Queryitis: Chronic Condition
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelYep, the query is back again. I'm calling it version 3, though really it's more like 3.49785. It's definitely better; the question is, is it better enough? You tell me.
Elle Davis and her fourteen-year-old daughter Haley have been on the run for two years. Elle's old boss, Eichmeyer, is developing a training program to create the perfect agent, and he thinks Haley is the ideal test subject to overcome his previous failures. Elle has seen some of those failures, and there's no way she's letting him get his hands on her daughter. To make matters worse, Elle's husband, James, is also Eichmeyer's right-hand man, and he sees nothing wrong with their daughter joining the family business. Which means that Elle and Haley have to be on the run from him as much as from Eichmeyer.
An old friend and fellow agent offers them a safe-house, but there's a price: he wants to use Haley as a stalking goat to bring Eichmeyer down. Elle refuses, of course. But Haley is fed up with waiting for the adults to solve the situation, so she puts the plan into action by turning herself in. Elle has no choice but to follow, effectively placing herself under house arrest while simultaneously trying to shield Haley from Eichmeyer's brainwashing and trying to bring him down from the inside. But Eichmeyer's people are too good to let anything important slip, the only systems she can access are isolated from the main network, and the one secret file she manages to lay hands on contains just enough to whet her appetite and stir up old ghosts. She even, though lying to the man she loves turns her stomach, tries to get information out of James. Finally she has to admit that her only choice is the last thing she ever wanted to do: run Haley as an asset within Eichmeyer's organization, plunging her headfirst into the same training program that's destroyed other promising young agents. And Elle herself has to train her daughter in the kind of intelligence work that places her in harm's way.
Haley retrieves some clues, and Elle begins to piece together a record of crossed lines and dirty deals that may, eventually, give her the leverage she needs. But Eichmeyer's no fool; he knows he has a leak. And people who betray Eichmeyer have a tendency to end up dead. Elle must risk everything, including her daughter, in a last-ditch break-in that will expose Eichmeyer's secrets -- or expose Elle and Haley both.
HIGHWAY OF MIRRORS is an espionage novel, complete at 80,000 words. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Obligatory note: I welcome constructive criticism. That does not have to be exclusively positive. However, if you don't like the genre and are determined to dis any example of it, or if your idea of feedback includes drive-by sniping that's more about stoking your ego than improving the work, feel free to move along without commenting.
Elle Davis and her fourteen-year-old daughter Haley have been on the run for two years. Elle's old boss, Eichmeyer, is developing a training program to create the perfect agent, and he thinks Haley is the ideal test subject to overcome his previous failures. Elle has seen some of those failures, and there's no way she's letting him get his hands on her daughter. To make matters worse, Elle's husband, James, is also Eichmeyer's right-hand man, and he sees nothing wrong with their daughter joining the family business. Which means that Elle and Haley have to be on the run from him as much as from Eichmeyer.
An old friend and fellow agent offers them a safe-house, but there's a price: he wants to use Haley as a stalking goat to bring Eichmeyer down. Elle refuses, of course. But Haley is fed up with waiting for the adults to solve the situation, so she puts the plan into action by turning herself in. Elle has no choice but to follow, effectively placing herself under house arrest while simultaneously trying to shield Haley from Eichmeyer's brainwashing and trying to bring him down from the inside. But Eichmeyer's people are too good to let anything important slip, the only systems she can access are isolated from the main network, and the one secret file she manages to lay hands on contains just enough to whet her appetite and stir up old ghosts. She even, though lying to the man she loves turns her stomach, tries to get information out of James. Finally she has to admit that her only choice is the last thing she ever wanted to do: run Haley as an asset within Eichmeyer's organization, plunging her headfirst into the same training program that's destroyed other promising young agents. And Elle herself has to train her daughter in the kind of intelligence work that places her in harm's way.
Haley retrieves some clues, and Elle begins to piece together a record of crossed lines and dirty deals that may, eventually, give her the leverage she needs. But Eichmeyer's no fool; he knows he has a leak. And people who betray Eichmeyer have a tendency to end up dead. Elle must risk everything, including her daughter, in a last-ditch break-in that will expose Eichmeyer's secrets -- or expose Elle and Haley both.
