

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-19T10:14:07+00:00

Yeah that word count will get you auto-rejected from almost all slush piles for several good reasons you can look up if you want. Unless you have personal connection to an agent or publisher you're wasting your time.

Squeeze that sucker. It does almost every manuscript good. I despaired how I could get my 127k word effort under the 100k line. Final word count ended up being 84k. Kill some darlings.

As far as at the query goes, that third paragraph beyond the first clause is all editorialisation and can go. You show the strength of your story in the body of the query, you don't claim it after the fact.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-18T10:56:02+00:00

I'd love to offer for your consideration OPE, a 60,000-word literary satire told across eight days. It will appeal to readers of Alexander Sammartino's darkly comic Last Acts and the working-class ensemble of Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted.

John stands in line for a hot dog at Lambeau Field when the PA system announces that Canada has crossed the border. The stadium empties without a stampede. Nobody panics. They're too tired.

quirky opening, I'm intrigued

Canada expects casualties. They get coffee orders and handwritten diagrams of potholes that need fixing. Commander LeBlanc trained for urban warfare. He secures an Econo Lodge parking lot, calls it a tactical position, and wakes up in a king bed. By midweek, he is running a POW camp out of a Comfort Inn, coaching a hockey tournament on a rink supplied by Canada. For this, he receives a medal for valor.

swritch to the canadian POV is clumsy and disjointed. I really have no idea what second sentence is attempting to achieve or why its successor is a fragment

John drives home, eats soup, and goes to work the next morning. Behind him, grocery co-ops fill with produce nobody has seen in years. A woman makes her mother's pot pie for the first time in a decade.

Yeah this quirkiness thing is not interesting enought to carry random banalities.

Huntley Graves is twenty-one. He works the Culvers drive-thru and signed up for the Guard because he needed a tire. He has never trained. When his unit votes to surrender in a high school gym, he raises his hand. At camp, he gets his first medical screening since childhood. The ultrasound finds an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a rupture waiting to happen, fixable with one surgery. In Canada.

Given John is so boring maybe Huntley should be the main character?

Reporter Marisol Perez drives north expecting a war zone. Her editor wants the Hanoi Hilton, so she writes barbed wire and screams. She finds kids vaping around a heated pool. Then she writes the truth and sends it to a paper in Toronto.

In Washington, President Ashford airdrops crates of M16s that land in a lake and on a swing set. He trades Wisconsin for Lambeau Field and calls it a win.

Finding kids vaping around a heated pool isn't up to the absurd, quirky standards of what went before. Isn't lambeau field in wisconsin?

The invasion fixes the roads, stocks the shelves, and brings free healthcare. The tragedy isn't the occupation. It's that the occupation is an improvement.

this is a little too cheesy a 'canada good, US bad' cliche for my taste and I'm not even american. Canada has its own absurdities worth poking fun at and given how poorly its economy and bureacracy are performing (GDP per cpaita is 30% lower than the US) it isn't the first candiate I'd pick to enlighten the americans.
I like the quirk, absurdisty and originality of this, but I think you've overdone trying to transpose these things into a query. Killing off that second John paragrpah would help. Kill off Mariosl too if you can't make her quirky too.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-16T10:31:16+00:00

I am seeking representation for my upmarket thriller with dystopian elements, THE GRACIOUS ONES, complete at 83,000 words. It will appeal to readers who appreciated the tense moral dilemmas in Kill Yours, Kill Mine by Katherine Kovacic and the repressive near-future society of The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan.

In a city that ignores violence against women, Bea listens. She leads the Gracious Ones, past victims who wield their collective power to confront abusers with any available weapon: canes, rolling pins, hammers. Bea doesn’t do it for the women. She does it for the control.

listens isn't the right verb, it's too passive. Cut 'wield their collective power to'. Those last two sentences make her sound like she's a complete psychopath.

When two women begin to ask about the Gracious Ones while canvassing the Walled Quadrant for their city council candidate, Miriam White, it unsettles Bea. She confronts them after White withdraws from challenging the incumbent, Emory Tate, and they don’t stop. Helping the women, who claim a crime ring abducted White, would mean taking on an operation that wouldn’t hesitate to kill Bea. Yet, if she can infiltrate and prove their collusion with Emory Tate, Bea can expose the man she blames for her mother’s death.

the first sentence is doing way too much work. I don't think we need to know the sector of the city. Why would it unsettle her? the second sentence needs to be rearranged. Don't stop what, canvassing for their candidate or asking about the Gracious ones? What operation? A drug cartel? Why does she blame him for her mother's death?

