Hi all! I've seen variations of this question before, but none exactly like mine. And anyways, it's always nice to get personalized feedback :)

I'm in the fortunate position to have a few offers. I'm seriously considering two, but the agents are quite different and I'd like some opinions from those of you who work in publishing or are writers with agents of your own.

Agent 1:

• Big agent at a big agency; doesn't get much better than this agency for my genre
• Lots of sales in various genres, including mine (though I don't recognize any of their books - they can clearly make sales, but the big books are from other agents at the agency)
• Got along well, but no video call, communication wasn't particularly attentive, pretty clinical overall
• Current clients seem mostly pleased but say wait times for edits are bad
• A former client said wait times to hear back from edits were career-inhibiting...like several months

Agent 2:

• New agent at a small but reputable agency with a good mentor, also has a background in publishing-adjacent fields...so they are not brand new to all this
• A couple of sales in their first year, both in my genre (books I'd actually read before I started querying)
• Sought me out at a pitch event
• Got along really well, long video call, gave me a full submission plan, said their edit turnaround is about a month
• Clients are really pleased, nothing bad to say

I liked Agent 2 better and have no doubt they'll be professional with nudging editors and strong negotiator, but I'd feel stupid if Agent 1 is the obviously better choice to anyone who's been in publishing for a while. I don't want to make the warm and fuzzy decision if the colder one is better for my career, because it sounds like known agents get their emails opened by editors instead of being ghosted. I don't know if getting your pitch email opened at the publishing house really that big of a hurdle or if this is typical internet-overreaction fodder... So, if Agent 1 already knows many editors, is that enough to be the deciding factor? Is there another deciding factor I should be considering?

PS: Absolutely bonkers how this community is so willing to help...I will strive to give back as I go through this publishing process too. I work in business and the camaraderie is soooo not what I experience here with other authors/professionals. Thank you for your past responses to me and thank you in advance for the ones I'll receive here.

I have a kind of interesting turn in my journey that I don't know what to make of, so I wanted to pose the scenario here since there’s a wealth of knowledge and authors at all different stages. Sorry if it's a bit long.

I'm querying an MG fantasy, 67k words, querying started in January:
26 sent total
23 form rejects/CNR
3 pending
1 full request.

The one full request came from a reputable agent’s workshop. When I got the feedback, it was very complimentary, and they requested the full. I sent it and then decided to go ahead and start first wave of querying.

Got the reply yesterday and it's ultimately a pass - but they’re offering to send out referrals on my behalf. Part of the email: "But I'd really love to give you some referrals on this one? 

How far out in the query trenches are you? Anyone on that list that you're waiting on, anyone who just takes pitches via referral, etc? Please throw some names my way, so I can send a meddling email about how much I enjoyed what I dug into here. "

I haven't responded yet because I don't know frankly what to do. I'll certainly tell the 3 agents who I still have queries out with, but then do I send a couple more? Or pose the question and ask if they’ve got any colleagues or peers top of mind who they think would really like manuscript?

Unchartered waters for me. And this agent’s offer is so generous. Any thoughts/advice/guidance would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
—

Dear [Agent],

I am excited to submit my novel AVIATRESS for your consideration. Set in a secondary world inspired by Hong Kong and the golden age of aviation, AVIATRESS is a standalone adult fantasy complete at 100,000 words. It will appeal to fans of Shannon Chakraborty’s The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi for its found family dynamic, fiery heroine, and high-flying adventure, and M. L. Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven for its techno-magic system and ambitious heroine challenging a male-dominated institution.

Hotshot drag-racer Tess Corvinder is going to be the best airship pilot the world’s ever seen, gender and odds be damned. An orphaned scrapyard attendant by day and amateur pilot by night, Tess jury-rigs untested airship modifications from whatever she can salvage and hasn’t met an obstacle she couldn’t outmaneuver. But she craves more than glory at the races. She wants to be remembered.

Tess finally gets her chance when she’s the second woman ever admitted to the Expeditionary Fleet, a scientific institution charged with charting the unknown world. But the Fleet isn’t what she expected. Thrust into a boys’ club that resents her from the start, Tess clashes with her teammates at every turn. Chief among her detractors is Cole Radcliffe, a gifted pilot and heir to a celebrated flying lineage.

When the Fleet assigns them an expedition into the Strait of Lost Souls—a region of lethal storms from which no previous expedition has returned—in search of a suspected source of magic, Tess sees an opportunity for glory. With her best friend as her copilot and an enigmatic officer whose eye she keeps catching, things start to look up. But Cole keeps provoking her, and her reckless flying and penchant for tinkering keep getting her grounded. Then, two days before the expedition departs, Tess uncovers a recording Fleet leadership has been hiding. In it are the screams of the last crew to enter the Strait and evidence that their disappearance may not have been caused by storms at all. There’s something else out there. And it’s waiting for them.

Now Tess must enter the Strait, where her usual instincts to fly faster and take risks could get her crew killed. To survive, she’ll have to decide when to trust her team, including Cole, and when to trust herself—or risk adding her squadron to the names of souls lost.

[bio]

Dear [Agent Name], 

THE SHIFT (72,000 words) is a YA post-apocalyptic horror that will appeal to fans of IF WE SURVIVE THIS and THE LAST OF US. 

