Query critique 1/21/21

Offer up your page (or query) for Nathan's critique on the blog.
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Nathan Bransford
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Query critique 1/21/21

Post by Nathan Bransford » January 18th, 2021, 12:42 pm

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 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.

Fishbelly White, my mystery (with a romance) complete at 90,000 words, would sit on the bookshelf with Hallie Ephron, and Charlaine Harris’ Aurora Teagarden series. It is Jessica Fletcher meets The Turner Diaries.

Claudia Perry, 50ish, myopic, asthmatic, zaftig, stubborn and full of gumption is a successful freelance travel writer. Recently widowed, she longs to be a part of a family, though thoroughly dislikes the one she has. It is summer 1995 when she returns to her hometown of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho to reconcile her relationship with Betti, her size 4 widowed mother, and her sycophant younger brother, Artie. She feels guilt at the stirrings of new emotions as she renews her friendship with her old high school crush, now sheriff, Frank Adams. When he arrests Artie on charges of murder and counterfeiting for white supremacists, she, too, is convinced of her brother’s guilt. Betti pleads with her to prove him innocent. Claudia dives into his world of the evangelical alt-right, taking with her, Phyllis Corlett, her best friend from childhood. When she confides their discoveries to her late father’s law partner, “Uncle” George Kapell and to the sheriff, she learns one of them is a member of the white supremacist, “Sovereign Nations.”

I have been given access to materials taken from the former Aryan Nations headquarters gathered by undercover Kootenai County (Idaho) sheriff’s deputies. Fishbelly was inspired by true events involving counterfeit operations in North Idaho and the Western states that white supremacists used to finance their activities.

A native of Coeur d’Alene, my weekly by-lined column ran in the San Mateo Times for thirteen years and I continue to freelance with travel writing. A former faculty member of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, I am a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, the Historical Novel Society of North America and Willamette Writers.

This book is a stand-alone with series potential. I have pasted the first ten pages below.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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