u/Immediate-Pace-7911

I got an offer for a single in I-House for next year, but I also applied for Anchor House as I’m an incoming transfer. I won’t hear about Anchor until whenever housing offers come out but I need to accept my I-House offer by May 20 since it’s not affiliated. However, I have an accommodation for a single room and semi-private bathroom for affiliated housing, which I think makes me more likely to get Anchor.

What is the quality of life difference between I-House and Anchor? Specifically, what are the bathrooms like at I-House and how is the location compared to Anchor? Should I just take the I-House offer or wait to see if Anchor comes through?

Thanks, everyone.

Long time lurker, this is the second version of this query I've posted, but the last one was on a now-deleted account. Not sure how I feel about this query, but I think I'm too close to it now to edit effectively without some outside feedback. Thank you all!

Dear [Agent],

HOLDING THE SUN is an adult queer historical fantasy novel complete at 90,000 words. It will appeal to fans of the slow-burn, yearning, and tension in Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas and the mundane magic turned politically crucial in Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar. [personalization if applicable].

Ilias Yfantis arrives on the island of Chios in 1875 determined to reinvent himself into a boy worthy of the attention he’s been deprived of ever since he told his parents he wasn’t their daughter. Instead, he meets Matthaios Athanasiou, the only other person in the Mediterranean whose magical abilities persisted past age eight. Matthaios shows Ilias his own inherent worth, right up until the day that he drowns. Unable to accept losing him, Ilias uses his magic to save his life, inadvertently causing the Chios Earthquake of 1881. When the townspeople catch the two trying to flee the decimated island for Ilias’s home, Matthaios takes responsibility for the disaster and they force him off the ship.

Miserable at his separation from Matthaios and loath to be alone with his parents, Ilias sets out for Constantinople, hoping to receive contact with Matthaios in exchange for using his magic to help the Ottoman Empire. But his letters to Matthaios are never returned and the capital city is starving for power. Those who want Ilias’s magic under their control sweep him into a spiral up the ranks of the Ottoman military, even as he slips into opium use and grief.

With magic outlawed on Chios following the earthquake, Matthaios hones his abilities in secret while the letters he writes Ilias go unanswered. But when he finally manages to leave the island, the ship he’s on is captured by the Ottoman Navy, and they discover his magic and enslave him in Constantinople. Matthaios works against them at every turn, and recognizing Ilias wearing the uniform of a high-ranking military officer is the ultimate betrayal. Despite the reunion, the way they got there may have damaged their relationship beyond repair, and now Ilias risks losing Matthaios forever.

[bio]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[my name]

First 300 words are below, may delete them later though. Thanks again!

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Ilias kicked his heels against the side of his trunk. He shouldn’t; it was new, made of pine from Athens and bound with iron ribs. It also held all of his possessions, and if it broke open now his starched clothes might catch the wind and go flying into the sea. If his mother were here, she would have scolded him. Stop that racket. Ilias drummed his fingers against the wood and kept kicking.

The SS Ithaca had supposedly been making her way through the Chios Harbor for the better part of fifteen minutes, but the slight misalignment between a nick in the metal of the portside railing and the window of the red lighthouse that Ilias had been tracking seemed to be the only evidence that they weren’t just staying completely still. Ilias had pulled his trunk over to the railing and sat down on it, craning his neck to catch a wavering glimpse of the shore. He could smell the green, bitter-deep scent of the mastic trees from here, gone soft in the summer heat.

Honk!

The SS Ithaca blasted her horn, pitching forward, and Ilias startled so hard he slid off his trunk and narrowly missed bashing his forehead into the deck’s railing. His heart jolted against the inside of his ribcage as he scrambled back up to stand on the tips of his toes. The sea, so far down it made him dizzy to look, slid beneath the ship like taut cloth drawn back over a beam. Ilias watched it disappear, faster and faster until his vision blurred. He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulled out the ticket. He didn’t want to read it, didn’t want it near his heart any longer. He crumpled it up into a ball and threw it over the railing into the water. This was it. This was his chance to become someone new.

I've been reading a lot about comps lately, and one piece of advice that keeps resurfacing is how choosing comps can be more about the "vibes" or style of the writing than the content/actual plot points. Things like, "with the biting wit of [author]."

My question isn't one of how you find your writing voice or style, but how do you find who to comp regarding it? I have many favorite authors in my genre and I appreciate different parts of each of their works, but I don't feel that I particularly "write like" any of them. It seems as though there must be a solution to this beyond just "read more," as finding the person I "write like" seems like a needle-in-a-haystack situation. Does anyone have any advice?

Thank you.