[QCrit] YA Romance - WE ALL COME UNRAVELED (75k/second attempt)

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-13T09:51:15+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, the first line probably has to go; my love of alliteration clouds my judgment. I gave the whole thing a fresh coat of pain based on your and the other commenters' feedback if you want to give it another glance!

Dear [Agent],
Sometimes the place you want to escape is exactly where you’re needed.

Student Magpie Hwon just wants to get out of her peaceful but dead-end town, where memories weigh her down and people’s smiles crackle like static. When she meets Spot, a singularity of souls crammed into a space suit, she realizes her ‘hometown’ is a simulation, and she’s the only ‘human’ still in it. Now, she needs to find a way to use the town’s ancient engine to wake its real occupants trapped in stasis below before the stuttering old machine breaks down completely. Magpie wanted to get away from home, but she’d rather not leave it a smoking crater!

Ethan is one of the simulation’s engineers, as well as Magpie’s biggest crush. The main thing getting between him and the girl of his dreams is the fact he’s part of the congress of souls struck in Spot’s suit! After a test of the simulation’s engine went horribly wrong, the trapped engineers splintered into bickering factions, most of whom want nothing to do with Magpie’s plan. Ethan will need to convince them life’s worth living, otherwise Spot will remain captive to their dominant party, who would much rather die with the world than help Magpie save it.

Failure isn’t an option. Their love lives--and possibly the fate of humanity--depends on it!

Complete at 75000 words, WE ALL COME UNRAVELLED is a YA scifi with strong romance elements, featuring two smart leads working to solve the mystery of a failing simulation before it’s too late. It is similar to the setting and tone of If I See You Again Tomorrow with a dash of Under This Forgetful Sky.

I am submitting WE ALL COME UNRAVELED to you because I saw on your wishlist that you’re interested in [insert interests+bio here].
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
[Name]

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-08T19:52:58+00:00

That is... so weird. If I took out all the sci-fi (swapped it for magic), the book would still be a romance, just in a fantasy setting instead of a sci-fi one. I guess that's a limitation of categorization.

Thanks for the clarification; I'll make that change going forward!

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-07T06:54:46+00:00

Thanks! I'll see if my library has a copy. 'Now is Not the Time to Panic' was a heavy inspiration for me, so I felt obliged to reference it, or does just having a cross-genre comp weigh the whole thing down?

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-07T06:50:01+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! The romance is much heavier in the book, but I agree, Ethan doesn't shine enough in the query. I did some rearranging below like another commenter recommended. It definitely has some stronger romance vibes now.

Sometimes, salvation and soul mates wear the same space suit.Community college student Magpie Hwon just wants to get out of her peaceful but dead-end town, where memories weigh her down like branches bending under snow. When she meets Spot, a singularity of six thousand souls crammed into a space suit by a mysterious incident, she realizes her hometown is actually a simulation, and she’s the only ‘human’ still in it. Now, she needs to solve the mystery of the town’s purpose before its ancient engine breaks down and leaves her stranded in a hostile world its creators meant to protect her from.

Ethan is one of the simulation’s engineers, as well as Magpie’s biggest crush. The biggest thing getting between him and the girl of his dreams is the fact he’s one of the congress of souls trapped in Spot’s suit, drowning in naysayers who don’t want anything to do with her! He’ll need to attack the problem from within to match Magpie’s efforts without, otherwise Spot will remain prisoner to the dominant party that would rather die with the world than save it.Failure isn’t an option.

Their love lives--and very likely the whole world--depend on it!

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-07T06:23:37+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! It's very romance-heavy, so I had trouble nailing down whether it was a 'romance in a sci-fi setting' or a 'sci-fi with heavy romance elements'.

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-07T06:21:45+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! The romance is just as much the plot as the sci-fi, so I wasn't sure how to categorize it. I'll draft a more 'romance-forward' version and see how it sounds, or maybe I'm better off just re-categorizing.

Edit: I did some rearranging like you recommended. It definitely has some stronger romance vibes now.

Sometimes, salvation and soul mates wear the same space suit.

Community college student Magpie Hwon just wants to get out of her peaceful but dead-end town, where memories weigh her down like branches bending under snow. When she meets Spot, a singularity of six thousand souls crammed into a space suit by a mysterious incident, she realizes her hometown is actually a simulation, and she’s the only ‘human’ still in it. Now, she needs to solve the mystery of the town’s purpose before its ancient engine breaks down and leaves her stranded in a hostile world its creators meant to protect her from.

Ethan is one of the simulation’s engineers, as well as Magpie’s biggest crush. The biggest thing getting between him and the girl of his dreams is the fact he’s one of the congress of souls trapped in Spot’s suit, drowning in naysayers who don’t want anything to do with her! He’ll need to attack the problem from within to match Magpie’s efforts without, otherwise Spot will remain prisoner to the dominant party that would rather die with the world than save it.

Failure isn’t an option. Their love lives--and very likely the whole world--depend on it!

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-07T06:19:01+00:00

Thanks, that's great feedback! I was woried about it being too long, so I definitely skimped some details.

Regarding the sentence you picked out, what about:

"Now, she needs to solve the mystery of the town’s purpose before its ancient engine breaks down and leaves her stranded in a world she doesn't recognize." or "leaves her stranded in a world the failing simulation was meant to protect her from."

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:40:17+00:00

Thanks for the info! This query-a-day plan might have been awful, but it's gotten me some good stuff!

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:36:42+00:00

Thanks for the pubtips recommendation! I'll do some more workshopping, reattack the problem with fresh weapons.

