Hi everyone, if anyone's willing to give their thoughts on the first chapter of my novel, Checks and Balances, I'd be very grateful. It's in the Shared Works area.
I've also written the text below. It could function either as a blurb if I self-publish, or as part of my cover letter if I try the conventional route. Thoughts on this also very welcome.
Thanks, G
Some call the First Lord, who took power through violence and keeps it with terror, a monster. I call him my beloved husband.
The rebels say our government is a dictatorship driving Britain into dystopia. I say we've changed the country for the better.
***
Fifteen years ago, like so many idealistic students before them, Julien and Marianne fell in love and fantasised about what they’d do if they ruled the world.
Ten years ago, long after their friends had moved on, they put their plans into action and couped the British Government at its moment of greatest crisis, ruling the new Regime as the First Lord and Lady.
Five years ago, by now the most powerful woman in the country, Marianne made the hardest decision of her life, and fled to join the Treaty, the rebels who will risk anything to see her husband dead and the regime overthrown.
Out on patrol with the Treaty, an unrecognisable Marianne is captured by the First Lord's elite troops, beaten and mined for information until the man she once swore to love and later swore to destroy saves her life and welcomes her back into the fold. But can she learn to be the First Lady again, and where do her loyalties truly lie?
Checks and Balances explores how good intentions can turn to bad realities, whether democracy is always the lesser of two evils, and whether love is ever enough.
With alternating timelines that cut between the romance and ideology of the past and the brutality and enduring love of the present, Checks and Balances juggles hard politics and big questions with a scorching hot tale of lust, obsession and betrayal.
Think of the mystery as an onion. In the first chapter, we don't know who Melanie really is. You dropped enough hints so that I chose her real identity as one of 3 possibilities / guesses. But it was a bit of a wild guess. It was perhaps who I would have liked her to be, but I wasn't expecting it of you.
I haven't read the 2nd chapter yet (I've been packing for a long coach ride, with hitchhiking either end, a total of over 2100km), it's 01:53, and I've got to get up at 06:30. I'll read it on the coach (if it's got electrical sockets for my laptop). But I'd plan the book like this: Keep Melanie's identity a secret from the reader until at least chapter 3. (I envisage it not being revealed until she's been captured by the First Lord's men, and, even then, not until somebody that knew her well [5 years previously] has been speaking to her for some time before the penny drops.) This would entail revising the first chapter so that nobody guesses at all. That's the first layer of mystery.
Then, keep her reasons for abandoning her old life a secret for another few chapters. Layer 2.
Then her motives shouldn't become clear for a few more chapters. Layer 3
Then her plans...
Then (perhaps) her change of plans...
Then whether she succeeds...
In the blurb, you intimate that she's variable in her feelings towards her husband. Play on this to add mystery. Perhaps she doesn't know herself just what she's going to do.
I think that you could write a blurb that captures the attention (and IMAGINATION) of the reader without giving very much away.
But maybe you don't want to write that kind of thriller. You know where you're going with this book. I don't.
All the best!
J
Jimmy,in relation to your comment on both this and the opening chapter, I'm sorry to say that the heroine's identity is revealed quite early on. The mystery and ambiguity is more around where her loyalty lies,why she left her husband to join the Treaty, and why she chose to come back.
Part of me would love to be more vague in the blurb, but I think it's one of those things where I need to give the game away slightly to be able to meaningfully describe the plot at all. Still, I'll consider whether I can be a touch more mysterious.
Lorraine, I'll have a think about better ways of phrasing the lines you've pointed out.
Anyway, thanks for your comments, and I've added the next 2000 words to my original post in Shared Work. Don't feel obliged to comment (though thoughts are, of course, very welcome), it's mostly just there so anyone who enjoyed the opening can see what comes next...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You've given the game away!
If this is a covering letter, it doesn't matter that you let the potential agent and/or publisher know that the narrator is the dictator's wife. If it's the blurb, you shouldn't let this cat out of the bag until WELL into the novel. (Read my review in "shared works".) How can you keep the reader off-balance if you're going to splash the secret identity of the main character all over the back cover???
It's now 3:26 a.m., and I'm off to bed to have nightmares. Thanks a lot! ;P