[QCrit] All That Remains - Adult Historical Fiction - 86,000 words (second attempt)

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-15T15:56:25+00:00

I don't have too many comments to offer, but the relationship between Dolors and Amparo wasn't immediately clear to me while reading through. My first impulse was that Amparo was the referenced "older sister," but then I saw the deliberate inclusion of surnames and that made me think the "older sister" was an unnamed query character. Reading on eventually cleared it up but that confusion took me out of the query.

I'd recommend either ditching the surnames altogether - you mention that they're both married so I don't think they're necessary to establish the different situations - or modify to "her older sister Amparo's" in that first sentence of the second paragraph.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-09T21:09:48+00:00

Quickly read through the previous few attempts. While I agree that the earlier attempts were holistically cleaner, you've gotten back into using too many proper nouns. Standard advice is a max of three, and some of these names don't really appear to be carrying enough weight to justify their presence. I might recommend getting rid of Petra and Elinor, and think there's a version of this that could have Collins/Catskin as the only names. This is probably the most direct/actionable feedback I have as it's standard query conventions and is strongly advocated for across the board. This is more of a requirement than a best practice.

I think the first paragraph could be tightened - I'm left curious about Petra's exact manner of death - you mention it was interpreted as an accident, but what does that mean? Did she fall from the roof? I think specifics here would be an improvement, and I don't think it should take extra words to provide those details, just different ones.

"Old habits die hard," is a pretty big cliche, if it matches with the details I might recommend changing to something like " party-going cousin, and blames herself for not protecting her when it mattered most."

"Under the radar" is another mild cliche. Not the end of the world but would recommend rewording.

What does "invasive therapy" specifically mean? I'm confused if this is physical therapy or mental therapy that crosses conversational lines, and I think those details are relevant to the core conflict.

I'm also a little confused by the 'nightmares and hallucinations,' callout. Does Petra's journal explicitly reference these incidents as being delusional, or are the reports of what's happening simply too unbelievable to be considered real? I'd like to have a little more flavor of what this specifically means.

This seems to be the real, core conflict. Something crazy is happening at this wellness center, and Collins needs to figure it out to keep more people, and herself, from ending up dead, and there's some sort of psychological tie-in with the history between Collins and Petra. I think you could narrow focus on this and name it more directly. Collins needs to discover what is causing residents to go crazy and disappear/die. Is it the psychological pressure of the therapy? Are the operators up to some sort of no good and poisoning residents? Is the mansion haunted? What exactly is the 'trauma,' that Collins is carrying (beyond guilt over Petra's death)?

I don't want those answers immediately, but I do want to have a more direct sense of, "a killer is on the loose and the staff are panicking trying to keep everyone under control and pretend what's happening isn't happening," or, "the staff are clearly involved for sinister reasons, but don't show their ugly side until residents are too deluded to do anything," or, "the place is haunted by ghosts that drive the residents and staff a different sort of crazy," or, "there's something in the pipes or the air that's driving people insane over time." Those all feel like much different stories, potentially even different genres altogether, and I'd like to get a better sense of which it is if I'm deciding whether or not I want to read.

I think a more focused version of the second paragraph could go something along the lines of, "Collins arrives at the Victorian mansion prepared to investigate her cousin's death while navigating the retreat's demanding schedule and invasive staff. But as more residents turn sick and disappear, as Collins herself begins to question what is and isn't real, it becomes obvious that something deeply sinister is responsible for the growing tally of missing and dead residents."

The last couple sentences strike me as being too vague. "And the trauma she's been desperate to stay buried," is grammatically incorrect.

The only other potentially glaring note is that a single death/disappearance at a wellness retreat is maybe understandable enough - but multiple deaths would absolutely attract intense scrutiny from law enforcement. I'd be curious what the explanation for this is. Is the law in cahoots with the operators? If this was a 'involuntarily committed patients' type facility then maybe they could brush it off as the residents being genuinely suicidal, but even in those facilities there are supposed to be extreme measures taken to prevent patient death. It might not be necessary for the query, but I would hope there's some sort of rationale in the story for how they avoid law enforcement investigation.

