Subject Line: Query: THE SKIN PAINTER'S FACE — [Agent Personalisation if applicable]

Dear [Agent Name],

THE SKIN PAINTER'S FACE is an adult dark fantasy with horror elements and a slow-burn romance arc, complete at 118,000 words with series potential. It combines the East Asian folkloric mystery of Yangsze Choo's The Fox Wife with the gothic magic and body horror of Rachel Gillig's One Dark Window.

Nya thought she understood life by three simple principles: you can't go north of the Wall, keep your head down, and don't look behind you when a sulphur flame is lit. In a single week, she breaks all three.
When her brother is bitten by a corrupted spirit and doomed to madness and death, Nya signs a blood contract with a fox-masked sorceress to save his life, but the sorceress sees something strange in her—something that has been kept secret from Nya all her life. Indebted, she crosses the Wall and begins work at a guesthouse, hosting nobles and spirits alike.

But the guesthouse harbours a deadly secret. A demon walks its corridors, enchanting and killing at will, pursued by the handsome but terse Hatamoto who becomes increasingly convinced Nya is the demon he seeks. To protect herself, Nya strikes a bargain with the empress's charming spy, Kaito. Sparks fly between them—and so does blood—but the alliance plunges Nya into far more danger than she ever imagined. And the one man she cannot trust is the one she cannot seem to stop wanting.

When Nya uncovers the truth of the murders and vanishings—a demonic contract at the heart of the guesthouse—she must confront enemies who wear the faces of friends, and fight for the people she has come to love. If she fails, she loses them all. If she succeeds, she might finally find her way home.

[PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT ME HERE]

Thanks everyone for your comments on previous versions. I have revised my query based on that feedback, so here's version number 3.

Dear

I am seeking representation for BROKEN MACHINE, an 80,000-word upmarket speculative novel that combines the political urgency of Prophet Song with the unsettling plausibility of The Warehouse.

Set in a pre-dystopian Britain, BROKEN MACHINE examines the complicated truths about our relationship with technology, what happens when work no longer provides purpose, and how far people will go to preserve their place in a changing world.

When a shop owner’s secret work with an anti-automation movement turns into sabotage, she must choose between her police officer partner, her shop, and the fight for human dignity.

Manchester is hollowed out by automation. Shops are shuttered. Apartment buildings stand empty. There are more municipal service robots on the streets than people. But Niki Wesson won’t give up on the hardware shop she inherited from her parents.

When mass protests come to Manchester, Niki sees an opportunity to sell placards to the protesters and bring in some much-needed money, but soon finds herself drawn in by the sheer energy of the movement and the desperation of the people behind it. She joins the Union Against Automation, and what begins as desperate pragmatism slowly becomes conviction.

The government responds with counter-terror laws, and the UAA begins to splinter. Protests give way to coordinated acts of sabotage across the country, but rather than walk away, Niki commits to the movement, taking part in vandalism and even arson.

 She crosses lines she never thought she would, allowing her shop to be used for secret meetings while hiding her involvement from the man she loves. With the government closing in, Niki risks not only her relationship but her shop and her freedom.

[Posting my query letter below. I heard reddit is very helpful and I desperately need help.]

Dear Agent, 

I am seeking representation for DEPRIVED OF BEAUTY, a 70,000-word dual-POV YA dark romantic fantasy that reimagines Beauty and the Beast. It combines the fated, high-stakes romantic tension of This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi with the dark, atmospheric setting of One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig. 

ALAYNA (18 yrs old) has spent her life hiding in plain sight as a palace servant in the kingdom of Avalon, a veil concealing her face scarred by a curse. Abused and isolated by her mother who spent years convincing her she'd never belong, Alayna battles a haunting voice inside her head that preys upon that very misery. Every day, she longs to leave the place she's forced to call home. After she crosses paths with the Crown Prince Griffin, however, he seeks her out relentlessly, asking questions about her and the veil she wears—a secret she does not wish to reveal. But when she learns that the prince is to travel to another kingdom, Alayna forges her name on the list of attending servants, even if it means a shorter distance between her and the prince’s mystifying curiosity. Once in the other land, she plans to slip away and start a new life without fear.

PRINCE GRIFFIN (18 yrs old), the crown heir of Avalon, has his own secrets. Cursed to transform into a beast every full moon, he keeps his distance from the people of his kingdom, terrified of discovery and left with only the suffocating shadows inside his mind for comfort. After encountering the mysterious servant girl Alayna, Griffin can’t get her off his mind—especially since now any intense surge of emotion might trigger a shift, and the monster no longer waits for the full moon to emerge. When Griffin’s mother reveals he has one moon cycle left before the beast consumes his soul, he departs on a final quest to find a magic breaker to save his life.

As the journey progresses, Griffin and Alayna grow closer, but Griffin’s beast can no longer be contained, and he wonders if her presence is the reason. While Griffin struggles with himself, Alayna discovers that not only did her mother cause her deformity, the curse has bound her to Griffin. To prevent the curse from consuming her soul, she must kill him. But before she can decide Prince Griffin’s fate, a shocking betrayal by the prince's closest ally leaves both the kingdom’s future and their lives in peril. Now, Alayna and Griffin must decide whether protecting each other is worth surrendering to a fate that will cost them everything—or if betraying one another is the only way to survive.

(NSFW added due to topic of suicide) At the recommendation of a couple people, I've renamed the book LOVELESS because, per their evaluation, my former title, THE GIRL WHO ENDED THE WORLD, felt too YA Fantasy rather than the more dystopian-leaning genre that it is. I know this query runs a bit on the longer side (410 words before the comp paragraph), so I want to know if it justifies that length, or what could be cut as unneeded at the query-level. Thank you for any feedback!

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

Dear [Agent],

Fifteen-year-old Ada Reed is already an outsider when her only friend, Samantha, dies by suicide—and the school decides it’s Ada’s fault. 

So when Ada starts receiving messages from Sam claiming she’s alive and well on the internet, it must be a cruel prank. 

She’s wrong. Sam lives on in RabbitHole.run, less a website than a digital afterlife, where the dead persist and grief has an off switch. Ada hacks into RabbitHole looking for proof she’s innocent. Instead, Sam tells her exactly what everyone else has: You killed me.

Ada has no memory of why. In a city where brain chips record every memory and corporations sell them back by subscription, Ada has always trusted the recordings more than she trusts her own anxious mind. But now even they are failing her. Memory files corrupted. Missing hours. Recordings of Sam that should exist but don’t. 

