Query critique 10/13/22

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 10/13/22

Post by Nathan Bransford » October 10th, 2022, 1:06 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.

Dear Agent,

Frankie June, a 12-year-old rock-and-roll enthusiast, loves adventures in the Cantamar forest. She and her best friends Nora and Ben spend every free second collecting treasures in the bramble and etching words in their tree trunk clubhouse. But when Frankie finds out Nora is moving far away, she fears how she and Ben will survive without their rock-of-a-friend who defends them from the school bully, Sammy.

But Sammy is not all Frankie needs to survive after Nora is gone. Frankie’s pack-rat Dad brings home a mysterious thrift store painting of a woman. She resembles the witch who lived in the town hundreds of years before, and she was rumored to disappear children. Frankie soon notices shifts and changes in the painting each time she looks at it. She begins to have nightmares and mysterious etched words begin appearing in the clubhouse. Just when Frankie can’t bear the creepiness any longer, Sammy disappears from Cantamar and appears in the painting in Frankie's house.

Determined to save her bully from death (because she knows that pain all too well after the strange disappearance of her own mother years before), Frankie vows to uncover the mystery of the painting and bring Sammy home. As she and Ben uncover more about the painting, spooky things begin to happen, threatening everything. The rescue. Family. Ben’s life.

THERE'S A WITCH ON MY WALL is a 20,000-word middle grade horror novel, written in verse, for readers who enjoy poetry and the spookier things in life. This book will pique the interest of readers who love the atmospheric horror of Katherine Arden’s SMALL SPACES and the fast-paced verse of Dusti Bowling’s THE CANYON’S EDGE.

I was a mentee in the 2019 SCBWI Nevada Mentorship Program, where I worked on a middle grade prose novel. When I’m not writing, I work as an instructional designer in the corporate sector, chase around my two young children and puppy, and soak up as many writing podcasts as I can.

Thank you for your consideration.

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