I think phrases like “to live life on his own terms” and “struggling to cope with life in the aftermath” are a little too generic and sound like a high school book report.

And I agree with Jane, the last part makes it seem a bit too complicated.

Good luck!

As for the blurb – I’m interested but, really, it sounds like too much going on and not enough space to take care of it. Give me one or two issues and I can see it. Add in the multiple careers for each all at the same time and I’m a bit lost about what’s important to the main story and what’s not.

In addition – I have to agree that the bootlegger subplot sounds a bit hokey/contrived.

The last bit (not to mention the shellshock Jack’s dealing with and the grief he isn’t.) sounds awesome and keeps me interested in following up on this one.

I would be interested in a m/m romance set in that time and place, but I’m not sure about all the elements cluttering the story.

I think that’s why cover blurbs have so few plot details, lol. But isn’t the purpose of the query different, and therefore the amount of detail an author must provide (more summary, for example)? But with both you still have to “hook” your identified audience, be that reader, agent, or publisher.

I have been a lurker for several weeks and have decided to come out of the shadows for “query Saturday.” It’s a great idea, and maybe I’ll get up the guts to submit one myself. I have read many times that a writer has to develop a thick skin–and this would start one! I love the site and have learned so much here already. Thanks to all!

but that doesn’t mean I felt that the query itself was coherent in terms of creating a cogent flow of plot, character, and conflict. I think the author could recast that query with a lot of the original detail in a way that sounds much more compelling.

Agreed.

I buy romance for the emotional journey, so the busy plot wouldn’t sell the book to me.

I like a well-developed, even complex, plot, but I have to be hooked by the way the plot is presented. For an author, I can imagine it must be a difficult balance making their ms appear novel enough to get noticed but genre enough to appeal to a wide audience. I mean, let’s face it: if you reduced most Romances down to their emotional journeys, there would be very few differentiations between books. But on the other hand, too much plotting detail can bury the emotional aspect or sound a bit kitchen sink-y. I like that the author here has a number of quirky plot details — count me as someone who liked the novelty shop aspect, for example — but that doesn’t mean I felt that the query itself was coherent in terms of creating a cogent flow of plot, character, and conflict. I think the author could recast that query with a lot of the original detail in a way that sounds much more compelling.

I buy romance for the emotional journey, so the busy plot wouldn’t sell the book to me. Tumperkin’s synopsis would sell me the book (though I’d wince at the phrase ‘passion flares’ which I’d interpret as ‘too many sex scenes’).

But, regarding this book, I’m not getting a strong sense of the central love story, much less the degree of its emotional punch. It sounds busy-busy-busy: too many seemingly extraneous plot elements and characters. In addition, I rarely if ever make book-buying decisions based on blurbs alone. I need to read an excerpt, get a sense of the author’s prose style, before I’ll bite…if I do.

Nice, though, to see this seldomly explored historical period as a background.

115k is considered long for new writers in the NY romance market, so in the very first paragraph there are three red flags for the editor—word count, gay romance and WWI. Add in an unknown author and it adds up to highly unmarketable.

If it’s lit fiction or epublishing, then it’s a different story.

For my money, the real story is Sutton and Jack’s attempt to build a relationship within the society and culture of their time; their war experiences would provide emotional depth, and Jack’s attempts to save his parents’ legacy add to that. The old-boyfriend plot seems unnecessary and sounds too much like an element from a contemporary romance. I think the conflicts in this story should be mostly internal (between Jack and Sutton and within themselves) instead of external (old boyfriends, bootleggers, back-stabbing friends).

But there’s definitely something worthwhile here, for my money. I’d be much more inclined to read it if the plot were streamlined a bit.

Complicating matters are old boyfriends, a back-stabbing childhood pal, and a bootlegger who’d like to turn Jack’s shop into a nightclub—not to mention the shellshock Jack’s dealing with and the grief he isn’t.

This is where the query began to take shape for me, and it’s the last sentence. I liked Tumperkin’s distillation paragraph because it provided a lot of conflict and emotion in a few sentences. In the query, though, the last clause is really the meat of things for me, and it’s introduced with what seems almost a throwaway phrase. Maybe starting with that last paragraph first, revising that and writing from there might push the conflict more directly.

OTOH, I love the time period and the m/m aspect. They didn’t call WWI “The Great War” because it was a fabulous time, and I can imagine all sorts of riveting emotional and social issues these two would have to deal with in the aftermath of such a brutal war.