Let’s be honest, fun is not a word associated with query writing. Oh, I’m sure there are a handful of masochists out there who enjoy the endeavor of condensing a 100k word story into half a page, but I’m not one of them. I’ll go as far to say that I suck at it. That said, I am currently writing one, creating it for the purpose of submitting my psychological-crime drama-romance mashup, Harbortown. So, for some actual fun, I’m going to post the body of it here, so we may poke fun at its inadequacies, and then we shall see what I finally end up with. Don’t be afraid to laugh. I laugh at my efforts on these sorts of things all the time.
Harbortown:
Harbortown is the story of, Rachel “Rehab” Rollins, a tougher-than-everything, forty-one-year-old detective, given notice that she is being forced to retire after the minimum twenty years of service. Never mind the fact that she has no desire to do so or that her body is breaking down on her after years of “enforcing the law” in the mob run town. The real issue at hand is that she must train her replacement and pass along the secrets of her success, secrets that have kept her alive in a place where half the population would prefer she was dead, secrets that Rachel had every intention of going to her grave with long before retiring.
Martin Falcone is just looking for a chance to perform the police work he loves doing. Growing up around Harbortown, it’s the perfect opportunity for the former Marine MP to prove his worth after being discharged from the Corps. Replacing local legend, Rachel Rollins, is a daunting task to say the least. Her history and body count would never make the Police Academy Training Manual, but Martin is okay with this. He fully understands that the law isn’t always as black and white as it seems, especially in the foggy recesses of the Town, but Rachel is far more than he bargained for. How does a cop, particularly a female one, get away with what she’s done? The near impunity with which she operates is baffling, and the more Martin digs, the more mysterious Rachel and Harbortown become. Everyone seems to be hiding something to kill for, and it’s all confounding Martin’s efforts to prove his worthiness by catching the baffling serial killer plaguing the area.
This 120,000 word, psychological-crime-drama-romance mashup, is the first book following the violent chaos of Rachel Rollins retirement, one man’s efforts to prove himself, and one woman’s striving to maintain her sanity as the world she built crumbles around her.
Effort #2:
Harbortown is steeped in the tradition of violence and corruption, run by the long-standing Fedelini and Torchio crime families. Twenty years ago, the first female cop in local history stepped in and turned the town on its head. Now, legendary detective, Rachel “Rehab” Rollins is being forced into retirement, and nobody is more put out by this fact than Rachel herself. Never mind that her body can longer take the abuse or that the mainstay of her diet has regressed to Percocet and whiskey. She must now divulge the secrets of her power to the grinning, gung-ho, former marine MP hired to replace her, lest he find himself floating face down in the bay.
Martin Falcone knew being a cop in Harbortown would be a challenge. He’d grown up around its crime-addled streets, and the Marine’s sense of law and order didn’t sit well here. Gaining the respect of the town, not to mention his coworkers was going to be difficult. He had not, however, expected the real challenge to be the cop he was hired to replace. Rachel had become the soul of Harbortown and it was not in a good place. In order to do this job, to gain the respect he needed, catch the serial killer plaguing the area, he needed to find out the secret to her power, and if Martin wasn’t careful, his efforts could ruin them all.
Effort #3:
A serial killer is terrorizing the women of Harbortown. The local mob is importing young, Russian women for prostitution. The DA wants her head on a platter. It’s all in a day’s work for detective, Rachel “Rehab” Rollins, except it’s been officially announced that she’s retiring in six months. Killers, mobsters, and government officials are cake compared to the idea of retiring at forty-one. Does anyone care that she’s the only one manning the gates between order and chaos? Apparently not, because the Chief has just handed her a squeaky clean, former Marine MP to train as her replacement. Six months wouldn’t train the Terminator to succeed at her job. Nobody could go through what she did to secure the stability of a town run amok with mob-controlled violence. Nobody had the sensibilities required to handle the lunatic asylum of Harbortown, and she was just supposed to turn over the keys to her secret vault to some hack marine? No way.
Martin Falcone was just looking to do the police work he loved, and what better place than the crazy town he grew up in? Harbortown was ripe with action, chock-full of criminal elements just waiting to get their butts kicked and put in their place. Nobody said it would be easy, but the options were limited when one got dishonorably discharged from the Corps. Sure, it would be a challenge, but he hadn’t expected the greatest difficulty to come from the enigmatic, questionably ethical woman he was brought in to replace. As his trainer, she was impossibly tight-lipped about what needed to be done in the Town. The more he pressed, the greater the roadblocks she threw down, but Martin was a marine, and marines don’t give up on anything. Figuring out this job meant figuring out Rachel Rollins, and he would leave no stone unturned in solving the mystery of the town’s legendary detective. If only he’d realized…
Writing in the Dark 