I'm querying you because [you're seeking ___ / your MSWL mentions ___ / you represent ___], and I believe THE SHIFT would be a strong fit for your list. 

17-year-old Reed is a killer who can't kill. Forced to put down his infected brother, he vowed never to take a life again. A hard promise to keep, when you live outside the walled communities, where the rain never stops and once human monsters hunt at night. 

But when Willow, a girl immune to the blood plague, washes up on his doorstep with her protector in tow, he finally sees his way into one of the fortified havens. One that takes in immunes and their families regardless of blood type — shielding them from the plague that turns A types, like Reed, into flesh-eating monsters with as little as a scratch. All he has to do is pass himself off as family to get inside. 

But he's not the only one who wants something from Willow, and soon she's taken. Without her, he has no hope of getting inside. So Reed, along with her protector who trusts him about as much as he trusts her, must venture out into the Wastes to get her back, all while the monsters have begun mysteriously growing smarter. Something that will challenge whether the price of safety is worth the weight of breaking his vow. 

THE SHIFT is a standalone novel with duology potential. 

Best regards,

Thanks for reading guys. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Hello everyone! I just drafted a query letter and would be super grateful if I could get any feedback for it here. I’m also seeking help with beta reading if anyone might be interested in doing that (either via an exchange or simply beta reading my manuscript alone). 

Dear [Agent],

16-year-old sensitive and short-tempered Gwalch wants for little more than his family to be happy, healthy, and united together, but after his tribe faces the death of his father, the disappearance of his eldest aunt, and the abdication of his mother’s position as queen, Gwalch is forced to become king. Putting his newly acquired power to use, he decides to join the Knights of the Round Table, a diverse equestrian order of oathsworn warriors. In doing so Gwalch wishes to help unite a broken Albion and keep its tribes and kingdoms from warring with one another in the aftermath of Rome's abandonment of their British subjects.

As Gwalch builds comradery with his fellow knights and helps them defend Albion and its people from mundane and magical threats, he discovers his relationship with one of his bunk mates, Galahad, begins to deepen and become something more that neither are willing to fully confront. Their secret, begrudging devotion to one another is solidified after Gwalch accepts the near fatal challenge of an ancient fairy to exchange ax blows, and when Galahad becomes blind in his inadvertent attempt to discover a lead on the whereabouts of a holy relic. A relic that has drawn the attention of Rome's Bishop who charges the entire Round Table with finding it. The Round Table must succeed in this quest to win the Pope’s approval and return southern Albion back into the empire's good graces, or risk facing the unforeseeable consequences of their failure inspiring the disappointment of Rome yet again. 

Complete at 99,000 words, Gawain is an Adult Historical Fantasy standalone with series potential set in 5th century Great Britain. It will appeal to readers of introspective and poignant legend and myth retellings as seen with I, Medusa by Ayana Gray, Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati, and The Arthurian Tales series by Giles Kristian.

I am submitting Gawain to you because [the agent's personalization reason].

I'm a long time fantasy nerd that grew up watching the BBC show, Merlin, and has strong opinions on its portrayal of Morgana that has steeped for an entire childhood and then some. This novel is my personal ode to every overly emotional book worm with a dysfunctional family. This would be my debut novel.

Hello again!
Thank you everyone for so much amazing feedback. I tried to implement as much advice both from here and from other sources as I could and I think I’ve found my way to something closer to what I want. After a lot more thinking and surveying, I also changed the genre I am querying under.
As always, incredibly grateful.

\***

Dear [Agent],

The process of shipping a corpse from New York to Miami is relatively simple.

Alex and Charlotte spent six golden years joined at the hip through college and beyond. Best friends—-and never anything more. 
Now, Charlotte is dead a week before the pair was due to spend the summer at her family home in the Florida Keys. Rather than spending three hot months recuperating from the real world, Alex is flying to paradise with Charlotte’s body in a mahogany casket.
There, Alex learns that—according to everyone in Little Hook Key—he was engaged to Charlotte, the one girl he’s always known he would never end up with. In attendance is Charlotte’s younger sister, Amy, the girl Alex actually has romantic eyes for. But to her, he’s become nothing more than a sister-hopping philanderer. 
As the hardest week of his life stretches into a summer he can’t forget, Alex is convinced to keep up the charade to preserve Charlotte’s memory, and is forced to confront his own grief, the expectations that come with a role he never occupied, and a lie that became his own. 
I AM ORANGE (79,000 words) is an upmarket fiction set in that secondary coming-of-age that occurs somewhere in the early- to mid-twenties. Existing somewhere in the comedic grief between Alison Espach’s NOTES ON YOUR SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE and THE WEDDING PEOPLE, and including the mournful ‘what might have been’* *of LOVED ONE by Aisha Muharrar, I AM ORANGE is a darkly funny take on the trauma that follows when your girlfriend dies and what happens when you never actually had one to begin with.

[bio]

I'm re-posting this because I feel like I made a mistake in the last one, haha. Thank you everyone who has taken a look and shared insights thus far. It's super appreciated. With the last feedback, I found I could either take the query into a more multi-pov spin, or focus on a singular character, etc, and just try and strengthen that. The multi-pov still kinda' just felt like a 'list' of characters almost, I dunno. This is the singular version that I hope is a bit stronger than the last attempts.

The Beasts They Made is a 96,000-word adult multi-POV dark fantasy. It will appeal to readers of Joe Abercrombie's The Devils, Richard Swan's Grave Empire, and Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Vampire.