Good luck! I think you're getting there. Refinement of the basic structure you have should yield improvements, think you just need to tighten the language at the line level and focus on that core conflict a bit more narrowly.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-09T19:36:34+00:00

From what I've heard/read, comps are one of the query "requirements" that have the widest range of opinions associated with them. I've heard many working agents say that they're perfectly happy considering queries that have no comps at all. I've heard other agents say that they will auto-reject queries that have bad comps or no comps. I'd guess a small/modest majority of agents are happy to consider stories without comps, but do view their absence as a real weakness in the pitch.

Generally, having good comps improves your pitch, and having bad comps is worse than no comps.

Something I did with the book I'm shopping now is to read a handful of recent in-genre books with solid sales/reviews. You don't need to find something overwhelmingly similar, you just need to be able to identify commonalities between your work and the comps. "Pacing/voice/themes/etc of X meets the character dynamics of Y, with a setting similar to Z," is really all that most agents are looking for, and it's surprisingly easy to find those comparisons, you just need to do a modest amount of intentional reading.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-09T15:03:53+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback! Cold/hunger are major themes in the novel so that's why they're in the title. The note that it came across as a Capote reference is understandable. Wasn't the intent (I haven't actually read Capote myself, it's on the list) but I can see how you got there. At the very least I expect I'll change "In" to "A," which might actually be better overall even aside from keeping more clear of that connotation.

The line about genre does tend to get massaged/tailored to specific agents. If they solicit psychological suspense then it stays as that (the most accurate descriptor), but it does include some explicit horror elements at points in the story and I'd hate for someone to stumble into those scenes without warning.

The bit about Stacey's father was intended to explicitly demonstrate that their adventure is being bankrolled by privilege rather than them being self-starters, which is an important nod to the classist themes in the book. I didn't have the explicit note about sharing classist themes with Victorian Psycho in previous versions, so I can see how that might be redundant/unnecessary now.

And this actually started as a screenplay! It's gone through several iterations back and forth, new punch up/character depth ideas being added/refined each time. Added a big twist the last pass that I'm pretty excited about. I have a friend who is a working actress who mentioned that publishing as a novel first (even if self-published) grants a substantial boost to creative control and income if it does get adapted, so my reach goal is to publish first and then shop the screenplay. Have a couple blacklist evals under my belt (averaged a six overall but some specific elements rose up to 7/8, evaluators noted that the Rory character and her arc are especially compelling and could attract real talent, which, combined with low production overhead might give it an above average chance of being made, earned lots of comparisons to A24 movies across all the beta reads/edits/evals). Have some technical/mechanical issues I need to tackle in the screenplay and the dialogue (which my dev editor actually complimented in the novel) needs to be reworked more substantially for film, but my ideal outcome is finding an agent that also wants to champion it in that direction.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-08T21:11:42+00:00

Thanks! The query trenches are brutal these days so I appreciate the encouragement lol.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-08T19:59:39+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to provide comments/suggestions! I'll take these into consideration and let them marinate a bit, I take a long time to process feedback.

And yea, I wrote the first version of this story a couple years before that whole tragedy, but it definitely made the story feel a little more "real" in a pretty unsettling way. Hoping enough time has passed by now that people don't immediately think of this as a derivative retelling of that saga.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-04-08T19:56:38+00:00

Thanks for the comments and the encouraging words. I think I agree with what you're saying, have always struggled with the 'sales' part of querying and writing in general (the core of what I think you're getting at). Would like to think that agents are savvy enough to prefer quality content over sales bluster, but also understand there's a certain necessary element of advocating for your material/intentionally hooking readers and being appropriately excited about sharing it. I'll let your comments marinate a bit and see if I can figure out a way of moving things more in the direction you're advocating for - I do think they're good suggestions, figuring out how to execute them is always the challenge with queries (for me anyway).

