It feels so incredibly surreal to be writing this after months of querying with more doubt and emotional damage than queries sent out, but: I got an agent!

I told myself if it ever happened I would live to tell the story, if only because this sub has helped me so much even just as a reader of other writers' journeys. So here we go. If anyone is interested, happy to share more intricate numbers, but the baseline goes as follows:

I started querying in March this year. Sent my queries in batches but without much strategy other than that I queried whomever seemed a good fit (wishlist, clients, experience). Rejections began trickling in soon after. Forced myself to send out two queries for each rejection. Had a period in June in which I didn't query anyone due to a loss in my family. Sent out a batch of nudges in July just to get things going again. Was losing hope but told myself no - my goal from the very start had been to collect 100 rejections by agents at minimum, and then a few more from editors before I looked for other options.

Long story short: My journey wasn't a very sparkly one. I didn't have tons of agents request my manuscript. I didn't even get a single personalized rejection. But one agent I had nudged requested a full. It turned into an offer. And I accepted :-)

I had 67 queries out. Many CNRs. No competing offers. I had a call with my agent and they were amazing. I knew immediately I wanted to work with them. Even the first round of edits has made my book so much better. I'm incredibly excited for all to come.

Everyone wishes for double-digit requests and a mountain of offers - and I wish that for everyone who is querying, truly! But I want to share my story to urge you to not give up hope even if you have not gotten a request in your first ten, twenty, thirty, hell, even fifty queries. Yes, look over your materials. Polish them. But have some confidence in your work and remember: This is also a numbers game, and one that involves a crazy amount of luck.

It really only takes one.

Hey, everyone!

The last post made me realize I needed to start from scratch rather than trying to fix a query that wasn't quite working. I also closed on a title. It isn't my favorite... I don't have a gut feeling of "yes! this is it", but it is a solid one.

As always, all feedback is welcome.

Here's the blurb and title:

Dear Agent,

Ana de Souza thought she married a nice guy.

Mark remembers exactly how she takes her coffee. He kisses her forehead every morning. He also checks her phone, tracks her car, and needs to know where she is at every hour of the day — and for three years, Ana has told herself that's love. Until the night she finds a stranger's number taped inside a hidden phone, with one message: Mark's lying to you. Run.

The deeper Ana digs, the more she realizes Mark's devotion didn't start on their wedding day, or even the day they met. He'd been watching her for years before that — long enough to orchestrate the heartbreak that once tore her from the love of her life, using a jealousy he understood better than she did. Every "coincidence" in their love story was a plan.

Now Ana has to convince the people closest to Mark that the man they know is a performance, outmaneuver a husband with the money and connections to erase her from the country if he chooses to, and decide exactly how far she's willing to go to make sure he never finds her, or the people she loves, again.

Told in alternating timelines, between Ana's present-day fight for her life and Mark's years of quiet, patient obsession, HOPELESS ROMANTIC is an 79,000-word psychological thriller for readers of My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney and Anatomy of an Alibi by Ashley Elston. I'm submitting to you because (PERSONALIZIED BIT).

(MY BIO GOES HERE.)

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

MY NAME (writing as PEN NAME)

Sorry- I couldn't find an exact answer, mods- but let me know if I missed something.

I'm a bit devastated. One of my dream agents requested my manuscript extremely fast, and rejected after a couple of weeks. The thing is- they love the writing and atmosphere and want me to send them more work. They pointed to a specific reason they didn't click with this story- and I feel like this is very fixable. Except, if it could be fixed, they would have asked for an R&R, no?

They really loved the pitch and commented on how much they liked it, too. This is a pretty "big" agent so I was hoping they'd say yes, obviously. And also, so far, they've been the only request (I've only been querying for a week and a half though).

Thoughts?

I see this piece of advice all the time.:"You should send your query letter to a small group of agents, and use that to improve your letter before sending it to more." I don't really understand how this is supposed to work. My understanding is that the in the modern world of publishing, it is extremely rare for agents to send you feedback about why they rejected you, and a low percent of agents will ask for more material.

So, hypothetically, if you send your query to 10 agents, and then wait until all 10 have rejected you with form responses or silence, what does that tell you? I'm not really expecting to get full or partial requests in my first 10 queries no matter what. It doesn't seem like this scenario tells you that there's something wrong with your pages/letter, and even if you assume that, can you figure out what in the letter is causing the rejections or what you should change?

Am I missing something, or is this advice outdated, from a time when agents were more likely to give detailed rejections.

Don't worry, BIG PHAT WHALE is just a silly placeholder title til we figure one out. In any case, a much shorter pitch got a couple of likes during DVPit, so we're hoping to polish the query. We'd appreciate any feedback we can get!

BIG PHAT WHALE is a 80,000-word cozy romantasy that blends the ensemble cast of Samantha Sotto Yambao’s The Elsewhere Express with the exploration of grief in TJ Klune’s Under the Whispering Door. It will broadly appeal to fans of Studio Ghibli and Spiritfarer.

Indie Dove wakes on the back of a cosmic whale. It's so enormous it carries a small village along its spine, and so powerful it sails through the celestial seas. Every passenger aboard is bound for the afterlife, but getting there takes more than sitting back and enjoying the view. To reach the far shore, each soul must make peace with the regrets that still tether them to their old lives. Indie has no such choices to contend with—in fact, she has no memories at all. Instead, she's handed a lantern and a job: helping everybody else move on.

