#118-Revised

Dear Query Shark,

Safe inside the rind of Orange County, parents pay a premium to shelter their kids. If those kids lie well enough, they might even convince their parents the money paid off.

Four best friends lie artfully. They keep up with grades, church, and sports teams, all while inhaling every puff of smoke, pill, and bottle their manicured hands can grab. But the delicate line between good girl and bad begins to erode when take hold of the hottest new drug to hit their high school: crystal meth.

For two of the girls, meth is manna from heaven. It makes cocky, witty Lindsey more sure and more funny (or so she thinks). For Charity, it eradicates the self doubt, the weight consciousness, even pushes away the clouds of depression and suicidal whispers. In just two weeks, Lindsey and Charity are hooked. They cover their dilated eyes with sunglasses and explain away the weight loss; but their arrogant, careless attitudes are hard to miss. Now Charity’s mom is threatening Catholic boarding school, Lindsey could get kicked off her all-star softball team for showing up hung-over, and their juiced-up egos have their best friends, Macey and Allison, needing some space. For a wallflower like Macey, who hasn’t made a friend outside the girls in eight years, a summer without Lindsey and Charity is gloomy enough. Then Allison’s boyfriend breaks off the relationship and she crawls back to Lindsey, Charity, and their dirty little crystals for comfort. Loneliness may be Macey’s worst fear, but if she follows the girls deeper into the gritty drug world, it could cost her more than friendship.

COUNTY OF GLITTER AND GLASS is a Young Adult novel that depicts realistic, suburban, teenage life, with all the drugs, sex, and lies that leave parents reaching for the Pepcid. The journey at the heart of the novel ultimately belongs to Macey, as her need for friendship and independence conflict for the first time. The novel’s third-person narration, which alternates focus with each chapter, reveals how this conflict develops, or fails to, inside each of the four, very different heroines. With its intense friendships set inside a drug underworld, the novel is best described as Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants meets Go Ask Alice. Its subject matter and language suit it for the 15+ age group, with a strong secondary audience in the parents and teachers of teens. It this is all telling, not showing is complete at 110,000 words and ready for your review.

Thank you for your consideration,

Focus on Macey.
What choice does Macey have to make?
What will happen if she chooses the wrong thing?

It's too long. YA novels need to be somewhere nearer 70,000 words.

This is MUCH better than the first draft.
I like the title.





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ORIGINAL


Dear Query Shark,

Macey Fry isn’t prude, she just gags at the smell of cigarettes and puts Post-Its over the nudes in her Louvre book. Her three best friends, however, stow Malboros in their air-conditioning vents and hide condoms in their teddy bears. Still, the four are inseparable; until Crystal Meth.

Post-it notes over art photos is textbook prude, by the way.
Crystal Meth isn't a person, or a proper name so it's not capitalized.

On the last day of Sophomore year, Macey is feeling bold. She’s sixteen now, after all, and she’s wasting her youth being scared all the time. She nervously gulps down two cocktails at an end of school party and winds up asleep before midnight. Macey’s three best friends are feeling bold, too, as the party ends. But Allison, Charity, and Lindsey are bored with cocktails. They’re ready to try the next big thing in teenage entertainment and Charity’s boyfriend has it in that dirty clump of crystals stuffed deep into his pocket.

This sounds nothing like any young person I know. It sounds like a disapproving adult: "wasting her youth" The thing about kids is they don't know they are wasting their youth. "teenage entertainment" is another phrase I'd fall over dead if I heard a kid say.

After just a few long nights with Crystal Meth, Charity and Lindsey are hooked. Macey will never be bold enough to try it and Allison is more interested in her new boyfriend than the new drug. For the first time in eight years, the group is split.



When a police raid on a meth party freezes the local trade, Macey and Allison think they’ve seen the end of their friends’ addictions. But Lindsey and Charity find another source: a dealer whose house is crowded with criminal men and shifty secrets.

Macey thinks her friends will stop being addicted because the supply dries up? I'm less enamored of this character with every passing paragraph.



Soon, Allison’s boyfriend ends their relationship and Allison turns to Lindsey, Charity, and their crystalline comfort, leaving Macey in solitude. Macey must decide which is more dangerous: wallowing in loneliness, or braving the hazardous drug world for the company of her best friends.

And where are her parents in all this? Surely she has a choice other than wallowing in loneliness or hanging out with meth addicts. She sounds spineless and weak here. That's NOT someone I want to spend 200 pages (let alone 140,000 words--ack!) with.

GLITTER AND DECAY is literary fiction, complete at 140,000 words. I describe it as Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants meets Go Ask Alice. I am an unpublished author hoping this novel will be my debut work. I have never been a meth addict, but I have pooled the knowledge and experience of several women who have to create this story. TMI

140,000 words is not only too long for a YA novel, it's also too long for an adult novel. Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants is a middle grade novel. I have no idea what Go Ask Alice is called but I read it in high school.

Thank you in advance for your time and attention. I am an avid reader of both your blogs and grateful for your every helpful word.

Focus on Macey. This is her story.

Right now I just want to smack every character and send them to convent school. Your job as a writer is to make me care about the protagonist even if I do want to smack her upside the head. You haven't done that here.

Form rejection.