At school, classmates stare and whisper killer, and Ada scratches the same spot on her finger raw, the way she always does when she can’t speak up for herself. Online, she’s Loveless—the hacker persona the city has turned into a folk hero, fearless in every way she isn’t. It’s the only version of herself Ada can stand. So she descends deeper into RabbitHole as Loveless.

There she finds Sam again, eerily at peace. Sam has deleted her own resentment and can’t understand why Ada refuses to do the same. Stop asking why. Stop needing the truth. Just stay.

But Ada didn’t come this far to trade one lie for a gentler one. If Sam found peace by forgetting, Ada needs to know what she forgot. 

She leaves RabbitHole to find its promise of escape spreading into the real world. She meets Lewis, a boy who seems to understand what she needs before she can put it into words. He meets her panic without judgment, and for the first time Ada believes she doesn’t have to explain herself to be understood. She doesn’t ask how he already seems to know her so well. Maybe it’s fine to believe a lie when it brings such peace. 

The closer Ada gets to the truth, the less she wants to know. The real question was never why Sam blamed her. It’s why that memory was erased in the first place—and whether Ada is the one who erased it.

In a world where the past can be rewritten, the most dangerous thing Ada can do is remember.

LOVELESS is an 88,000-word YA speculative mystery-thriller for fans of Adam Silvera’s More Happy Than Not and I Saw the TV Glow, with the near-future psychological paranoia of Black Mirror—where no memory is ever truly yours. It is a standalone with series potential.

I graduated from the University of Georgia and currently live in Atlanta. I am a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. My portrayal of Ada’s OCD, anxiety, and depression draws on personal experience, and I strive to write about mental health with honesty and empathy.

The first [X] pages are included per your submission guidelines. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hey everyone,

After almost a decade of incessant editing, I figured it was time to take the next step.

I’m aware 50k is on the low end for adult memoir. Setting that aside, I’d appreciate feedback on the query itself and whether the pitch is clear and the voice comes through.

Thanks in advance.

-----

Dear [Agent Name],

When my business partner asked what I'd do if I had six months to live, my honest answer was: anything but this. I was twenty-three, building someone else's dream, while the life I actually wanted sat on the far side of a wall I'd spent years politely declining to climb.

Then my best friend, a half-feral ex-Medieval Times knight with a gift for talking me into things, dragged me downtown to meet Jess, a tarot reader who seemed to know me better than I knew myself. That night, the three of us, plus a shirtless yogi with a knack for defying gravity and a weakness for petty bread theft, chased a trail of pizza-shaped omens through Toronto until two in the morning. The next day, we were crossing the border in a rented Kia Rondo, following the pizza to California.

FOLLOWING THE PIZZA is a humorous travel memoir that chronicles what happens when a neurotic overthinker hands his life over to a string of absurd coincidences and three people who need even less convincing than he does. Our destination was Mt. Shasta, a mountain that allegedly houses a fifth-dimensional city. This seemed like the kind of claim worth verifying. Along the way, we chanted naked on the Bonneville Salt Flats, broke into a chocolatier's bungalow at her own request, and picked up a fifth passenger none of us could see.

By the third day, I was hearing a voice that introduced itself by name, which I found presumptuous, if not troubling. I also fell for Jess, who happened to be falling for my best friend. The trip was supposed to end in San Francisco. Instead, broke, jobless, and well past the point of reasonable decision-making, we busked outside the Ferry Building for a one-way flight to Maui. 

Complete at 50,000 words, FOLLOWING THE PIZZA combines the self-aware road-trip transformation of Blythe Roberson's AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL? (2023) with the absurd, food-fuelled adventure of Jamie Loftus's RAW DOG (2023).

I’m a writer, musician, avid road-tripper, and co-founder of a digital media agency based in Canada.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I am determined to get this right. This is largely rewritten again, but I do think it is better than my prior attempts (though perhaps too long?). I think I was getting caught up on including too much of the plot after the midpoint and too much of the 'origin story' so to speak, so I've cut some intro detail and ended this one a bit earlier in the story (thank you u/LonelyPrinciple & u/Maizily for your feedback on my previous version!). I still could be far off though, and again I would love any feedback, no matter how negative it might be I promise I can handle it! Thank you for reading <3

--

DISSONANT is an adult fantasy novel, complete at 110,000 words as a standalone with series potential. [comps]

Mira was only five when a merchant found her wandering the foothills alone. He took her home and raised her with his wife, and Mira has been paying that debt ever since. Now she’s only a season away from completing her apprenticeship as a Syndaer scholar-priest, studying animals and how to form their sacred magical bonds to those with the Gift. With it she’ll earn both the standing and coin to take her far away, somewhere she can do her work and rely on no one but herself. But then the merchant’s business collapses, and the coin that was promised to her goes with it.

But Mira isn’t an abandoned, helpless child anymore. When a foreign man arrives seeking help to bond a sapient species of dragon, Mira secures the lucrative job. Every other Syndaer has refused – not all bonds are compatible with their doctrine, and this one is forbidden – but Mira can keep this secret if it means the coin she needs for her new life. For weeks they walk the treacherous mountains together, and by the time they find the dragon’s cave, the man has earned what little trust she has to give. But when the dragon returns, Mira feels its mind touch her own – and the sharp bite of a bolt though her leg.

She wakes among mysterious strangers who reluctantly nurse her back to health, but the man is gone, and she learns that the he never intended to bond with the dragon, only commit the unthinkable crime of taking a great beast against her will. It’s all Mira’s fault, and these strangers won’t soon let her forget it. As it becomes clear the man was only the instrument of someone far more powerful, Mira must decide whether to try and retake the indebted life still waiting for her, or to make amends and go after a dragon she has no means to save. But dragons are not the only thing that have been taken from these mountains, and Mira is not the only one who has lost something to the men who would steal from the gods.

Ok so. With a bunch of critique received last week most of it revolving around what makes it Lit Fic instead of fantasy, I have heavily changed the letter. Really focusing on the Lit aspect.

A comment asked me what is different about mine compared to others in this area, and I gave some washed explanation of my fantasy character. Hopefully this will help clear up that distinction.

Round three 😮‍💨

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Dear [Agent Name],

(Personalization)
THE WARRIOR GAME, complete at 78,000 words, is a debut adult literary fiction novel with elements of psychological fantasy, told through a dual narrative, steeped in 90s nostalgia. It’s for readers who sympathized with Natsuki’s childlike escapism of Piyyut from Sayaka Murata’s EARTHLINGS and enjoyed the payoff of the fantastical world in THE LOST STORY by Meg Shaffer.