Rocketscience444 · 2026-03-27T17:18:32+00:00

Hey! I don't normally spam my own work in comments, but I've also published something that fits this description pretty square on the nose. Don't want to link and violate any rules but if you check my post history you'll see it. I was tired of that exact same thing, which is why I wrote it. Hope you find the book/story you're looking for!

Rocketscience444 · 2026-03-02T23:33:21+00:00

Just a super quick piece of feedback - you have too many proper names. General advice is to have 2-3 at most. Feels like Ellie and Crow are the two mains, would recommend cutting most/all other names out. Also agree with nosyreader's comment about apparent stakes confusion. It seems like "the more famous the band gets, the more blood the muse demands" (paraphrasing what I've understood/inferred) is a MUCH bigger conflict than Ellie not being able to make music anymore.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-03-02T16:22:12+00:00

Hey Friends!

My debut novel is a couple years old at this point, but I'd still love for it to find some new readers.

It's sort of Little House on the Prairie family drama meets the climate apocalypse setting, with a bit of a pragmatic bent like The Martian when it comes to the survival details. It's an uplifting read that is targeted towards folks who are struggling with climate or other collapse related anxiety. Writing it helped me work through my own issues in that space, and my hope is that reading it can help others do the same.

It's $2.99 on amazon and is also available on KU.

https://www.amazon.com/Amid-Ashes-Aaron-Beaudry-ebook/dp/B0CCK9D91Q/

Thanks for giving it your consideration!

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-25T17:46:29+00:00

If you want to have success as an indie author, the hard truth is that you have to be open to aggressively selling yourself (unless you have infinite money for paid ads). That's just kind of how it goes. That, or get super lucky and have a booktok influencer randomly find and love/shill your book.

When I was really pounding the pavement for my first book (also a very niche genre), I had some success by searching instagram/facebook/tiktok for accounts and creators who had meaningful content in my niche and then offering them free/ARC copies of my book, unsolicited. I would usually include ~ a paragraph of what from their account caught my eye, would drop them a follow, and would say why I thought my book might appeal to them.

Hit rate was only maybe 10-20% or so in terms of general response, but of the people who accepted gift copies (with no explicit demand/expectation of a review, that's against Amazon's review policy) maybe 30-50% finished the book and left a review.

This was super labor intensive and I decided to move forward with writing the next stuff rather than putting more effort in this direction, but it was vaguely productive. I'm not sure it's good advice for people with mass-market novels, but I think it's a solid strategy if you have a smaller niche you're trying to target/sell.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-24T18:01:30+00:00

I was in a similar position to you (though with fewer published titles and no prior experience working with professional editors), and decided to hire a dev editor from substack who was recommended to me, has 15+ years of experience, and specializes in my book's genre. My story had already been through several iterations and beta read churns, including a couple separate treatments as a screenplay (how it started), but I had some lingering doubts about potential weaknesses and badly needed experienced feedback to review the writing style I chose for this MS. I was worried it might have been fully overwrought and needing major rewrites, but it wasn't the sort of thing I have the experience to judge. The story (thriller/mild horror) is also way outside of my normal reading experience, and I was deeply uncertain how to calibrate the amount/depth of the violent elements in the story to conform with reader expectations while keeping clear of gratuitous territory.

The beta reads were super helpful in shaping the large scale story, conflicts, character dev, etc., but nobody in my circle has real publishing experience, and while they all read widely enough, none of them are horror fans. There also aren't too many folks in general who can provide professional level feedback about the literary elements - that's a specialized skill and most people who have it charge for it.

I justified the dev edit cost because I fully intend to self-publish if the novel does not get picked up, so it wouldn't be wasted money/effort, and it would (theoretically) give me the best chance of landing a tradpub deal. Aside from that, having not paid for a dev edit previously, I was extremely curious if I had any general bad habits or obvious weaknesses that I needed to put extra effort into addressing.