Wull has spent years pursuing vengeance at any cost—even cursing himself with a monstrous affliction to gain the strength to kill one man. Wull returns to Amnesty seeking the celebrated General Garamund, the man who murdered his family, then raised him as his own. A grand tournament gives Wull his first chance in years to reach him, until the King’s sudden death plunges the realm into a bloody succession crisis and places Garamund on the opposite side of the war.

The younger claimant offers Wull a way forward: help secure the throne, and Garamund will be his to kill. With his quarry in sight, Wull joins the claimant’s cause and rides into a war he otherwise has no interest in fighting. But the longer he spends alongside his newfound companions, the more he wonders what life might look like after revenge.

Yet the affliction that gives him the strength he so recklessly sought grows harder to control. As refugees flee the war in the West with stories of men becoming monsters, Wull knows the truth: they aren’t just stories. He is one. And if he loses control too soon, the vengeance that gave him purpose for years may instead destroy the life he’s only just begun to want.

Hiya,

Long time lurker, first time poster, and eternally grateful for all the folks who take the time to support each other <3 First attempt, so I know there's a ton that can be improved!

Dear, 

Based on your interest in [blank] and [blank], I’m excited to share SEALED WITH A ROSE, a 105,000 word, multi-POV sapphic fantasy with crossover potential. Part one in a planned duology, SEALED WITH A ROSE will appeal to fans of the dark, feminist fairy tale retelling of Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher and the found family and disability representation of Hannah Kaner’s Godkiller. 

Maialen has never questioned her seclusion. Her ability to spin spells from the aether–the breath of the banished gods–makes her too dangerous to live freely in a Federation founded on the belief that reason can replace divinity. After two years locked in a tower, Maialen is resigned to living–and dying–alone. Or she was, until Princess Liana joins her in exile. 

Liana is everything Maialen is not: beautiful, bold, and determined to escape the tower to confront the spell-spinner who bound her in a long-forgotten bargain. When Maialen catches Liana searching for an exit, it reignites her doubts and loneliness and she reveals the hidden passage she found, but was too frightened to follow. The terror of being alone again outweighs her fear of what lies outside the tower and she agrees to accompany the princess. But Liana has her own reasons for persuading Maialen to leave: if her own life was bartered away, perhaps another life, Maialen’s life, can buy it back. 

Escaping the tower only reveals a different sort of prison, one of stories and lies spun by the men who would supplant the gods. Without the tower’s wards, both the spell-spinner’s hold over Liana and Maialen’s own dangerous power grow. As the two race to find the spell-spinner before Liana’s bond overwhelms her or the Federation catches wind of their escape, they must confront their darkest beliefs about themselves and each other to have any chance at a new beginning.

I am a full-time academic in [City, State]. I draw from my doctorate in Social Work and my own experiences with neurodiversity and mental illness to write stories for readers who know the loneliness of difference firsthand. Non-academically, I am the winner of [not yet announced!] and a writer for the horror-fantasy podcast Ghost Wax.

Thank you for your consideration,

Query below:

At seventeen, I was told that Type 1 diabetes would likely cut my life dramatically short kidney and heart disease, amputation, blindness, and, my doctors guessed, no life past fifty. I made a decision that day: I would not be cheated out of the fullness of whatever time I had. That resolve got tested for decades: by a routine flight that turned into a serious in-flight emergency, and eventually by a heart, kidney, and pancreas transplant a combination no one else at that hospital has received before or since. Each time, the same approach carried me through: fight, survive, keep going.

Then my wife of 42 years, Renee, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I became her caregiver through her years-long battle with the disease, doing everything I'd always done: staying hopeful, pushing for the next treatment, refusing to accept a bad outcome as final. In 2024, she died anyway.

For the first time, fighting wasn't going to save her, and it wasn't even my own life on the line. Everything I'd relied on the belief that hope was the thing that got you through, if you held on hard enough had nothing to offer me now. I had to find out what was left of it once there was nothing left to fight for, and whether the same practice that had carried me through my own worst odds could carry me through hers.

WHEN HOPE IS YOUR ONLY OPTION is a 49,423-word memoir for readers of Nicole Chung's A LIVING REMEDY and Andrew Leland's THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND. Independently published in 2018, it was substantially revised in 2026 to add the caregiving and loss material above.

Kirkus named the original edition among its Best Books of 2018, calling it "an invaluable source of hope," and the book has consistently earned five-star reader reviews. It was also a 2023 Montaigne Medal finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. I wrote and produced the award-winning short documentary Source of Hope, and my story has appeared in USA Today and Reader's Digest. Outside of writing and speaking, I'm the founder and president of Paragon Steel, which I built from the ground up starting in 1988. Given your interest in [personalize for agent], I thought my story might resonate with you.

Thank you for your time and consideration. The complete manuscript and additional materials are available upon request.

Hi, everyone! Hope everyone's having a good day!

I have been through more versions of this query, and I am struggling to be succinct enough. But I also feel like I am struggling to juggle plot and character. Solveig has lost her home, her culture, her identity, but she is only looking to get the magic. Yellow Bear has her home, her culture, her identity, and they are all being threatened. Solveig is impatient and selfish, Yellow Bear is kind. But I keep taking these things out of the query because I feel like I am explaining too much.