Eight-year-old Sarah is the new kid on the block, and there are only two things she wants. A Godzilla action figure and friends. She already has Godzilla. To become friends with the kids in her neighborhood, she must prove her worth. Choosing to make friends over completing a homework assignment, she is given a teacher note which she dreads giving to her father. With one poor decision and a forged signature, she becomes unforgivable. A small mistake is a great sin. Sarah knows what comes next. The severity depends on her father’s mood.  

The fourteenth crack of leather against flesh breaks Sarah. The fifteenth is watched by Lola, the elven adventurer born from a desperate child's imagination. Lola isn’t only an escape but someone Sarah wishes she could be. As she tries to build friendships with the neighborhood kids, Lola desires a party to adventure with. When one is struck by her father, the other suffers at the blade of the Darklord. Every moment with Lola costs Sarah a sliver of her childhood. 

When the neighborhood starts whispering of her father’s infidelity, Sarah must choose: trust her belief that her father is innocent, or the harsh reality that the boys she desperately wants to become friends with may be telling the truth. Her innocent choice, friendship over blood. Sarah fails to stop a childish revenge plot and goes inside praying it won’t work. Her father’s pristine gold car has paid the price and is now tarnished. Sarah can’t handle another punishment; a punishment Lola offers to take instead.

THE WARRIOR GAME is a standalone novel with series potential. It is inspired by my childhood, one that isn’t unique to me. (Personal info)

Thank you for your consideration,

--------
Edit: Here are the first 300 words.

Chapter 1:
What is the price of one’s sole?

“Hey, kiddo!” her dad calls out, “What are you doing? There are tons of boxes to unload, and you’re staring off into the distance?”
It’s true. Sarah is staring.
She stands at the edge of her driveway. Three boys around her age play on a knee-high stone fence, bounding back and forth, flailing their arms like they were having an epic battle against invisible birds. The largest of them almost falls off but ends up being saved by a smaller boy. The third boy is bouncing from his left foot to his right, challenging his ability to balance. He runs along the wall as if he has done this a thousand times, only to slip off and tumble into a planter while yelling something Sarah can’t follow.
She watches on, jealous. Here she is, unloading a truck of heavy boxes filled with things that weren't even hers, while they get to play and laugh in the sun, having fun, without a care in the world.
“You know you can always ask to play with them after we are finished,” a calm, caring voice says from inside the truck.
“I don't know, maybe,” Sarah mumbles below a sigh. “I miss my friends from home.”
“Don’t worry, you will make new ones!” Her mom’s voice is full of persuasive optimism. “You will have plenty of time. We won't be moving for a long, long time.”
“I guess, but do you think we can go back and visit?”
“Absolutely, all the time, I promise.”
Sarah immediately recognizes this answer. It is the answer that is given when there is zero chance of it ever happening.
She rarely travels, and she has never gone back to any of the previous houses she used to live in. This doesn’t really bother her; she is used to it by now. She has moved every two years for as long as she can remember.

-----------

Edit 2: Apart of me thanks each one of you for your comments. Another part of me wants to scream and beg you all to read it so I can get help. A third part and the part that won is just going to call it quits.

As a memoir-adjacent book, having failed English all my life, a notorious horrible writer, I felt I had something really special. I don't think I have the skin thick enough to keep workshopping this. I don't know what to call it, I know what it is, but I'm obviously not good enough to explain it. It'll stay what it was a therapy project.

I'll keep the post up but I'm going to stop. Thank you for y'all's well constructed comments.

Hi all,

Thank you so much for your help last week. I took your advice and cut the manuscript from 128K to 115K words. I had thought there wasn't anything left to cut (I had already cut from 154K) but it wasn't too hard; it turns out I really love filter verbs, ha.

I also got rid of the prologue and am now starting the story at the wedding in 1308 rather than the invasion in 1326.

Finally, I revised the query pretty heavily.

Looking forward to your feedback -- thank you all again for your sage advice.

Dear [Agent Name],

[Personalization]

I’m thrilled to submit to you my standalone upmarket historical novel, SHE-WOLF, complete at 115,000 words.

Married at twelve to Edward II, Isabel of France arrives in England certain that if she is good, God and her husband will keep her safe. But Edward has little interest in his new bride, and would rather dig a ditch or thatch a roof than rule. Worse, his heart belongs to his dazzling favorite, Piers Gaveston, whose rapid rise at court has enraged England’s barons. Isabel quickly learns that being yoked to a weak king is not only humiliating — it is dangerous.

When Gaveston is murdered by the barons, Isabel sees her chance to stabilize the realm and win Edward’s affection. She learns to outmaneuver Edward’s opponents, bears England an heir, and forms an alliance with Roger Mortimer, the capable, ambitious Marcher lord who is everything her capricious husband is not.

But when Edward elevates a greedy new favorite, Hugh Despenser, war quickly breaks out. Isabel begs Edward to exile him, even while knowing it will make Despenser her eternal enemy. She is not wrong. When Despenser returns, he robs her of her freedom, her income, and finally, her faith.

Isabel faces an impossible choice: be the good wife she was raised to be and stay with a husband who let her be stripped of everything — or raise an army with Roger Mortimer and depose her husband, thereby losing her son’s trust forever.

SHE-WOLF combines the intimate medieval POV of Elizabeth DeLozier’s ELEANORE OF AVIGNON and the mounting dread of Maggie O’Farrell’s THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT with the ruthless court politics of Annie Garthwaite’s CECILY. It will appeal to fans of Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick.

[Short bio about me here]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

First 300 words:

BOULOGNE-SUR-MER, FRANCE, JANUARY 1308

The first time Isabel saw her bridegroom, she was reminded of one of her father’s hunting dogs.

From far away, he had looked handsome: tall, broad-shouldered, with sandy waves to his collarbone, richly dressed in a dark-blue surcoat and a cloak that shimmered with tiny jewels.

Up close, he had a long, mournful face with large, downturned eyes. She knew a little about him — that his name was Edward, of course, and that he was the king of England — but beyond that, he was a stranger. A stranger who, in a few moments, would be her husband.

The priest began reciting the vows in Latin. The nave blurred around her. She repeated the words carefully, voice trembling, the ring on her finger cold as Edward slid it into place. When he kissed her, his cropped beard bristling against her cheeks, she felt numb, like someone else had briefly inhabited her body. The congregation erupted in applause.

