[QCrit] PSYCHEPHAGE - 60k - Sci-Fi/Upmarket (First Attempt)

Hi PubTips! Just finished my second manuscript and it's ALMOST ready to start querying, so I thought I'd run the letter by you lovely people. Thanks so much!

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Dear [Agent Name],

I'm excited to present PSYCHEPHAGE, an adult upmarket science fiction manuscript of 60,000 words that blends the character-forward horror of DEAD SILENCE with the tight pace of WHALEFALL. [Personalization]

Cass Hudson is dying in agony— but that's what she gets for scabbing.

The Psychics Union has been on strike for four years. Without psychics, there can be no space travel. Without space travel, there can be no more of the off-world power source that the Earth relies upon. But the Union holds strong, insisting that the working conditions on ships are too dangerous. Forty-four percent of psychics die immediately after their journeys, destroyed by the strain.

Cass has always been on their side. She's watched psychics die in her own hospital, raving and bloody. When she is discovered to be a psychic herself, she fully intends to join the Union— until she loses her job, and is left with nothing but a half million dollars in debt. She's the only psychic in California who isn't a Union member— to SpaceCorps, she is the most valuable person in the country— and she can't turn down the offer of five million dollars for a week of work.

The only problem? Cass is fairly sure that she was a false positive. But when she is plugged in, she has an agonizing transformation, changing from ordinary to psychic. If SpaceCorps finds out that they can manufacture psychics, it will enable untold cruelty. Cass cannot tell anyone the truth.

Only: if she doesn't tell anyone, nobody can help her. And if nobody helps her, the pain will consume her alive.

[Bio]