#26-with revision

Dear Query Shark:

Dogs and foxes are similar in appearance but they are not at all alike in character.

My book is named, 'To Kill a Snake.' John Suter the chief of homicide at the CBI. Is like the hound dog. He is happy to guard the live stock and chase the predators away.

Books aren't named. They are called or titled. You have two sentence fragments. They make your query letter look illiterate. What is CBI?

The fox in this case is Ryan Stone. His son has been killed by a jealous rival for the attention of a girl at a graduation party. Ryan's quest for revenge takes him into the dark world of drug dealing. After he enters that world in search of vindication he finds, he like the fox, is over whelmed with blood lust. He is killing for the shear joy of it

Your punctuation renders your sentence meaningless. I believe what you mean to say is finds he, like the fox, is overwhelmed. The rule on clauses set apart by commas is: if you remove the clause the sentence must still make sense. If I remove your clause I get: he finds is overwhelmed with bloodlust. And in fact you'd do better with a well chosen that: he finds that like the fox he is over whelmed with blood lust.

When I see this string of errors in diction, grammar and punctuation I stop reading. Words are your tools and yours need to be sharpened.

The drug cartel sent an enforcer to put an end to the leakage of money and drugs caused by Ryan’s activities.

John Suter and Patty Bell are called in to investigate killings at a small airport near Erie Colorado. They are soon up to their necks in the chase. They need to find the person who is stacking up bodies faster then they can travel to the locations.

We already know who the villain is. You need to start with this and then reveal the villain or it's anti-climactic.

You aren't ever up to your neck in a chase, the metaphor doesn't make any physical or visual sense.

In the end Ryan Stone and the enforcer have a shoot out in a local park. Ryan is shot by the enforcer. Suter arrives on the scene and is forced to shoot the enforcer. He is profoundly disturbed by this event because he has never before fired his weapon at another person.

There's no plot here. You've described a series of events about four people.

To Kill a Snake is a story of about 103400 words. I have added the first few pages to this e-mail. I am now writing another Suter story. I will have a completed draft by the end of July I also have another book on the back burner ready to start as soon as I finish the one I am working on.

Thank you for your time and attention. I am hoping to hear from you soon.


Form rejection letter.
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Revison #1

John Suter has always been happy to guard the live stock and chase the predators away. He is a hound dog by nature. This has always worked well for him in his capacity as chief of homicide at theCBI. (Colorado Bureau of Investigation.)


John Suter and his partner, Patty Bell, have been asked to come to the airport at the small town of Erie just north of Denver. The Chief of the Erie police thought that seven murders would be well beyond the capacity of his small four man police force. When the operating crew arrived at the airport, that morning, they had found seven bodies scattered across the tarmac.



John slowly walked the perimeter of the crime scene. The view reminded him of the morning he had walked into the chicken coop shortly after the visit of the neighborhood fox. That morning, as now, everything he seen was dead.


This is not a hook, it's a description of what happens early in the book. It's not that compelling because we don't have a sense of why this matters.

Everything he seen? Basic errors in grammar raise the bar for your query to Olympian levels.


When Ryan Stone's son was killed by a low level drug dealer, Ryan went hunting for the men responsible. He found that he enjoyed the excitement of the hunt, and was pleasantly surprised by the stacks of unexpected money. After Ryan had left an impressive total of bodies behind; the drug cartel sent Royal Roybal to stop the cash bleed. Roybal soon began to stack up his own total of victims. After perusing the scene at the airport John felt his hound instincts going to work. John and Patty Bell start to hunt down the pair of foxes that have invaded their chicken coop.

This paragraph is a mess. The sentences don't connect to each other. We don't know who Ryan Stone is; we think John Suter and Patty Bell are the people you're talking about. There's no connection to the scene at the airport with Ryan or this other guy Royal.



My novel 'To Kill a Snake' is 103000 words. I am currently writing another story with John Suter and Patty Bell, as the protagonists. There is another novel in line behind that one. I will have a first draft by the end of July.


form rejection