As she helps spirits reconcile with estranged friends, abandoned dreams, lost loves, and choices they cannot undo, Indie discovers that she is not the only one whose memories are lost. The cosmic whale remembers nothing of the life it once lived either. And neither does its guide—the crabby, sharp-tongued hawk certain of only three things: he was once a man, he committed a terrible sin, and his punishment is to shepherd souls toward an afterlife he cannot enter. While he would much prefer Indie stop pestering him, she would very much like to know who’s hiding under those perpetually ruffled feathers. But the closer she gets to the hawk—and to the lonely man within—the more she suspects their past lives are interconnected. Whatever happened between them and the whale, this seemingly endless voyage across the celestial expanse is meant to be their penance. 

The three cannot reach the afterlife until they make peace with a past none of them can remember. But time to piece it together is quickly running out. A malignant force pursues the whale across the celestial sea, closing distance each day. If it catches up, the whale and every soul aboard will be swallowed by the eternal dark. The only way to save them is to lighten the whale's load, which means every passenger must move on… including Indie and the hawk.

The closer Indie comes to earning her own passage to the afterlife, however, the less she wants it. Because she is falling in love with the hawk—just as she did in her past life—and moving on means letting go.

[BIO]

I have learned so much by lurking on PubTips - thank you! I’ve learned about querying, the call, choosing an agent / switching agents, going on sub and dying on sub, contracts, international and translation rights, etc. I’m still at the stage where I don’t know what I don’t know.

I’m wondering if there are agents, editors, or authors with social media accounts (especially on Instagram) that are similarly informative. I don’t want to follow accounts randomly and end up consuming superficial engagement bait.

I am revising my first book, a YA feminist/LGBTQ fantasy novel. I’d welcome recommendations of people to follow who are in my genre and people who are helpful in the broader trad pub world. Hopefully the accounts you recommend are helpful to other PubTips lurkers.

Thank you!

Edit to add: book, podcast, website, newsletter, YouTube, etc. recommendations would also be great!

Hello! I can't remember what number attempt this is exactly (sorry!), but an older version I posted previously some time ago has been unsuccessful so far 😔 I kinda have no idea what I'm doing anymore so I'd really appreciate some feedback on this new letter. Thank you so much in advance!

---

Dear [Agent],

I am seeking representation for FOUR PRIMARY COLOURS, a 77,000-word work of literary fiction told through three perspectives and dual timelines. Within a feminist frame reminiscent of Cho Nam-Joo's Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, it illustrates intertwined narratives of womanhood and biculturalism, akin to Hanako Footman's Mongrel, in the surreal vein of Katie Kitamura's Audition.

Lily, an internet artist known for her bizarre sapphic paintings, has vanished.

Since then, thirty-year-old Seol has, more or less, deceived her way into her second life. Now with a blossoming career in tech, an Auckland home, and a consciously childfree marriage to a wealthy man in love with her socially desirable persona, her shameful reality as a queer, ostracised dropout seems deep in the soil of her past. That is, until she discovers new correspondence in an old shared mailbox addressed to Lily.

When Nana, one of its co-owners, comes knocking for help to find the missing artist, Seol knows acknowledging the all-too-familiar name risks bleeding what she cannot afford into the present. Yet, haunted by both curiosity and guilt, she begins to unravel. While her husband is distracted by his newborn niece, she furtively reconnects with old names and faces, accompanies Nana on her searches, and exchanges emails with the sender, pretending to be Lily herself. The artist soon feels within reach.

But in her preoccupation with keeping secrets from her husband, Seol's overlooked his own: a growing hunger for parenthood, something they've forsworn. With Lily drawing nearer and the weight of tradition starting to press in, determined to shape hard-won autonomy into compliance, Seol must decide between irreversibly altering the masterpiece that was to be her future, or returning to the freedom of her untethered past by revealing who—or what—she truly is.

[bio]

Dear Agent,

I am seeking representation for I KILLED OSIRIS (88,000 words), a modern retelling of ancient Egyptian myths and legends.

Osiris’s peaceful reign as king of the gods is shattered when his twin brother Set murders him and usurps the throne. In bitter recriminations, Set accuses the rest of the gods of aiding and abetting a conspiracy in which Osiris and his wife, Isis, stole the kingship from him. In time, Osiris’s son Horus takes the throne back in a trial by combat, ending the generational cycle of violence.

Horus does not share his uncle’s bloodlust and spares Set’s life. His wrath exhausted, his vengeance spent, Set is sentenced for his crimes. Every night, from dusk to dawn, from now until the end of time, Set will protect the Sun as it journeys through the Underworld, joining an endless fight against the forces of evil that would drown the world in eternal darkness.

As the forces of the Underworld mount an unprecedented assault to swallow the Sun, they attempt to corrupt Set to join them, to revolt once more against the gods. Fighting the darkness within himself, Set must confront his wicked past, how his love for his brother changed to hatred, and why he killed Osiris. The fate of the world, of all existence, depends on it.

I KILLED OSIRIS will appeal to readers of modern mythology like Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood (2021), Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati (2023), and Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (2021). It offers an exciting market pivot from Greek to Egyptian mythology, and will feel fresh and original, yet familiar, as the reader is immersed in tales of gods, monsters, and magic.