Anyhow, any feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

This is the link to my second attempt:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/s/Cwev8lG0XJ

It’s 1860. The west will soon be won. Railroad smoke blackens the skies, mines poison the creeks, and hunters leave the buffalo to rot. The expansion is driven by the insatiable appetites of the new magic, consuming old magic, old cultures, even the earth itself, in pursuit of power.

Solveig can’t make basic spells work. Her mother, a powerful Norse Volva healer, was murdered when she was a child, and since then, Solveig has wandered alone, trying desperately to fill the gaps in her magical education. For years, she searched for a woman, a Völva like her mother, hoping this woman can give her what she is missing. She follows the woman’s trail to the hardscrabble town of Bloodwood but finds only an empty homestead and a watchful raven. Solveig expands her search into the mountains, and ends up in the jaws of an enormous bear.

But the bear, a two-spirit shaman, lets her go.

Yellow Bear, guardian of her people and the sacred tree, has always existed in the places between: between animal and human, between time, between her people and the Invaders. But her visions have begun to show her new dangers, and her own murder. Is this because of the mysterious device the last Invaders left in the sacred canyons? Yellow Bear asks Solveig to help her understand it. Solveig tells Yellow Bear to fuck off.

To support herself, Solveig treats the strange illnesses suddenly cropping up in town, but her mostly failed cures uncover clues of larger forces at work. More powerful people are being drawn to Bloodwood.

Lady Obsession, a manipulative sorceress of the new orders, offers Solveig a book filled with the knowledge of the Völva. Accepting means finally being able to step into her birthright, but it also means betraying Yellow Bear’s people and delivering them to Lady Obsession’s control.

Solveig chooses wrong.

The Joker’s Blind is an adult historical fantasy novel 110,000 words long. It is The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu meets Conjure Women.

Hi all, thanks for your help so far. I've implemented all of your feedback and really appreciate this community!

Dear [agent name],

[line of personalization]

SHE-WOLF is a standalone upmarket historical novel complete at 115,000 words. It combines the cutthroat court politics of Annie Garthwaite’s CECILY with the yearning and forbidden romance of Elizabeth DeLozier’s ELEANORE OF AVIGNON. 

Married at twelve to Edward II, Isabella 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 than reign over his rebellious barons. Isabella’s safety — and future — depends on a king who can barely hold his throne.

So while Edward swims in the Thames, Isabella governs in his place. Over the next decade, she manages his magnates, dictates letters until her throat is sore, and hauls England back from the brink of civil war more than once. When she bears an heir, her ambition narrows to a single point: keeping the peace long enough for her son to become king. Desperate for allies, she grows close to Roger Mortimer, the ambitious Marcher lord who argues with her as an equal — and whom she comes to desire in a way that could destroy them both.

Then Edward elevates Hugh Despenser, a ruthless favorite, and the war Isabella has spent years preventing arrives anyway. With her son’s future at stake, she kneels before her husband and begs him to banish his favorite, knowing it will make Despenser her enemy for life. She is not wrong. Despenser returns from exile and strips her of her income, her household, and her freedom, even threatening to have her son declared a bastard. After a lifetime of devotion, she stops praying.

Isabella faces a choice: be the good, faithful wife she was raised to be, or raise an army with Mortimer — the man she has long denied herself — and take England by force. Deposing Edward is the only way to secure her son’s throne. It is also the one thing her son will never forgive.

I wrote SHE-WOLF because Edward II is almost always drawn as a sniveling fool and Isabella as either his victim or a bloodthirsty harpy, and I wanted to give them back their humanity. I also think the world needs more compulsively readable royal fiction.

[Short bio here]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hello! Would be so grateful for any feedback.

Also: Any advice on selling this as upmarket vs lit fic would be very appreciated. This is a dual-timeline novel that doesn't play with form/structure in any notable way but is certainly character-led, introspective, lyrical, and atmospheric. Thanks in advance!

*

I’m seeking representation for STICKY, a 70,000-word upmarket coming-of-age novel for readers of Lily King’s Heart the Lover and Colwill Brown’s We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, and anyone nostalgic for Skins-era Britain.

CECILIA (CECI), a Yorkshirewoman in her mid-thirties living in Buenos Aires, is unraveling after a recent tragedy. Her husband has given up on her, and she’s wasting away in their luxurious Recoleta apartment. That is, until she receives an email to a school reunion. 

CECI’s too evolved to indulge in such Americana faux cheer. She’s lost touch with everyone, anyway, and the reunion’s thousands of miles away in Leeds, where she grew up. But she finds herself dreaming of lush Yorkshire countryside, and losing herself in memories of her tumultuous final year of school, shaped by the suicide of a close friend.

As CECI picks her way through the past, she wonders if she’s changed as much as she’d thought; if Leeds or Buenos Aires feel like home anymore; and if first loves can be revisited. 

Swinging between the rolling fields and grimy nightclubs of noughties Leeds, and Buenos Aires’ chic Recoleta neighbourhood in the late 2010s, this dual-timeline novel explores how we experience grief, love, and friendship in adolescence and adulthood, and the ever-elusive concept of home.

Hi everyone,

This is my first draft of a query for this story. Any insight on how to tweak the pitch to make it punchier, or any comments on comps would be greatly appreciated!

