Reply To: Query Letter Help

[Glenn Rosado]

Hi Terry! I must say this story sounds epic! Always loved the idea of minds being hacked.

As for the query, I think this is a good start. But I think it can be improved by cutting out some words and keeping the focus on the main character and the antagonist. Rule of thumb with queries is to keep it to one page or less. I’ll provide feedback on a line by line basis to make it easy.

In my science fiction thriller, Varanasi, colonists aboard a generation ship are nearing their destination. But they don’t know that a cache of digitized humans intends to overwrite the colonists’ minds with immortal mindware salvaged from old Earth.. Agents want to get right into the story. A summary at the start of the query letter will almost certainly result in a pass. Best to start the query with the next paragraph.

Seraph Stone, the lead agricultural officer aboard the generation ship Vera Rubin (Italicize ship names), harbors a secret fear of their impending arrival at Varanasi. Seraph has received a message from one of the members of the launch crew, a scientist who has been dead for over two centuries. The message warns of a mysterious genetic mutation that was purposely introduced among the first generation of colonists. Further instructions about the nature of the mutation and its purpose are contained in an encrypted journal hidden aboard the ship. This is a strong hook, definitely want to start off with this paragraph.

After finding the journal, Seraph must contact the only person who can decrypt it. Camber Maypole is a digitized M.D. who resides on Varanasi’s surface. Maypole is part of a large population of bodiless minds who are preparing for the arrival of the ship. (We don’t need to know Maypole’s life story. Just how she helps Seraph in tackling her goal. I suggest rewriting this paragraph to keep the focus on Seraph.) But these minds are beginning to deteriorate from the effects of data decay. Seraph distrusts Maypole, seeing her as nothing more than AI, but he is forced to form an uneasy alliance with her in order to understand the nature of the threat that awaits them on the planet’s surface. Together, they uncover a plot that was centuries in the making. (I like!)

Before the ship launched, a cognitive scientist named Tanbo Khando created an artificial chromosome that would enable the digital-to-biological interface needed to overwrite one consciousness with another. Khando intends to replace the minds of the affected colonists with the mindware of wealthy elites who are seeking to defeat data decay. With eight percent of the ship affected, Seraph is faced with trying to save his wife and daughter who both carry the mutation.

Unable to override the ship’s navigation, they enter Varanasi’s orbit, and the battle for the lives of the affected colonists begins.

At 95,000 words, Varanasi (Put title of ms in all caps) has elements of the scientific suspense and worldbuilding found in The Expanse series, Altered Carbon, and The Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red.) (Titles of comparative works need to be in all caps. Also, these are three highly successful franchises. Agents tend to roll their eyes at such comparisons. Better to keep one well-known title and use one or two lesser known titles.)

I am a winner of Writers of the Future and the Hollywood Film Festival Screenwriting Award. My fantasy series, Three Wells of the Sea, is published by Digital Fiction Publishing, and my short stories have appeared in several anthologies and online magazines under my pen name, Terry Madden. I am a member of SFWA, Kevin J. Anderson’s Superstars, and Codex Writers.