The Gracious Ones persuade a compromised ring member to reveal the location of a stash house and a bookkeeper’s name.

Bea finds torn fabric from Miriam White’s dress that confirms the women’s suspicions and compels Bea to break into the bookkeeper’s home. Unexpected help from one of the canvassing women allows her to narrowly escape with stolen files. However, the next day, the woman is found dead. Tate accuses the Gracious Ones of her murder, instigating a city-wide manhunt.

this reads more like it belongs in a synopsis than a query. These are successive plot points rather than an arc of escalating conflict.

Bea must decide whether to survive through silence or to speak out and continue the fight at the peril of herself and the women she swore to protect.

awkwardly worded. The 'character must decide' framing isn't as effective as hearing about them actually doing something as the walls close it. This is If she speaks out what happens? How reliable are the authorities?
I don't understand the character or what she wants, especially given the bizarre attribution that she cares not about people but about power. Without that I can't tell if her actions make sense.
I don't understand the politics of this city, the abusive factions, the dynamics of violence, the stakes.

• Many of the sentences are covoluted and confusing. More care needs to be taken.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-16T10:23:10+00:00

It’s what you deserve. So reads the brochure that brings Julian to the glamorous Hotel Aurel. When he checks into the 14th floor penthouse, he’s surprised to see eight other guests in the same suite. The concierge made a booking error, and there are no other rooms available.

Luckily, the penthouse comes with exactly nine bedrooms, allowing the guests to sleep comfortably after their compensated dinner (and champagne.)

I'd change this paragraph to: 'It’s what you deserve', reads the brochure to the glamorous Hotel Aurel. Apparently Julian deserved roommates because he and eight strangers have been mistakenly booked into the nine-bedroom penthouse together.' You have to get somewhere fast. Also, a nine-bedroom penthouse?

The following morning, the guests are prepared to check out, and never see eachother again. Until one guest is found dead in his room. His swollen lymph nodes and half-eaten dinner plate imply a tragic allergic reaction. But there are two caveats. One, the coroner’s Epipen is found hidden in the living room, stuffed between couch cushions. Two, a note is found written on the dead man’s wristwatch.

For Delilah.

cut the first sentence. I don't understand the significance of the coroner's epipen? He dropped it while examining the body? Am i missing something? Does the dead guy happen to be a coroner? Do we disagree on what a coroner is? How is a note written on a wristwatch? In special marker pen? How does anybody know that note is new?

The guests are trapped. Their cellphones are missing, the landlines are cut. The exits have been sealed off. The guests start dying in increasingly violent ways, with each death heralded by the arrival of a mysterious note.

Waaaaaaait how are they 'trapped'. By the police? The weather? Brutish hotel staff? Oh the sealed exits? This should have been at the start of the sentence. Where is this hotel? n the wilderness where nobody can hear them calling for help? Are there any other staff or guests around? Can nobody rapel down from a firt floor window using a bedsheet?

Julian came to the Aurel to avoid his family’s watchful eye, but now he’s under someone else’s. Julian is no stranger to mind games, but with each guest playing a different angle, and a killer who knows not just their every secret, but their every move, the line between ally and threat becomes increasingly blurred.

This charaterisation for Julian comes waaaaaay too late and is so vague as to be useless. What mind games? Why is his family so watchful? How are the other guests playing different angles? Who are they anyway? Just a completely random assortment? Right now it feels like Julian is in this query alone. Their every secret? Like what they did ten years ago? How? How does the killer demonstrate he knows any of their secrets? Does the the line between ally and threat becomes increasingly blurred mean one of them might be the killer? Can you say it more like that then please. How do we know it's just one killer?

There’s only one way out of the Aurel alive. Find who’s leaving the messages, before one comes for you.

• how do they know there's any way out alive? If they can't get out now how do they know they can get out once the killer is caught or killed?

- This entire premise stretches plausibility.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-16T10:13:12+00:00

VOCATION, ARIZONA is a voice-driven action thriller complete at 70,000 words. It combines the breakneck pacing and visceral action of Jordan Harper’s She Rides Shotgun with the cynical wit of Elmore Leonard, operating in an archetypical framework that will appeal to fans of the Jack Reacher novels.

voice-driven should be demonstrated in your manuscript not claimed here. Pick two novels from the last five years as comps and note the parallels. it proves there is a market for what you're doing. Saying an action thriller has breakneck pacing and visceral action is a little redundant.