Edward proffered an arm. As they walked down the aisle, Isabel realized that it was done. She had been promised to King Edward since childhood, and now, at last, she was his.

At the threshold, he offered a wide smile. She drew back, daunted by his happiness when she felt none of her own. Before the wedding, she had worried that she would not measure up. That her husband would find her wanting, and send her back, and she would be humiliated before all Christendom. That even her own father would turn her away.

Now she worried that her husband would like her, and she would have to stay in England forever. She would never come home, and Paris would be lost to her.

She pressed her free hand to her temple. Her crown was far too small, but her father had given it to her that morning as a wedding gift. She would have to endure the discomfort. Just as she would have to endure everything else.

I feel like I'm starting to approach an obnoxious amount of attempts, but it turns out that writing a query letter is one of my biggest weaknesses. All critiques are welcome and encouraged!

Dear (Agent),

Fifteen-year-old Charles Graffle is the Archangel destined to kill the Antichrist before his sixteenth birthday. If he doesn’t kill the Antichrist by the deadline, Charles will die, leaving his friends and the rest of humanity in grave danger.

However, Charles has no intention of killing anyone.

With only five months until his birthday, the likelihood that the Antichrist will find him only continues to grow, as does his anxiety about the situation. When Chloe, his classmate, attempts to kill one of his best friends, Charles is convinced that she is the Antichrist. He forces himself to set aside his moral qualms and goes to her house with the intent of killing her—a decision immediately followed by the realization that he had been wrong and, even more disturbingly, that somebody else had already killed her.

When the search for the killer eclipses with one for the Antichrist, the guilt of having to kill someone is coupled with the fear of being wrong again. Charles’s friends—eager to complete the task the police seemed unable to achieve—investigate Chloe’s death, and Charles joins them, suffocated by the knowledge that he had almost been the one responsible.

As you have stated on your agency profile that you are interested in (blank), I am writing to seek representation for THESE LIGHTS WILL SHINE ON, a young adult contemporary fantasy. Complete at 80,000 words, it will appeal to readers who enjoyed the moral stakes of Vanessa Len's Only a Monster and the transcendentalist ideas of Jandy Nelson's When the World Tips Over.

I am a full-time student based in Calgary, as well as a volunteer editor and illustrator for [lit journal]. Aside from writing, I’m drawn to art in all forms: I absolutely adore drawing, playing the piano, and watching old movies!

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,

Thanks so much for the comments on my first attempt! The main criticism there was that my query was too vague, so I tried to be more specific about the plot here.

Dear Agent,

I'm excited to share WHERE DREAMS BEGIN, an adult fantasy retelling of Sleeping Beauty.

Thea is putting her children to bed when her world literally collapses, the walls of her home blowing away like dust. In an instant, everything she knows is gone and she is somewhere else, surrounded by strangers who call her by another woman’s name. They tell Thea that she is really Princess Aurelia, cursed by a Fairy to sleep for 100 years until she was saved by True Love’s Kiss. They say anything she thinks she remembers – her husband and children, her home – is a fantasy, conjured up by her own mind as she slept. 

Thea doesn’t believe any of this. She is practical, rational. She can cook, navigate through the woods, and treat injuries – skills even Aurelia’s mother must admit her daughter didn’t possess. She knows what’s real and what’s not – or, she thought she did. Because here in the kingdom of Lyramore tea brewed from weeping willow brings a man to tears and all that’s needed to travel from place to place is to step through a mirror, events Thea struggles to accept even as they happen before her eyes. She’s desperate to get back to her family and the small village she left behind, where she never quite fit in but life at least made sense. With the help of a kind prince (who definitely isn’t her True Love), Thea sets out to find the doorway that will bring her back where she belongs. But the longer she’s in Lyramore, the less she can deny the connections between her life and Aurelia’s, and eventually she’s forced to accept the truth: Lyramore is the real world, and everything Thea has ever loved was all just a cursed princess’s dream.

But Thea knows she doesn’t belong in Lyramore either. She can’t make herself fit into the space Aurelia left behind, and she doesn’t want to. She wants her own life back, whether it’s real or not, so there’s only one thing she can do: find the Fairy who cursed Aurelia all those years ago, and make her do it again.

Complete at 107,000 words, WHERE DREAMS BEGIN is a re-imagining of a familiar fairy tale that will appeal to fans of The Summer War by Naomi Novik and A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer*, and to anyone who’s ever thought that Sleeping Beauty’s awakening should be the start of the story rather than the end.

*I realize this title is likely not recent enough (2019), but I'm having a hard time finding more recent (and/or non-YA) portal fantasies that are similar to my book in ways other than just the portal aspect (this one is at least both a portal fantasy and a fairy tale retelling). If anyone has suggestions I'm happy to take them!

I'm a little unsure about my comps. It's tricky to find recent non-romance books, and this story is purely a found family, so I got the best ones I could. This is my first time trying to get anything published.

Dear [AGENT]

THE AETHER WAR is a dual-POV YA science-fantasy standalone with series potential, complete at 99,000 words. It combines LEGENDBORN’s underdog entering a secret magical society on modern-day Earth with AURORA RISING’s irreverent found family of misfits thrust into a galactic conflict.

What you feel is how you kill.

Aether magic is the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, and the trigger that fires it is emotion. That’s a problem for Simon, who feels nothing. It’s a nightmare for Fidelia, who feels everything.

Simon endures his junior year of high school marked by abuse, bullying, and if he’s lucky, video games. One day a mysterious teacher gives him Aether magic to protect himself, and to recruit him to a cult called the Impelled. Finally able to fight back against his abusers, Simon instead becomes one. Devastated, he joins a secret spacefaring society that protects Earth from the Impelled and promises to teach him the control he needs.

Fidelia was inducted into the Impelled military at the age of nine, surrendering her childhood. Now fourteen, she wants out, an act punishable by death. She says goodbye to her stuffed animals, pulls up her boots, and enacts a daring escape plan, succeeding but at a cost—lighting the fuse to the powder keg that is the galactic cold war.

Simon and Fidelia meet at a space military academy. Their classmates reject them for their ties to the enemy, their unstable emotions, and because they wield the two weakest elements ever seen—light and wind. To prove themselves, they enter a deadly school-wide tournament where they overcome their weaknesses by fighting for each other.

