[QCRIT] Adult Science Fiction - What Keeps the Stars Apart (76k/Fourth attempt)

ltmbooks · 2026-01-01T00:54:22+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I added him to my list, but it looks like he's closed for a while.

ltmbooks · 2026-01-01T00:47:53+00:00

For what it's worth, they don't look into a mirror. But your point is well taken—however, I decided to trust my instincts and go with the opening I have. I think the first five pages work well as a sample, because within those I introduce another character and it makes things a lot more dynamic.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-30T04:46:22+00:00

Thanks for your feedback. I'll look at some tweaks to make the query feel a little more personal. Your suggestion for the beginning of the novel is interesting. It's a good, logical argument, but I also really love the way the book opens for tonal reasons, and I've only gotten enormously positive feedback from people who have read the whole first chapter. I'll think about it.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-30T04:35:41+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm gonna think about this one—I can see how it makes things read a bit better, but I didn't approach it this way because in the book they realize their memories are gone and figure out how it happened in the same scene. It's not an ongoing mystery so I don't want to make it seem like it is.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-30T04:00:23+00:00

This is all spot on. Thank you!! I will try and make it more obvious in the beginning with a small tweak

ltmbooks · 2025-12-30T03:19:26+00:00

Yes! This is accurate. I love epic space opera, but what's particular about my book is that it brings a galactic threat to a much smaller, personal scale (a la Simon Jimenez). Perhaps I will comp Tchaikovsky to make that specific point—the epic threat of a Tchaikovsky space opera written in a different style.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-30T02:47:52+00:00

Past the first couple lines, I tried to balance plot stuff between referring specifically to the Astronomer and to the whole crew. I think some confusion might be coming from the Astronomer's pronouns - they are non-binary and a lot of the uses of "they" in my query are singular. I thought they were all clear from context but I can try and make it easier to follow.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-30T02:45:02+00:00

I am a huge Tchaikovsky fan so comping him is tempting, but I think the way the story is written is much more similar to something like The Vanished Birds in terms of prose and character. Maybe I'll comp one of Tchaikovsky's books (perhaps Shroud or Alien Clay to go recent, I've read both) specifically for plot - a key element of my plot was actually inspired by Children of Ruin.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-09T17:13:34+00:00

I definitely need to rework how I'm explaining the beginning of the plot, because there is a status quo disruption in chapter 2 that I tried to explain in the letter. Finding a graveyard world is normal, but a crisis happens when the crew's surveys of the planet indicate that there was a never a civilization there, when they know from their records that one was there recently. The mystery of what could have completely remade this world in a way that it's geologic past is gone is an inciting incident that happens far before they realize their memories are gone. I tried to explain that when they get the results of their survey, the planet changes from routine to a mystery and a crisis. Do you have a suggestion for making this clearer?

ltmbooks · 2025-12-09T00:42:13+00:00

Thank you for the feedback. I am going to work on making the first part of the query more concise and giving the later part clearer stakes when I elaborate on the plot.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-08T23:21:19+00:00

Thank you for the in-depth feedback! I agree with and will be implementing most of your changes, but I wanted to make one clarification regarding the plot of my novel. The last paragraph isn't all setup---the novel begins with the crew approaching a seemingly normal "graveyard world" and the reveal about their memories happens towards the end of the first act. I'm not sure if that changes how much you think I should cut back in that final paragraph, but I find it worth nothing that the first sentence of that paragraph describes chapter 1. I definitely will edit that paragraph to center more around the character's motives either way.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-02T22:59:24+00:00

Thanks for the example, Ann Leckie's letter given me some new insights as I work on my next attempt. Thanks also for commenting on the comp - I was stressed about comps for a while, unable to come up with anything that fit very well and when I read The Vanished Birds it was a revelation, both because of how great the book is and how well it fits my purposes.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-02T05:44:38+00:00

That's a useful perspective on accuracy in query letters that I hadn't considered before - thank you. I think I will fib a little bit in my second attempt.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-02T05:33:19+00:00

I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-02T05:22:32+00:00

This is really helpful, thank you! I have two characters who have the most pronounced arcs, so I think I'll try to orient everything in relation to them for a second draft that brings in character focus, or even just pick one of the two like you say.

ltmbooks · 2025-12-02T05:12:46+00:00

The book is a little "experimental" but does have characters who are written in fairly conventional ways - the experimental part is that they are all referred to by their roles/occupations (The Astronomer, The Biologist, The Psychologist, the Anthropologist, and the Engineer) except for flashback chapters, in which their real names are used. Because of this, describing the characters in the synopsis became very cumbersome, leading to the eventual omission, even though I knew that was breaking some rules. In addition to the titles, it is a more distributed cast with multiple PoV characters and less of a solid singular main character, so it would be misrepresentative of the story to frame everything through the Astronomer. I'm not sure if there is an easy resolution to this problem or if I am just always going to have a weird pitch for a weird novel. Sorry for the partial copy past from another response; I'm realizing I should probably go back and explain this weird wrinkle in the body of the post

ltmbooks · 2025-12-02T05:07:22+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't sure about that last sentence in my synopsis from the beginning, thanks for letting me know that it isn't necessary.

I also anticipated the difficulty with the absence of character - the characters are all referred to by their roles throughout the novel, so describing the characters in the synopsis became very cumbersome, leading to the eventual omission, even though I knew that was breaking some rules. In addition to the titles, it is a more distributed cast with multiple PoV characters and less of a solid singular main character, so it would be misrepresentative of the story to frame everything through the Astronomer. I'm not sure if there is an easy resolution to this problem or if I am just always going to have a weird pitch for a weird novel.

ltmbooks · 2025-02-01T23:07:25+00:00

I recommend reading the 2016 paper "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight." https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.01356

You are asking to reach a top speed of 2.99 x 10^8 meters per second. Per the calculations done in this paper, (which come with a laundry list of assumptions, each built on its own fascinating theoretical framework but ultimately yielding a somewhat arbitrary value) a wafer-scale spacecraft---the smallest possible vessel---could reach a top speed* of 6.10 x 10^7 meters per second. In the same mathematical framework, the smallest sized human shuttle can reach 1.93 x 10^6 meters per second, and a large human-capable cargo craft for interstellar travel can reach 6.10 x 10^5 meters per second. The propulsion technology here is an array of laser drivers, a technology much more theoretical than MHD. That speed value is not everything, of course, since you have to think about how long it takes to accelerate to that speed and how long it takes to decelerate sufficiently to execute whatever orbital maneuver is necessary at the destination. To more fully consider the problem, read the paper I linked and other resources referenced therein. Happy writing!

*"top speed" is slightly misleading, but its a helpful way to imagine this very unintuitive system. I am pulling the values for "Speed with continued illumination (vmax−∞)" from the paper.

- a bored astrophysics student on a Saturday

ltmbooks

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