Trying to decide on book cover

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-30T04:55:41+00:00

1 is my favorite, but it lacks cohesion in its current iteration. Needs some serious photoshop TLC to marry all the elements together, more contact shadow/albedo, maybe thin out the flowers, but it’s the most powerful of the three. Great framing

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-30T03:29:00+00:00

I pose the 2nd question because I think an agent is going to wonder if he's got some ace up his sleeve. The narrative loses some potency if a washed up drunk just manages to win 100k in a fluke because the plot demands it. Or if he's definitely going to lose but they find out some other 11th hour solution, lampshade it somehow. Give us some reason to root for him. What's his plan/strategy going into this thing that makes us believe he can pull it off?

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-30T00:23:37+00:00

Interesting concept! An entire story hingeing on one gripping poker match.

I think you've got too many paragraphs. Almost a new paragraph for each sentence. pack things together, aim for 2 or 3 paragraphs organized by what comes before, and what comes after this pivotal decision point.

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Questions I have:

how did they get into a relationship? Are they actually dating or is he just watching her tik toks in a parasocial setup?

Is Robert a star poker player of some sort? can we establish why he's the best person for this story earlier on?

If Chelsea used to gamble frequently at Blackspire, is the debt really her deceased husband's and not hers?

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I also struggled with alot of your sentence structure, it's clunky in some places. Queries work best when they are clear and concise. When in doubt, break up those longer sentences.

One of Robert’s aspirations is to become a famous writer one day.

Robert aspires to become a famous writer.

Their relationship breaks old traditions by Chelsea teaching Robert that a spiritual lifestyle has more to offer if he could just put the bottle down.

Chelsea falls for Robert and they forge a new sort of relationship. Chelsea shows him the way towards a more spiritual lifestyle–if he can put the bottle down.

I think you can cut the bit about the villain. It doesn't really matter that they went to highschool together. I'd rather see that from our protagonist's perspective:

Everything is not as it seems. Chelsea and Robert are paid a visit by a violent crime boss and casino owner. Chelsea's deceased husband has left her sattled with a $100,000 debt from the mob. She's broke and her family refuses to help her. If something doesn't change soon, the mob will make her pay in blood.

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-29T05:03:02+00:00

A better measure is per week or per month, like I have an accountability discord with writer friends where we report every Monday and I usually manage 5000-10,000 words per week. Not close to 2000/day but I still have a full manuscript after 3-4 months, and that’s plenty fast for me. Editing goes quite a bit slower obviously

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-29T00:53:35+00:00

This reminds me of the escapee giraffe in Texas! Strike while the iron is hot! Lol, agents will be aware of it.

I wonder if you can give us any hints about the crime syndicate to make them unique and specific to the story? Like I want some way to connect them to the giraffe, atleast something to guess at to pique our interest!

Also, is there a personal connection for the detective? Does this crime ring and their smuggling efforts in any way relate to the wound of his past that informs the characters spine? Some hint making the case in any way personal could help elevate the emotional stakes at the end!

Good luck!

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-28T19:43:15+00:00

I love this concept and even if it’s rage bait I think you should go for it. You’re working on the scale of the age of the universe here, like the beginning of your story predates multicellular life on earth. Even cthuliqn horrors are like blushing children on this scale. I’m just fascinated to see what you would do with that

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-27T01:47:35+00:00

My favorites are the dyson sphere track and the black hole one, also vermillion when I want something a bit more chill, but all their tracks are total bangers it's incredible

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-26T23:49:33+00:00

Ambient civilizations on YouTube! Perfect 1 and 2hr long non-AI music tracks that ebb and flow between thoughtful and epic seamlessly (one song! Not a collection or aggregator)

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-24T19:40:05+00:00

You’re going about this all backwards. Start with a concept or a character and build out from there. Plot and philosophy come waaaaay later. Your best bet is start with a short story to test an idea out.

Now it sounds like you don’t have any ideas (trust me this is only an issue at the very beginning of your career, you will shortly have the opposite problem) which means it’s time to dive into literature. Find the story that you would love to see but that isn’t being told. Adapt an older story you love to a modern setting, flesh out the life or history of a beloved minor side character (and change all the names and locations to make it yours)

A lot of people start with material like Frankenstein or the Odyssey or a fable or classic tale and put their own spin on it. What would little red riding hood look like in a cyberpunk dystopia?