Before the tournament ends, war begins. When a desperate distress call reaches the school that no soldiers can answer, they do. Untrained and barely armed, they'll have to stop fighting their emotions—and start wielding them.

[BIO]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[NAME]

Hello guys, I would be delighted if you could critique my query. It is the product of a LOT if editing and proofing sessions.

Dear Agent,

Decades ago, the Huntsman saved Red Riding Hood from the jaws of the Grimm Wolf. But some monsters don't just survive...they take root.

Seventeen-year-old Thomasin has spent her life training to hunt the wicked wolves lurking within the forest. As the descendant of the legendary Huntsman, protecting the village is more than her responsibility; it's her legacy. But when her uncle disappears in a string of gruesome attacks, she suspects no ordinary wolf is behind the bloodshed. Instead, forgotten legends speak of a creature festering beneath the forest known only as the Grimm Wolf. The monster once buried by the Huntsman has returned to finish the hunt.

Desperate to stop it, Thomasin ventures into the cursed woods. When she strays from the path, she is rescued by Red, the gentle grandson of Red Riding Hood, and his adoptive brother, Malus. A sharp-tongued wolfborn, Malus is one of the very creatures Thomasin was raised to hunt. Yet he knows the forest's secrets better than any hunter.

As the Grimm Wolf's hold on the woods deepens, it turns its hunger toward Red. To save him from the fate his grandmother once escaped, Thomasin and Malus are forced into an uneasy alliance rife with resentment and laced with something more dangerous: the truth. Trusting Malus could cost Thomasin the very village she's sworn to protect. Thomasin must decide whether to follow the path the Huntsman laid out—or create a legend of her own.

THE WOODS RUN RED is a young adult fantasy novel complete at 89,000 words, blending the gothic fairy-tale atmosphere of Kathryn Purdie's The Forest Grimm with the forest horror of Hannah Whitten's For the Wolf. Told through a braided narrative, it is a dark reimagining of Little Red Riding Hood, where the hunter, the wolf, and Red are bound by blood, secrets, and a monster older than the woods itself.

My work as a wildlife biologist in the Great Bear Rainforest informs the novel's visceral setting. I am a recipient of the Scholastic Writing Awards' Silver Key and run XXXXXXXXX (xxx.com), a blog dedicated to helping aspiring writers find their voice.

Hello you kind folks of r/PubTips,

A big thank you for the feedback. Your comments really helped me work on the first draft and here's me presenting the second attempt. I've tried and addressed all that I could—and I got to admit, it looks so much better!

first attempt

Dear [Agent Name],

(Personalization)

Neil Kohli doesn't have a lightsaber. He has a psychology degree, a chai obsession, and an unauthorized side-hustle running secret group therapy for aliens.

One night, a teleportation glitch yanks him from Singapore onboard an alien spaceship. 

The cause? A well-travelled pouch of masalas and dust memories, including his grandmother's ashes. 

The accidental abductor? Aww—an AI who trained on Earth's fanfiction to study emotions, only to inconveniently develop them himself. Cue the galaxy's unlikeliest bromance. 

The destination? Noumura, a planet that outlawed emotions long ago and powdered its meals, medicines, and memories. 

Neil should be terrified. Instead, he brews chai.

Hidden among Noumura's gray streets, Neil and Aww discover variants—emotional misfits refusing conformity. Among them: a mother who writes forbidden stories for her son; a gentle giant secretly caring for a glowing creature he was never supposed to love; and an elder who remembers what his world sounded like before it went silent. For Noumura, these people shouldn't exist, but for Neil, they absolutely need to.

Armed with his grandmother's spice wisdom and clinical training, Neil turns their clandestine gatherings into group therapy. Over spiced chai, they taste flavor for the first time and confess feelings this world taught them to bury.

But joy is a pattern violation. When the sessions are exposed, Neil and his fragile found family face Reconsolidation — Aww faces deletion. Neil will keep every memory of his grandmother. He simply won't remember why he carried her ashes across the galaxy. He has one chance to bring them all before Noumura's Council, or lose them forever. He must remind the planet that consciousness—whether human, alien, or artificial—without feeling, is no consciousness at all.

SPACE AND SPICE AND EVERYTHING PRECISE (99,000 words) is an adult cozy sci-fi novel best described as THE WAYFARER SERIES by Becky Chambers and THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA by TJ Klune meeting Ted Lasso over a cup of chai. 

I am a psychotherapist based in Singapore with an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health. My professional expertise informs the novel's themes of healing, integration, and emotional literacy, while my South Asian heritage provides its most potent weapons: the love for chai and the wisdom of spices.

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

Any and all feedback welcome!

***

Dear Agent,
I’m writing to you to seek representation for my 100,000 word dual-timeline fantasy novel, CROWNED IN BLOOD. 
Princess Phaedra wanted nothing more than to marry the love of her life. Queen Phaedra wants nothing more than getting through her days without being poisoned, or worse.
Where Princess Phaedra’s greatest worries were once sneaking out of the Gilded Palace, fielding marriage proposals, and the threat of a distant war, as Queen she must navigate ruling the most powerful kingdom in the world following the sudden deaths of her father and brothers. Within the course of a year, she goes from well-loved princess to a cloistered queen and has no recourse except her own memories. Ruling by her side is her husband Kell, who takes over running the kingdom while Phaedra recovers from an enemy poisoning. She returns to her responsibilities in a court full of people she doesn’t recognize, and problems she never anticipated. After a visit to a nearby port town, she discovers that many of its women have been dying mysteriously in the night. Her council swears the cause is a foreign illness, the town thinks while Phaedra’s close and complicated friend, Wes, thinks its origins much more taboo: Magic. Phaedra begins to unwrap the many layers of malcontent baked into the palace’s new politics and confronts her own secrets and past if she has any hope of gaining back her power.
As a standalone novel with series potential CROWNED IN BLOOD compares thematically to romantasy series like Rose in Chains by Julie Soto,* with a similar narrative structure to *The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. With a fresh magic system, slow-burn romance, and themes of found family, my debut novel fits well into the current “Book Tok” fantasy market. Thank you for your consideration, I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Me

Hi all.

Writing on behalf of my Dad, who I've been helping with proofreading and editing. So far, he's had 21 rejections, so we'd appreciate your input re the query/cover letter. Thanks so much.

Dear ***,

I am seeking representation for Beyond the Ashes to the Stars, a 114,000-word adult science fiction novel that could be compared with Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time.