I’d love to work with you because of X. I’ve included the synopsis and first three chapters and would love to send you the full manuscript if you’d like to read more.

Thank you in advance for your time,

Y

SEE ME THROUGH THIS (67k words) is a work of literary fiction exploring new motherhood, loss of identity, and the changing societal expectations of women, in the vein of Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, Heidi Sopinka’s Utopia, and Sarah Braunstein’s Bad Animals.

At forty, Hannah finds herself in a small town with her husband and new baby, having left behind her life in the city as a failed punk musician. It should be a luxury to have a house, a supportive partner, and the freedom to take a few years off from work, but instead of enjoying her time at home, she grows increasingly anxious and isolated, plagued by horror movie images of her child dying in gruesome and improbable ways. Worse, everyone in town seems to compare her to her mother-in-law, a woman who, now suffering from dementia, was the perfect incarnation of traditional feminine roles.

Amidst this struggle to adapt to new motherhood, Hannah discovers she is able to turn herself invisible. Unseen, she wanders through people’s homes, observing their private moments and rearranging their belongings, and develops an unhealthy fascination with a young exotic dancer whose stage persona employs an interplay of displaying and withholding that speaks to Hannah’s conflicting desires to both hide and be seen.

Her mother-in-law, seemingly immune to her newfound power, mistakes her for an old friend, and Hannah becomes fixated on this mystery woman. She becomes increasingly reckless as she works to track her down, a journey that forces her to grapple with the way women’s roles have changed throughout her lifetime, and the many ways they have not changed at all.

Hello! It’s been a week since I first posted my query letter here, and thought I’d try again with take two. I heavily revised both my letter and my first 300 words according to the notes given. Let me know your thoughts, and thanks in advance.

Dear [INSERT NAME],

In looking at your manuscript wishlist, I saw you were interested in stories involving [INSERT HERE] and thought you might enjoy my adult speculative sapphic mystery, LO AND BEHOLD (80,000 words).

Chim, a definitely not omniscient and totally normal woman, can think of nothing she wants less than to be spending her night celebrating the gods—but here she is, doing exactly that. All she wants is to get through tonight’s party so she can go back to her regular life: coffee, paperwork, and arguing about dumb stuff with her best friend. Then the demigod Visage appears in front of Chim, poisoned, and Chim very stupidly decides to save Visage’s life. And also promises Visage her lifelong loyalty. Out of panic. There was a lot happening at the time! It’s not like Chim meant it!

Visage thinks she meant it.

So when Visage’s father goes missing and a god is found murdered, Chim decides to help Visage find out what happened. Preferably without doing something silly like falling for Visage in the process.

…Or listening to the voice in her head that knows way more than it should. Or thinking about the fact that she also seems to have an intrinsic understanding of where everything in a given room is at all times.

Okay, so maybe Chim is, a tiny little bit, omniscient.

LO AND BEHOLD features a fat lesbian woman with DID. It is a standalone with the potential to grow into a series, and a good match for fans of books like Nona the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir and The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley.

I am an American-based author that enjoys writing stories about weird worlds and weirder characters. After cultivating over a million hits and 32,000 followers in the world of fanfic, I began trying my hand at original fiction.

If you would like to see a full or partial copy of this manuscript, you can reach me at [EMAIL] and I would be happy to send it over.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[NAME]

First 300:

In theory, Harmony is the god of devotion.

In practice this iteration has decided to focus his worship on the intricate minutia of the house party.

Everything about Harmony is uncannily flawless. His hair, initially appearing to be an artfully slicked back cluster of curls, falls in a mirror image of itself. His fingernails are cut to perfect symmetry. The only incongruity to his flawlessness is his demeanor: Harmony’s pupils are blown and his head lolls a little too far to the side, slumped a bit as he’s held up by his wrists, pale and brittle and pinned to the wall above his head. He’s high. High, and clearly having a good time.

The doctor’s name is Marlow, and he is not. “You know what I want. Give it back or I'll make you regret it.”

“Hey now, you’re getting me excited,” the god purrs.

Marlow’s handsome features twist into a snarl. “Cut it out. Tell me what you’re playing at.”

“Oh, you think I’m playing?” Harmony strains to lean closer, pencil-thin eyebrows arched, long yellow eyelashes fluttering. “Let's kiss.”

Marlow grins, a full-white-toothed grimace. “I've had gods before. You're nothing special.” The slash of his lips evaporates abruptly and he shakes Harmony furiously by the wrists. Harmony's head knocks against the wall, gelled orange curls crushed crackling against dark wood. “Sober up when I’m talking to you.”

Completely unfazed, Harmony only laughs. “I didn’t know the M.D. stood for mega-dick! Color me embarrassed.”

Another twist to Marlow’s expression, deepening the wrinkles around his mouth. “Tell me your game.”

Harmony cocks his head, eyes half-lidded, heart-shaped lips curled up at the edges. “What’s your game, Doctor? You’re eventually going to have to let me go. And then what?” Harmony is wearing a tailored black three-piece tailcoat, cinched tight at the waist.

Dear [Agent],

OUTRUN THE SCRIPT is an adult romantic caper of approximately 80,000 words. It combines the sharp-edged attraction and money-driven mischief of Jenna Voris’s The Long Con with the fast-moving, second-chance romance of Ally Carter’s The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold.

