Query critique 5/27/21

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 5/27/21

Post by Nathan Bransford » May 24th, 2021, 1:08 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.

Dear (agent's name),

Fifteen-year-old Georgia is a dead ringer for Twiggy, and is obsessed with pyramids, and with Ben, intern in the special ed class – even though her moronic fascination with him makes her a complete hippopotamus. She doesn’t speak, but she writes letters to her dead mother and is drawn to the drama of the hurricanes passing through her home with her Aunt Bridger and Uncle Joey in 1967 coastal Maine. Maybe it’s because she survived a tornado when she was just an infant. Maybe the roar of the storm, the hum, makes up for the lasting silence inhabiting her.

Georgia’s quiet, snarky, genius mind renders her an anomaly in the center of a provincial existence - a riddle her school guidance counselors try to solve. Bridger and Joey struggle to maintain a connection with her while battling their own personal loss of a child and failing marriage, when a well-hidden secret about Georgia’s mother is revealed unexpectedly - and Georgia is forced to forgive the truth about her past, realizing there is extraordinary in the mundane. The essence of the daily, the pull on your sneakers and run outside. The grip of your fingers on a rake. The sliver of a moon behind the shadow of your hand.

I am seeking representation for my completed 75,000-word novel, AND THAT DIVINE EYE. I am a graduate of the MFA program in Writing with a concentration in Fiction at the University of New Hampshire. I won the Dawkins Prize for best overall thesis at the University of New Hampshire for my short story collection. I am a member of the New Hampshire Writers' Project.

My work has been published in Epiphany, The Good Life Review, and Ginosko Literary Magazine. I was included in a pulp fiction anthology entitled "Murder Ink 3: Even More Tales of Newsroom Crime.” I’ve recently completed two novels and a poetry collection.

AND THAT DIVINE EYE would probably be shelved with books by authors such as Liane Moriarty, Maria Semple, and Jennifer Egan.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best,

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