Would you read this?

A basic fact of my life is that I am a writer. I have been since I was old enough to talk, driving my parents up the walls with my fairy tales and insistence that there really was a monster in my closet, who was actually a really good guy. I've been honing the craft for years, writing for university literary magazines (I actually won an award for one story) and my university newspaper (Fine Arts journalist=free opera tickets), with the publication of my first book in 2010. Those are my credentials.

Anyone who has been reading this blog or my Twitter feed for long will know that for over a year now, I've been working on a novelized version of "Fidelio". It started out as a dare to write it for National Novel Writing Month, after one of my best friends got a little sick of me theorizing about the before and after of the opera and told me to "just write it already; we both know you could". So I did.

Over one year and five drafts later, I am finished with the novel, and writing up my query letter to try to lure an agent. As with all writing, this takes time, effort, a lot of staring into space when I should be learning German, and no small amount of tenacity. And feedback. This is where you come in, my dear blog readers. Over the next week or two I will be posting various synopses of "Fidelio" here. I hope some of you will be so good as to tell me if you would read this story, whether you know the opera or not. I hope that you will tell me if the synopsis is boring, or exciting, or too long or short: basically, any feedback that you would like to offer, please do.

Please note that I worked very, very hard to keep it as close to the opera as humanly possible. Lucy of Opera Obsession, who has been reading the novel and offering her invaluable opinion, can attest to this.

And with that, my first possible synopsis:

"Seville 1788: Florestan Serrano, aide to the Minister of Justice, vanishes one dark night in the midst of a dangeorus investigation. He awakes in hell, injured and without any knowledge of where he is or who has taken him. All he has is the terrible certainty that no one knows where he is.

All the clues point to her husband’s gruesome murder, but Leonora refuses to believe it. Not without proof. Not without his body. With only a hint of hope and the desire to avenge her husband, Leonora follows the clues to a terrible fortress, where, disguised as a man, she learns secrets that will change everything she knows, and fights a tyrant for her husband’s life."