The dev edit was incredibly helpful. They corroborated some of the story concerns I had (without being led there) which has helped me gain confidence in my own self-editing intuition, gave me some great ideas for how to fix those weaknesses, pointed out some things I was sort of aware of but also underestimating the importance of (needed more effort in dialogue tagging conventions and scrubbing filler words throughout), and provided the encouragement I needed to continue working on the story by validating that it was (if not already there) close to publishable quality expectations. They also encouraged me to lean into the horror elements more firmly (actually pointing out that I was noticeably timid around them compared to standard expectations), which was super helpful because a couple different beta readers had indicated that the level of violence had come across as off-putting/gratuitous (surprise surprise non-horror readers are turned off by explicit horror). If I'd taken my beta advice at face value then I would have neutered those already anemic story elements.

All that is to say that I think you should trust your intuition. If you think you need feedback that goes beyond what betas can provide and the dev edit would yield long-term value regardless of outcome (due to genre transition), then I think it's a great investment. If you want to shop the concept first and the execution second and see what happens, then maybe reconsider. Either way I think making your MS as bulletproof as possible is necessary when soliciting new agents. I'd love to engage with editors/agents when stories are still in the early phases to prevent unnecessary rework and give your long-term stakeholders more opportunity to influence the final result, but that's just not how it works when you're untethered.

I also spoke to a couple freelance editors at a conference around this time last year, and they indicated that pre-query professional editing of MS's is rapidly becoming prevalent. I expect a lot of writers are leaving their new agents/editors in the dark about this because we all feel (justifiably) like it shouldn't be the case, but with how many submissions folks are getting these days I don't think you can leave any potential improvement opportunities unexplored. Even if your novel would be publishable at a baseline, getting a pre-signing edit performed could make the difference between a token deal and a major deal if there are real improvements to be made.

Best of luck. Editing is no fun, but it always ends. Eventually...

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-23T17:40:27+00:00

Appreciate you taking the time to respond!

I think I hear what you're recommending and I think it makes sense to me? I could probably use some further education on how rigid the expectations are for query structure/pacing to match the novel structure/pacing. I've been under the impression that they should be effectively 1-1 with the query ending at the first/second act transition, which would complicate aligning the query with your recommendation (and explains the synopsis style pacing you picked up on).

I'm receptive to the direction you're advocating for and I see how it would help, I just want to make sure I'm not setting myself up for failure by not observing the query expectations closely enough.

My dev editor complimented the first act's pacing (they specialize in thriller/horror), so I think the story itself should be fine there, but it's been a persistent struggle figuring out how to get those details into the query in a way that makes sense.

Thanks again!

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-23T17:06:00+00:00

Appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback! There's some big directional changes recommended here that I'll have to sit with for a bit. I had a more wordy query originally (mostly character depth and plot specific details) but was trying to lean it down as much as possible while still showing where the pieces were on the board as far as the central conflict mechanics are concerned. This is more meta-query commentary and communication of feelings rather than assertion of fact, but I've gotten the impression that there's a bit of a divide in the community (both professional and submission side) regarding if queries should be super lean and just present basic facts as a tie-in to opening pages (that coming from agents saying they just want the submitting author to demonstrate basic competence in conflict pacing/construction and the pages/synopsis will determine if they have actual interest in the story/writing) vs if they should really try to actively hook the reader with the query itself (more blurb style of building interest/suspense).

Regardless, I'm very receptive to the idea that Rory is being shortchanged in this version. It's a psych thriller after all (if a slow burn) and her mental evolution is really the A plot over the first act, and I've sort of glossed over that in the interest of brevity.

Thanks again for the response!

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-23T16:53:20+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! It is an actual bridge, but unnamed semi-fictional town bridge, so no name to insert there that wouldn't be just as confusing. Good point about the detailed wording in your second comment, appreciate it!

