The Synopsis Treasury (29 page)

Jacqueline Carey

New York Times
best seller Jacqueline Carey is the author of the critically acclaimed Kushiel’s Legacy series of historical fantasy novels, The Sundering epic fantasy duology, postmodern fables
Santa Olivia
and
Saints Astray
, and the Agent of Hel contemporary fantasy series. Jacqueline enjoys doing research on a wide variety of arcane topics, and an affinity for travel has taken her from Finland to China to date. She currently lives in west Michigan.

Further information is available at www.jacquelinecarey.com. Join her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jacquelinecarey.author or follow her on Twitter at @JCareyAuthor.

How do you sell a 275,000 word first novel?

In the first place, it’s a bad idea and an endeavor to be avoided if possible. Publishers are understandably cautious when it comes to taking risks on unknown writers, and big, old doorstopper tomes increase the financial risk involved. The cost of production is higher and there’s less shelf space available. It’s that simple.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice. From its first inception, the novel that became
Kushiel’s Dart
was a big idea for a big book. It was big, it was compelling, and I had to write it. However, one of the secrets to writing a polished first novel is to write other ‘practice’ first novels. I had a couple other manuscripts that had made the rounds of slush piles and agency queries without success.

They were much shorter … and not nearly as good.

Still, it helps—a lot—to have a solid grasp of plot structure and how your own creative process works. And it helps to be working in a genre that’s more amenable than most to lengthy novels. There’s a term for them in the industry: BFFs, Big Fat Fantasies.

So I wrote the novel, then titled
A D’Angeline Tale
, and knew it was the best thing I’d ever written. Conventional wisdom holds that it’s as difficult to get an agent as it is to sell a book, and the best way to do the former is to accomplish the latter. While there’s a good deal of truth to it, I decided to try the agent route anyway. More and more publishers were refusing to look at unagented submissions, and I figured a manuscript topping a thousand pages wouldn’t be regarded kindly as it hulked amid the slush piles of those who did.

Toward the end of the writing process, I began compiling a list of ten literary agencies that represented similar material, using Writer’s Market, Literary Marketplace and acknowledgements of other novels to gather information. Once I had finished editing, I wrote the synopsis that follows and sent queries to the ten agencies on my list, adhering to the submission guidelines of each particular agency. Most requested a brief synopsis and three sample chapters. All of them were cold queries—I had a lot of practice writing synopses and cover letters, but no contacts in the industry.

Out of ten agencies, two expressed interest in seeing the full manuscript; one only if I was willing to divide it into two books. Although I was prepared to deal with the possibility, I viewed it as a course of last resort, so I submitted it to the other agency first. There, at Jane Dystel Literary Management, I had the fortune of having my mammoth manuscript with its controversial heroine land in the hands of a literary agent who fell in love with it. “I kept expecting it to fall apart,” he told me. “And it didn’t.”

We spent the summer of 1998 polishing the manuscript, paring it down until it was under a thousand pages. In the fall, it went out on submission to a dozen or so publishing houses. Meanwhile, I began work on the second book in what would become the Kushiel’s Legacy trilogy. Although we submitted
A D’Angeline Tale
as a stand-alone, I had a clear vision for the arc of the second and third volumes, and my agent urged to me start writing.

And a good thing, too, because there’s not much about this process more suspenseful than waiting to hear whether or not a book will sell. I was glad I was able to lose myself in the writing process.… Although, of course, if the first book hadn’t sold, there wouldn’t be much point in what I was writing. Still, it kept me occupied. And as it transpired, several publishers were interested, and as the holiday season drew near, my agent called an auction.

Tor Books made a preemptive bid.

It was a good offer—and they wanted a trilogy. And they wanted to keep the book intact by putting it though an intensive line edit. Oh, and they wanted to change the title
^*
, which was fine with me. Theirs was better, anyway.

We accepted it.

Sometimes it pays to buck the odds and defy conventional wisdom. Not always, not even often, but if a book leaves you no other choice, it may be worth the effort.

—Jacqueline Carey

^*
Published as
Kushiel’s Dart
in 2001, the first of many novels in the Kushiel’s Legacy universe. —CSH

A D’Angeline Tale
synopsis
Jacqueline Carey

A D’Angeline Tale
is epic in scope, a speculative fiction novel of approximately 275,000 words, set in a feudal Europe at once familiar and strange, where well-known landmarks of history, place and culture emerge from a fantastic terrain, in a nation where the blood of wandering angels runs in the veins of their mortal descendants. It is an intricate tapestry woven by a single thread of narrative voice, undermining the traditional clichés with which the imperiled heroine is imbued.

Born with a flaw—a scarlet mote in her left eye—Phèdre is sold as a young child to Cereus House, oldest of the D’Angeline pleasure-houses that comprise the Night Court. Gauged unsuitable by their aesthetic canons, her bond is sold to Anafiel Delaunay, a brilliant, enigmatic nobleman with an uneasy relationship to the Crown. It is Delaunay who recognizes the scarlet mote as no flaw, but Kushiel’s Dart, the mark of an
anguissette
, one who has been chosen by the angel Kushiel to find pleasure in pain.

Expecting to be trained as a courtesan Servant of Naamah, Phèdre finds herself, along with Alcuin, another protegé, set first to the task of learning: History, theology, the languages of the realm—even barbarian tongues—and above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. By the time she reaches the age of consent and obtains patrons of her own, Phèdre is well-trained as a courtesan and spy alike, aided in both by the dubious gift of Kushiel’s Dart. The only knowledge she lacks is the true nature of Delaunay’s purpose. An aged King sits on the throne of Terre d’Ange, his granddaughter Ysandre his only heir; and somewhere in the past, with the death of Ysandre’s parents, lies the answer.

Skaldi barbarians raid the borders, held back by the warrior Duc d’Aiglemort, while princes and courtiers vie for the throne and Ysandre’s hand, and the beautiful, dangerous Melisande Shahrizai—scion of Kushiel’s line, Phèdre’s weakness and Delaunay’s equal in wit—plays a deep-laid game of her own. With the help of her childhood friend Hyacinthe, the self-styled Prince of Travellers, Phèdre seeks to solve the puzzle of Delaunay, despite a warning from Hyacinthe’s mother, a Tsingani fortuneteller, that she will rue the day she succeeds. Thus far, the only thing Phèdre rues is the appointment of Cassiline Brother Joscelin Verreuil, a disdainful young warrior-priest, to guard her.

On the day Phèdre is to complete her marque, freeing her from bond-service, the prediction proves horribly true. A messenger from the Royal Admiral sends Phèdre and Joscelin racing back to the house, only to find Delaunay slain and Alcuin dying. With his last breath, Alcuin tells them that Delaunay had sworn a vow on the ring of Prince Rolande—his beloved—to protect and serve his daughter Ysandre, heir to Terre d’Ange.

Now it falls to Phèdre … and she’s about to be betrayed, setting in motion events that will culminate in full-scale war at the very heart of the realm.

***