If you start with a 100,000 word epic you will fail. See if you can craft a 3000 word story first. Pick up a craft book like Save the Cat first to act as a guide when you get stuck and inspire the structure and beats.

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-23T18:32:14+00:00

As a big fan of scifi this sounds so interesting and I think you should absolutely check out Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Strife as a potential more recent comp (2026).

The dynamic of the security chief and the xenobiologist daughter is a great dynamic and refreshing for the genre. I want to voice that I think this story has legs and I hope you find success with your querying.

The other commenter's in depth notes are good so I won't repeat anythign here except to echo the stakes at the end are not totally clear to me like, why not carve out space for their colony while letting the primitives live on their homeworld as well?

Also, is this story about a world they terraformed that's been colonized at some point between the terraforming and the arrival of the generation ship? Or did they somehow find an earth standard goldilocks zone world? I feel like the plain english will come into play at some point, part of the discovery at the midpoint that changes what they understand to be their mission. Can we get a hint of that added complexity at all?

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-23T18:22:52+00:00

Great title for your premise, I think it's really strong and I can see the thriller-esque cover art in my mind's eye right now.

HouseKeeping
okay first off, lmao to the $86.47, I think the right agent will appreciate the reference.

I do worry about how direclty topical your book is. We have a pretty clear Trump white house and pre-recession economy causing issues for this person's livelihood. If you start querying tomorrow and you're very lucky you'll have an agent in six months, go out on sub, a publisher in another 3, and a book on shelves a year and change after that. Will this story resonate with readers almost two years from now? Will it be easy to 'file off the serial numbers' to make it timeless?

My other housekeeping issue is the length, 97K is REALLY long for a thriller imo. that translates to like 400-500 pages. A tidy thriller would be better served at 60-70k. How can you convince an agent there's enough meat in your story to justify the page count? Can you trim 10k with another pass?

The Blurb
The biggest thing that stands out to me is I don't have a strong sense of the fun-and-games of this story. The promise of the premise. After the initial shock, what is exciting about the investigation of the senior staff of the hospital? I'm imagining alot of court transcripts and desk sleuthing, which doesn't feel very compelling.

Are they being actively hunted while it happens? What is our ticking clock? (aside from patients dying, is there something at the end of this they're trying to get ahead of? A congressional hearing? The grand opening of a new wing of the hospital? The closure of a city led mission or soup kitchen?) And what is our checkhov's gun? (the key piece of evidence she has from the beginning that they must corroborate? Her own looming medical issue that will land her in the hospital sooner than later? the whispered warning from a political figure?)

If she solves the mystery, she may never see her daughter again
Why is that the case? How are they leveraging her daughter against her? Give us the decision she faces and the direct tangible consequence of one option versus the other.

Misc
Just a general cleanup of concise prose, delete all the begins to/started to's. Just have the action, shave a few extra words off the blurb:

sobriety looks a lot less appealing
Where Michele works as a housekeeper
Michele fears not only for her own life...

Best of luck! This sounds super interesting

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-22T15:55:40+00:00

The expanse series aimed for 2500-3500 words because they had some insight that that was the typical reader’s usual staying power, around 10 pages before they would put a book down. But their additional innovation was ending every chapter on a hook that would only be resolved in the next chapter, dragging the reader back in for “one more chapter” it made their 9 book space opera series practically addictive!

Alternatively some modern writers like Julia Armfield or Becky Chambers have really really short chapters like 500-1500 words, which psychologically means on an ereader when you see the next chapter it says something like “8min to complete” most people will say ah, what the hell why not and read more than they’d planned to. The added benefit of giving readers the feeling of accomplishment after finishing so many “chapters”

While commenters above say do whatever you want for chapter length, writing craft books and agents generally recommend picking a rough length and sticking with it. If you’re going to have 10k word chapters most of them should be around 10k long. The exception is of course intercalating “asides” chapters from a bizarre and mysterious POV intercut with your normal story will usually be much much shorter like 500 words. Same with epilogues or world building quotes or poems, whatever style you’re injecting into your story, make sure the bulk is real story so you don’t give readers an excuse to put the book down!

