[Qcrit] RED LIKE FIRE, Adult Fantasy, 104k words, version 3
Hello everyone! Thanks for taking the time to look over this edited query, your input has been very helpful. I'm feeling good about this one, hopefully you agree. I've included the first 300 words of my manuscript.
I am seeking representation for my stand-alone adult fantasy novel RED LIKE FIRE, complete at 104,000 words. Tales of a hero defeating a dragon are classics, but I’ve written a story where they’re the same person. RED LIKE FIRE is about the struggle of trying to overcome yourself, and the pain of wondering if you’ll ever succeed. It combines the burden of trauma in T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace with the quest for self-improvement that can’t be helped by overwhelming power found in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea and One’s Mob Psycho 100.
For the sake of his father’s ambitions, kind-hearted Garrett is cursed with the ability to transform into a dragon. His purpose is to destroy his father’s enemies. He hates it, but the enchantments of bloodlust woven into his mind rob him of the power to resist. It makes the killing satisfying in the moment, but it can’t numb the horror he feels later. After years of bloodshed, his father is killed in battle and Garrett is grievously injured. He is swept away downriver and awakes to find himself in a different country, his wounds treated by the kindly witch Josie in the forest village of Verteuille. No one here knows who Garrett is, or of his dark past. It’s an opportunity for a fresh start. With his father gone, Garrett can make his own decisions for the first time and he decides to start a normal life beneath the green boughs of Verteuille.
Garrett makes friends, finds work that doesn’t involve slaughter, and lives in a house of his own. A life of peace, it’s what Garrett always wanted, but he quickly realizes it’s harder than he was expecting. He may be free from his father’s side, but not from his influence as he finds that the enchantments that made him a terror on the battlefield have grown no weaker. Although Garrett would rather help Josie with her garden or have a drink with Orlen, the dragon inside him knows only prey. Injuries, bullies, bandits, and even other dragons threaten to unleash the fire inside and reduce his second chance to ashes. If that wasn’t difficult enough, the knight Signir is hunting Garrett to exact revenge for the son Garrett took from him. The joy Garrett has found in Verteuille has given him strength to fight this new war against himself, but he isn’t sure if it will be enough.
I’m a registered nurse who cares for patients with neurological disorders. I’ve witnessed countless tales of underdogs fighting their own dragons and have been inspired to write my own. I am unpublished.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration, please contact me if you would like to see a full plot synopsis, sample chapters, or a complete manuscript.
Everything was drenched in red light, a scorching wave rolling over green fields, yellow thatch roofs, muddy brown roads, a black island cutting through all dotted with wide white eyes filled with terror. Staring at him.
“Garrett! Garrett!”
The sound of his name could barely be heard over the screams — no, the roaring of flames. When Garrett opened his eyes a whirlwind of fire and smoke surrounded him so thick he could see nothing else, and it took him several seconds to remember where he was.
“Garrett!”
“What have you done?”
It was then he realized he was no longer upon his straw mat but a pile of ashes, the stones hot enough to sear but it didn’t leave so much as a blister on his fair skin. The smoke pulled back and his sister, Shera, strode forward barefoot, concern filling her brown face. Embers glittered on the edges of the scorched holes in her woolen nightgown.
“Garrett, what happened?” Shera said.
“I —”
Soot-stained hands shoved Shera away. His brother Deldrin was standing before Garrett nearly as naked as he was, his clothes from the waist up completely burned away, his skinny chest dusty gray and heaving with barely contained anger, smoke pulling smoothly through his nostrils and out of his mouth in a fog. At 11 years of age, Deldrin was the oldest of them, Garrett and his five other brothers and sisters only 10.
Deldrin slapped Garrett hard across the face. It didn’t hurt, but it stung all the same.
“What are you doing, you baby?” said Deldrin. “Look what you’ve done to our room!”
The fires were guttering out, the others hastily snuffing them with their hands and what scraps they had left of their blankets. Although all of their mats were damaged by the inferno, it was Garrett’s alone that was reduced to cinders. What few possessions he had were utterly gone.
“Father is going to be furious,” said Deldrin.