Okay, so here's my plight: I've finished a book. Hurrah! (btw, it's posted here on fictionpress) But isn't that the easy part? My books write themselves. Unfortunately summaries of them do not. In order to get someone else to read it (namely the people who might some day pay to read it), I have to write a "please publish my book" letter to a dozen people who all receive a thousand "please publish my book" letters a week! It seems like they don't like authors... Actually, to be sure they only sign people with great stories who are truly serious about their writing, they put all of us through hell and back again to write the perfect letter that will be better than anyone else's (and likely more stunning than the book itself). It sucks. The end. No excuses, or explanations, or anything else. Writing this letter sucks. Anyways, I'm going to post my current options and make you tear them apart like a school of sharks until the letter is good enough to survive the vicious world of real life writers. Because there are people out there who already know what they're doing in their "please publish my book" letter, and people who can write at the end, "I've already sold a ton of this other book you liked..." I'm like a dandelion in a hurricane. But I bet, with the help of everyone, I can catch the eye of...at least *one* person-agent-publisher-thing. So your task: 1) Choose which of the two is better....unless they're both awful. Tell me that bluntly and give some suggestion that will help me start over. 2) Find something wrong with it. At least one thing. A sentence you don't get, or at least something. Or everything if that's the case. 3) Help me fix it. :'( I'm so awful at this.

The crime lab paged Kyoko, Saburou three times before he responded. It was his week off; certainly they could handle investigations on their own. He had his own hectic mess to tend to: a six year old son that went by the name Nori. A box of the boy's belongings appeared at Kyoko's door with a note that tactlessly stated Nori was his to keep forever. By the third call for help, however, Kyoko knew his team needed him. Published that morning in Tokyo's most widely circulated newspaper was the horoscope, "This week, someone will make you very angry. Give into your inner feelings...kill them. No one will catch you." While investigators scrambled to keep up with a string of ensuing murders, they assign Kyoko to track down the original cause of the graphic message. An ex-convict, betrayed by the press years before, is seeking revenge by destroying the newspaper's reputation in the most brutal, indirect way his sick mind can imagine. If he isn't stopped by the following weekend, casualties will multiply. The new father struggles to find balance between work and family, as the deadly criminal plans for a second round of his revenge. "The Horoscope," a mystery novel, is 87,000 words of crime and family. Thank you for your consideration.

"This week, someone will make you very angry. Give into your inner feelings...kill them. No one will catch you." Like a seed planted, the words of a horoscope began to sprout in the hearts of readers. Published in the most widely circulated newspaper in Tokyo, the message results in a string of crimes across the city. As investigators scramble to keep up with the heightened work load, they are almost blinded to the underlying cause. An ex-convict, betrayed by the press years before, is seeking revenge by destroying their reputation in the most brutal, indirect way his sick mind can imagine. If he isn't stopped by the following weekend, casualties will multiply. The crime lab paged Kyoko, Saburou three times before he responded. It was his week off; certainly they could handle investigations on their own. He had his own hectic mess to tend to: a six year old son that went by the name Nori. A box of the boy's belongings appeared at Kyoko's door with a note that tactlessly stated Nori was his to keep forever. By the third call for help, however, Kyoko knew his team needed him. With the other investigators overloaded with cases, they assign Kyoko to track down the original cause of the graphic message. The new father struggles to find balance between work and family as the deadly criminal plans for a second round of his revenge. "The Horoscope," a mystery novel, is 87,000 words of crime and family. Thank you for your consideration.

Thanks in advance to anyone who responds! I really want this to work...

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