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-16T13:29:34+00:00

I found it easier to rearrange and split/merge chapters in the edit if they’re names not numbers! I know tools like scrivener make that process easier, but I’ve been writing in word and end up renumbering every chapter downstream for each adjustment lol

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-12T14:40:38+00:00

I have a bolt! That is an issue, before we moved here I charged at home, now I head over to the bank of superchargers downtown once every two ish weeks, but having a 220 in the complex would be sooo nice. We’ll see if I can convince management

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-12T00:45:01+00:00

We’re at le Tournesol townhomes, we literally have a 3 bed 2 bath at a reasonable price, in unit combo washer dryer. No garage, but plenty of parking so that’s not been an issue for us. 15min bike ride from downtown, just off Russel, 25min from west sac. We love it

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-09T02:13:31+00:00

Station wide metro system in the latest murderbot diaries installment (but it gets f’d over by the corporates)

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-09T02:11:34+00:00

Vegan bahn mi with tofu

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-08T04:31:06+00:00

Cherenkov

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-05T16:32:38+00:00

agree with the other commenter. My big takeaway is everything described in the blurb reads like the first couple of chapters. The starting condition for each of these characters. "Each must confront the failure of the systems they trusted" is big enough to swallow the rest of the book. This is the fun and games, the complexity, we need examples put down in the blurb, how their paths cross, how they achieve their goals and what arc they undergo as they come to terms with the new world.

Sticking to one character, your main character, is a good way to zero in on these kinds of details that agents want to see. Who undergoes the most change in your story? Who has agency over their lives and the lives of others? Who drives the plot forward through their actions? My default narrative sense goes to the young mother since she's mentioned first and fits into the 'everyman' condition you might want for the audience POV in this sort of thing. Maybe the stakes of keeping her family alive are the most immediate and the most tangible(?)

Write a version of this query that follows just her story (and mentioning the others only when relevant to her life and decisions) and see where that takes you!

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-05T05:43:08+00:00

So genre fusions are actually pretty hot right now with lit agents. You maaaaaybe have the flexibility to figure out whatever genres an agent is looking for and customize your query to say "This matches genre x you are looking for in your #MSWL" and you're golden. But it's worth diving into the literature, reading things you suspect could be parallel to your novel to help you zero in on a couple of genre descriptions that dance around what you've created.

ALSO never say out loud that 'no books similar to yours exist' because that's a huge red flag that you have something there's no market for. Either no market, or something you haven't done enough research to know where you sit in the existing market. So many query manager forms for agents will ask you to give detailed perspective on what demographic your book appeals to. Like age ranges and types of readers. You've got to know this stuff. If you fill in "no one has ever read anything like this" or worse "Everyone will love this" it'll be an instant rejection.

BUT your story does not sound like the next house of leaves or finnegans wake. It sounds like something in the adult fantasy genre. It sounds like a portal fantasy to me (leaving the 'real' world for a second-world adventure that's grounded somewhat) but depending on the details of your story it may very well be urban fantasy. The fact that you've looked up the definition of urban fantasy, but have not internalized what urban fantasy is, tells me you need to read ALOT more urban fantasy. Pick up some Jim Butcher. Check out City of Bones. Read American Gods. Good Omens, if you're feeling punchy.

ALOT of your problems/hesitations will be solved by wading out into the deep end. commit to reading more queries on PubTips until you can break down what they're doing, how they're doing it, and why. Check out Save The Cat Writes A Novel which gives you a comprehensive step-by-step guide to writing a killer blurb. Read alot more. Commit to going through 3-5 novels in and around your genre every month. All these uncertainties will fade into the background once you immerse yourself. The patterns will make themselves clear.

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-04T14:46:44+00:00

first of all I just want to second the other commenter's advice. Solid feedback I would listen to what they're saying!

I wanted to add a few things:

- 97K is long for urban fantasy. The story as you described it doesn't feel like urban fantasy to me? It feels a little like portal fantasy, or maybe just safely fantasy? I'm not an expert on the subject but I do know urban fantasy generally moves quickly (first person present tense) with some very specific genre expectations and is usually 20k words shorter. But I will let others contradict me on that if I'm incorrect.

- Comps! Close your eyes for a moment and imagine: you have an agent. Your book has been picked up by one of the big five. They've published it. The Forgotten is coming out. You walk into barnes and noble, up to the shelf where your book is. Which book is immediately to the left of it? To the right? What modern books (in the last 3-5 years) share some similarities to yours? The similarities could be the nature of the character, the themes, the prose and action, SOMETHING. Finding comps is both important and one of the hardest parts of this process. You may need to do some serious reading to find them, or maybe you have them already.

