[QCrit] THE SMOKING MONK, Adult Autofiction/Literary Fiction, 95k words (First Attempt)

Long time lurker, first time poster. Thank you in advance for any feedback you may have!

Dear [Agent],

At twenty-two years old, at the peak of a forty-two hour bender on top of a rooftop club in New York City, I climb onto the ledge of a fourteen-story building looking for a place to end it all.

Instead, I wake up in a psychiatric ward with fractured memories, a unforgiving mental health diagnosis, and a question that the life I’ve built has been driven as much by mania as by meaning.

Refusing to accept the limitations imposed on by my doctors, family, or diagnosis, the THE SMOKING MONK spirals through the world in search of transcendence, identity, and escapism. From uncovering buried family secrets to chasing enlightenment through monasteries in Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, I drift through sex work in New York, sexual awakenings with gay porn stars in Mexico, Ayahuasca initiations in Peru, dark-room retreats, addiction, spiritual corruption, and obsessive self-destruction, all the while trying to outrun the terrifying possibility that my mind cannot be trusted.

But when a ninety-day solitary meditation retreat sparks a destruction in everything I believed about reality, spirituality, and myself, I’m forced to confront a question that has haunted me since that rooftop in New York: was I searching for awakening, or simply a more beautiful form of escape?

THE SMOKING MONK is an autofiction novel complete at 90,000 words. It’s a blend of the psychological descent of A Little Life, the spiritual disillusionment of Eat Pray Love turned upside down, and the manic existentialism of On the Road through a queer, psychologically raw, and darkly comedic lens.

Drawing from my own experiences, the novel explores mental illness, addiction, spirituality, sexuality, and the ever-so fragile boundary between transcendence and self-annihilation.

Thank you for your consideration,
The Smoking Monk