Title: DEMON AT MY DOOR
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Sixteen-year-old gothic outcast Natalie Sugarman bartered her soul for her dying mother’s life eleven years ago to a boy demon who could stop time. Now, the lifelines on her palms are slowly vanishing, and she knows it’s just a matter of time before Satan’s little helper returns.
Natalie's learned to keep the soul bargain to herself; after all, blabbing about it in the past has only landed her on a suicide watch which was followed by a string of lame psychiatric appointments. But when the weirdness begins—snakes gathering around her, disappearing beetles—she seeks answers about her dwindling lifelines from a freaky, glowing-eyed fortuneteller. Creeped out by the psychic’s methods, she bolts from the reading and misses the warning that the demon who stole her soul is closer than she thinks.
After some strange incidents with her new boyfriend and a hot levitating make-out session, she realizes he’s the grown-up version of her little nightmare. Natalie must figure out how to win her soul back from the demon before her lifeline completely disappears—even if that means damning five other souls to take her place.
DEMON AT MY DOOR, my YA Urban Fantasy is complete at 52,000 words. The manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your time and consideration.
I'm definitely intrigued with this query, and if I were an agent (sorry, I'm not), I'd be requesting the full. I love the voice and am curious about the 'hot levitating make-out session'. You have my vote.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I question is the part about missing 'the warning that the demon who stole her soul is closer than she thinks'. The query is supposed to be written from your mc's point of view. So she wouldn't know that she missed the warning. However, since I'm not an agent, I could be completely wrong. I just know I've had my wrist slapped in the past for making a similar mistake.
Good luck with it!
Hey!
ReplyDeleteFirst off, awesome premise!
So first paragraph: To me, I love it. I especially love 'Satan's Little Helper'. You've got a great voice here, and I can already tell what your manuscript is gonna be like.
The only advice I can offer is that right after the "glowing-eyed fortuneteller" sentence, the query started to sound a bit like "and this happened and then this happened". I think it might be a good idea to start focusing on the main conflict. "She didn't know that blah blah blah, but now Natalie realizes that blah blah etc." or something. It's like after you provide the set up with the causal events as your tools, you have to start talking about what she's torn between, what she has to face etc. You do that, but I think it might come too late - your causal events "this happens and then this happens" goes on for too long.
Otherwise, this sounds very interesting!
Oh by the way, the "hot levitating make-out session", while it definitely sounds like something I'd like to read, seems out of place in the query. Like it's just thrown in there and I don't know what it's relevance is. I mean I'm assuming it's the new boyfriend who made them levitate, but there's no indication of that, nor is there any indication as to why he'd become her boyfriend if she's her mark. Does he even know who she is? Is he playing her? Maybe that's a part of the conflict you should be mentioning.
All in all great job :D
I love the title and the premise (I even had a flash of a sequel called DEMON IN MY BED, lol). I think your query is very close to perfect, maybe just slight tweaking, but definitely not something that would stop me from reading it if I were an agent (which I'm not).
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
I love the voice in this. It's great and very hooky. Definitely something I would read. The stakes are really high at the end.
ReplyDeleteI might change the first sentence of the last para to have "...boyfriend, including a.." The levitating make-out session could be creepy or cool. I love this possibility.
I think this is a completely solid query. I can tell you've had it kicked-around by a good group of critiquers and it totally shows. I think it's just about perfect and I wish you the best of luck.
ReplyDeleteStrong first paragraph.
ReplyDeleteYour second paragraph is a good example of working in your main character's voice and strong character development details. A few word choices struck me as adult, though: "lame" "weirdness" "freaky" "creeped out". I think you're trying too hard to get the teen voice right, and, as with dialect, less is more. In this case, I recommend fewer teen slang words.
You have room to expand a bit here, and I'd like to get a better sense of the second half of the story, even just one or two more sentences in your third paragraph.
Nice work.