Query critique 9/28/23

[Nathan Bransford]

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,

PERSONALIZE + I believe you will enjoy The Siren Dialogues, an 85,000 word contemporary literary novel with a twist of magical realism that will appeal to fans of V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, and Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, with a splash of American Mermaid by Julia Langbein.

When Libby Levine is assigned a story on renowned photographer Tanner Bixby, she sees an opportunity to prove her writing chops and win a long-desired promotion. As an added bonus, the photographer has a vacation cabin on the same island as her boyfriend Jasper. But Bixby has a surprise agenda: he’s looking to find the long-lost love of his life he once rescued at the beach—who he claims is a mermaid. Libby dismisses the account until a mysterious, half-conscious woman washes up with the tides. They form an inexplicable bond that challenges what Libby knows about herself, her past decisions, and where her true loyalties lie.

With the arrival of a hurricane, the woman fully awakens and reveals her true nature. And Libby must summon all her power to choose, once and for all, who and what she wants to become and who she’s willing to betray, or run the risk that someone else might choose for her.

An excerpt from The Siren Dialogues was published in Best of The Sand Hill Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Additional stories have been published in the award-winning Fault Zone anthologies, Travelers Tales: Spain, and Fabula Argentea, and won Best of Show in the 2021 San Mateo County Fair Literary Arts competitions. Along with being president, founding anthology editor, and recipient of the Jack London Award for the San Francisco Peninsula branch of the California Writers Club, I have worked as an editor at Macmillan, and on projects for Simon & Schuster, Berkley Books, and others. I hold a BA and MA in English and Creative Writing and have interviewed several bestselling authors for the San Mateo County Libraries and book clubs.

Attached are # OF PAGES per submission guidelines. The full manuscript is ready to send on request. Thank you for your time and consideration.