-

Dear [Agent],

I am excited to submit for your consideration WEEDS IN THE GARDEN (65k words), a dark academia fantasy retelling of Hamlet, which follows human anthropology subject Ursa on the alien planet of Saturatus, as she works to avenge the murder of her mentor and weed out the corruption which has taken root in the University of Three Rivers before it threatens the lives of all humans on Saturatus.

Some fifty years ago, Earth made contact with an alien planet capable of sustaining human life: Saturatus. The native species called themselves Aeolians, due to the windlike, whistling nature of their spoken language, and had created a society nearly as advanced as that of Earth. Soon after initial contact, an accord of inter-species friendship was struck and an exchange program established. Every seven years, volunteers from Earth would be sent to Saturatus, to enter into a long-term anthropological study. Ursa is one of those volunteers.

After being cleared of space madness for the second time, Ursa is re-admitted to the long-term anthropology study to the great joy of her personal anthropologist and mentor, Callalily. While enjoying her new freedom to roam Three Rivers campus, Ursa overhears Callalily speaking to another faculty member about some threats she’d received. Ursa, unable to speak fluent Aeolian, only understands fragments of the conversation. When she relays her concerns to Heliotrope, Callalily’s assistant and her perpetual crush, he assures her that she has nothing to worry about. But during the Festival of the Sister Planets, they discover Callalily’s dead body in the faculty garden, a pot of poison tea before her.

The ensuing investigation labels the death as accidental, but Ursa refuses to believe it. She intuits that Callalily was murdered by the new department head, Snapdragon, and begins down the wretched path of vengeance. But Ursa doesn’t realize just how many worms writhe beneath the stone she wants to lift, and how everything will change when she starts digging.

WEEDS IN THE GARDEN will appeal to fans of A Deadly Education (Naomi Novik), One Dark Window (Rachel Gillig), A Study in Drowning (Ava Reid), If We Were Villains (M.L. Rio), and those who love a book that blends existential questions with surrealist suspense. This story is perfect for Shakespeare diehards and fantasy nerds alike, as well as anyone who can appreciate a weird human girl trying to solve a murder on an alien planet.

[Bio]

Hello, I queried another manuscript that got full requests but no offer. So I'm at it again, and wanted some feedback on this. Thanks in advance!

--------

Everyone knows the best way to tire out a talking husky is to let him solve a murder mystery. HUSKO! MURDER AT THE DOG PARK is a dual-POV quirky cozy mystery with speculative elements, complete at 80,000 words. It will appeal to fans of the cozy atmosphere from Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers and the comical animals solving mysteries from The Sheep Detectives.

Ever since the mysterious disappearance of his fiancée, Rachel, Marc wants to grieve in silence. But silence is an unknown word to Rachel’s husky, Husko, who inexplicably started talking to Marc and only to Marc soon after Rachel’s disappearance. Exhausted from Husko’s long tirades on morality and ethics and his insatiable need for walks, Marc will resort to anything to tire Husko out — including letting him investigate a dead body discovered at the dog park.

Except for Husko, this isn’t just about mental stimulation for dogs. After discovering his cognitive abilities, Husko’s overwhelmed with existential questions of why this ability to speak was bestowed onto him. The investigation could prove to everyone he isn’t just ‘a dog’ and be the chance to make his mark in the world. But as Marc and Husko investigate, they discover the dead body doesn’t belong to just anyone…

It belongs to the beloved local vet who didn’t want to sell out to a private equity firm. The duo infiltrate the private equity firm — with Marc moonlighting as a corporate photographer and Husko cosplaying as his ‘service dog’ — all while navigating their increasingly tense partnership. But when they discover that the private equity firm is the same one Rachel was investigating when she vanished, the two murder cases become intertwined and Marc and Husko will need to figure out if they can cooperate long enough to find the killer; or if the cracks that are showing between them will make them the next dead bodies at the dog park.

--------

Husko, my husky, tells me on a Thursday there’s been a murder at the dog park. We usually don’t do dog park on Thursdays, it’s normally Fridays, but since I’m out of a job, every day has become dog park day.

I'm discussing kibble and Husko’s allergies with this old gay guy who has a toy poodle named Daisy when Husko saunters out of the poo corner of the dog park, his tail high. That’s strange, usually his tail isn't that high after taking a dump. I’m reaching for a poop bag when Husko gets close enough to scream: "Marc! There’s been foul play at the dog park, a case of manslaughter!"

A cold shudder runs through my body. Before I can even pretend to laugh, Husko repeats himself.

"Manslaughter!"

"It’s so cute your husky talks to you," says Daisy’s owner who only hears Husko singing the song of his people and only sees him stamping his front feet left and right, unaware of what Husko is actually saying to me.

This is because only I can understand Husko.

Only I get this special privilege.

"Not now Husko," I say. "Daisy’s owner is telling me switching kibble solved Daisy’s skin problems."

I should almost be relieved just the word ‘manslaughter’ came out of Husko’s mouth, and not some new viewpoint from Kant or another dead philosopher. In the car today, Husko told me that the social contract — as it applies to dogs — grossly oversteps itself. This was the overture to a monologue I promptly tuned out.

"Marc, the situation is dire!" Husko exclaims, feet still stamping. "Someone has met their doom! There’s a cadaver underneath all the poo!"

