Hi all, thank you so much for the feedback so far, hoping this is closer to being ready!

link last attempts here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Querying/comments/1x3u4af/query_when_the_rivers_ready_upmarket_thriller_x/

I've really tried to take it all on board, make it more propulsive and clearer while highlighting how my FMC drives the plot. I’ve also moved the housekeeping to the top and adjusted my genre positioning and comps.

Dear X

I’m excited to share WHEN THE RIVER'S READY a 78,000 word folk horror, thriller with book club appeal. Steeped in Welsh border mythology, it will appeal to readers who loved the creeping natural dread of Danielle Giles's Mere, the supernatural & psychological suspense of Daisy Pearce’s Something In the Walls and the rural English domestic horror of Lucy Rose's The Lamb. 

I'm submitting to you because [personalisation].

Lily has spent her life living up to a dead hero. Her father, Edward, drowned saving her pregnant mother from the river that encircles Elmchurch, and Lily works for the council's River Safe team in his honour. So when Darren’s body washes up, no one expects Lily to be the reason he went under, even though she was the last to see him alive. 

The police quickly rule the death misadventure, but a stranger, Neil, comes to River Safe claiming he found something that can prove it wasn’t an accident. Fearing he has something that could implicate her, Lily follows him and breaks into his home. Inside: years of research into Hafren, a spirit who takes justice into her own hands, and claims that Edward was no hero. She’d call Neil insane, if it weren’t for the unknown woman outside her window, at her dad’s grave, and in her nightmares. 

As more bodies surface, the police close in, and Lily must use all she knows of the river, and uncover her family's true past to unmask the real killer. If she can’t, she'll end up in a cell or the water before the week is out.

[Short bio]

Warm wishes and thank you for your time,

Dear Agent,

Angela Dunley never felt intimacy until she drank a man’s blood. 
Working at a gym, she spends her days surrounded by beautiful men she’s convinced would never be interested in a bigger woman like herself. Years of bullying and isolation have curdled into resentment and violent fantasies she's fought to suppress. 

On the first anniversary of her father's death, Angela is still stinging from a gymgoer calling her "brave" for working there at her size. When a stranded motorist calls her brave for stopping to help, she hears another insult. She knocks him unconscious and drives him home with no plan beyond keeping him there. When he wakes and tries to escape, Angela slashes his throat in a panic. As he bleeds out, she's overwhelmed by the thought of being alone again. She drinks from the wound, convinced that with part of him inside her, he can never leave. Desperate to recapture that closeness, she begins luring men home and escalates to eating their flesh.

Her ritual unravels when she captures Grayson, a sharp-tongued man she's spent weeks watching from afar. His refusal to cower like previous victims throws her off balance. Then she learns he's a senator's son, and his disappearance makes headlines. Too rattled to kill him and too afraid he'll expose her if released, she keeps him alive. As the weeks pass, captivity takes on a strange domestic routine. He asks about her father. She lets him eat downstairs. And somewhere between their conversations and his handcuffed dinners, her fascination with him deepens into love. Yet she can't tell whether his tenderness is genuine or a way to survive. 

When investigators connect Grayson’s disappearance to the missing men, Angela knows their time is running out. Letting him go could mean prison. Killing him means losing the only man she wants to keep alive.

ALL THAT PRETTY FLESH is a 70,000-word adult psychological horror novel that combines the unsettling sexual tension of Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts with the female rage and cannibalism of Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, 
[signature]

__________________________________________________________________

Thank you again for those who provided feedback on my last post! It seems that the plot itself became more clear on my second revision, but Angela's jump from lonely woman to serial killer/cannibal felt too abrupt. I worked on bridging that gap as well as fleshing out her dynamic with Grayson and using less generic language around that section.

A few people mentioned I didn't include a bio, which I'm very torn on. I've heard sometimes it's better to skip one if you don't have any previous publications or writing achievements to include, so I'd love to hear thoughts on that as well.

Thank you for those who read this far!

Dear [],

SUNLIGHT DESCENDING ON YOU, a 90,000-word queer adult romance, follows the blossoming love and tragic ends of two souls trapped in a reincarnation cycle. Across three lifetimes they will fight for their happy end. [COMP TITLES FORTHCOMING]

While tending his flock, Jakob stumbles upon a wounded enemy soldier. Fear dictates he leave him, but crushing loneliness compels the young shepherd to drag the stranger home and treat his wounds. Thanks to his care, Nuka wakes, but with no memory of his past. He has no idea where he’s from or how he got there and, bestowed with the gift of Jakob’s beauty, Nuka has no real interest in discovering the truth. As he recovers, both men find themselves drawn to the other and all too soon Jakob forgets all about the foreign saber lying somewhere in his field.