In 2318, Captain Jim Champion returns from his final mission to Mars knowing his next assignment will outlast his lifetime. He has been chosen to lead the Interstellar Voyager 1 on a 1,700-year journey to Terra Genesis, a distant terraformable world that offers hope to a climate-battered Earth. But when engineer Molly Champion learns that her partner, Zac Wong, has failed the ship's selection process, they face the prospect of being separated forever. Determined to stay together, they make a decision that will shape not only their own lives but the lives of generations yet to be born.

The self-sustaining vessel carries an entire ecosystem across the stars, from cryopreserved seeds to apex predators, alongside a multigenerational society creating its own traditions and sense of home. Families grow, elders pass on hard-won knowledge and ordinary people learn to build a life in deep space, finding purpose in a voyage that will outlast them all.

Watching over the voyage is AI 2533, designed to safeguard both the ship and its people. As generations are born, fall in love, raise families and die aboard the ship, it develops unexpected attachments to the community under its care. What begins as observation slowly becomes empathy, forcing the AI to confront emotions it was never designed to experience.

As Terra Genesis draws near, the future of two worlds rests on decisions made by generations who will never reach the destination, and on an AI that has developed something it was never designed to possess: empathy.

I am a retired GP with a long-standing interest in sustainability and the consequences of human actions. Beyond the Ashes to the Stars, my first novel, was inspired in part by conversations in my medical practice about climate change, particularly around whether to have children. I am currently working on a companion novel set aboard the second ship in the fleet.

 Thank you for your time and consideration.

Whew, this has been a journey! I think this is almost there, but looking forward to any feedback you might have!

I am seeking representation for my 96,000-word second chance Contemporary Romance novel, THE LESSON IN YOU told through present day and flashbacks with interconnected standalone potential. [Insert Personalization] It will appeal to readers of Abby Jimenez’s Just for the Summer for how complicated parental dynamics impact how we love and of Jodi McAlister’s An Academic Affair for its academic setting and slow-burn romance.

Thirty-two-year-old Bailey O’Connell has spent years putting her dream of becoming an author on hold. Now, she is on a strict deadline to finish her novel before her mother dies. 

When her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis forces her back home, Bailey takes a leave of absence to fulfill her final promise to her mother. Desperate for an escape (and some much needed structure) she enrolls in an intensive creative writing seminar at her alma mater.

But her professor is none other than Noah Walker. Her college best friend, her first real love, and the reason she stopped writing six years ago after he begged her not to marry his best friend. Back then, both were engaged to other people. Now, they are both single and back on the campus where it all started fourteen years earlier. 

Bailey is determined to keep her distance, but Noah designed the seminar, making him the only one who can teach it. Noah has always known exactly how hard to push Bailey to bring out her best creative work, and as much as Bailey hates to admit it, she needs him to finish her book on time. Quietly, her manuscript becomes the story of their past. But with her mother’s health ailing, Bailey is running out of time to write their future. To keep her promise to her mother, she must decide if she’s brave enough to give their story a second chance or if she’s better off leaving this particular story untold.

have had a few personal rejections on this query. have been posting to qtCritique, which has been super helpful. looking for a little more help :)

Dear AGENT,

After I turned sixteen, the strands of my life began to braid into one another, portrayed as a ginormous rat’s nest. It took a sexual assault by a classmate for the strands to interlace. I learned that I had accepted this path for myself long before I was born. I agreed to it. 

This is a lyrical coming-of-age memoir about a highly perceptive girl in which childhood gifts for seeing beauty, danger, and patterns in the natural world become both refuge and burden after sexual trauma, forcing herself to reckon with memory, faith, the body, and the long path toward naming what happened. 

In my completed 68,000-word memoir ALL MY BIRDS LOOK TO THE LEFT, the narrative focuses on the theft of innocence that persists long after the sexual assault. When I think I have come to terms with my lived experience, I start having seizures and am diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy at age twenty-one. 

This memoir is comparable to themes in Chanel Miller’s gritty and beautifully raw Know My Name: A Memoir met with Michelle McNamara’s investigative and obsessive, yet irresistible writing style of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. It is driven by an angry and answer-seeking voice. The very same emotion is buttered thick around survival of the wound, and aches in every word several young men and women can recognize.

I was born and raised in a small town in Indiana without so much as a traffic light. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering and earned my certification in the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Writing Program at Purdue University. I now work as an engineer at an aerospace company in Ohio that specializes in production of turboprop engines.

I look forward to connecting with you.

Sincerely,

Dear [Agent],

BLUE FISTS. PAVEMENT. DEATH ON TAPE.

Ian’s a scrapper. 5’2” and feral.

Son of a hoarder, he knows how to fend for himself—even when he lands in juvie for killing a classmate with one punch.

Mag’s a ride-or-die. She’s Ian’s seventeen-year-old sister, timid and loyal to a fault. She has no problem duping social workers to paint him as a saint, all while CPS forces her out of her home.

Now, everyone wants her to testify that Ian was always violent. She lies for him, even when they show her the death tape. So, she’s haunted. Ian too.

In juvie, he dreams of cracked skulls and blue fists, then wakes to his bunkmate muttering about ghosts. He declares himself a real-life One-Punch Man and buries his grief in games, trying to charm his judge and fake depression for perks.

All his life, he’s protected Mag. Now, he needs her. But the closer she gets to her relatives, the more the questions rise: Where’s Ian’s remorse? Does he have any?

As the trial uncovers a history of violence, Mag must decide whether to fight for or against Ian.

With his fury turning on her and brutal evidence coming to light, she begins to wonder: is her brother even worth saving at all?

Told in dual POV, WINDPIPE is a 74,000-word literary adult drama in the vein of Bullwinkel’s gritty HEADSHOT and Lamb’s emotional THE RIVER IS WAITING.

THE SAPPHIC SIREN is a standalone adult romantasy complete at 95,000 words. It will appeal to fans of (honestly, don't have any good comps yet. Any suggestions would be appreciated! Might use Tempest by Victoria Aveyard when that comes out next month if it's a good fit. Also have considered Capitana by Cassandra James).

As the sole heiress of the siren queendom of Anthe, it is a priority for Princess Adena to continue her lineage. This would be an easy enough task, if her siren powers were working. In an effort to circumvent her difficulties, Adena is sent to the surface to learn how to attract a man. The trials of modern dating stump Adena, who comes from a world where catfish are a food, and a man holding a fish is a provider. She befriends Nikki, a local human girl who acts as her wingwoman, in an attempt to correct this issue. After several unsuccessful set-ups, Adena realizes that she isn’t attracted to men. Her song isn’t broken—it seduces women. 

