CREATURES OF TIME: Adult Historical Fantasy

I'm feeling like you might be starting too early (I don't know if this is true of the book, but it feels that way with the query.) For some structuring ideas you might want to get a look at Michelle Hauck's blog. www.michelle4laughs.com/2018/04/building-blocks-of-query-letter.html



Think: P1: Setup (motivation + obstacle)

          P2: Escalation (%#$@ gets real)

          P3: Stakes (possible outcomes: bonus if its actually a dilemma)





You want to drop the agent into the inciting event in the first paragraph, but you also don't want her to feel like this stuff is coming at us out of nowhere. Get us from A to B to C. How does the Sphinx come into play? Why is the map on the back of a painting? Why does the Sphinx care about the tree of life? Should Maddie have known this stuff about grandma? (Luckily, you have another 100-150 words to play with here, so plenty of room to deepen this.) You know the details, so you know what would be most salient and interesting.



I love the idea that grandma was an art thief of serious proportions (museums are not easy targets), and I want to know more about that. (You don't have to tell me more in the query, I'm just saying this is a great detail).



The last paragraph reads more like a very short synopsis rather than the presentation of stakes.



Sometimes its just really hard to see the right direction for a query because you're so close to the novel, and everything feels important. I don't usually do this, but I know you outside of QK, so maybe you'll forgive the hubris. I'm going to try to rewrite it (cue the minor chord). Since I don't yet know your novel, I might have to make some stuff up





Though it's been decades since Nana's death, Madeline hopes attending the same college will put her on the other side of all the fascinating stories. The first day doesn't disappoint. She comes to the terrifying conclusion that the stories were neither metaphor nor hyperbole when a monstrous Greek Sphinx interrupts the lecture, pointing a razor sharp claw at Maddie, and demands she return what was stolen.



Prompted by fear, she and a group of friends step into a whole world Maddie didn't know existed, a world of secrets societies and a dark family legacy of immortality, [this phrase is a struggle for me--I don't understand how the ideas relate, particularly since her grandmother is, reportedly, dead. I repeated it partially so I could talk about it] a world where nana turns out to be a big time art thief. One stolen painting, a secret map, is missing from Grandma's collection, but the Sphinx isn't in a forgiving mood.



As word of death and destruction mounts, Maddie and her new friends race the clock to follow letters, journals, and first hand accounts, only to discover that they are at the epicenter of an ancient feud between the immortals. If Maddie doesn't figure out how to finish what her grandmother started fifty years ago, the (big bad thing will happen. I'm not sure that the generic "chaos and death" is sufficient, and I can't think of anything specific without resorting to being silly--just my nature I suppose. But you have to have stakes, and all they did in your last paragraph was discover they were in the middle of something.)







Okay, sorry for my presumption that feedback like this might be of use. Take the structure of what I wrote. Replace my weak, made up stuff, with your accurate good stuff, include the stakes and the end, see what happens. I know the end of the world is the stakes, but you need greater specificity, and it should be what the whole query builds toward.



And certainly flesh the query out with more juicy specifics that bring the idea to life (like grandma the art thief!).