Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I'm interested in swapping queries, if that's ok. I've got a YA detective fiction with magical realism.

15-year-old Alice Dale wants his family back together, the love of a girl named Dan, and his best friend alive. Unfortunately Alice’s sister is in an insane asylum, his dad is a drug-addict, his mother his mother what? and the girl of his dreams hardly notices him and his best friend died in a drug ...

Protagonist, Jack Brewer, is a contractor and recovering alcoholic living in a quirky little town in the Florida Keys. He is a member of the Sober In Paradise (SIP Group) of Alcoholics Anonymous. He has twelve-years of continuous sobriety and remains zealous to give back to the program that saved h...

Dear NKK, The First thing I'm seeing is punctuation--I'm seeing a lot of commas that feel unnecessary. Next thing is: what's a veena? Is Aranyanagari the place or the name of the population? Or is it like Maya, both the name of the people and their world--so to speak? If the name of the people is Ki...

Dear [Agent], My name is Clio, I’m a debut author with teetering pile of To Be Read books and a day job that prevents me from devouring them. I found your name on the Manuscript Wishlist and saw that you enjoy locked room mysteries. I would like to submit for your consideration Death Sight, a YA Sci...

Dear [Agent], The day the Flemings adopted Nicholas was the happiest day of his young life. Until he met Lorelei. With flaming red hair and a gap between her teeth, Lorelei was the most fearless girl Nicholas had ever met. After bonding over mutual sun allergies, Nicholas and Lorelei become insepara...

It was Helen’s fault. That’s what they all said. If Helen hadn’t eloped with Paris, her husband never would have called upon his brother, Agamemnon. If Agamemnon hadn’t thus been obligated to retrieve his brother’s wayward wife, he never would have sent a thousand ships across the sea to Troy. If he...

Ok, to be honest, this isn't technically a query, but I wasn't sure where else to ask. I am in the process of finishing and polishing my current work and am now starting to brainstorm queries; however, I have hit a snag, the genre is eluding me. It is about vampires, but only tangentially, so might ...

Ok. You are all over the place here. When you rewrite, which I think you should, these are my thoughts. These are the elements that I see could be interesting. But I don't know enough about your story to really say. In the first paragraph: After a wildfire starts and everything around her is on fire...

Hi, thank you for the time you took to respond. I've read through the post and must say that the book I'm trying to query is not nonfiction, it's historical/mythological fiction. I'm new in the field so I don't have any famous author reviews of previous books or any New York Times Best Seller listed...

I'm looking at querying a publisher directly and they ask for any "Marketing Information". Does anybody have any idea what this means?

Thanks

Clio

JT Shea, can I ask why you prefer the other version? (Just as an FWI, this version has been reworked slightly, posted below.) NEW: It was Helen’s fault. That’s what they all said. If Helen hadn’t eloped with Paris, her husband never would have called upon his brother, Agamemnon. If Agamemnon hadn’t ...

It was Helen’s fault. That’s what they all said. If Helen hadn’t eloped with Paris, Menelaos never would have called upon his brother Agamemnon to fulfill his pledge. If Agamemnon hadn’t been obligated to retrieve his brother’s wayward wife, he never would have sent a thousand ships across the sea. ...

There should be a paragraph break between the last sentence of the query "Disadvantage" and the first sentence of your descriptor "This (word count)". What's the title of the work? What's the Genre? What's the word count? Don't tell what the novel depicts, the query should have d...

Hi, I'm also new here! Your query was the most recent one on the forum so I thought I'd pop in. First things first, I think "Fiercely independent criminal" is good! It's different. Attention getting. Now, your second sentence doesn't really work. How does he know why they are after him? Wh...