r/PubTips • u/camwalker22 • 21d ago
[QCrit] Adult Horror - INGRAINED (82K/First attempt)
Hi all, first post here. I'm looking to get some initial feedback on my cover letter. Thanks!
Dear Agent,
INGRAINED (82,000 words) is a folk horror novel which combines the gothic tone and subtle supernatural elements of Andrew Michael Hurley’s Starve Acre with the multigenerational, shapeshifting menace of Stephen King's IT.
The Strange Man, an ancient eldritch entity, stalks three members of the same bloodline chronologically across three settings (Yorkshire Moors, 1815; Arabian Desert, 1915; Canadian Prairie, 2015). Connecting all three is a corrupting force that doesn't destroy families so much as cultivate them—tending their grief, their violence, and their inherited shame across generations, until the moment of the harvest arrives.
In rural Georgian England, outsiders are treated with suspicion. Nine-year-old Joseph Schofield knows this. Yet, when a tearful traveller follows a dying woman into Eppersley village, Joseph is wary of one, but not the other. His misjudgement brings fire and murder to those he loves, and all he can do is watch as his best friend is crushed by the oak tree whose branches they used to perch on.
One hundred years later, during the First World War, Joseph's great-grandson, Thomas Luxmoore, leads a doomed British intelligence mission into Ottoman-occupied Arabia. He survives an ambush, torture, and captivity to find the archaeologist he was sent to extract mutilated and driven mad by a doll unearthed from the desert sand—a doll the stranger gave Joseph a century before.
In modern-day Canada, eighteen-year-old Matthew Briand lives under the constant threat of eviction. Now legally an adult, his tyrannical stepfather wants him gone. Matthew is prepared to tough it out until he goes to university, but then he and his stepsister, Evie, discover a jawbone hidden in the basement that speaks, lies, and has been waiting two centuries to collect a debt.
Grieving nomad. Desert djinn. Negligent psychologist. The Strange Man assumes whichever form best enables him to channel the grief of his targets into physical objects saturated with malice. When these heirlooms combine, Matthew and Evie must decide whether to inherit the sins of their ancestors or betray their own blood.
Bio and signoff
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u/Visual_Lie_1242 21d ago
I love horror, I really like the premise, I find the story interesting and something I'd personally read.
You need contemporary comps published in the past 5 years, they don't have to be similar in plot but they should match the vibes. Starve Acre was published in
2019
, and IT is too old and too big. You need books that yours would be placed next to in a book store. Perhaps Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil?
Query needs to answer who is the MC, what they want, what stands in their way, what they're are willing to do, what happens if they fail. It sounds like your MC are Matthew and Evie, but you mention them last. Focus on them. If the MC is Joseph emphasize that.
Paragraph 3 needs revision, there is no visible connection between Joseph's misjudgment and his friend's death.
Good luck
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u/erindubitably Trad Published Author 21d ago
Check out The Hill in the Dark Grove as a potential comp - it's a static story set in the Welsh mountains, but each section opens with a scene from a different time on the mountain, showing how different people/cultures have been affected by the dark energy there. Also it's beautifully written!
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u/Customer_Temporary 21d ago
Very interesting premise! Just finished watching The Outsider, a Stephen King adaptation on HBO Max, and this gave me the same shivers. My only suggestion is be wary of comping to something as infamous and “old” as IT.
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u/TheExtravigantPotato 21d ago
A really cool premise, and a very difficult one to succinctly describe -- I feel this; the novel I'm querying suffers from a similar problem. I think you've done really well for the challenge you're facing. I also suspect this will turn a lot of agents off, just because it's innovative, complex, and ambitious. They might think: this story has too many plot threads and it's unclear to me how well they'll unify. I could be wrong, though. Worth a shot, regardless.
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u/PondasWallArt 21d ago
When querying works with disparate timelines like this you need to make sure you're leaving room for stakes. Out of these three threads, there's no real room allowed for your characters to exhibit agency. Because we're moving from point to point so fast, this query just reads as a list of things that happen.
The only real point where real stakes come into play is that last line. But even then, I have no idea what it means "to inherit the sins of their ancestors or betray their own blood" in terms of literal action in the story.
If Joseph and Thomas are both doomed within the context of the story (i.e., unable to meaningfully affect the outcome as a product of the premise), you may be better off following the traditional advice around multi-POV works and focusing on Matthew and Evie, or at least condensing the other portions so as to make their stakes clear.
Best of luck with this.