Caged Bird

[VaniasNovelNook]

Daughter of a prostitute, young Serena somehow manages to survive the physical and emotional abuse of her mother’s clients, but the resulting damage destroys her childhood and nearly ruins every aspect of her life.

Caged Bird begins in 1976 just outside Detroit with a biracial child who is the product of a young unwed mother. Hillary is disowned by her wealthy family then lured into exotic dancing and prostitution to make ends meet, which eventually leads to her daughter Serena’s physical and mental abuse. Hillary loses custody of Serena, who is later adopted by a loving family.

Now an adult, Serena meets Eli Reed. There is a powerful attraction but her tragic experiences have her terrified about pursuing any kind of intimacy. She cautiously allows the relationship to bloom while still struggling to come to terms with her tumultuous and abusive past. Ultimately, Eli’s marriage proposal forces Serena to evaluate the emotional demons which have continued to haunt her so she returns to therapy hoping to overcome the fears that have controlled her mind since the age of ten. Serena and Eli undergo a great deal of personal pain and sacrifice with their relationship in jeopardy while she battles the tortured childhood and negative experiences that have held her captive in a mental prison for most of her life.

As the mother of two adopted children who suffer from ADHD and Reactive Attachment Disorder, my years of personal experience dealing with these disorders and researching these subjects has given me a unique window through which to create Caged Bird. I started writing in 1998 during my tenure as a travel agent when I published a series of magazine articles on cruise travel. My first effort as a novelist was in 2006 and I have since finished five novels including Caged Bird (132,500 words).

[Tabris]

Hi! Welcome to the forum. You might want to post an introduction in the introduction/greeting/saying-hello section.

Looking over this query, I'm thinking this is going to be a hard sell because it seems like a memoirish novel without much action. It seems based on the query to take place mostly in Serena's head.

The first two paragraphs are backstory, it seems. (Although I can't tell because while the third paragraph begins with "now an adult," implying that's when the story begins, you say in the second paragraph it begins in 1976.)  It also seems that the main action of the story takes place during a series of therapy sessions, which again is going to make the novel sound like a string of conversations plus flashbacks plus thoughts. We don't really have a sense of what are the consequences if Serena drops out of therapy.

I would strike most of the information in the final paragraph. Also, the length is on the very-high-side. If we're in women's fiction, you really want to keep that to between 80K and 100K.

--

I think if I were trying to query this project (and bear in mind, the only things I know are what were in your query already) I would begin with Eli's marriage proposal, and Serena's terrified reaction. Then I'd have him give some kind of ultimatum (she needs to decide by X timeframe, otherwise he enrolls in Americorps) and as a last resort, Serena starts to dig into her abusive past to try reconciling her past with her present in order to create a future.

I'd suggest staying away from vague terms like "tortured childhood and negative experiences" in favor of more specifics. Tortured childhood could mean a child emotionally abused by her mother or a child raped by her father or a child fed and clothed but locked in the attic all the time because her grandmother doesn't want anyone to know she exists. Negative experiences can be anything at all, starting with "My blue marker ran out before I finished coloring the sky."

Good luck.

[LateToTheParty]

Daughter of a prostitute, young Serena somehow manages to survive the physical and emotional abuse of her mother’s clients, but the resulting damage destroys her childhood and nearly ruins every aspect of her life. (As a hook this falls flat. I'd strike it.)

Caged Bird begins in 1976 just outside Detroit with a biracial child who is the product of a young unwed mother. Hillary is disowned by her wealthy family then lured into exotic dancing and prostitution to make ends meet, which eventually leads to her daughter Serena’s physical and mental abuse. Hillary loses custody of Serena, who is later adopted by a loving family. (This is all back story/setup. You want line one to intro your protag/character, short and succinct, then immediately segue into your crisis/inciting moment.)

Now an adult, Serena meets Eli Reed. There is a powerful attraction but her tragic experiences have her terrified about pursuing any kind of intimacy. She cautiously allows the relationship to bloom while still struggling to come to terms with her tumultuous and abusive past. Ultimately, Eli’s marriage proposal forces Serena to evaluate the emotional demons which have continued to haunt her so she returns to therapy hoping to overcome the fears that have controlled her mind since the age of ten. Serena and Eli undergo a great deal of personal pain and sacrifice with their relationship in jeopardy while she battles the tortured childhood and negative experiences that have held her captive in a mental prison for most of her life. (You have conflict here to strip-mine and then condense it down.) Try: Serena NAME has focused her life on school/job/ear wax sculpting, (you choose) to escape the pain and abuse of her past. But when tall-dark-and-peachy Eli Reed breaches her carefully constructed walls, she must find a way to defeat demon she can no longer hide from. As their relationship grows around job/project/pinochle tournament, (yeah I made that last one up) Serena can no longer suppress her feelings, fears or anger from Eli.