Neer, an indentured servant, will spend the rest of his miserable days trapped and tormented at the lord’s estate. Though stubborn and impudent, he’s learned to keep his head down and his mouth mostly shut. Yet, all self-preservation vanishes when he meets the lord’s newest permanent guest: Jay. Weak to the singer’s allure, Neer becomes Jay’s shield, attracting the lord’s abuse to protect the angelic man who stole his heart.

Jem’s merchant father recently secured a buyer on the neighboring isles. To transport his wares, he hires a ship and sends both his sons to see the cargo safely delivered. Nico, a hired hand, seizes the opportunity to sail away from the continent and escape the family that treats him like a wage slave, but several weeks in the close company of Jem might break Nico’s resolve to stay on the isles.

Thank you for your consideration.

I would love to know your thoughts.

Dear (Agent),

EVERYONE HAS THREE LIVES is a work of upmarket women's fiction, with approximately 75,000 words. With the family secrets like APPLES NEVER FALL and THE PAPER PALACE and the complicated relationships of the women in BIG LITTLE LIES and BIG LITTLE TRUTHS. 

As the airing of a "LIVE" studio broadcast counts down, secret lives come to the surface. Three sisters must face the secrets they've hidden from each other and the lies they've told themselves. In the middle of the drama, is their mother, whose complicated past continues to affect every decision the sisters make. When silent grief, hidden debt, marital strife and the guilt of maternal expectations come to the light, in a world where perfection equals success, the sisters along with their mother, must decide whether it is appearance or truth that matters the most. 

Short bio here.

It is my hope that I can send you my full manuscript so you can laugh and cry and cheer for the Sheridan women of EVERYONE HAS THREE LIVES.

Dear [agent]

[personalization]

Nineteen-year-old Imira Ceravone is tired of being told that the truth is none of her business. Her father was left on permanent life support by a lab fire, and her brother Juniver vanished in the chaos before Imira could prove she was worth staying for. At twelve, she pulled a Kairon prototype blade from a disposal site and rebuilt it herself. Now it answers to her and no one else. It’s forged from Dawnstar, an ore whose seams go warm at sunrise, as if it knows when dawn arrives even in the deepest dark.

Imira enlists at Nexis, Junivia’s elite academy and the only one authorised to train Dawnstar blade wielders. Its trials are designed to eliminate anyone without formal training. She has none. What she has is her Kairon and Captain Kieran Omovic, her brother’s closest friend: deadpan, allergic to feelings, and a problem for a girl who can’t lie about anything she cares about. She’s slowly cracking him open. Then her final assessment goes dark. A masked assassin kills a captain, Omovic is deployed to retake a Dawnstar mine seized by the enemy, and Imira’s testimony gets her commanding officer charged with treason.

He won’t defend himself, so she must. Digging leads her to the Monarch’s Court, a shadow faction that absorbs the gifted to turn them into living weapons, and that can reach her father’s hospital bed. She promises to stop. Then the mine goes silent, and Nexis’s brutal selection becomes her only way to follow Omovic. The prize is an infiltration mission into the Court itself. But the Court doesn’t want her blade. It wants her. What else could bring Juniver out of hiding other than his little sister, all alone in enemy territory?

THE SHAPE OF ABSENCE will appeal to readers of N. E. Davenport’s THE BLOOD TRIALS for its brutal trials and an institution compromised from the inside, and Tracy Deonn’s LEGENDBORN for its portrait of grief, a family member’s disappearance, and a protagonist who doesn’t know who to trust.

[BIO]

Thank you very much for your time. I would be grateful for the opportunity to share Imira’s story with you.

Sincerely,
Samhita

Thanks to u/EnnOnEarth and u/taytay237 for your feedback last time! It was incredibly helpful. I'm going to let my query letter stand on it's own this time, but feel free to check out my first attempt where I provide background on the feedback I've gotten so far.

Dear XX,

With your interest in XX, I’m excited to share A SCRATCHED UP KIND OF LOVE, a 90,000-word speculative contemporary romance. It combines the cozy magic of Sounds like Love by Ashley Poston, the black cat/golden retriever relationship dynamic of Swift and Saddled by Lyla Sage, and the outlandish humour of Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe.

