The Big Five

Barbara Poelle

Five Plotlines I’d Kill to See

So Grand Central has this amazing book coming out this spring (tune in next week for me to GO BONKERS about it in this blog, and I mean BONKERS) and it really got me to thinking about what I would kill to see in my slush pile. And I’m not talking about “Oh, I would kill to have tickets to see Carrot Top.” I am talking about leaping out from the closet wielding a chainsaw wearing a rubber mask and galoshes kill to have the chance at signing. I feel pretty confident that typing these out ensures that they are now hurtling through space and time towards me, but it’s a Tuesday and there’s a new President so I may just be feeling wildly optimistic.

Okay, in no particular order

1.       It Devours From Beneath.

So, here’s what I am thinking. Small town. Quirky yet authentic characters. I’d like a Sherriff’s Deputy who is constantly under the umbrella of her father’s stint as Sheriff, but maybe daddy wasn’t such a great guy. Character driven- maybe sleepy bayou town? I’d like people to be dying horrific deaths. I’d like the culprit to be something that devours from beneath. I don’t care if its DNA is all bling’ed out or if pollution forced it into shallow waters, or if it is a megladon, just give me something devouring from beneath. Think Northern Exposure meets Jaws. Think Tremors. Just give me something that makes me check the closet or the swimming pool or both. Oh, and maybe give the heroine a police dog. For five extra points you can name the dog Justice.  (For ten extra points you can find out why).

 

2.       Moonlighting meets Psych

Remember how awesome Maddie Hayes and David Addison were? The bees being, the bears bearing and the doors slamming, and through it all that fabulous chemistry. I would like a series featuring two detectives that have such electric magnetism together that they make you want to commit a crime just to have the pleasure of them hunting you down. But to add an extra layer I would like it if either one or both of them had an ability or- wait for it- a disabilty that made them a particularly adept partner. Maybe one is blind and so they can smell things at the crime scene. Maybe one is deaf and so is extremely adept at reading body language. I don’t know, but give me good old fashioned chemistry meets unique new twist.

 

3.       Sigma Chi Till You Die

I used to love reading Christopher Pike’s books when I was 12, because sometimes it was the cute cheerleader who was chopping the heads off of the varsity football team. Now maybe this is the vodka doing the typing, butI would like to see a femme fatale in the vein of Basic Instinct but with a Legally Blonde type of approach. Say protagonist A kills her husband and then protagonist B finds out and blackmails her into killing her husband, but protagonist A decides to kill B instead. Lots of black, black humor.  And give me a finale like the trailer fight scene between Uma Thurman and Darryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol. 2

 

4.       The YA YA’s Standing by Me

So go back and read The Body by Stephen King and then watch some girly movies (That came out wrong. I don’t mean girly movies I mean chick flicks) and give me something from the 50’s or 60’s or 70’s where something horrific has happened and how it is processed as adults. Wait, I think I just stole that entire plotline from IT. But you know what I mean. It doesn’t have to be a thriller or horror novel, think more like commercial fiction. We can kill somebody’s husband again in this one, but let’s have some flashbacks here too.

 

5.       Zombies Zombies Everywhere and None to Drink

There is nothing better than a good old fashioned apocalypse novel. Okay, I know that many people will tell you that zombies are so passé, those people should be checked for excessive red eye because me thinks thou doth protest too mucheth. I love to read these as I love to imagine myself in those circumstances (hit the pharmacy first and then a pawn shop NOT a sporting goods store, those will be picked clean, but pawn shops will have many useful items as well). And having an apocalypse is fine, but having something that chases you during the apocalypse is better. Vampires, infected folks, Republicans, anything.  It can be a bit steam-punk or a bit sci-fi but at the very least give me something lurching through dark subway tunnels and a backpack snagged on a ladder rung.

(Side bar: Hey, mom, I’ll save you the call:  “steam-punk” is like that movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the movie Wild Wild West, with Will Smith, where they take inventions from today that they couldn’t have had in, say, Victorian times and power them by steam. Almost like Mad Max but those guys had gasoline. And Tina Turner. )

So there you have it. These are the five plot lines that I am currently stalking in the field. The big commonality I see here is that they all must be character driven, and so in the end, I guess that is what I am truly restless for.

Well, that, and something devouring from beneath.

 

 

 

Comments

[Jeff Cohen]

That's a lot of husband-killing, Barbara. Or am I especially sensitive to such things?

[lianabrooks.blogspot.com]

I have two and five written if you think you could sit through something with sci-fi elements.

And now I'm tempted to go write number one just for fun. Visions of plagues and gators dance in my head...

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawlkjHNAcDFu_qMqAD0IvstU1eik3d-YYmU]

I have a dream plot as well, but no one has written it for me--a virus thriller set on a submarine. Basically, "Outbreak" meets "Crimson Tide." I love the claustrophobic feel of each genre...so anybody with one of those, send it to me!

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkerzpm5p1bYRpu76sFi8Turqo0W7OUHCw]

My god woman, you just waltzed your way to the top of my list of Dream Agents. There's a lot of husband killing in my first novel. And my second novel is an apocalypse novel based in Chicago.
Sweet :) The zombies told me "Must Query Barbara!".

crimogenic.blogspot.com

[crimogenic.blogspot.com]

The blogsphere is being funky today. For some reason, my sign in information above got all screwed up.

[Lartonmedia]

Hee! For some reason, no. 1 made me think of Torchwood. Except in that everyone gets their end away apart from the poor old dinosaur!

[Sarah Jensen]

So I'm assuming you're okay with non-happy endings?

[Karen Duvall]

LOL! I'm putting the finishing touches on #2, but it's more like Moonlighting meets League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It's repped already and there's an editor waiting to see it, so maybe your instincts are right! I hope so, anyway.

[Barbara Poelle]

Hmmm, non-happy endings...not a fan of the phrase as it covers too broad a base. If the heroine and the dog make it to page 417 and then are killed by zombies, no. Hanibal Lector escaping into the crowd at the end of Silence of the Lambs? yes. To be safe, though, let's say I am NOT okay with unhappy endings as a whole.

[Sophie Littlefield]

y'know, way I'm thinking, it's always a better story once the first husband is murdered. but maybe that's just me. :)

[NickJobe]

What about a post-apocalyptic novel that has zombies, (hardcore) faeries, and other mythological creatures that chase the main characters about? Oh, and it's all based around the poem 'Annabel Lee' by Edgar Allen Poe.

Because I have that.

[Jerry Bryson]

Sorry, I haven't written anything like what you're looking for.

The good news is, now I don't need to send you a query and you don't have to read it. That saves us both time.

I really, really wish all agents would do this. I'd like to know if somebody is just not interested in my kind of story without bothering us both. And I particularly would like to know if some agent is actively looking to handle a story like mine.