#295

Questions:

1) This novel has a lot of action, but it's about the complications and mounting tension in the main character's life. You mention a thriller has larger stakes than one person's life, so how would you categorize this? Suspense?

2) The book has 3 acts with tension and stakes building. This query is about the final conflict. Is that okay?

3) I feel the current title would grab attention, but is it a bad idea to tip my hand? Other titles I've considered include DISARMING THE BEASTS, and PREDATOR'S TITHE.

4) While the protagonist is a woman, I don't consider this is chick lit. Cassie is an emotionally damaged, socially awkward Jason Bourne with a medical degree. Should I query chick lit agents or stick to thriller/suspense (or however you categorize this?)

Dear QueryShark:

Cassiopeia Gordon (Cassie) has spent 12 years trying to erase one night—not easy for someone with a photographic memory. When she was an 18-year-old virgin, her drill instructor savagely raped her.

One thing that just drives me bonkers is listing a character's name and then her (nickname) in parentheses. This is not a newspaper article or a police report. Call your character what you call her in the book: Cassie Gordon.

A close second on the bonkers list is putting a character's age in parens for the same reasons. You avoided that here, thankfully.

And I'm not sure why you mention her memory; it doesn't seem to be a plot point later on. And no one needs a photographic memory to have problems forgetting a savage rape. 


Determined she'll never be victimized again, Cassie has trained relentlessly in hand-to-hand combat, while becoming a trauma surgeon to repair bodily damage. Those skills and a facility for language have led her to join an elite Marine strike force where she proudly keeps her team members safe.

This is a total hodge podge of information. She's trained relentlessly so she'll never be a victim, and then becomes a trauma surgeon to repair bodily damage? Whose body? Trauma surgeons by definition are repairing damage. You don't need to say both things.

She's a member of an elite Marine strike force and a trauma surgeon? Really? Where did she find the time? Oh and she's got a facility for languages. And let's not forget the photographic memory.

You're making the classic mistake here of creating a caricature, not a character. A character's flaws are what make her interesting, not the fact that she's superwoman in camouflage scrubs.

A more interesting story is how someone who ISN'T Superwoman responds to an attack and seeks vengeance.

Now the CIA has recruited Cassie to join its operation. Onboarding will happen at headquarters near where Cassie's best friend lives. Not only is Melody the closest thing Cassie has to family, she's also the only person who really understands Cassie's past. A fellow victim of the serial rapist drill sergeant, Melody has channeled her experience into helping others as a rape counselor.



When a series of Melody's clients reveal their attackers admitted—even bragged about—the number of women they've raped, Melody can take no more. If the system won't stop these monsters, Melody decides she must.

Why won't the system stop these monsters? It's not as though rape is the unspoken-of crime it was 40 years ago. Women and men report rapes all the time. What makes these beyond the law?

Though equally sickened by the revelations, Cassie recognizes the dangers of Melody's plan and tries to dissuade her—unsuccessfully.

What's Melody's plan? Kill the rapists. I'm very much in favor of that. Slowly too. This is where the book would get much more interesting: how these lovely ladies take their revenge, and what it costs them (ie what's at stake for them.)  You can't brutalize the brutalizer without being yourself becoming a brutalizer. 


If Cassie doesn't act, the only sister she's ever had could be imprisoned for the rest of her life. To save Melody, Cassie will have to break the law and risk losing everything — her medical license, CIA career, her freedom, and possibly the only man she's ever loved.

Melody will get imprisoned only if she's caught, right? So Cassie's dilemma is whether to report her, try to stop her, or do nothing. You need to be specific about what's at stake here for each of those choices. Breaking the law brings possible prison. Losing her medical license, her career? What's the down side of that for her? 



You've created a too-good-to-true character and set her up as an avenging angel. This is textbook first novel syndrome. A character has to have some flaws to be interesting. She has to make tough choices. Maybe even wrong choices. There's really nothing better than someone doing good for the wrong reason and getting in trouble for it.

Also, the villains here have zero nuance. Thus they are uninteresting. This is why it's very very hard to write compellingly about child abuse and sex crimes. The perpetrators aren't all that interesting; they're just ugly souls I don't want to spend much time with. 

It tells you something that a lot of people thought Omar the rip and run artist was the most interesting character on The Wire; that Satan is more interesting than Christ in Milton's Paradises Lost and Found.

What makes both Omar and Satan interesting is the choices they make. We have sympathy for them. We see their flaws. We know they're doing the wrong thing, but we see why they are doing it.


DISMEMBRISTS is a 95,000 word adult thriller exploring themes of trauma, vulnerability, friendship, betrayal, sacrifice, and love.

Mentioning themes in a query is not the way to go. Tell me about the story.

This is my first novel, though I've spent 20+ years conceiving and writing advertising. After reading so many accounts of campus and military sexual assault, I had to write a response. This is it, in time for the #MeToo movement.

Even if I sold this book tomorrow, it wouldn't be on the shelves for another 12-18 months. Don't put anything in your query that will make me think it's going to be outdated any time soon. And sorry to say, what's of interest to people in social media today doesn't always last. Do I hope we continue to talk about sexual violence? Damn straight I do. But don't bet your query on it.


Thank you for your time and consideration.



1) This novel has a lot of action, but it's about the complications and mounting tension in the main character's life. You mention a thriller has larger stakes than one person's life, so how would you categorize this? Suspense?

Suspense novels have an uncertain outcome. Generally in a thriller we know Our Hero will prevail, we just don't know how, or at what cost. In suspense novels we're not so sure of the outcome. This is neither a thriller nor a novel of suspense. It's a crime novel.

2) The book has 3 acts with tension and stakes building. This query is about the final conflict. Is that okay?

No. You want to tell me about what happens in the first act. If you're querying with what happens at the end of the book, it's sign that you don't have enough plot or enough at stake. 

3) I feel the current title would grab attention, but is it a bad idea to tip my hand? Other titles I've considered include DISARMING THE BEASTS, and PREDATOR'S TITHE.

Don't worry about the title. But yes, the one you have makes the book sound like a horror novel. That said, I don't even consider the title when I'm looking at a query. This isn't even close to the terrible titles that actual clients have chosen for their mss (yes, they got changed!)

4) While the protagonist is a woman, I don't consider this is chick lit. Cassie is an emotionally damaged, socially awkward Jason Bourne with a medical degree. Should I query chick lit agents or stick to thriller/suspense (or however you categorize this?)

This literally made me laugh out loud. You don't know what chick lit is do you? It's ok if you don't, it's a term that has to be learned like everything else. It's not a character flaw to not know everything. But chick lit is a term for  girl comes to city for job, finds love, battles love and bad boyfriends. In other words, books where the main character is the polar opposite of Jason Bourne.

Before you query anyone I'd suggest revising both the query and making sure the novel has enough plot, and three dimensional characters. I think you've got a problem there that this query illuminates.