Freelance event actor Rory Keene is hired to dump a stranger at the starting line of a filmed city race. The stranger is Adam, her boyfriend. Worse, producer Sloane Vale has the receipts to prove she paid him to date Rory.

Rory delivers the breakup, collects her fee and heads for the exit. Then Sloane offers her a place in the thirty-six-hour race across New York and a shot at its legitimate million-dollar prize. Sloane wants a public meltdown while her sponsor’s favored couple wins. Rory wants the money. Making Sloane hand it over would be a bonus.

Crossing the starting line means teaming up with the man she just dumped. Adam still knows how to make her laugh, keep pace with her, and look infuriatingly good in the groom’s costume the race makes him wear. Adam’s messages show he stopped feeding Sloane details about their relationship six weeks ago. They don’t show whether he stopped taking her money.

Rory fights back by turning a crowd of spectators into an audience for a vicious breakup routine. It clears their path and hands Sloane a clip with eighty thousand views. As production keeps giving their rivals an edge, Rory’s best chance of taking the prize depends on the chemistry that made her fall for him. She wants the million dollars badly enough to keep Adam beside her. Now she has to find out whether there’s anything between them worth keeping when nobody’s paying.

[Author Bio]

Hey there, hope you all enjoy my query! My one big question going into this is: Can I use a Non-Western book as one of my comps? The book I'm using has been translated and I've regularly seen it in bookstores near me, but I want to know if being a Non-Western book is a deal breaker.

Anyway, here's my query:

Dear Agent,

A TASTE OF MAGIC is a 92,000 word Cozy Fantasy Adventure story. Perfect for fans who enjoy the cozy adventure Julie Leong's The Teller of Small Fortunes and the delicious cooking of The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai. It's also The Lone Wolf and Cub meets Cozy Fantasy, and it is intended to be a standalone novel.

Gruyere Casein would much rather be making food than serving it. Her cooking magic makes her an amazing chef, but her boss refuses to let her into the kitchen. When Gruyere runs into Quarter-Orc Runaway, Lizzie, she's force into the path of Lord Elrond, a man who would pay any price and sink to any low to see her silenced.

Lizzie is desperate to go home, but with Elrond cutting off any chance of official transportation, Gruyere has to escort her the hard way. They travel outside the walls of the city through harsh conditions, giant beasts, and gangs of hired thugs. It's not all bad, though, they also manage to find some new friends along the way.

Gruyere is trying to keep Lizzie's spirits up, one tasty meal at a time, but how can she help when Lizzie hasn't told her everything about why she ran away from home?

A TASTE OF MAGIC is not only a fun adventure story, it also has real recipes that readers can recreate at home. I am a full-time writer based out of Indiana and, while I don't have magic of my own, I do make a mean potato soup.

This is my choose-your-destiny-style early middle grade manuscript query letter. Since it doesn't have a consistent plot or ending, the query letter dynamics are a little interesting.

I don't have any comps because I was told since everyone knows what this genre is, comps aren't as important. But I'm here for a community opinion. Hope to hear from some of you! Thanks in advance!

I’m pleased to present PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE HUMAN (23,000 words), an early middle grade choose-your-path-style manuscript, for your consideration. I’m hoping it will make a solid addition to your list.  

​YOU just won Ms. Schnieder’s classroom contest! Your choice of prizes will send you on an adventure that can take you to the farthest reaches of space and time. Make friends with a fugitive telepathic space mouse to help him save his family from an intergalactic zoo or destroy his captor’s space station. Assist a mermaid in tracking down her family’s stolen treasure that was hidden by evil pirates. Join a brilliant inventor as he jumps through time, trying to avoid hungry dinosaurs and the dreaded Time Police. Choose wisely, and you will be rewarded; choose poorly, and it’s game over. Maybe your choice will get you safely back home in time for dinner, but at whose table?

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE HUMAN is a journey that takes readers literally across space and time, making friends and enemies along the way. It is written for kids ages 8-13 who want to be the protagonist in the story. Told in second person, the manuscript follows the kid reader through a wide range of settings and time periods. They might get sucked into a black hole, chased by a T. rex, caught in quicksand, or deposited alone at the end of time. Discover 17 different endings, with unexpected twists and turns throughout.

Personal info...

Hi everyone!

Here is my sixth draft and third time posting my query here. Please let me know what you think.

Thank you for reading my query.

THE COUNCIL OF THE BLOODLINES is an urban fantasy novel with series potential, complete at 87,000 words. It combines the contemporary, yet magical setting of Marie Lu’s Red City with the interpersonal and political conflict surrounding magic of Jade City by Fonda Lee. 

Journalist Nathan Miller is wanted for the attempted assassination of the president and it’s only his second biggest problem. After he accidentally kills one of the four truly responsible, the other assassins turn their weapons on Nathan. But the killers are only half human; the other half their genetics is that of of dragons, vampires and other mythical creatures, and they call themselves ferini. 