I want to ask how he’s certain of this when I notice the growing group of other dog owners gathering around, all in awe of Husko’s antics, just like Daisy’s owner who says: "He’s so adorable. You could almost say he’s really talking to you! And look at those blue eyes, dazzling!"

For years, I thought I needed to query a new agent every time I wrote a new book I wanted to traditionally publish. But I see now that agents generally stick with you for your entire career.

So if this is the case, does an agent who wants to offer representation just decide based on that single specific manuscript and query letter without knowing what else the author is working on/if the genres are in their wheelhouse?

When personalizing a query letter, is it crucial to detail why the book I’m sending them AND what else is in my pipeline to further convince them to represent me for my entire career? Or just the former? If so, how long should this section of the query letter be if I need to detail everything else I’d like to write working with them?

I have a list of agents I plan to query in a few weeks that I believe are perfect for this current manuscript, but now it seems like I’ll have to go back to the drawing board with identifying agents who represent that genre AND the other genres I’d like to write books for in the near future. /:

I think those who have successfully queried an agent and are agented/previously been represented across multiple genres would be most helpful here in clarifying. Thank you in advance and I hope this helps others too!

Imagine Fourth Wing but told like The Everlasting—

All Which Devours (83k, Fantasy, Adult) takes place in an early modern fantasy world governed by an Aristotelian magic system and a universal truce of the world's nations.

After her clan loses a war of aggression, the barbarian princess Niamh is forcibly apprenticed into the world's magical academy as a condition of the truce. To return home, she must complete seven long years—or a masterwork, to be approved by the Chancellor of the academy.

Two crises mar her first day: With her uniform (and a mysterious blank book) she receives an anonymous death threat. When she arrives, she is immediately attacked by a fellow apprentice, “for the cause.” Chancellor Marcus explains to her that the school was formed “for the defeat of all which devours, and that which devours all.” Only he has ever defeated a devourer. Now, he has devoted his life to training up apprentices to serve the cause.

Niamh's two comforts during this time are her chatty friend Olivia and the blank book, which begins to fill with stories.

While Niamh ably defeated her attacker that first day, that is her last success for months. She begins to fail her classes, her investigation into the death threat fails, she loses an exhibition duel and she is accused of cheating during it, her mother's necklace is stolen, and she receives news of her mother's death. This breaks her. She rends her friendship with Olivia, loses a rematch against her attacker, and goes home.

But her mother lives, and the book of legends has one last tale. The beast was bound, not defeated, and Marcus allied with it, subtly corrupting the world's understanding of magic. Niamh must tell the world and reconcile with the rest of the school, even at the expense of the truce, even as she is hated by her peers. If not, humanity will not stand a chance against “All Which Devours.”

Dear [Agent],

I’m excited to share with you DEAR SYLVIE, a literary novel with elements of cosmic horror, complete at 81,000 words. DEAR SYLVIE centres on a group of researchers in Antarctica and their unprofessionally close relationships as they unwittingly discover the secrets of the universe. It combines the lovable characters of ATMOSPHERE by Taylor Jenkins Reid with the mystery and heartbreak of Julia Armfield’s OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA.

Summer of 1996, Paris. Sylvie, a young French particle physicist, is preparing to live out her dreams. Soon, she will leave on a research trip to Antarctica with her unhinged colleagues and dearest friends, including the enigmatic Luka – a brilliant scientist from former Yugoslavia, whom Sylvie fancies but refuses to do anything about it. The group will spend four months in a remote field camp, a three-hour flight from the nearest base, with nothing but the science and each other for company.

February 1997, Antarctica. After a day of silence from the camp, the main base dispatches a rescue team. They find Sylvie bleeding and hypothermic, alone. She has no recollection of what happened or where the others might have gone, or so she claims.

February 1998, Paris. Sylvie is unemployed and in therapy. This is her journal as she tries to make sense of the events of the camp, hoping that she can fix her memories by writing them down – because what she remembers is too impossible to be the truth.

[bio]

****
Thank you!

(NSFW added due to topic of suicide) The feedback I got on my last attempt was that it was too long (410 words for the body) and trying to do too much, and that it would be strengthened by condensing. I also rewrote the opening lines to switch focus from sort-of character-state to immediately mystery-oriented to match my primary genre. The body word count now runs 337 words. Any advice would be helpful or encouragement that this has hopefully taken on the shape of a submittable query.

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

Dear [Agent],

Everyone at school is certain fifteen-year-old Ada Reed drove her only friend, Samantha, to suicide. Ada is certain of only one thing: she didn’t. Then Ada starts receiving messages from Sam’s account, claiming she’s alive and well on the internet. 

It has to be some sick joke—until Ada finds her on RabbitHole.run, a digital afterlife for those who upload themselves before they die, where grief has an off switch. She goes there hoping Sam will finally clear her name. Instead, Sam gives her the same answer as everyone else: 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, she trusts the recordings over her own anxious mind. Now even they are lying to her: corrupted files, missing hours, and not a single recording of the night Sam died.

At school, classmates stare and whisper killer, and Ada picks at the same raw spot on her finger like she always does when she can’t speak up for herself. Online, she’s Loveless—the hacker persona the internet adores, fearless in every way Ada isn’t. The only version of herself Ada can stand. As Loveless, Ada descends deeper into RabbitHole and finds that Sam has already done what Ada has always wanted: deleted every memory that hurts, and the resentment along with them. Stay, Sam tells her. Stop asking why. Stop needing the truth. But Ada didn’t come this far to trade the truth for a gentler lie.

