QueryDice #45: Romantic Suspense

The following is a query critique. Comments, suggestions and discussion are welcome and we hope you join in. I can only offer one opinion. The author of the query and I would love to hear yours. 

Dear Ms. Ruth,

Until his socialite sister took a swan dive out her penthouse window, FBI Agent Jonah White’s life had been fairly simple: track down bad guys and slap a pair of silver bracelets on them. (I like the voice here!) Haunted by his failure to protect his little sister, the lawman is left with a Texas-sized guilty conscience gnawing at his heart. He’d do anything to prove she was murdered. There’s just one small glitch: the prime suspect has already been bagged and tagged, and the inheritance money stolen from Jonah’s sister is long gone. This starts to wobble here. How is the money being long gone a glitch in Jonah’s plan to catch the killer?

Disobeying orders, Jonah goes undercover to seduce the killer’s young widow, Maya Savantes. But falling in love with Maya – a possible accomplice to murder – definitely wasn’t part of the plan. As he tries to sidestep Maya’s suspicions, and ignore his own growing feelings, he learns two things: 1) there’s a pissed off, trigger-happy loan shark willing to put both Maya and Jonah in his sights to get the inheritance money, and 2) Maya’s husband isn’t so dead after all. <– This paragraph would be far better written from Maya’s point-of-view. Romances are often very heavily dependent on the heroine’s point-of-view, probably because most of the readers are women. I’d like to hear her voice, her side of things, and then see how that ties into Jonah’s troubles in a third paragraph that brings everything together.

The loan shark muddies the waters and confuses the readers because it is not fully explained. Why would the loan shark have any chance of getting inheritance money, which I thought was long gone? I worry there might be a plot hole in there, and agents will worry too unless you explain this fully. I love the last sentence, though, and I’m VERY intrigued by Jonah falling in love with the widow of his sister’s killer! There is a good story in here, we just need a little more information from the right characters, and a little less information about things not completely central to the romance or to the suspense.

[redacted] (75,000 words) is a romantic suspense novel set in Hill’s Creek, Texas, a fictitious town where the kinfolk like their secrets the way they like their steaks: big and juicy. I’m a Romance Writers of America member and a 2nd place finalist in the 2011 Dixie First Chapter contest.<–very good to know. This was a great bio paragraph.

Thank you for considering my book for representation.

[redacted]

QueryDice #44: Women’s Fiction…I think

The following is a query critique. Comments, suggestions and discussion are welcome and we hope you join in. I can only offer one opinion. The author of the query and I would love to hear yours. 

Dear QueryDice, (the author noted that she would have used the agent’s name when querying. The proper way to do this is a simple “Dear Mr. or Ms. SoandSo.”)

Randi hopes rejoining her old band, ‘Raptor Snatch,’ [no quotation marks necessary for the name of a band] will cure her depression. [From how deep into Randi’s past has she unearthed her involvement with the band? How old is she? Age helps to create relatability in a query.]Music is more than just a job for Randi – it’s the rock and roll fuel for her rise from the ashes of the past eleven months.  [What happened in the past eleven months?]Nothing is going to stand in the way of her comeback. Nothing! Certainly not a jealous rival band hell bent on stealing Raptor Snatch’s place in the spotlight.

They may call themselves, ‘Slutmaster,’ [again, no quotation marks or comma necessary] but their combined sexual conquests don’t equal a trip to third base. What they lack in sexual – and musical – prowess, they make up for in sabotage. [what does Slutmaster’s sexual prowess have to do with Randi’s life?]

Slutmaster lingers at Raptor Snatch’s performances, slinging glares around like Mardi Gras beads. They cancel some of Raptor Snatch’s gigs. [How?] They give anonymous tips to  night club security accusing Randi’s band members of theft.  Slutmaster’s weaselly tactics are getting under Randi’s skin more than Kelvin, her sexy lead guitar player. But Randi didn’t claw her way out of an emotional abyss to give up without a fight.

Can Randi hold her band – and herself  – together, and hit the stage singing? Or will this rock and roll phoenix’s comeback go up in flames?

[I like this. The band names are hilarious, and I love Randi’s endeavor to use a band to revolutionize her life. But something is missing. I need to know what it was about Randi’s life that inspired her to join a band called Raptor Snatch, of all things, and how she expects being in that band will make her life better. The most important things to divulge in a query for any story are 1. what the main character wants 2. what is in her way and 3. how she plans to get around that. From this query, I am unsure what Randi really wants. What is it about her life that is unsatisfactory to her? In other words, what exactly is at stake here? I can see that Slutmaster is in Randi’s way of achieving a goal and that she is going to get around that by fighting back. But how will she fight back, and what, aside from Raptor Snatch, might Randi lose if she can’t defeat Slutmaster. 

Aside from that, I’m curious about this story…I might like to see it if I felt Randi had something more than the band at stake.] 

[redacted] is complete at 83,000 words. [This is, I believe, women’s fiction, but it is helpful to an agent to know what YOU think it is. Because if you think this is mystery, then I’m sorry to tell you this really sucks. If you think it’s romance, then you’ve placed the focus of the query on all the wrong things.]

I am currently a librarian; I lurked there for so long recommending books to patrons and shushing people, that I suspect they only hired me so it would be less creepy. Now I’m armed with a name tag, and a thin veneer of credibility. I’m also a musician with synesthesia which is as interesting, and more irritating than it sounds! <– I like this paragraph, not because I care that you’re a librarian, but because it is chock-full of personality. I’d love to hear more of that voice in the query! 

Thanks for your time and consideration.
[redacted]