HIGHWAY OF MIRRORS is an espionage novel, complete at 80,000 words. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Obligatory note: I welcome constructive criticism. That does not have to be exclusively positive. However, if you don't like the genre and are determined to dis any example of it, or if your idea of feedback includes drive-by sniping that's more about stoking your ego than improving the work, feel free to move along without commenting.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-Aug-01, Wednesday 11:56 pm (UTC)It seemed a bit clinical overall. Like you were concentrating so hard on being precise and detailed that you'd lost a bit of the emotion and personality.
I didn't know that "bringing him down from the inside" meant "piecing together a record of crossed lines and dirty deals" until much later in the query, so the "the only systems she can access, and the one secret file she can steal" felt like it came from left field because I didn't know what it had to do with a training program. And since I didn't really understand what she was trying to do, I couldn't respond properly to it failing.
Also, I had no idea what "whet her appetite and stir up old ghosts" was supposed all about, because I had no clue what she was searching for until much later in the query.
The other thing that felt like it came out of nowhere was the reference to James as "the man she loves", because just because she married him doesn't mean she still loves him... she's been on the run from him and all that. Besides we're told that the reason for Elle to not wanting Haley to get involved is because she's seen the previous failures of this training program. And James didn't? It was bad enough to send the mother on the lam, but the father didn't blink? Er? So I'd assumed that James wasn't exactly a prize, and it seemed odd that she would find lying to him so difficult.
When we finally learned that there was a lot more wrong with Eichmeyer than an unsuccessful training program, A lot of what you had said earlier that never really clicked seemed to fall into place, and I had a grumpy "well why didn't you tell me in the first place?" sort of reaction.
And finally, the old friend offering a safe house angle seems to get lost in the rest of the query, especially since neither the friend nor the safe house is ever mentioned again. The connection between a safe house and a plan that apparently involves having Haley going back to Eichmeyer seems a bit tenuous also.
And, um, in conclusion, I suspect that the flow of the story would be better with a tiny little reordering...
When a former colleague offers, ex-secret agent Elle Davis a safe-house she thinks that, at last, after two years of running, she and her fouteen-year-old daugther Haley can rest. Then she learns that her friend only offered because he thinks Haley could be used as a stalking-goat to bring down the man Elle has been running from. Her agency boss, Eichmeyer, wants Haley for his somewhat dubious agent training program, but Elle doesn't trust him because (and here we learn something about whatever that "old ghost" was and that Eichmeyer is guilty of more than just training innocent young would-be agents badly?). Unfortunately Elle had never had enough evidence of Eichmeyer's (crimes? evilness?) even to convince her own husband, James, who still works as Eichmeyer's right hand man. (Which establishes James as a non-evil, just duped.) Elle wants to (bring Eichmeyer to justice? Stop him from XXX?), but not if it means risking Haley.
If Elle didn't have any reason to think that there was evidence to be found against Eichmeyer for something (and something not too vague, hopefully), then I assume the friend was after it, and that you can phrase that information as coming from him. (Although in that case I'm still bewildered at how mom can be going "run for the hills!" while dad's still saying "join the family business".) Once we know that the point of Haley going back is to uncover evidence of secret malfeasance, THEN we're set for Haley deciding that nobody is going to solve anything if she doesn't give them a push.
So she forces her mother to confront Eichmeyer by turning herself over to him. Elle now has no choice to go back with her and somehow find the evidence of dirty deals and lines being crossed that she is certain exists, so she can convict Eichmeyer (or get him fired or whatever) before Haley succumbs to his brainwashing (and/or gets killed on a mission?). But Eichmeyer doesn't trust Elle, she's essentially under house arrest,
...and this time when we get to the failed attempts to find evidence, it can whet appetites and stir up old ghosts, and we'll know what that's about. See? Then you can get on to...
...The only way Elle can free Haley from Eichmeyer, is to use her as a double agent. Deliberately placing her in the very danger she had run away to protect her from, in order to gain the evidence she needs... Etc, etc.
I think. Maybe. Your mileage may vary. All advice followed at your own risk, and I don't even play a doctor on TV, and all that.
I hope some of this ends up being useful to you.
PS. FWIW. A writer friend of my acquaintance reported to me that the number of positive responses she received went up when she started placing the line with the title, genre and wordage at the beginning of her queries instead of the end.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-Aug-02, Thursday 09:25 pm (UTC)So, want to send your query my way?