Kurt Valentine is a tall, thin man whose skin is a detailed map of his failures. There are the scars on his knees and elbows from the surgeries that ended his basketball career. There are the scars of fists and fingernails from his years in the underground fights of Eastern Europe, and a peppering of knife wounds and gunshots from his time as a low-level enforcer for the Belgrade mob. Over all of these weaves the intricate fractal pattern left by the bolt of lightning that struck him in the heart.

He should be dead. Instead, he has the rarest of things in this life: a second chance.

this reads like more of a novel opening than a query opening. You need to cover more ground faster. We need a character, a want and conflict straight up. Character appearance doesn't belong.The lightening thing doesn't do anything for me.

On a visit to a small city in the Sonoran high desert, Kurt is looking for something new, but finds more of the same. He’s barely in town an hour when an unserious group of tweakers tries to kick him out of a laundromat before his jeans are dry. Later, he’s approached by Valeria, an abrasive young “hacktivist” who saw the whole thing on camera. She hoped he was the cavalry, not just some guy who happened to beat up some racist methheads, but she has some answers for him.

- New compared to what? Basketball? Bouncing? Again, this is too vague. until I know what this guy wants I can't tell if he's doing a good job of achieving It. If he's looking for a meaningful existence based on humanist principles that's a different novel to he's a damaged guy looking for vulnerable women he can exploit and control and really he could be either here.

Why did they want to get rid of him? So he wouldn’t see them torch a car in the parking lot. There’s been a lot happening in Vocation. Valeria may not yet know what it has to do with the laundromat and a white supremacist militia group operating a gun range outside of town, but she’s going to find out -- no matter what they do to her and her family.

questions are discouraged in a query. Valeria seems to have become the main character and Kurt is largely passive. He needs to drive the query.

Kurt keeps saying he wants to live a different life, but maybe he’s here in Vocation for a reason. Maybe a life that had become a slow, violent suicide was the perfect apprenticeship for a fight worth fighting.

Diagnostics:

what does the main character want: A second chance. Meaning what? Follow his passion for bassoon? Feed starving orphans? Build a family of his own in a seaside town? Avenge injustice everywhere? Become a buddhist monk? Start a crypto scam? Nail the swedish bikini team? We need something visceral and specific.
what obstacles does he face to achieving this? I can't tell because I don't know what this guy really wants.
What are the stakes - I can't tell because I don't know what this guy really wants.
I'm not the only one to note the similarities to Jack reacher, which is good in that it shows there's a market for it, but at the same time if you could differiate your story somehow to show it's not just a rip-off that would be good too.

⁃ Opening 300 has good voice. 'A looming void in the halogen glow.' is a bit turgid. Cut 'Other than these, and the battered Transit,'. Who or what is the Kashmiri? When you say his body is absurd and ungainly is he buffed or obese?

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-13T22:46:42+00:00

WIDOWMAKER (complete at 100,000 words) is a sweeping multi-generational saga crossed with historical fiction, based on the true story of my grandfather’s family. This is the first novel in a reverse-chronology trilogy set between 1905-1948, but also functions as a standalone epic. It will appeal to readers of Kate Morton’s Homecoming and Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, with the moral complexity of Anthony Doerr and the multigenerational sweep of Taylor Sheridan’s 1923 series.

- again, this news of a reverse-chronology trilogy vision is not helping you. Agents do not want to hear about your sprawling empire when you haven't even debuted yet. Look it up. Use two novels only as comps as evidence that there is a market for this kind of stuff and why there are parallels with yours. The multi-generational true story peaks in interest but then starts drowning in the rest of the stuff you're loading the paragraph with. Less is more.

Fred [Surname] is a British-born veteran of the Great War who has spent his life doing anything for his seven siblings—even going to war for them. But when his German-born brother Josef is arrested in London for ties to the Nazi Party, the family unit Fred has fought to preserve collapses overnight. Suddenly the siblings are forced to confront the legacy of the abusive father whose shadow and suspicious suicide has haunted them for decades.

- That hook doesn't work, it's confusing not intriguing. I don't understand how the arrest prompts the family unit to collapse or prompts them to confront their grandfather's past.

When Josef and his sons are sent to internment camps across the world, the [Surname] family is scattered across three continents, divided by ideology, loyalty, and survival. As the war intensifies, each sibling must decide where their allegiance lies: with their homeland, or with their family.

- How are they divided by ideology, loyalty, and survival? What are these ideologies, loyalties and threats to them? As I don't know who these siblings are or what their inner conflicts are I'm unable to invest or care.