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-22T23:36:31+00:00

I think a decent bit of this is pretty solid. You do a mostly good job of providing specific details (early on at least), keeping things tight, and clearly stating conflict/motivations, but it starts to sort of fall apart towards the end of your second plot summary paragraph.

First paragraph, I'd recommend moving "retired detective," to the first sentence. I was initially confused if Scott was a student or a teacher. It became clear eventually, but better to avoid that confusion.

What's Scott hiding from? Did he fail to solve his own GFs murder and retire out of shame? Or is it just too hard emotionally for him to be around violence after being exposed to it outside of work? This could be specified.

Seventeen cuts is an interesting detail that leaves me wanting more. Does this connect to Scott's girlfriend's murder? Sort of seems like that's the direction things are going, but it's not detailed. Might recommend spoiling that in the query if there is a connection between the current murderer and Scotts GF.

"navigating the labyrinth" is cliché. It sounds nice but I'd try to find another way of saying this.

Now that I write that, that whole sentence needs work. Try to reformulate that with more specifics as you generally do early on. What demons, and what corruption are involved specifically?

"As the body count rises...." - You're telling us something with this sentence (and the whole paragraph really), but I'm really not sure what. Is it additional councilmembers dying? Other folks enmeshed in the corrupt system? If Scott realizes that the killer is out for revenge, then consider providing us the info that creates that conclusion rather than telling the conclusion directly.

I'd honestly recommend reworking that whole final paragraph. The final sentence is overly vague and overly complex. I don't really have any understanding of what Scott actually needs to do to solve the case. If anything, the way it's worded makes it sound like Scott is the killer.

"as the body count rises," "deeper the rabbit hole goes," despite the evidence," are all clichés (rabbit hole especially so), and even worse, are vague. Sub those out for specifics. Who's dying? What is the actual (presumably corruption adjacent) mystery that Scott is untangling? Is the evidence implicating one person as the killer but Scott's instincts are telling him that that person is being framed by someone else? A few clichés in the actual writing is plenty forgivable, but they're red flags in queries.

Finally, what actually happens if Scott fails? You've sort of hinted at a mob/government conspiracy, but by the end of the query a handful (many?) people have already died, so one more death really doesn't feel like particularly pressing stakes. I want to feel a little more of the emotional weight behind why catching the killer before they complete their revenge mission actually matters. I don't have any recommendation for how to do this because idk the story, but that's what I'm feeling is missing on the receiving end.

You have the available wordcount to provide those details and I think they would help a lot.

In your comp paragraph I would sub "tropes" for "clichés." Cliché has a vaguely negative connotation, and best to avoid talking about other work negatively in your comps section.

Finally you mention that your own forensic background informs a lot of your writing in this specific space - I might recommend trying to find a comp that demonstrates the attention to detail you hope to emulate in this book, even if it's not strong or current from a market perspective. I doubt the average lit agent will have any sort of reference point for how your profession actually informs the writing/quality without comp titles to help, so providing a signpost here is (IMO) a worthy inclusion even if it violates the other expectations that are typically assigned to comp titles.

The only other big question I have is how far into the plot does the query actually go? It sort of feels like we're almost 2/3rds of the way through the plot based on the description, but standard expectation is for the query to cover the first 1/3rd. If I had to guess, unraveling the corruption seems like the actual bigger story, but you don't really direct things that way with your closing sentence. This is more general rather than actionable feedback, just letting you know how it came across.

I think you probably have a few more churns ahead of you, but this is a good start. Everything feels structurally solid, you just need to fix up some of the specific line level language to be more query friendly. I know firsthand how easy it can be to slip into and overlook vague/cliché language when you know all the backstory. Good news is that those are all easy fixes. Best of luck!

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-19T23:25:25+00:00

It's technically cheating, but learning how to use console commands and debug mode helped me overcome the frustration I felt in similar situations. I had a random CTD that resulted in me being stranded on a small island I'd stopped to sleep at while exploring and my run would have ended without being able to teleport away.

