Query critique 4/7/22

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 4/7/22

Post by Nathan Bransford » April 4th, 2022, 10:43 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 [xxxx],

I am sending you this query because [xxxx]

“When a college freshman falls in love with a classmate who was sexually abused, their secrets threaten to destroy everything that means anything to them.”

Eighteen-year-old Dave Carmichael is a golden boy who aspires to pastor the biggest church in his denomination but has a habit of stealing porn. Leah Kline has her mother’s compassion and her father’s self-righteousness, but longs to escape from their abusively fundamentalist home. When they meet at a southern Californian Bible college in 1982, their secrets threaten to derail all their dreams.

SINS OF THE FATHERS is a contemporary novel that tells the story of Dave and Leah, through their own POV’s, as they struggle against everything from Leah’s sexual abuse to Dave having possibly knocked up his dad’s girlfriend. It is Tara Westover’s memoir EDUCATED meets Nancy Pearl’s GEORGE & LIZZIE, with hints of Rainbow Rowell’s FANGIRL. There’s a touch of neurodiversity via Dave’s undiagnosed dyslexia (based on my own experiences) and Leah’s sister with Down syndrome. SINS OF THE FATHERS is complete at 107,000 words.

Like Jojo Moyes’ ME BEFORE YOU (in the series of the same name), SINS OF THE FATHERS is a standalone novel, but also the first in a planned trilogy following Dave and Leah through falling in love, marriage, infertility, infidelity, desertion, and falling in love again after twenty-five years.

I’m a former pastor turned bartender turned full-time ghostwriter. I have one traditionally published book (RADICALLY NORMAL, Harvest House 2014) that saw modest sales and translation into German. Since then, I’ve ghostwritten nine more books and have two in process. I live in northwest Washington with my wife and two daughters.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Josh Kelley

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