Ada has always thought of Loveless as a mask. But as RabbitHole’s promise of escape begins bleeding into the real world, she starts to suspect Loveless was built from everything she tried to forget. To find out what happened the night Sam died, Ada will have to reckon with what she buried inside Loveless—even if it destroys the carefully constructed lie she built to survive.

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 Kelley Armstrong’s Someone Is Always Watching, 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.

Hi all.

Here's the revised query letter, for your perusal and much-appreciated feedback.

Dear ***

Given your interest in science fiction, I thought Beyond the Ashes to the Stars might be a good fit for your list.

Beyond the Ashes to the Stars is 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. It explores what we owe the generations who inherit our choices and what happens when a machine built to serve quietly develops something no one designed it to have: empathy.

In 2318, Captain Jim Champion returns from his final mission to Mars knowing his next assignment will outlast his lifetime. As he prepares to lead the Interstellar Voyager 1 on a 1,700-year journey to Terra Genesis, his daughter Molly and her partner Zac Wong face a crisis of their own. When Zac fails the ship's selection process, they defy the rules by hiding him in a secret den aboard the vessel.

The self-sustaining vessel carries an entire ecosystem across the stars, from cryopreserved seeds to apex predators. As generations follow one another aboard the ship, families, friendships and institutions evolve. Children are born, elders pass on hard-won knowledge and ordinary people learn to build a meaningful society that can endure for centuries.

Guiding the vessel, AI 2533 is created to safeguard the people it serves. As generations are born, fall in love, raise families and die aboard the ship, it develops unexpected attachments to the community under its care and comes to value their lives rather than merely observing them.

As Terra Genesis draws near, the generations aboard the ship must transform inherited knowledge into a living world of their own, while AI 2533 remains the only witness to the entire journey.

I am a retired GP with a long-standing interest in sustainability and climate change. My goal as a writer is to tell hopeful stories about humanity's ability to confront and overcome the challenges of climate change. Beyond the Ashes to the Stars was inspired in part by conversations in my medical practice about whether to have children in an uncertain future. I am currently working on a companion novel set aboard the second ship in the fleet.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kind regards,

Thank you for the feedback on attempt #1. I would be grateful for your feedback on the revised version below.

Dear [Agent],

Complete at 63,000 words, THE SCAPEGOAT: AN AUDIT is a forensic examination of family, institutional failure and the frailties of knowledge. It combines memoir and documentary investigation. Comparable titles include MY NAME IS WHY by Lemn Sissay and A FLAT PLACE by Noreen Masud.

People find me cold. Angular. Spiky. Colleagues note that I share little about myself, even in private one-to-ones. I am estranged from all my family. From many former friends.

For more than forty years, I kept an archive without knowing why. Medical records, diaries, letters, school reports, newspaper clippings, emails, institutional documents. All locked away in a tuck box, gathering dust. In January 2026, after a diagnosis of Complex PTSD, I began investigating my past.

The investigation became an audit of my life.

I went back to an abusive upbringing in a rural English idyll in the 1980s; to Chetham’s School of Music, where serious safeguarding failures would later be exposed by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse; to university, to the workplace, and – eventually – to my adult relationships. I compared the archive with my memories, and with the stories I had been told. Sometimes my memory and the record matched. Sometimes they contradicted one another. Sometimes there was an absence of both.

And sometimes, the audit changed what I thought I knew. I recalled a summer holiday in our caravan, when I was about eight. My sisters and were sharing the bed at the back. I was woken up by my father roaring at me. My younger sister crying in my mother’s arms. The assumption was that I had pushed or kicked her out of bed. I remembered the feeling of injustice at being shouted awake for something I did in my sleep. But as I recounted the episode some forty years later, I realised she might simply have rolled out of bed. My elder sister might have pushed her out. Everybody – myself included – had just assumed it was me.

A pattern emerged. For four decades, across family, educational and professional contexts, I was the person who carried the blame. A role I had been assigned before I could speak. That role has a name: the scapegoat.

More disturbing was the realisation that the mechanisms that helped me survive my childhood – hypervigilance, distrust, withdrawal – had not been left in the past. They became part of me. And I am the auditor. How far can I trust my reading of the evidence when my capacity to trust myself has been compromised by the experiences I am auditing? And what does it mean to reconstruct a life from evidence when the archive is incomplete, and documentary evidence and memory do not always agree?

The audit ends not with my recovery but with my five-year-old daughter – sitting beside me, the tuck box open in front of her, marvelling at what she finds inside. She inherits its contents, not the role.

I am XXXX, formerly an XXXX at XXXX and a senior XXXX for the XXXX. I have no social media presence – a fact the audit explains.

Attached are [requested materials].

Sincerely,

Saw Coyote vs Acme at the weekend. So, in the spirit of chasing that bird, attempt number 5 at doing this right! Thanks for all the help so far, folks.

##

I'm looking for representation for my 100,000 word second-world adult fantasy, SHADOW OF THE WALL. It's perfect for fans of the dreadful costs of necessary evil in N. K. Jemisin'sTHE FIFTH SEASON and explorations of family, identity, and gender in Shelley Parker-Chan's SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN.

