Query critique 3/24/22

Offer up your page (or query) for Nathan's critique on the blog.
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Nathan Bransford
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Joined: December 4th, 2009, 11:17 pm
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Query critique 3/24/22

Post by Nathan Bransford » March 21st, 2022, 11:46 am

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.

Dear (Agent name),

On your website and Manuscript Wish List I saw that you like historical fiction that has a different angle. I've written a historical novel that might make us a good fit.

I like to think that enemies are human, or at least not all of them are monsters. Scattered across the United States during World War II were over 360,000 German prisoners of war. Kept in 150 base camps, and wanting out, they made numerous escape attempts. My 81,000 word story, UNDER THE WIRE, is based on the true event that at Camp Trinidad, Colorado, prisoners escaped through a tunnel. I realize World War II has been largely covered, but this remarkable aspect of German POWs has been largely overlooked.

German prisoner of war officer Captain Martin Beyer has a fear of suffocating when he's enclosed, the prison camp much too confining for him. His distress comes from a traumatic incident during the war in North Africa, and fuels his desperation to escape. To get out, a tunnel is dug from his barracks to beyond the wire fence. Besides having problems avoiding discovery, Beyer is in conflict with the ardent Nazis who rule the camp inside, which their ideology jeopardizes the tunnel completion. But by sheer resolve Beyer manages the escape.

On the outside two women aid the escapees by providing a car in a run for the Mexican border. Traveling through rural New Mexico, they experience the American home front, acquire more food and gas by robbing, get past roadblocks, and shoot down a surveillance plane. In pursuit are camp guards and FBI agents, both with their own need to recapture the prisoners. Captain Beyer, however, despite having trouble eluding them, will not give up. He would rather be killed than go back.

I've had articles and short stories published in magazines, and I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy from a state university. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Gary Behm

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