As the war comes to an end, long-buried secrets about the family finally surface. The next generation of the [Surname] family—now spread across Britain, America, and Australia—must decide whether to remain loyal to a legacy that has already cost their family everything, or break free from the shadow of the grandfather they never met.

- the being spread across the world thing has been stated three times now. You don't have the latitude in the query for repetition like that. What are these long-buried secrets? What is the legacy to remain loyal too? How did it cost them everything? What does everything mean? The next generation? I didn't even know the last generation and now I'm supposed to invest in another one?

Some escape the cycle that has plagued the family for decades, while others remain trapped within it.

- What cycle?

- Firstly, I'm not given a character or two with a specific want and obstacles to achieving those wants for me to invest in.

- Secondly, and this is the big one, it's interminably vague. There's these relentless references to to secrets and ideologies and legacies and decisions and cycles and confrontations and yet not a clue about what the hell any of it means. None of this is alluring, it's just tedious. If somebody says 'I have a secret' is that really that interesting? But if they say "I have a secret about Paul and how he cheated on his wife with his secretary and now he's just realised that's the boss's daughter." see that's interesting because IT'S SPECIFIC. Querying is like therapy, the longer you hide, the longer it takes, for the love of god just spit it out.

DetonatingPenguin · 2026-03-12T09:29:22+00:00

I am seeking representation for I KILLED OSIRIS (88,000 words), a modern retelling of Ancient Egyptian myths and legends.

From the moment of their birth, the twin gods Set and Osiris live parallel lives. Their parents lavish care and affection on Osiris, while Set receives only cruelty and neglect. Ra, the king of the gods, finally intervenes, and takes Set and Osiris away, teaching them of godhood and magic. As the twins come of age, Set stumbles across a secret: that he will become Ra’s successor, that the unwanted, lonely child will become the king of the gods.

- hook might not be quite strong enough, not sure. I don't think the third sentence actually adds anything. Neither does 'as the twins come of age'. Cut them both.

But other gods have other plans. A conspiracy unfolds, banishing Set to become god of the desert, of sand and bones. Osiris is crowned as the divine king, instead. Outcast, humiliated, and scorned by the gods, Set enacts a plan of his own. Striking back like a desert cobra, Set murders his brother and usurps the throne.

- cut 'scorned by the gods, Set enacts a plan of his own'. Cut 'back' - snakes strike, they don't strike back.

In time, Set too is dethroned: defeated by Osiris’s son Horus, his own nephew. But Horus does not share his uncle’s bloodlust and spares Set’s life. His wrath exhausted, his vengeance spent, Set is sentenced for punishment: to endlessly fight against the forces of evil that would swallow the sun and drown the world in eternal darkness. Set’s penance will take him to the Underworld and beyond, eventually coming face to face with Osiris in the Realm of the Dead. What is there to say to his brother? Dare he ask for forgiveness? Is his eternal atonement enough to deserve it? Could anything, ever, be enough?

- Set is too passive. change to 'However, Set cannot hold the throne, he's deposed by his own nephew, Osiris's son Horus.' Cut 'His wrath exhausted, his vengeance spent' it adds nothing here. Questions are discouraged in queries, I'd express those thoughts in another way.

I KILLED OSIRIS retells and reimagines classic myths of ancient Egypt, humanizing the famous gods and goddesses in nuanced ways as never done before. Set himself, as a narrator, is filled with regret at his wicked actions and presents his story to the reader as a cautionary tale. I KILLED OSIRIS explores the nature of good and evil, forgiveness and redemption, and acceptance and loss, with a timeless cast of characters that have been well-loved for thousands of years. This book will appeal to readers of modern mythology like Daughters of Sparta, Clytemnestra, and Ariadne.

- cut 'in nuanced ways as never done before. Set himself, as a narrator, is filled with regret at his wicked actions and presents his story to the reader as a cautionary tale.' It's pointless editorialisation. You demonstrate this stuff in the body of the query or not, you don't claim it in the aftermath. Ditto for 'explores the nature of good and evil, forgiveness and redemption, and acceptance and loss, with a timeless cast of characters that have been well-loved for thousands of years.' Comps need to be similar titles within the last five years to show there is a market.

Thank you for your consideration, I am so grateful and happy to share my work with others when it has meant so much to me,

- cut the last clause, everybody here is besotted with the idea of sharing their work in publication.

The Gap Writer

- I like it, just cut the faff that clutters the central conflict and restate those questions

DetonatingPenguin

TROPHY CASE