All Abraham has ever wanted is connection: connection to his family, connection to his Jewish faith and community, and connection to an audience with whom he can share his love for the violin. But almost two hundred years ago, his musical patron turned him into a vampire without his consent, despite the patron’s own sire being a former Inquisitor. Abraham has been running from his grand-sire ever since, and his grand-sire has been trying to kill him ever since. As for connection, vampirism is a significant barrier to Judaism, and hiding is bad for one’s musical career. And constantly picking up and moving is bad for one’s love life. At least pets are portable.
But now that Abraham is in love with a mortal woman, he’s stopped running to honor his wife’s family and community connections, despite his own growing fear of mortality in general and outliving his loved ones in particular. Will he convince his wife to become a vampire as well? If he does, she can’t have the children they’ve both always wanted, and if he doesn’t, he’ll only have half a century with her at best before the inevitable. And if he turns her without her consent, he loses her for certain.
And about those children… what will they be? Vampires are only created one way—even if they’re pets—but that doesn’t guarantee that his genetic children will be human.
What do you think? Any suggestions? Any volunteers to beta? 😀
It sounds like a fascinating story!
I have a few thoughts, but please take them with a grain of salt, given I have never queried, successfully or otherwise. My only qualification is that a few years ago I read the entire archives of Query Shark.
The first paragraph feels like backstory. I may be misreading this, but I feel like your book starts with a change that now Abraham has fallen in love he can no longer keep running, which is what has kept him safe from his grand-sire. Would it make sense to start with that? – he’s fallen in love with a mortal woman, which is a problem because…
It sounds like it’s a problem for a number of reasons, but it might help your query to focus around one main conflict and the stakes.
In the first paragraph you mention a number of things that are never fleshed out – the musical career, the pets, his Judaism. I think there needs to be more about them or less.
That probably wasn’t helpful at all, but maybe it gave you a few ideas to mull over. 🙂
I’m available to beta too. I’m happy for you to send me the first chapter, and I’ll give it a read and let you know if I think I can help you with the rest. My email is a.s.akkalon (at) gmail.com.
Hi there!
First of all, thank you for posting such a thoughtful and interesting comment! I really appreciate it!
The book is dual timeline, which… I heard the best way to query that is chronologically. (Insert shrugging woman emoji here.) So… yeah, it’s hard. I’ll ponder.
Good luck!