[QCrit] Literary Horror, Mother Teeth, 70k, Fourth attempt
Hello all,
We had four requests from the original query but it stalled and folks on here pointed out clear issues with the original. Hopeful that this next version shines. Thank you for any and all feedback!
Dear Agent,
Please consider representing MOTHER TEETH, a 70,000-word literary horror novel told in alternating past and present timelines. It will appeal to readers of The Devil Takes You Home and Boys in the Valley, combining literary horror, rural decay, and supernatural dread.
Daniel Burr has spent twenty years trying to outrun Rowley, Pennsylvania, a decaying lake town steeped in addiction, poverty, and old rumors best left buried. Once the town’s golden boy and now its alcoholic chief of police, Daniel survives on routine, denial, and cheap gin. Then a town selectman is found murdered outside his home, his face mutilated and every tooth ripped from his mouth.
The killing forces Daniel to confront what happened one summer when he was fifteen. In 2005, Daniel and four friends broke into the abandoned Morehead Manor, a crumbling estate once owned by the Order of the Golden Twilight, a wealthy occult society rumored to have summoned something called Mother Teeth, a whispering presence said to lurk behind mirrors, all shifting teeth and endless hunger.
Inside the manor, they discovered the rumors were true. For weeks, Mother Teeth pursued them through mirrors, dreams, and darkened reflections, appearing as a writhing mass of jagged teeth pressing against the glass. She demanded devotion and servitude, taking a special interest in Daniel. Desperate to escape her, the teenagers performed a ritual they believed sealed the entity away forever. As adults, they buried the experience beneath therapy, addiction, and denial, convincing themselves it had all been a collective hallucination.
Then the killings begin again.
Drawn back toward Morehead Manor and the secrets buried beneath it, Daniel must confront the possibility that the entity he spent twenty years dismissing as trauma and delusion was real all along. Because whatever waited behind the glass that summer was never gone. It was only sleeping. And if Daniel cannot stop it now, Mother Teeth will consume everyone he has left before finally pulling him into her service forever.
My previous work has been published by independent presses, and I was previously represented. I reside in (my town).
All best,
(my pen name)