One-Sentence Wonderful

Sigh..... Yoda was right.

There is do or do not. There is no try. (I am probably misquoting the great green sage, but my Star Wars crazy kids are not here to double check for me.) Try sucks. Try is driving me a bit crazy these days.

I've spent a lot of time this beautiful labor day weekend tweaking my draft and query letter, researching appropriate agents, tweaking some more... researching, rereading, revising and so on.

At this point, my query is the literary equivalent of marshmallow fluff-- an amorphous mass that can be pulled a little one way or another but has stubbornly refused to be sculpted into anything close to a work of art. Or at least that's the way it seems when I've been so gosh darn close to it a while.

If ever there was a thankless and miserable task, it's putting together a pithy, slam-bang fantastic query letter. There are a hundred great resources out there to help, and yet... the thing just isn't falling into place.

Perhaps if my novel were more high concept, the sort of one-sentence wonderful that would sell itself I wouldn't struggle along like this. But it isn't, or at least doesn't seem like it to me. In fact, after staring at my 3rd draft for a few days and at my lousy query version #73, I have no idea what it is!

So, in desperation, I'm asking you guys -- all 12 of you... :) -- to tell me what's wrong with this query. (Please!)

Here it is:

"Roger “Zorro” Weitz has it pretty good, slumming off the scant profits from Hate You (Gonna Eat Cheese), a hit second only to Muskrat Love in the cornball-rich scene of 1976. But when a near-death experience leads him to a rare moment of introspection, Zorro decides to make a more tangible impact on the world. Believing “cool” is about all he has to offer, Zorro commits to helping his girlfriend Carla’s timid, obese daughter find the attitude and style that could bring about her own hip transformation… even if it means going behind Carla’s back to do it.

Eleven year old Dawn, a budding zoologist and certified genius, is puzzled by Zorro’s sudden attention but intrigued by his mention of a band mate’s long-abandoned gibbon. While she makes no progress whatsoever in “cool” she does learn a thing or two about blackmail, and before he knows it, Zorro is involved in a vaguely illegal rescue attempt, a slow-speed car chase and—most unexpected of all— he’s actually starting to care for the kid.

Readers of Tom Perrotta and Nick Hornby will enjoy Family, Genius, Species, a sort of reverse Pygmalion, replete with cheesy music references, a lesser ape, and a lot of heart. The book is 90,000 words and ready for perusal."

(I've left off the chummy and agent specific greeting and short bio as the crux of the matter is this middle part.)

Any ideas?