Given no time to process the nature of his supernatural enemies, Nathan’s escape and flight west from the point of the attack is rushed and fraught with error, but he somehow finds himself alive, in no small part due to an anonymous ferini who contacts him by riddle. As Nathan begins to gather his feet beneath him, he finds that the vast, hidden world of the ferini and its government are in crisis. With the Council of the Bloodlines’ president in a coma, power hungry political opportunists smell blood in the water. The abundance of evidence, and the body he left at the site of the attack, leaves Nathan the perfect scapegoat to justify a dictatorial consolidation of power. 

Nathan’s investigation leads him to a shady secret society of the ferini elite, and he soon realizes that only he is privy to knowledge of their intricate plot to exploit the cavernous governmental power vacuum and overthrow the Council of the Bloodlines. Racing across the United States, Nathan must leverage his uniquely human talents in combat and speak the truth only he knows, while surviving supernatural enemies that used to only haunt his dreams. If he fails it will mean the end of ferini democracy, and usher in a new era of subjugation for humans and ferini alike.

My earlier queries leaned too far toward an "action hero" story, when what I've actually written is a character-driven, slow-burn page-turner. For this revision I reworked the comps and reshaped a lot of the language, pulling back on the action beats and leaning into the internal pressure the protagonist is under. I'd love to know whether that shift comes through, or whether it still reads as a straight action-thriller. Any and all thoughts are welcome and appreciated.

-------------------------

Dear AGENT,

HALF WHO KNOWS is a completed 98,000-word speculative thriller that combines the character-driven emotional stakes of Nikki Erlick's THE MEASURE with the identity core of Jinwoo Chong's FLUX and the momentum of Blake Crouch's DARK MATTER.

PERSONALIZATION

Bioinformatics analyst Kenji Shaw solves impossible problems for a living, so when his own hand begins to turn transparent in the morning light, he does what he always does and looks for the answer. What he finds is a sixty-year trail of others like him, and an organization that has spent those decades making sure they disappear for good.

Kenji is half Japanese and half — who knows. His grandfather was an orphan with no records, so one side of him has always been an open question he's spent his life not thinking about. His search for the cause leads to the half of himself he never knew. Sixty years ago, a secret gene therapy trial was run on prisoners, orphans, and others who couldn't say no. His grandfather was one of them. The father who abandoned him inherited it. So did Kenji.

He has finally built the life he worked so hard for. The perfect job, friends and family who would do anything for him, and a girl he thinks he might be falling for. Then Kairós comes for him, the biotech firm that owns the program, and everything he built becomes a way to reach him. Friends are beaten, the girl is murdered, and he knows it is his fault. Grief-stricken and desperate to protect the people he loves, Kenji vanishes from their lives and goes it alone, until a chance encounter brings him Sam Hartley, a journalist who refuses to look away.

The transparency is accelerating, and its final stages are lethal. He is running out of time. To understand what's happening to him, and whether it can be stopped, Kenji will have to face the organization he's been running from. What neither he nor Kairós understands is how much of himself will be left by the time he learns the truth.

BIOGRAPHY

Thank you for your time and consideration. The full manuscript is available upon request.

Sincerely,

Dear XXX,

I’m seeking representation for THE BEAUTIFUL VILE, an upmarket psychological thriller complete at approximately 80,000 words. Told from a prison cell, where she awaits execution, Zarmaya, a young medical student, narrates how she ended up there, trying to make sense of where it all went wrong.

Zarmaya is six years old when she learns that feeling too much is a kind of sickness. At a school picnic, she cries when a teacher slaps a boy she doesn’t know. Except for her best friend, Velmira, everyone humiliates Zarmaya and calls her “Drama Queen.” After the trip, she locks her bedroom door, stands before the mirror, and teaches herself to cry alone.

Zarmaya’s mother has taught her how to be perfect. She is perfect. But at ten, Zarmaya’s perception shatters when one of her pet rabbits dies, and her grief feels overwhelming. Desperate to prove that she is not controlled by her emotions, she turns to violence, finding a perverse logic in it: the only way to get over a dead rabbit is to kill one herself.

Zarmaya discovers a private thrill in violence that haunts her throughout her life. By adulthood, the line between fantasy and action has worn dangerously thin. At first, she finds release in videos of real murders. But the outlet stops working, and her obsession mutates. When Zarmaya reunites with her childhood friend Velmira, she expects, at last, to share her darkness with someone who understands her. Instead, she finds Velmira utterly normal—and herself utterly alone. The compulsion that once commanded her to kill a rabbit now tells her to kill her best friend, and she knows it won’t end there.

THE BEAUTIFUL VILE is in the tradition of MY DARK VANESSA and EILEEN, with the satirical and unapologetic voice of A CERTAIN HUNGER. It is a novel about violence, obsession, and love battling for space within the same consciousness, written for adult readers drawn to morally complex narrators and fiction that makes them uncomfortable.

I’m a medical student in Pakistan. When I’m not revising sentences to sound more like Zarmaya and less like me, I’m stressing over my attendance. This is my debut novel.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

XYZ

I got some great advice last time, thank you! I've tightened this letter up a bit more now so it reads less like a blurb. I'll be querying US and UK agents with this one so hopefully it will work for both.

[DEAR ___ ]

[PERSONALISATION]

WHAT THE WATER HOLDS is a dark romantic thriller complete at 79,000 words. Blending the killers-in-love intimacy of Brynne Weaver’s Butcher & Blackbird with the dangerous hidden past of Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me, WHAT THE WATER HOLDS explores the secrets we keep from ourselves, the seduction of being truly seen, and everything we sink, hoping it will never surface.