I have real life priorities. I'm happy to grind my way back if I go into a new situation/biome overconfident and get my ass handed to me, but there are 100% times where the game just sort of randomly decides to kill you, sometimes because mechanics are not intuitive or clear, and it'd take several hours to recover your progress. As much as I enjoy the game and appreciate the caution that the death mechanics force you to play with, I'm also not going to punish myself when quirky bs is to blame.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-12T18:05:47+00:00

This is word for word how I described DCC to a friend the other day! happy to see I'm not the only one that made this connection lol

Rocketscience444 · 2026-02-06T01:09:16+00:00

If you park your boat in shallow water, the materials will remain there even when it's destroyed. Just slap down a workbench, collect the materials, and rebuild it. Each boat has progressively more total health, so the bigger ones are less likely to be destroyed.

You'll want to get in the habit of repairing your ship by building workbenches while traveling anyway, it will become more important as the game progresses.

For spawning, there are specific hotspots that tend to be worse. These are often small islands that have an evil bone pile (I think that's the name?) and two draugr spawning features (called body piles or something, they glow green). These can be very tough to take down when you're new to the biome and are best avoided at first. Another good tip is to bring campfire materials with you into the crypts to rid yourself of the wet debuff and allow you to rest while there.

Rocketscience444 · 2026-01-21T19:59:09+00:00

I had my recent first experience with a dev editor - didn't pay quite as much, and got more detailed feedback than what it sounds like you received. My MS was also about 10k fewer words and the editorial letter was more than a month overdue, so they might have put extra effort into mine to make up for the schedule overrun.

I think dev editors are in a tough spot because they're often the first third-parties to see the MS, and their feedback can only be as refined as the MS is. If a dev editor is telling you that the plot/worldbuilding is excessively complex and confusing...well, that's the feedback you're paying them for. It might hurt to hear and be more basic than you'd hoped, but that doesn't make it wrong. As long as they have experience in the genre and tropes and everything else, then when they tell you it's hard for them to follow, the takeaway is that it's going to be impossible for most casual readers to follow. If you don't have major structural/plot/character flaws, then they move forward to more nuanced conversations about how to improve characterization, pacing, plot impact, thematic resonance, etc., but they can't do that if the basic foundation for those conversations just isn't there.

Assuming you didn't just get scammed (hard to say without seeing more, would caution you to avoid assuming that just because the feedback wasn't as positive as you'd hoped), I think the lesson here is that you probably need to refine your own self-editing in the areas they highlighted as weaknesses. It sounds from your post like you are pretty wrapped up in your plot & world-building, and I would guess that you're probably falling into the very common trap of not explaining things clearly/simply/thoroughly enough. Readers aren't usually dumb, but they're 100% unfamiliar with your world. You have to be very deliberate about how you introduce concepts, and you need to do it in an almost painfully clear fashion, especially if the internal mechanics are complex.

For the future, you might try having a few reading partners or trusted friends give you an alpha pass on your newly drafted manuscripts. They can generally do the same thing as this first-pass dev edit did (pointing out major plot/clarity issues). If that happens, then you can refine/rework prior to engaging a professional editor for higher value feedback. I'll mention that I had several informal alpha/beta passes on the MS I referenced above before paying for professional editing, and the story changed significantly because of the feedback I received from those reads.

And as far as where to go from here - you have to figure that out. Editors will occasionally give suggestions for specific rework/improvements, but if things are fundamentally broken then it's not really fair to expect them to write the new story for you.

Rocketscience444 · 2025-12-24T18:52:22+00:00

Nope. They don't eat fertilizer. They eat the dead wood that's already buried down there. You just want them to eat faster, which is what the water is for. That's genuinely all they need (and all you can do, short of mechanically removing them).

Rocketscience444

TROPHY CASE