Query Letter / DANCING WITH FATE (Analysis)
Dear Mr. Laghi,
As a member of Urbis.com I would like to thank you for the opportunity to submit Dancing With Fate. The genre is commercial literary/women’s literature, with a word count of 121,327.
This is the story of Sandra Barton’s perseverance, after the aspiring seventeen-year old ballerina was kidnapped by people she thought were friends and a vicious pedophile nearly beat her to death. Sandra's triumph over her fragile mental state and fate's cruel challenges, creates a heartwarming story of life on the edge. After years of turmoil, she finally has a normal existence with a loving husband, a child and a budding career, when her sister has a shocking encounter with one of the kidnappers, who was never caught. Driven by a need for retribution, Sandra and her former ballet coach plot to hire a killer to even the score.
Per guidelines, the first chapter follows.
Sincerely,
MORGAN ST. JAMES
CHAPTER 1 A door slamming makes one jump, but it doesn't make one afraid. What one fears is the serpent that crawls underneath it. ~ Collette, Cheri
SANDRA, NOVEMBER, 1956.
Don’t want to get up.
Every day before I get out of bed, I wonder why I bother to go on. I hate my life.
This morning images race through my mind like the pictures in one of those flip books—the kind that look like a movie when you flick the pages. I’m so cold, I want to pull the covers up to my chin and never open my eyes again.
What? Can’t move.
My heart hammers as the images speed up. Flip. Flip. Flip. I see Wilbur, the goldfish I had when I was only five. I used to scoop him out of the water, watch him flop wildly in my hand, and think we were playing. I didn’t know he couldn’t breathe. Icy sweat drenches the sheet covering me.
Hurts. Can’t breathe. Arms, legs. Move, move. Paralyzed? Please God, not like Trudy. Polio.
Relax. Breathe. Nightmare.
Mama? Work early? Breathe. Breathe.
Judy? Still here? Don’t know. Stupid. Shout.
I try to cry out, but words won’t form. My tongue slides around something wedged in my mouth, while hot tears well in my eyes.
Concentrate!
I stare at bits of dust clinging to a leafy design on the plaster ceiling, and think they look like furry caterpillars ready to spin cocoons.
Flip. Flip. Flip.
Not my ceiling. Not my room!
<<<>>>
A sound like door hinges that need to be oiled breaks the silence.
Footsteps.
Gardenias. Stale tobacco.
Someone is in the room. My heart pounds faster than Gene Kelly doing a tap dance. A tall woman stops at the foot of the bed, and stares down at me.
“Well, Sandy, you're awake. Good.” She bends toward me, blond hair spilling over her shoulders like a glistening shawl.
Angie?
The gold flecks in her hazel eyes flash like caution lights. Full lips, painted brilliant scarlet, draw into a sneer. “You look scared to death, you little idiot. Well, good. I want you to be afraid.”
Her long fingers stroke my hair, playing with the black waves. She cups my chin in a vise-like grip. “You know, you’re awfully naïve for a seventeen-year-old.” She straightens and a nasty smile scoots across her face. “Remember you said the Coke tasted funny at lunch yesterday? There’s no harm in telling you now.” She snickers. “I slipped something into it to knock you out. Honey, you lost your cherry last night.”
Tears snake down my cheeks. Cherry?
Angie digs her fingers into my shoulders and shakes me. “Stop that damn crying. Look, you better do exactly as I say or…” She juggles the tray in her right hand and puts it on the dresser. “I brought you some toast and juice.”
Her eyes flash. “Cut it out, hear me Sandy? Damn you, quit wiggling! If you calm down, I’ll take that thing out of your mouth for awhile.” Her fingers trail along my cheek, stopping at the fabric. She unties the knot, and it falls away.
My mouth feels like it’s full of cotton balls, but I manage to plead in a raspy voice, “Angie, get me out of here, please. I want to go home.”
Silence.
The pain between my legs is terrible. It hurts more than the time I fell on the edge of a wooden milk crate in kindergarten and the doctor told my mother I had a bruised vagina.
“Angie?” My voice rises higher. “What’s going on?”
She stares at me without a word, eyes frigid as the winter winds off Lake Michigan.
“An- Angie, you’re frightening me.”
She moves her face close to mine, releasing hot puffs of breath against my cheek. “You’re a real pain in the ass, Pavlova. Quit bawling and drink the damn juice. Want to know why you’re here? Because Danny Boy and I kidnapped you, that’s why.”
<<<>>>
A distant voice says, “That horny old goat is going to love our sweet little ballerina.” A goofy hee-haw laugh follows, and I realize it’s Angie’s boyfriend, Danny.
“I told you, Ange, the cops will think she ran away.”
“Let’s just hope that’s how it goes, Danny Boy!”
Her face is fuzzy again, like it’s covered with a piece of chiffon.
I wander through the fog of my memory, picturing the horrible fight Mama and I had last November. That’s when I finally knew she would never sign the contract offered to me by the New York City Ballet. It wasn’t just my dream that died that day. Everything in me died.. Now, I’m a body without a soul.
Every day after school, I walk to the bus stop on Clark Street like I used to, take the bus to the Kasarvina Academy on Howard, and watch the other dancers. I don’t dance. Not anymore.
That’s where I met Danny and Angie. He plays piano at the Academy. The first time I saw him, I was sitting on my chair in the corner, like I always do, watching the others. He winked and said, “Hey, gorgeous, how about a smile for the new piano player?”
It was one of the days I felt like a robot. I’m like that most days now. On others, all I want to do is cry. Danny teases me about having the saddest eyes he’s ever seen, but he never gets a rise out of me.
My eyes dart around the room frantically. Where am I? My heart pounds. I don’t think the walking dead are supposed to care about anything, so I try not to be afraid. It doesn’t work. I’m terrified.
Tiny blood red specks blink furiously on the dark blanket inside my head. They grow larger and larger, until everything turns pitch black.
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The one aspect of your submission that struck me as odd was putting your biography at the end. I was happily getting involved in the first chapter when all of a sudden the biog came along and I wasn’t sure whether it was part of the story or not. I feel it may be better placed before the excerpt to avoid confusing other small brained mammals such as myself! I have read the guidelines and I can’t see the requirement to place a biog anywhere, it just asks for a query letter and synopsis and first chapter.
The use of ‘just completed’ in the first sentence is, for those of us on the eastern shores of the Atlantic, grammatically dubious and ruined the flow of probably the most important line of the submission. Paedophile has an A in it otherwise it is someone with a foot fetish.
After saying all that I was there with Sandra bound and gagged and wanting to read more.
Best of luck.
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What the query letter lacks is a strong hook in the beginning. Without a hook, a reader will not feel compelled to read the story.
What’s also important is to mention how many words the story is.
Your bio should be included in the query letter itself and everything from your writing credits/history, what’s your target audience and what makes you more qualified to write this story than the next person.
My main problem with the story is the dialogue. There’s so many quotation marks with few tags, I don’t know who’s talking most of the time. Secondly, a lot of paragraphs should be joined as one. Unless these aspects are corrected it could distract any reader enough to want to put it down, even though this may be a great story.
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