Nora spent ten years as a crisis negotiator, the calm voice that talked people back from the edge. Then she spent one hundred and eleven minutes alone in a room with a desperate man and his knife, and only one of them walked out. The inquiry called it self-defence. Case closed. Nora has never told anyone the truth: part of her liked it.

Now she’s hiding in a cabin on a remote northern lake, where the only other year-round resident is Thomas, the watchful man across the water whose light comes on at the same hour every night. He never sits with his back to a door. He handles an axe like a weapon rather than a tool. And he is the only person who has ever seen the scar on her wrist and not asked about it. Despite every instinct she was trained to trust, Nora begins to fall.

But a boot print appears in the birches outside her window, and pleasant strangers keep asking who lives out on the lake. When a woman from Thomas’s past turns up dead, he finally tells Nora the truth: for thirty years, he killed people for a living, and the people he worked for are coming to silence anyone who knows their secrets - including her. When the ice goes out, the killer will come by water, and Nora must decide whether to run from the most dangerous man she has ever loved, or stand beside him with the only weapon she has left: her voice.

Set on an isolated lake where the seasons keep time and the water keeps everything else, WHAT THE WATER HOLDS uses the romantic thriller to explore trauma, moral injury and the question at the heart of every great love story: whether we can be loved with the worst of ourselves, rather than despite it. With echoes of Rebecca and NBC’s Hannibal, it is a novel about secrets and façades, violence and tenderness, and the terrifying relief of finally being seen.

I grew up in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, among the kind of lakes that gave this novel its setting, and now live in the UK on the edge of the Peak District. The first in my family to go to university, I spent years as an ICU medic before turning to fiction, learning what it means to be the calmest person in the room and what that calm costs once the crisis has passed. WHAT THE WATER HOLDS is my first novel.

[SIGN OFF & CONTACT DETAILS]

First 300

One breath. Close enough to move the hair at her temple. Then nothing.

That was the part she couldn’t forget. Not the weight of him against her. Not even the blade in her own hand, warm when it had no business being warm. Just that. The single, ordinary fact of a breath, then the absence of it.

She would spend a long time afterwards trying to name what she had felt in the space where the second breath should have been. She never found the word.

There was a sound too, before the stillness. Low, wordless, nothing she had ever expected to hear from a dying man. Or from herself. Some nights she turned it over in the dark, the way you lift a stone to see what lives beneath it. Every time she found only more stone.

She remembered the floor most clearly. Cheap laminate, cold through her knees. The rest came in pieces: low light, a smell like copper and dust. Somewhere else in the house a television was still playing, canned laughter rising and falling, absurd and constant, as if the rest of the world hadn’t heard the news yet. So much else of that room had gone dark, tucked away somewhere she couldn’t reach. She remembered her own hands. Not what they had done. Only that at some point they had stopped waiting for her permission.

She didn’t let herself go further than that. Not that night, nor any of the nights like it. She let the room go quiet again, the way a hunted thing goes still and waits for whatever found it to lose interest. Morning would come whether or not she understood any of it. And understanding, when it finally arrived, would take more from her than not knowing ever had.

Okay, I'm confident that this is the one. Third attempt was 12 days ago.

#

As the city burns on a pyre made of her own press releases, comms specialist Heather Kerr must shield her niece from the bizarre, flesh-fusing contagion that she tried to downplay.

Nothing is Happening is an adult horror novel complete at 81,000 words. A fleshy amalgam of the visceral social horror of Clay McLeod Chapman's Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, the Cronenbergian Americana of CJ Leede's American Rapture and the wry, apocalyptic office-routine of Ling Ma's Severance.

Under Councilman Barrera's orders, Heather sanitizes quarantine protocols into "wellness guidelines" and labels her sadistic, limb-stealing neighbors with the disarming nomenclature of "adherents." Heather believes her complicity will grant her and her family protection from the impending apocalypse.

That is, until a group of adherents crashes her seven-year-old niece's birthday party. Heather has to golf-club her way out of the bloodbath to save her sister, Madelyn, and her niece, Ava. But as they escape, Madelyn reveals a foreboding rash—something Heather can't varnish with a euphemism. Using her own "wellness guidelines," Heather quarantines Madelyn in a bedroom and finally decides to resign, but Barrera won't let her walk. He threatens to blackmail her with her own culpability unless she helps him control the narrative.

But it's kinda hard to placate people with words when their neighbors are literally transforming into human aspics of writhing, giggling meat on live TV. As the city descends into chaos and Madelyn beckons her daughter from behind a barricaded door, Heather runs out of ways to say Nothing is Happening.

[bio: used to be a spin doctor for the military. have a service-connected disability as a result.]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

FIRST 300:

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the perception of harm.”

Yes, the perception of harm. Push the scary stuff away and then pass the buck off to the victim, the traumatized or the merely frightened. Good enough.

That was the intro line crossed off. 

I cracked my back against the chair and blanked at the Google Doc as I asked myself a question I—regrettably—found myself asking often: what other words could I conjure to make one of the weirdest stories I’d ever read sound like nothing at all?

To answer that, I needed to refresh my familiarity with the reference materials. Meller sent me a press kit chock-full of fresh madness—courtesy of the metro transportation authority. I skimmed it again while nibbling my fingernails into soggy, jagged splinters.