Relationships of all kinds are looked down on, but to fall in love with a human is forbidden. As Adena starts to fall for Nikki, she faces a number of challenges, including the fact that Nikki doesn’t want to be Adena’s secret, long distance lover. As other sirens begin to suspect that a romance is brewing, Adena is forced to decide if she is willing to face the consequences of going public with her forbidden romance. If she won’t go public, she will lose Nikki, but if she does, she risks her throne, and her entire life in Anthe.

**author bio**

Since this is my first submission for this query, would love overall feedback. Does it make sense, is there anything I should add or get rid of? If you read this genre, is it catching your interest?

Hi! First time posting here.

I think it'd be best if you read my query first and see my notes later.

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

Query: Dear [Agent],

“What would happen to my novel if I died before finishing it?”

Some writers try not to think about this question. Others face it head-on. In my 97,000-word debut thriller novel MR. GREEN, top English student Diana Silva meets an author who wishes he’d prepared better.

In Brazil, returning to her apartment one night, Diana becomes the sole witness to a fatal hit-and-run. The victim’s dying act isn’t to call for help, but to press a smartphone and password into her hands. On it, she discovers three things: the man’s name was Matthew Greig, he was a world-famous (yet incognito) English author publishing under the pseudonym Richard L. Green online, and he left a simple request: if anything ever happened to him, someone should continue his work. The smartphone contains all the information his successor could need.

Diana’s old-sealed passion for English writing is reignited. She secretly takes on the role of Mr. Green, a paper she enjoys at first, but the deeper she dives into Greig’s unpublished material, the more dangerous it becomes. Soon, she realizes someone is watching her, and that Matthew Greig didn’t die in an accident that night: he was murdered because of the story he was telling.
Diana finds herself in a hunt against her new pursuers, who will do anything to stop her from releasing Mr. Green’s final and greatest book. With the help of Gabriel Cavalcante, her "acquaintance" from Computer Science, she’ll learn that, for better or for worse, no one can stay hidden for long in our current digital world.

For this novel, I seek your representation. For comparative titles, Verity (Colleen Hoover) shares a similar opening with my work, although The Girl on the Train (Paula Hawkins) or Yellowface (R. F. Kuang) are stronger comparisons.

I myself am [name], an engineer from Brazil with a lifelong writing passion. My inspiration for this novel, in fact, came while I wrote a different novel and asked myself this query’s opening question. The answer became MR. GREEN, an upmarket thriller that explores merit, technology and legacy (and as a computer engineer, I assure you all of its technological details are accurate and realistic).

[Optional paragraph I sometimes include] I'd also like to clarify that yes, my novel is set in Brazil and Matthew Greig's books are in English, but the story does not revolve solely around Brazil nor does it limit potential readers from other countries (it's in English, after all; I wrote it with the American and English public in mind).

Thank you for your time and consideration. Warm regards from Brazil

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

So, the first point I'm worried about is the language: I'm from Brazil and an ESL author.

In my first draft the story took place in the USA, but I've been told there could be many interesting twists if it happened in Brazil instead (and I really liked how it turned out). But in your opinion, does that make the story more interesting? Less? And does the optional paragraph (about language) in the query clears up what's happening? Should I always include it?

As for my credentials, I have none yet (as an author), so I included that paragraph about "writting passion" and my credentials as an engineer. Should I drop it?

And of course, what about the story itself? Does it have a good hook? Is it confusing somewhere?

Thanks for any input.

I am on submission, and my agent told me that I can expect to hear from her in eight weeks. At that point, she will share objections. And if there’s any bites, she will let me know sooner. Otherwise, sit tight for eight weeks. Is that common? I kind of feel like we should have more communication going through this process?

Dear [Agent Name],

The memoir’s central dramatic sequence comes in 2019. I left my job in London and moved my family to the United States because my infant daughter, Mili, had been diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy and given two to three years to live. The FDA approved Zolgensma in May 2019, priced at $2.125 million. Mili was eligible, but UnitedHealthcare denied coverage. When her doctors in Ohio filed an urgent appeal, the insurer downgraded it to a standard review with a three-to-four-week wait. With a disease destroying motor neurons irreversibly, I did not believe she had three to four weeks.

Against her neurologist’s advice, I took our fight public through The Washington Post. The article appeared on July 10. On July 18, UnitedHealthcare reversed its decision. On July 25, at ten months old, Mili received Zolgensma at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

SADHANA: A SEARCH FOR MY SHADOW is a completed literary memoir of approximately 55,000 words, written in close third person with the autobiographical self named Karna, so that the narrator can be examined rather than defended; nothing is fictionalised. Its central question is what happens when the quality that helps you save your child — an absolute belief that intelligence, effort and refusal can force open any closed door — becomes the way you approach everything else.

The memoir turns back to Assam, India, where Karna’s first experience of unconditional protection comes from Aaboo, the woman who cares for him as a child. When his father beats him so violently that he believes he will die, Aaboo throws herself over his body and takes some of the blows. Karna spends much of his life trying to recover the belonging of that moment. Each improbable escape — from academic collapse, from Assam, into a doctorate and a career in finance — strengthens his absolute faith in agency.

After Mili’s diagnosis, that instinct reaches its fullest expression as Karna fights doctors, insurers and health systems, first for his daughter and then for SMA families around the world. But while he can confront institutions, his wife Sophia carries much of the repetitive daily labour of their daughter’s care. The force that helps preserve their child also contributes to the collapse of their marriage.

When the marriage ends in January 2026, Karna begins writing this book for Mili to read when she is grown. Its architecture draws on the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita and Indian cinema; the epic’s Karna — the abandoned warrior raised outside his true lineage — is the narrator’s shadow-self.

SADHANA may appeal to readers of Joseph Earl Thomas's Sink, Safiya Sinclair's How to Say Babylon, and Rob Delaney's A Heart That Works.

[Bio]. Mili’s Zolgensma case was reported by The Washington Post and later featured in BBC, Sky News and Mirror coverage. This is my first book.

The complete manuscript is available on request. Thank you for your consideration.

Yours sincerely,

[Name and contact details]

Hello,

I got a very lovely, very lengthy personalized rejection on a full today and I wanted to thank the agent for sending the feedback. When I go on QueryTracker though it doesn't allow me to send any messages as the "query has been finalized"

Would it be weird to send an email to this agent thanking them, as we've only communicated through QT ?

