lilfluff

This a Flashfic based on a prompt from

ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fiction Meme

My 30 Days of Flashfic Index Page

Day 26 – Prompt: Write a personalized rejection letter for the YA novel “Sparkle Lust”

Written over my lunch break. Hurrah for one hour lunch breaks.

A Random Publisher & Sons
123 Any Street, #45
Your Town, State, 12345

Greetings, Mr. Anon E. Mouse,

I was most hopeful when I read your query letter. I agree with you that far too many turn a blind eye to the dangers of mortal/vampire relationships. As you stated in your letter there is a great need for a cautionary story to warn our young of these dangers.

However, I found myself puzzled and a little disturbed as I read your manuscript for Sparkle Lust. Was it really necessary in chapter three to have the health class teacher be quite so graphic and detailed in describing sexual intercourse? I fear that when this teacher makes a return in chapter seven describing as she put it, feminine hygiene issues, that the detail again was quite excessive. Indeed some might even suggest that the description of flowing blood was intended to be titillating.

While a certain other popular series recently included a great many pages involving scholastic sports, having six of fifteen chapters cover a high school chess tournament seems out of place in this book. Especially given that these are by far the six largest chapters of the book.

Finally, while it is important for our young to know about the methods by which vampires are killed so that they may be prepared to defend themselves, the staking scene in chapter fourteen simply would not be acceptable. The way in which this Buffy girl has been presented in earlier chapters makes her seem a good and loyal friend to the protagonists. To then have her turn on her friend simply because she has discovered he is a vampire seems out of character. The entire fight before the staking in written almost as if it is meant to be romantic.

Then the staking itself. I am sorry, but even for a cautionary novel the way you have written this scene from Wesley's perspective is too vivid in the horror of the act and simultaneously to suggestive in comparing it to the pleasures of the flesh.

While we must emphatically refuse to print Sparkle Lust as written, I believe you may have two publishable books contained within it.

* Consider submitting a novel that builds upon the six chess tournament chapters. Chess is woefully under appreciated among the young and an exciting book involving it would be most welcome.

* If you then took the cautionary elements and rewrote them as non-fiction we maybe able to market that. Please submit a proposed table of contents if you are interested in pursuing this.

Vlad Harcort
ARP & Sons YA Line Editor