As the mother of two adopted children who suffer from ADHD and Reactive Attachment Disorder, my years of personal experience dealing with these disorders and researching these subjects has given me a unique window through which to create Caged Bird. I started writing in 1998 during my tenure as a travel agent when I published a series of magazine articles on cruise travel. My first effort as a novelist was in 2006 and I have since finished five novels including (The only info they want is publishing credit.)

Caged Bird is a GENRE novel, complete at (132,500 words) (This word count is heavy for all but epic fantasy/scifi.). I published a series of NAME magazine articles on cruise travel DATE OF PUBLICATION.

You have 250 odd (in my case, very odd)  words between "Dear Agent" and "Complete at" to sell your story. This query doesn't do it. Go to http://bethanymyers.blogspot.com/2011/12/quesy-from-queries.html
BRMyers advocates the three C's: character, crisis and conflict spanning the first 30-50 pages and not to exceed the first-third of the book. You have bundles of conflict, you can write, now you have to learn how to sell it. Buona fortuna. 

[VaniasNovelNook]

Thanks to both of you for responding to my query. It appears that my attempts to incorporate advice from other bloggers and agent sites has fallen flat here. I feel as if I need to scrap this query and return to a draft that I wrote long before this one. Nothing personal against the comments you've both made, but it appears my biggest problem is second guessing myself and doing research looking for the advice that 's going to help me write "the perfect query". I was told that my last query was "too short" and lacked enough plot, this one obviously has too much.

I will presume that the "memoirish" comment is a reference to my inclusion of her mother and childhood in the query. Apparently this is poor advice from another source that encouraged me to touch on the source of her trauma, or maybe I just did a poor job wording it...   Serena does not spend the entire novel in the therapy office, rather the reader lives her efforts to expunge her past along with her in the present as her relationship with Eli creates ongoing challenges. Maybe I should mention the scene where she hits rock bottom and breaks off the engagement?! (I was once told to take this out because I was giving away the story).

I am also aware that my word count is "heavy" for my genre, however I must believe that I am the exception in this case. I have sold nearly 300 copies (not just to friends and family) and every review has been positive. The compliment I hear most is that readers can't put the book down and become absorbed in the characters. I've even had readers say they were sorry to see the book end! The endorsement that I received from a fellow author who has published multiple novels compliments the pace and ease of reading.

In response to the mention only of publishing credit in the bibliography sentence, I interpreted advice to "tell the agent why you are the person qualified to write on this subject." I may not be quoting verbatim, but this came directly from the submission page of an agency for fiction!

Thank you for taking the time to assist me and leave your comments. It is greatly appreciated regardless of my personal frustration. I intend to consider everything as I edit, revise, become further confused, and pull my hair out!

As I continue my pursuit of a writing career, I am becoming painfully aware of that it seems to be more luck than skill to match even a well written query to an agent. I hope that someday my query will zig at precisely the right time and zag into the hands of the perfect agent!

Sincere thanks,
Vania

[Tabris]

Thanks for clarifying.

This is my response: I only know what you put in your query, so the key is to frame the query in such a way that there's no room for doubt what the novel is and how the novel does it. If the query is heavy on the therapy and the resolving past pains, we're going to assume the novel is likewise. If your novel consisted of a character making peace with her past by cooking and eating beautiful cakes, then saying she makes peace with her past doesn't actually tell us the key portion. If you look back at my comments, I think I used the word "seems" about 500 times because there was a lot I couldn't nail down.

This has been self-published already? You may be in trouble there because many agents won't touch a book that's been self-published. You should mention that in the query because you don't want to get all the way through the process and then reveal something that would make the agent reject you outright.

The reason I said "memoirish" is because in your query as posted, all the action takes place in her head or heart. She "allows the relationship to bloom," she "evaluates the emotional demons," she returns to therapy, undergoes a great deal of personal pain, etc. The efforts to expunge her past aren't reflected in the first query at all, so in another version, include them. If she travels to Chicago to visit her old stomping grounds or climbs Mount Rushmore or joins a karaoke club...tell us. It doesn't need to be extensive, but it needs to be active.  If she breaks off the engagement at some point, then highlight the jeopardy this relationship is in and why it would be like a nuclear bomb blast if she loses it.

It may be more luck than skill, but I'd still encourage you to give this query another shot. Don't pull out your hair. :-) Just give us more character, higher stakes, and a clear direction for Serena to follow.