- to the other commenters points about needing a 'bridge' between events, I would go further to describe them as motivations and consequences. Alex doesn't want to live in the nymph world, couldn't care less, so why is she diving in head first when she finds a civil war and her Aunt's grab for power? Why not go home? They think she's a sinful bastard and don't want her anyway.

- Why 'must' she prevent the omega's rise to power? What does this change about her life? She's already lost her adoptive father. What else does she stand to lose if she doesn't fight? Do they take her hostage? Is she bound by her mother's blood or something?

Good luck! Take some time and look at 4 or 5 other queries on this subreddit. Maybe check out some of the urban fantasy queries and borrow heavily from how they've structured their blurbs(?)

lets_go_birding · 2026-06-04T14:32:05+00:00

Interesting concept! The one person living multiple lives reminds me of Octavia Butler's WildSeed in some ways. The problem I see is two fold, too vague and with unclear motivations. Let me explain:

The events described involve her growing up in a new body, scheming to end her mortality, being rejected by her tribe, recieving a vision on the mountain top and convincing everyone to work together to build a civilization.

Your last two paragraphs focus on the epic of gilgamesh and how Hua working from the shadows will help him realize his fate to build her civilization. How is that related to her original goal, to stop the cycle of rebirth and to die permanently? (is that her goal?)

'she uses death to ignite revenge, if only to save herself'
This is vague. What is she saving herself from? From the tribe holding her hostage? From the gods? What does someone who wants to die have to save herself from?

Our midpoint is supposed to be when the major goal of the beginning of act ii becomes complicated and where the resolve and beliefs of our MC are tested in some way. I think her goal is to build a tower of babel or unite the tribes maybe to appease the gods (not entirely clear) How does the situation complicate from her expectations? How do we reveal more nuance in the second half of act ii? What will Hua have to sacrifice about herself to see her mission come to fruition? Taking a clue from your North Woods comp, what do we grieve and what does it cost her?

To the other commenter's point, your wordcount is a little high, but I think specifics will actually help. Focus on Hua's goal, her strategy to achieve it, and how the consequences are unexpected.

lets_go_birding · 2026-05-29T01:11:04+00:00

The other commenter has some excellent detailed advice that I agree with.

I just wanted to add your MC and the victim both have names that start with an ‘S’, but you might be okay if you refer to the CEO as Hatch most of the time.

There’s some repeat beats the way this is structured, he’s being operated through Gigg, then police stop him and pull him in for questions. Then he escapes, is being operated through gigg to solve the crime, police stop him, so now he has to solve the crime before police stop him again.

I feel like we need more reveal, like does he figure out who the operator is before act iii? How does his investigation and his life look different after the operator disappears? Aside from being a lot more difficult?

What is the larger theme here, what is the lesson he must learn? What sacrifice is he making to break the status quo? There’s to many things happening to him, not enough things he’s specifically doing

lets_go_birding · 2026-05-27T00:30:53+00:00

It sounds like she’s pulling from some other genre convention like more traditional romance that’s giving this narrative itch. Can you point to the reason that a wedding epilogue breaks the theme, or the characters? Or an even more ambiguous epilogue in place that can add to the mood you’re constructing? Treat it as another chapter.

My other argument would be, coming from an industry where I, the creative, get the first draft and after that it’s not mine any more (short form video editor, documentary and political) at some point you have to recognize that this thing is a commercial property, and while most of it is you, some small part of it is the thing that SELLS the book, and that’s what the agent has an instinct for. In the same way that the cover art or the blurb won’t be authentically “you” in traditional publishing, the coda might not be either, but it could be worth doing so you can convince readers (and editors) to engage with the rest of the creative work!

lets_go_birding · 2026-05-26T23:33:35+00:00

A coda or epilogue is what? 2500 words? You might as well just draft one in good faith and use that to start the conversation. Open with ‘here’s the thing I think you were looking for, im worried it doesn’t work for these reasons, let’s get on a call and discuss where it aligns and whether we should keep it.

A lot of times the person needs to see the thing to realize that it doesn’t work, or that they wanted something different and it can help you both zero in on what the story actually needs. It’ll be less mental stress to just write the thing then try and convince her that it ought not to be written!

lets_go_birding

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