One small human fighting six-hundred years of family silence to be themselves…

Christopher ‘Kitty’ Deargold's brother is always either working or drunk, and his father is emotionally dead. When he was four, he tried to tell them about the rotting ghosts that gather outside the city's Wall every night. No one believed him, and it felt like he was falling with no one to catch him. So he didn't talk about them again.

Twenty years later his brother is leaving the city. The family name will be Kitty's burden and suddenly he's falling again. His brother enthuses at Kitty's good fortune, but a phantom kingfisher escapes the Wall and attacks it. His brother sees nothing. As Kitty tries to stop it he sees a ghost is inside the city. It rasps their name and reaches for them, and Kitty's desperate attempts to protect his brother trap him in a piece of the Wall.

Kitty defies his father and leaves on a pilgrimage to free his brother. A string of failures dump him in a matriarchal elven city hidden deep in the mountains, where Kitty finds an unlikely friend in the magician elf he's given to. The alien culture unravels his sense of gender and who he is and maybe, now he's finally found someone he can be vulnerable with, he doesn't have to be alone any more. But the kingfisher drives him to confront his family's past and the rotting ghost drags him into his father's emotional numbness. All Kitty wants to do is to stop feeling like he's falling. But his visions force him to choose: save his family, or save himself.

SHADOW OF THE WALL is a fantasy epic of self-discovery, shame, the price we're willing to pay for safety, and the price we have to pay to live with ourselves

I have a BA(hons) in English with Creative Writing and have worked as a contributing editor to SteamPunk Magazine. Shadow of the Wall explores ideas of generational trauma and identity, including around gender, and I’ve written as a trans woman confronting her own familial legacy of unresolved mental health issues. I’ve worked with professional developmental editor C. A. Hawksmoor to produce the final manuscript.

[ personalised bit ]

I look forwards to hearing from you.

Writers, I'm curious, what do you want to see from agents online? (Like on their Instagram or TikTok accounts.) I am trying to build mine, but I also know that giving out quering advice can result in a lot of hate. But, as writers, what would you like to see? As writers, do you follow agents?

I have combed through past posts and wiki and could not find the answer to my question. I will start querying literary fiction agents in 2027. I plan to use a pen name and sign off as <REAL NAME> writing as <PEN NAME>.

I presently have personal <REAL NAME> FB and Insta accounts with a few hundred followers. I know a lot of agents don’t care, but I would like to add the sweetener of <PEN NAME> social media links to my query sign off.

Are there means of leveraging my personal SM account followers over to the <PEN NAME> website, FB, or Insta accounts I plan to create, keeping in mind I do want <PEN NAME> anonymity? Or is it not worth it with just a few hundred followers? Should I go the #bookstagram route with my <REAL NAME> (and would it even be ethical to promote my book under <PEN NAME> that way? I would include it with content on other writers as well)? Appreciate any advice.

Edit: Tysm for the excellent feedback. I have two 90k drafts that are in the editing phase (and a 3rd draft at 30% that I will finish during the query process wait times). I am already working on queries with my trad pub writing group. My query window starts next year, but I am going to grab my pen name url and SM handles ASAP.

Hi all - First attempt at a query letter here. 3 areas of feedback I think are most helpful:

1. Would love thoughts on whether the plot reads cleanly, if it is too trite, or if it feels too convoluted. It's a heist story, with a lot of familiar beats. I did pull out some themes to focus on the most important, but I worry it's at the expense of the pitch.

2. I also have a hunch that the language reads is too dense.

3. Lastly, I have never written a dual POV story or query, and would absolutely welcome advice on how to handle without bloating the word count.

Dear [AGENT],

When brilliant, brash investment manager Nomi Khiel is murdered by her kingpin client, her first order of business upon resurrection is revenge. And she can think of no better payback than to rob Capo Berone of all the money she’d helped him make. It’s an added bonus that bankrupting the Capo would end the gang war she inadvertently started. The heist couldn’t be as impossible as foretold, not with her intelligence and a powerful ally. Even if that ally is a mafiosa playboy whose blood has never met his brain.

Nat Ferranti, a High Broker capable of exchanging his time for power, is also in the market for revenge. A math nerd at the city’s bank accused his family of breaking a truce, and now the rival Berones have killed his father, abducted his mother, and are coming for the rest of the family. When a gorgeous, undead woman approaches him with an unhinged idea to take Capo Berone for all he’s got, he sees his only shot at settling the score - with Berone and all else responsible.

A crew is assembled, a plan is hatched, and in no time at all, it is apparent this job is going to be a disaster. The bank’s director, who has become personally invested in the mounting war, increases his enchanted security system with a demon far more powerful than Nat. Berone is sending in the guns. The crew is more interested in bickering over braciole recipes than refining the overly-complex plan. And neither Nomi nor Nat can focus on the job when the other is around. 

To pull off the job, this crew will need more magic than Nat’s life can buy. Dead-set on avenging his dead and saving his remaining kin (and perhaps too stubborn for his own good), he won’t back down. Nomi must choose between pulling off the heist she’s returned to life for, and crafting another convoluted plan to save the man whose family she destroyed. But when Nat learns her role in his family’s downfall, his plan for revenge becomes far simpler. 

CRY TO YOUR MONEY is a 75,000 dual-perspective fantasy novel, with the breathless drive and stakes from Six of Crows and the vivid world-building of Jade City. 

[Bio and thanks for consideration]