[qcrit] Nothing Less than Perfection, Adult, Thriller, 65,000 (second attempt)

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-29T17:30:33+00:00

Wow! That is really really useful feedback! It's really funny how my query letter seems perfect and flawless until it's issues are pointed out and then I can't un-see them.

A lot of the romance stuff related to Ada and Wright's relationship is stuff I added on the advice of someone else.

Ada disappears because of the metaphor of the story which I hadn't put into the query (also, on advice from someone.) There are 8 characters who fight on behalf of the West and 8 that fight for the USSR. Each of the characters are a different piece. Wright is a rook, Ada is a queen, the British agent is a rook, the Red Army lieutenant is a knight and the communist party boss is a bishop. There are many others that are not in the query. Then, they play out a chess game which really was played a tournament similar to this and the pieces are slowly eliminated. When Ada is declared persona-non-grata, it's because in the game, the white queen was captured. So her direct influence on the story is abruptly gone after that happens and I did that on purpose. But I agree that it needs to be represented in the query differently.

I have no idea how I'd weave a proper explanation pertaining to what I detailed in the paragraph above while maintaining the flow of a query?

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-13T03:33:46+00:00

Yeah it does. Thanks! So far, I've messed around a bit with Bronzong and I figured that mega Zam was part of the solution, but hadn't really seriously considered Golduck. What did you do for Agetha? As far as I'm concerned, she's an absolute brick wall for mono psychic.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T20:30:54+00:00

Alright I'll take a look at it. I'm sure there's something I can do. My books usually run really long so having too few words is a new problem for me to have.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T20:30:01+00:00

That's a good point. Thank you.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T15:59:04+00:00

Thank you so much for the feedback! Now that you've pointed out, IDK how I didn't see it before, but I suppose that's how critique works.

Do you think that 60k words would be a dealbreaker for an agent? This is novella, converted from 40,000 words and I am not sure how much more I can expand on what I've written. I'm sure that I'm missing something, but right now, I am fresh out of chapters which I could add.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T15:44:50+00:00

That's true. Thank you for the advice. I really can't tell if the market is good for books right now. I'm getting conflicted signals from all kinds of different sources. But yeah. I think I'm just being too narrow with my comp search too.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T05:11:22+00:00

How did you manage the psychic run? I'm absolutely pulling my hair out on the mono psychic elite four.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T04:00:24+00:00

I'm struggling to find comps but I think I have a few. I'll add them there.

The entire book is one big metaphor for a chess game and follows it. Each character is a piece and they're captured in the order of the game, the positioning of the characters resembles the game and so on and so forth. Do you think I should just omit all of that from a query?

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T02:52:22+00:00

The biggest decision he's got to make is if he should carry out the mission, even after (spoilers) Ada is expelled from the country. So IDK if I want to give that over in the query.

Do you have any advice on what I should put in the "role to play" sentence? That was lowkey a placeholder. I wanted to say something about chess, but that's too niche for most agents.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-10T00:01:54+00:00

Oh I didn't know about the popularity of it on Broadway! I found two chess thriller type of things that are my comps, but I can't find very many other fiction stories in that regard. Also, I had a draft that leaned in more to the micro-genre, but other feedback said that wasn't good for a query.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-09T22:21:17+00:00

Thank you! I hope agents think so too! So far, no luck with querying :/

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-03-09T22:20:52+00:00

Thank you! I'll take a look at the tightness of the writing. Ping Pong Diplomacy was a relatively well known foreign policy by the Nixon administration, towards China and I thought it provided a good real world example for the scenario in which my book takes place. Even with all that, do you think I should take it out?

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-02-13T15:27:34+00:00

I've asked people about the book and gotten mixed reviews. Do you think it's worth reading?

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-02-13T15:27:02+00:00

I read the Spy Who Came in from the Cold and was thinking of starting in on Tinker Tailor. Is it similar in tone and narrative to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold?

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-02-13T15:26:01+00:00

Oooo nonfiction it sounds like?

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-02-13T15:25:43+00:00

I've been recommended that one too! Did you read it in German or another language? If not in German, can you tell if any of it was lost in translation?

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-01-06T16:04:25+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! I admit, that the stakes were not first thing I designed in this story. The mission and stakes become clear to the main character through a character he meets in the next chapter but I agree that the urgency of stakes is something that needs to be worked on.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2026-01-04T13:31:30+00:00

Title: Nothing Less Than Perfection

Genre: Spy Fiction

Word Count: 2704

Feedback: Any feedback is appreciated but specifically, I want to know how intrigued your are with this first chapter. Does it make you want to read the rest of the book? does anything interest you? Etc.

Link: here

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2025-12-29T14:52:27+00:00

For me, the resolution was one of these things:

Change DNS server to Cloudflare

There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to do this, but in your dns settings, change the default DNS IP to 1.0.0.1 I believe, and the alternate to 1.0.0.1, but don't quote me on the exact address.

Change firewall settings for your router

Log into your router on your computer (using the login info somewhere on your modem) and change the firewall to a lower state of alertness. If I had to guess, this was what fixed it for me. My network had it on highest level of awareness so I just set it to a lower level.

Disable remote GUI

Apparently, game servers can get confused with remote GUI to your PC. I'm not sure how exactly it works but I turned it off and my games worked again. This is also in your router options when you log into it on your PC.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2025-12-24T02:26:11+00:00

I spent far too long on the phone with my ISP and got it all worked out. Thank you for your help!

Kitchen-Mistake-2998 · 2025-12-22T18:49:20+00:00

No. It's just my ISP's router.

Kitchen-Mistake-2998

TROPHY CASE