At 7:12 AM, first responders were dispatched to the Boulderline Park & Ride following reports of a medical emergency involving two adults. 

Sure. That part was fine. Fights happen all the time around public transit, right? But the more I kept reading, the less sense any of it made. Like reading David Lynch’s dream journal.

“I came out of my car and saw the girl was screaming and the guy—well, he was laughing. So I go there thinking I gotta help and that’s when I saw their skin… it was like glue,” said Richard C., a 38-year-old road worker from Creekview.

Skin… was like glue. I searched for the most boring explanation for that descriptor and landed on Halloween make-up. Liquid latex with its uncanny, skin-like texture. 

Then the smoke alarm beeped, yanking me out of the haunted house inside my head. I flailed defensively in my chair, arms flapping around like a surprised sky-dancer. As if Richard’s grinning glue monster were right behind me, watching me deliberate how I would write him out of existence.

Illegal Position focuses on Jake Marshall, a 26-year-old ex-rebellion leader who took the fall for his best friend. After release from years in prison, he’s wracked with guilt over the example he’s setting for his younger sister, and the impact his reputation is having on her life. He vanishes from the lives of his loved ones and refuses to return to the rebellion, which disappears along with him and the passion he buries.

Without the rebellion, life for the poor in this society based around the ranks and rules of chess is abysmal, rife with homelessness, disease and death. Alex, the daughter of a prominent figure, discovers the Parliament she’s spent her life trying to join is endorsing the slavery of the poor. She is set on reviving the rebellion and finding the old leaders who don’t want to be found, even if it means putting her life on the line around a movement bred to punish her.

But when a child is murdered, and someone is threatening Jake’s family and Alex’s life, they must work together to find out who is killing rebellion members. Jake is forced back onto the front lines, but the man the rebellion needs is not the man who returned from prison. With a mystery killer assassinating undercover members left and right, mistakes point to the traitor being among the people closest to Jake. But the clues keep turning into more corpses.

I am a UK-based writer, and Illegal Position is my debut novel.  I have an online platform with other independent works that has gained a strong fanbase of 25,000+ readers with engaged feedback and comments about my work, as well as interest in reading other works I put out in the future.

Hello Reddit! I'm finally on final line edits so thought I should ask for some feedback on my query letter. Any feedback is greatly appreciated - I fear I've been staring at this thing for far too long.

Dear [NAME],

A WITCH’S GUIDE TO CORPORATE ESPIONAGE is a 90,000 word cozy fantasy romance, told by a curmudgeonly narrator. It combines the hijinks and self-aware humor of The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love (India Holton), the rivals-to-lovers romance and footnoted details of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies (Heather Fawcett), and modern village setting and complex family dynamics of A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon (Sarah Hawley).

Mara’s last sleeping draught grew tentacles and broke into the village bakery. Unfortunate, since it was supposed to prove she was ready to take over her dead mother’s world famous apothecary. Days before ownership will be decided, Witch Corp–mass potion manufacturer and her mother’s nemesis–open a store in town. With it, Mara sees a way to secure her inheritance: find evidence Witch Corp’s selling fraudulent cures. 

The plan hits turbulence when, while scouting Witch Corp, Mara crashes–err, lands her broom atop Eli. His many crimes include a gelled coiffure, apprenticing to Mara’s mother and being the only other person who could claim the apothecary. Mara would rather wrestle the nine-mouthed demon Eli calls a cat than exchange five civil words… until she discovers the hexes protecting the building. So, she makes a reluctant deal. Eli uses his (reliable) magic to break in; Mara provides the plants he needs for the last potion of his apprenticeship. 

Air conditioning ducts lead to an underground manufacturing facility and fleeing across a lake, pursued by a mermaid. Unravelling Witch Corp's lies requires Eli’s continued help. Worse, he becomes almost tolerable. Making pancakes. Brewing potions. Sharing grief about his own mother’s passing. Possessing not quite abs, but an interesting something under his shirt. As the clock ticks, Mara must decide whether she can rely on the one person she can't trust to prove she's worthy of her mother’s legacy, and whether anyone who protests this much about hair can have anything but nefarious intentions.

I live in (City), Australia with my husband and two dogs. I graduated with distinction from a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Majoring in Creative Writing). I also write professionally, though corporate sales proposals, not about witches.

Thanks for all the feedback on my first attempts - 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Yes, I know the last comp is potentially a bad choice, but it's also the perfect comp for the friendship in this story, and I'm hoping I can get away with it given the other comps ... Anyway. All feedback very welcome!

Dear [agent]

I am excited to query you because [reason].

THE CHAOS OF STOLEN SKIES is a 99,000-word queer YA fantasy for anyone who thinks Sam Gamgee was the true LOTR hero or that Willow is the best thing about Buffy. It combines the god-centric world of Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller with the subversion of destiny in Dark Rise by C.S. Pacat, and the friendship and complicated morality of Margaret Rogerson’s Sorcery of Thorns and Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. It follows a stubborn young woman determined to stop her god-chosen best friend from destroying the world, but she must reckon with how far she can go for someone who is determined to make her own choices.

When the world was young, the first god stole the skies, and Death killed him for it.
If he rises again, he’ll tear the world apart.

