Query critique 4/30/20

[Nathan Bransford]

Want to see how your editing approach compares to mine?

Below is the query up for critique on the blog on Thursday. Feel free to chime in with comments, create your own redline (please note the "font colour" button above the posting box, which looks like a drop of ink), and otherwise offer feedback. When offering your feedback, please please remember to be polite and constructive. In order to leave a comment you will need to register an account in the Forums, which should be self-explanatory.

I'll be back on Thursday with my own post on the blog and we'll literally be able to compare notes.

If you'd like to enter a query for a future Query Critique, please do so here.

Please consider my 78,000-word YA mystery novel, BUTTERFLY WARS: What Really Happened to Grandmother? This is a retelling of the original Red Riding Hood story and told in three perspectives: The Wolf, The Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood.

This story is set in a small town with queer grotesque Southern characters where superstition creates a werewolf through the imagination of a young girl named Elizabeth Christmas,, also known as Little Red Riding Hood.

Elizabeth Christmas has problems – her grandmother just tried to kill her. When her overactive imagination convinces her that she’s turning into a werewolf this sardonic little girl begins exploring the mystery - before she starts ripping out beating hearts.

Her grandmother is more than an old woman with a sweet smile and horn-rimmed glasses. Little Red thinks she tried to kill her. But, that isn’t all. Her Uncle John becomes less content to measure his life in coffee spoons and becomes more than a watching shadow. He might try to kill her. Of course, her beloved mother cannot be trusted and her best friend might not understand. Both of them could die.

Elizabeth searches for clues in her grandmother’s past uncovering the secret of a werewolf legend dating back to 1945 and tracing it to her blood thirsty grandmother. As she searches, three bodies are found brutally murdered and another attempted murder makes her look like the killer, the girl in the red hood.

This book is similar to books like WICKED by Gregory Mcguire. It's like WICKED because it flip-flops the boxed-in notions we carry about evil. In my story the character of Little Red and the grandmother is questionably evil and in WICKED, the Wicked Witch of the West is good.

BUTTERFLY WARS is a mystery. Please contact me if you would like to read a partial or full manuscript.