Query critique 10/27/22

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 10/27/22

Post by Nathan Bransford » October 24th, 2022, 2:33 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,

I am seeking representation for Standing Too Close, an 82,000 word contemporary YA novel that will appeal to readers who enjoyed books like The Boy Who Stole Houses by C.G. Drews, Far From the Tree by Robin Bennway, Stick by Andrew Smith or Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz.

Seventeen-year-old Blue Lannigan believes in exactly one thing: his two younger brothers deserve more than the crappy apartment and abusive, drunken mother they’re stuck with. And when he comes home to find one brother bruised and bleeding (again), the other cowering in terror (again) and their mother drunk off her ass, blaming all three of them for her tanked singing career (again), Blue decides waiting until he’s 18 to leave is no longer an option.

Deciding to hole up in an empty house at the lake until Blue can figure out what to do next, things get more complicated when the owner of the house arrives unexpectedly. Especially when Blue realizes the unconscious woman they’ve tied up on the couch isn’t a stranger after all, but someone who could give him just what he’s looking for.

After avoiding reality and playing house, a scene at the grocery store lands him in handcuffs and his brothers with a social worker. Add to that losing his job and being stuck in a group home he hates, and Blue’s sole purpose becomes finding his brothers and getting them out of whatever hellhole they’re in. Blue’s hopes unravel, and betrayal rips his heart in two as he tries to reconcile the role he plays in his brothers’ lives while trying to figure out his own.

Full of forbidden romance and the kind of hurt only family can cause, this book reaches to the heart of anyone who has struggled with abusive parents and foster care while also reminding us that we can walk away from the past we’ve survived even if the present doesn’t look the way we imagined it.

I have published four YA novels with a small press, and my short stories have appeared in Halfway Down The Stairs, A Fly in Amber, Daily Flash Anthology, The Barrier Islands Review, Everyday Fiction, Death Rattle, Kissed Anthology, Just Me Anthology, Drastic Measures, Cutlass & Musket and Residential Aliens, among others. I participate in writing blog Operation Awesome, offering weekly advice for writers as agony aunt O’Abby.

Per your submission guidelines, you will find the first XXX chapters and a synopsis below.

Regards,

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