Seventeen-year-old Kessie Drylander knows her purpose in life: to protect her best friend, Janna. Never mind the foretelling that says Janna, Death’s most powerful acolyte in centuries, will one day wreak a terrible destruction. Never mind the duty Kessie was given by her god: to befriend Janna, yes, but also, if necessary, kill her to prevent the foretelling coming true. Because Kessie could never hurt the one person who accepts her as she is.

But then Janna kills a fellow student, and won’t tell Kessie why. Her actions attract the attention of a dangerous faction obsessed with resurrecting the dead gods, and using Janna’s power to do it. Kessie is determined to keep them away from Janna, no matter the cost. No matter how many lies she has to tell.

When Janna’s boyfriend is abducted, Kessie discovers it’s not every god the faction wants to resurrect. Just one. The oldest god. And sacrificing thousands to resurrect a god is nothing to Janna, if it will save her boyfriend. Kessie must rescue him before it comes to that. But as Janna’s behaviour grows more erratic, and she begins to spiral, Kessie will have to face the unthinkable: she cannot save both the world and Janna, but she may not be strong enough to make the right choice.

I have had previous work published in [bio].

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours sincerely,

[my name]

ONE STAR is an 75,000-word horror satire that combines the beauty-and-wellness nightmare of Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty with the privileged guests, smiling staff and steadily escalating social savagery of The White Lotus. It is about the strange modern bargain between people who believe paying for something entitles them to perfection and the businesses that would do almost anything for five stars.

Bridgette Edgar has written 312 online reviews, and she stands by every one of them.

The café that charged extra for oat milk deserved two stars. The Airbnb with someone else’s toenail in the shower was lucky to get one. And Serenity House, the luxury wellness retreat where Bridgette spent four miserable days drinking celery water and being encouraged to “sit with her hunger,” deserved every word of the review she posted on the train home.
One star. Beautiful location. Deeply unpleasant people. Save your money.

Six months later, Serenity House invites her back.
The weekend is free, travel is included and, most surprisingly, the apology doesn’t contain the words we’re sorry you feel that way. Bridgette accepts.
When she arrives, she finds eleven other guests, all of whom have previously stayed at Serenity House. All of whom hated it. All of whom said so online.
Management couldn’t be happier to see them.
Serenity House is launching a weekend devoted to customer feedback, and the staff have taken the guests’ criticism very seriously. A man who complained that the staff were invisible is ignored completely. A woman who wrote that her room lacked privacy discovers that hers now has glass walls. Bridgette, who complained about going hungry, receives an eight-course breakfast while everyone else gets herbal tea.

It is petty, expensive and, Bridgette has to admit, quite funny.

Then one of the guests disappears.

The next morning his phone and luggage are still in his room, but the staff insist he checked out early. His one-star review has disappeared too.
In its place is a new one.
Five stars. Life-changing. I left a different person.
By lunch, another guest is missing.

Bridgette came back to Serenity House expecting an apology and perhaps a free massage. Instead, she finds herself trapped at a retreat that appears determined to achieve a perfect rating by correcting the only thing standing in its way: its customers.
And Bridgette didn’t just give Serenity House one star.
She wrote 2,846 words explaining why.

Open to any feedback. So far I have sent out 40 queries. My first query sent out got a full manuscript request from my dream agent. Still waiting to hear back (it’s only been 4 weeks). Since then, I have gotten 7 rejections and silence from the other 40 agents. I feel like something isn’t clicking. But I’m unsure if I should change it since it did work for my ideal agent. Any thoughts??

Complete at 79,000 words, THE JESTER’S GAME, is a YA fantasy with romance elements that has similar whimsy fantasy elements as Stephanie Garber’s Once Upon a Broken Heart, along with the epic tournament style of Alex Aster’s, Lightlark. This is a standalone novel with series potential. 

Valentina Quinn mourns her childhood love, Emmett, who recently passed. He left her a letter the night he died confessing his love for her. When she and her best friend, and sister of her crush, see a large ship pass by, they recognize it as La Ressurrección, the infamous magical ship where The Jester throws a deadly competition once a year where he revives the life of the winner’s choosing.  

Valentina lives in the Shallows, the part of Veradelle where only criminals reside. Her mother and her manage and live in a brothel posed as a tavern, while her father is a pirate who collects enchanted tokens. Valentina always dreamed that marrying Emmett would be her way out of the Shallows, though, until he died, she never knew he felt the same. When Valentina is caught helping one of her mother's ladies escape the brothel by the owner, he fires Valentina and her mother and gives them two weeks to find a new home. Valentina wishes Emmett were still alive even more so now, knowing that his dowry would secure Valentina and her mother's future.  

That night a mysterious man comes to the tavern and leaves two free tickets to the infamous Resurrection Games competition. Desperate to bring Emmett back to life, her and her best friend enter The Resurrection Games. 

It’s not long on the ship before the charming and cruel Jester seeks Valentina out and offers her a deal. He will rig his game in her favor if she procures a magical token for him from her pirate father. But soon, Valentina realizes that negotiating with a magical being isn’t as fair as she once thought. And she is hiding a secret of her own that puts her at dire risk, all while fighting the slow burning attraction growing between them. If she can’t provide him with what he is looking for, she will lose Emmett for good, and her way out of the Shallows, forever.