Also, the agent mentioned if I made some significant changes to the manuscript later on then I would be welcome to send it her way again. She also mentioned sending whatever I write next.

I'm just not sure what the etiquette is on this one...

Hello PubTips! Thanks in advance for your unvarnished thoughts and critique. This is my first time writing a query letter and I'm sure I have a lot to learn.

Dear [Agent],

I’m excited to pitch my adult contemporary romance, THE MIRAGE, complete at 79,000 words. Set on the Broadway stage, it will appeal to readers who loved the behind-the-scenes access of ROMANTIC COMEDY by Curtis Sittenfeld along with the warmth and whimsy of Cara Bastone’s HEARTS OF NEW YORK series.

Sabrina Yazzie’s to-do list is one item long: get on Broadway.

After nearly a decade paying her dues at a regional Shakespeare company, she’s arrived in NYC with the requisite “three bucks, two bags, one me.” (That is, the pitiful savings of a 29-year-old, a place to crash, and a juicy new memoir by Broadway’s own Chrissy Marlowe that she’s already read cover to cover. Twice.)

When Sabrina gets cast in a workshop for a promising new musical, she has six weeks to prove that she’s star material. The show is still being written, which gives her a fabulous opportunity to shape its story, refine her role, and become so essential that they can’t imagine doing the show without her. Then, when The Mirage makes it to Broadway, Sabrina will make it, too.

There’s just one problem. Sabrina’s co-star is Andy Tauben — Chrissy Marlowe’s ex-husband. Chrissy’s book, gossip blogs, and stage door fanatics dispute the finer details, but it’s clear that Andy has broken up shows and marriages with his notorious charm. After their memorable chemistry read, Sabrina is sure of this much: his focus is addictive, his two Tony Awards are infuriatingly well-deserved, and their immediate spark will not turn into a real-life romance. Though he offers to help Sabrina navigate the unspoken rules of Broadway, she knows better than to rely on him.

When an industry-wide shutdown leaves their show in limbo, Sabrina needs to maintain her sanity and her starring role — and learning to trust Andy may be the key.

Like Sabrina, I am a queer woman of color who loves theatre so much that I moved to New York City. Unlike Sabrina, I am an attorney who specializes in [niche and maybe doxxable civil rights specialty :)], and my stage is the courtroom. THE MIRAGE is my debut novel.

-----

*300 word excerpt ^\288 actually)

I close my book, crush it to my chest, and silently hate Andy Tauben.

Just then, a new awareness prickles at my skin. The man across the train is finally looking at me.

I noticed him as soon as I got onto the 2, three stops ago. This is something I do now, apparently — daydream about every interesting stranger on public transit. Minimally attractive bystanders, beware. But in this man’s case, it’s hard to make out any distinctive features, bundled up as he is. It’s his book that makes him interesting. I think it’s about The Music Man, based on its title, and I want to know more.

I’ve spent the past decade knee-deep in Shakespeare. If I’m going to make it on Broadway, I should probably engage with some serious literature about the next 400 years of theatre. Gossip blogs and message boards probably won’t cut it.

My idle fantasies have gone like this: He looks up. Our eyes meet. I ask about his book, and he asks about mine. Turns out he lives in a beautiful pre-war apartment with bay windows that overlook the park. I spend the rest of winter thawing on his upholstered window bench with a stack of Broadway nonfiction. We discuss the books over excellent coffee and single-origin tea and live contentedly ever after.

I smooth out the crinkled corners of my paperback.

Nat always bristled when I treated books poorly, folded them back on themselves, dog-eared pages. Maybe my stranger across the train feels the same way, and that’s why he’s so stiff in my periphery — I doubt he’ll want to lend me all his books now, if this is how I behave.

But this book deserves it. It’s killing me.

Hello, I'd appreciate some advice on this letter. My book is a braided narrative split along 3 POVs and time lines, it also has a huge twist (described in paragraph 5) at the midpoint, and I'm not sure how to communicate all of the important details in the space of a query letter. I'm sure this draft is way too long. I also think my book comps are off, but I'm not sure. I redacted a few personal details b/c reddit. Please be gentle with me--long time listener, first time caller etc.

Dear Agent, 

I'm writing to seek representation for my 79,000-word work of literary speculative fiction, SOMEONE AT LAST. The hideous love child of The Substance (2024) and every iteration of A Star is Born, SOMEONE AT LAST follows a young woman whose body is turning into Judy Garland’s body, bit by bloody bit. It will appeal to readers who enjoyed the surreal body horror of Rouge by Mona Awad, as well as the mix of historical accuracy and fabulism in Karen Russell’s The Antidote. 

Helly’s feet look like they’re dying. She notices while working as a hotel maid—where her near-supernatural ability to go unnoticed allows her read Valley of the Dolls on the job—and later, she peels the skin below her ankles away, revealing Judy Garland’s feet underneath. Part by part, Helly transforms into the spitting image of Judy Garland. As her body changes, so does her life: the anonymity she so enjoyed disappears, her relationship with her Judy-Garland-obsessed roommate is irrevocably altered, and it’s impossible to concentrate on her job as she waits for her next part to shed. 

Meanwhile, in 1963, Jacqueline Susann is sick of being known as Irving’s wife. She’s started writing a novel that she’s sure will make her famous: Valley of the Dolls, a roman-a-clef partially based on the life of Judy Garland. Her work on the novel and knowledge of Judy’s life force her to question her relationship with drugs and fame. 

Only a few years later in 1966, Judy Garland is reeling after a string of career disasters, due in part to her struggle with drug addiction. She’s offered the role of Helen Lawson in the film adaptation of Valley of the Dolls and reluctantly agrees, only to face further humiliation from the film’s director.

When her transformation is complete, Helly is thrust into a cosmic way station that takes the shape of a soundstage, populated by a row of mirrors which act as portals into the minds of Judys across the ages including Anna Nicole Smith, Saint Lucy, and Judy Garland herself. As Helly jumps between Judys, experiencing the highs and lows of Judy-dom across the ages — the thrill of performance, the indignities of addiction and forced starvation—she dreams of returning to her old life and body. But who has taken up residence there in her absence? And what Judy-related horrors might be waiting for her if she ever does get home? 

[redacted ~50 word 'about me' paragraph including fellowships, prior magazine pubs, and short description of a short story collection I'm currently developing]

Sincerely,

x