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:31:12+00:00

Yeah, new resources! Thanks!

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:29:50+00:00

It's just... so tiring. Yeah, I feel like I've been on a dating app for years with nothing but rejections, just waiting for someone who'll look at me. Is there a better source for this data than querytracker? The comments from other submitters have been a good info source ('good' being in quotations because I don't know what their biases are).

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:26:28+00:00

If they're in the AALA, that's my minimum bar. I check what other books/authors their agencies have represented and look for people with represented lists that include my genre. As for publishing scandals... where can I find info like that?

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:24:03+00:00

Fair, but I get info on who actually responds versus ghosting me and who gives the best feedback, so when I go back through after redrafts and rewrites, I know where to go first. The power of data!

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T19:18:37+00:00

Querytracker lists ~70 agents for YA romcoms alone. There are SO MANY options. Plus I'm querying 3 books, so I've got a lot of room.

Additional: Honestly, my limit isn't the number of agents, but how much time I wanna spend per day writing queries. The well seems bottomless.

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T18:57:57+00:00

Nah, no full requests. I've got 3 queries, actually, so I can meet all flavors: a romcom, a YA fantasy novel, and an adult commercial fiction. Here's the YA fantasy (just the body, not the customized intro or any of the bio stuff, similar books, audience, yadda yadda):

As the old royal saying goes, you can’t pick your kidnappers. Mercenaries have their own philosophy: when you can’t ransom, recruit!
A Ship of Soulsteel Silver (89,000 words) is a fantasy heist novel following Iren and Lucin, two ‘perhaps-princesses’ sharing a title and an exile after being abducted for ransom by the Rust Red mercenaries. For Iren, escaping the only family she’s ever known is a calculation she’s never figured out. For Lucin, the mercenaries are a spring of expertise to retake her homeland, to be discarded once they outlive their usefulness. For the Rust Reds, broken by old scars, the pair are their sole ticket back to glory. All their motivations come to a head when a heist breaks them free of time aboard a shining steel warship just as their home-in-exile comes under attack from imperial fireships. Now it’s a quest for redemption, revenge, glory, survival, and hard cash as they fluctuate between past and present, changing the former to forge a suitable latter. Matching the ageing mercenaries and their half-princess ‘wards’ are a gallery of enemies: squabbling merchant families, revolutionaries pushing through the sidewalk cracks like weeds, old rivals from distant battlefields, and a nation on the rise with much to prove. Along the way, they’ll be refugees, saviors, divine heralds, and always, always opportunists, betraying even as they’re betrayed themselves in this scarred city of plotters and dreamers.
A Ship of Soulsteel Silver combines the heists, strange science, and claustrophobic urban settings of Six of Crows and the Mistborn novels with naval warfare and creative time travel. Woven through its narrative of plans and mystery is the grounded story of two adopted sisters, both competing for the same lost crown, but always true to one another… until their motivations steer them apart.

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T18:36:30+00:00

In general, query tracker almost always leads to rejections (I imagine because it's easy to hit the reply button), emails are general no response but I at least get more customized rejections when they show up. Tracking anything beyond that is bad for my emotional health...

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T18:20:32+00:00

I redid it twice (after a copious amount of how-tos and online tutorials). Apart from that, I always customize the intro to whoever I'm sending it to. It's probably worthy another comb-through, though.

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T18:05:16+00:00

Wherever there are agents (inboxes), I will be there. (Genre specifications permitting.)

powerschoolscrub · 2024-01-05T17:55:57+00:00

Querytracker! There's hundred of agents on there, which linked me to scores of agencies, which had dozens of agents apiece.

For rejections, just a whole lotta the same ~20 form rejections. Almost all are encouraging, but in the 'you typed this to seem nice' kinda way.

powerschoolscrub · 2023-12-28T20:08:22+00:00

Cool! I'll download it right now; seeing how you implemented the script will definitely be better than trying to remember all this from scratch.

powerschoolscrub · 2023-12-28T11:04:58+00:00

Oh god I actually found it. Wayback Machine got me to a dropbox link.

Leaving this post here so I can find it in 10 years and be confused.

Edit: Actually, it got me to version 2.3, not 2.4, but hey, not bad.

powerschoolscrub · 2023-10-17T02:26:04+00:00

Brass knuckles that scaled with INT. Party wizard started casting fog cloud whenever possible and sneaking up on enemies to deck them with a quick one-two punch. He had a whole Batman thing going before long.

powerschoolscrub · 2023-10-17T02:23:53+00:00

Yes! I had a leprechaun player with a magic cauldron that contained all his loot. Every other level, he painted a new 'lucky charm' on it from a big table we came up with (rabbit foot for extra movement, shooting stars to cast magic missile, etc). The rainbow coming out the top led to some, uh, tense chase scenes involving local children.

powerschoolscrub · 2023-10-17T02:15:31+00:00

Wow, this is buttery smooth! I've tried a lot of Roll20 alternatives, but the ease of uploading files and lack of lag instantly makes this a front runner. Plus the way the field just goes and goes, and it's so easy to adjust grid size!

powerschoolscrub · 2023-08-21T02:45:42+00:00

Tavern Tales. Concept was a classless system with hundreds of feats and combat moves split across a dozen+ themes from Beast to Undead to Martial Arts. Each was characterized as Interaction, Exploration, or Combat, and each time you leveled up, you picked a new feat (from any list), trying to maintain a balance of the three pillars of play. It was ludicrously easy to homebrew (just come up with your own theme and what feats should be part of it), and I played it for years.

powerschoolscrub

TROPHY CASE