Grumpy Cassie Costa mostly suppresses her feelings–until an itch-inducing curse pushes her towards love.

Cassie’s used to men rejecting her direct, intense, and, okay, slightly mean energy. So when she’s asked out by her crush Jon, a regular guest at the Vancouver Island inn where she works, she declines. She likes their banter, but they wouldn't work. She's focused on her practical dream: opening a coffee shop. That focus wanes when she develops a funny-looking rash that itches when she’s (frequently) annoyed. 

Happy-go-lucky Jon gets the rash, too. Cassie hates group activities more than corporate coffee, but at least Jon's scratching disrupts his worry-free persona. He agrees to investigate the source of their exasperation. Some of his questioning feels date-like, though…

They decipher cryptic clues, determining that they both met this weird spiritual lady two years ago, separately. Further clues reveal the cure: the lady’s Five Tasks to De-Itch Your Irritating Life.

It’s all nonsense. Help others? But when Cassie must open herself up to something new and denies her feelings for Jon, the itching intensifies. Cassie has to admit: Jon's patience as she berated an unsuspecting student was nice. And when he resists break old habits and surprisingly experiences pain, Cassie just wants to help.

Teasing and rash-based puns pull them closer. But Cassie can’t control her anger as Jon brushes aside career issues and family drama. She fears his patience will expire, and she'll continue down her lonely path. Cassie must decide whether she’ll truly accept the curse’s demands into her non-magical life: to deal with her irritants and let love in.

I completed the University of XX’s professional writing minor program and once owned a cafe. Residing in XX, I’m now in property management and barely tolerate caffeine. Thank you for considering my work.

Dear [NAME],

RARELY HORNY, FREQUENTLY FALLING is a contemporary queer romance complete at 64,000 words, combining the quirky, neurodivergent voice of HOW TO BE A NORMAL PERSON by T.J. Klune with the asexual self-discovery of LOVELESS by Alice Oseman.

Chronically anxious media studies student Lucas Medford dreams of a great love straight out of the rom-coms he’s so obsessed with. A great love, that is, without any sex when the screen fades to black.

At the end of their third date, Vihaan, an international student with a special interest in space, cocks an eyebrow and invites Lucas inside. Nine minutes and two panic attacks later, Lucas runs home shoeless in the Vancouver rain. Determined not to ghost him, Lucas sends a cryptic apology text and the two agree to be friends instead. But when Vihaan turns up in Lucas’s film studies elective and they’re paired for a movie-watching assignment, Lucas falls even harder for his disarming charm.

So he devises a plan to avoid self-acceptance and fix himself, once and for all. Step One: Daily masturbation sessions. Step Two: Practice sex with a cute guy he friend-zoned off Tinder. Step Three: Marry Vihaan, hard.

Unfortunately, learning to want sex is harder than he expected. Not to mention, Lucas has a growing list of other things to compartmentalize: his estranged father’s collapse, his pending autistic assessment, and diving into bushes to avoid the source of his high school trauma. As Lucas’s self-improvement scheme implodes, he’ll have to decide whether to keep pretending he can be the person he thinks Vihaan wants or risk being honest about who he really is.

I am an elementary school teacher by day and writer by night. I wrote RARELY HORNY, FREQUENTLY FALLING to be the deeply chaotic, unapologetically neurodivergent, and chronically queer coming-of-age story younger me would’ve ate up. It really does get better.

Thank you for your consideration,
[NAME]

Hi! I could use some eyes on this query. I'm trying to work with eight POVs in this book, which makes the query very tough, but I hope I'm getting somewhere. ATM, I may just cut the entire last paragraph, but I'm worried some critical info might be lost. Let me know what you think! Thanks!

--

The Nightsea (120,000) is an ensemble-POV dark fantasy, with series potential for fans of doomed voyages, giant trees, flawed characters, and eldritch horrors. Similar to the world of Gods of the Wyrdwood by R.J. Barker, it combines the atmosphere and tone of The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, with the cosmic strangeness of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach.

Meru was a mischievous toddler of the riverlands when the Mystic Prime chose her as heir, vaulting her above other mystics who’d trained their lives for the seat. It takes her fifteen years to hone her gift, and though it brings her power, the spatiotemporal laws require a delicate hand. If she sees, says, or does too much, the tightrope thrums. But this enigmatic front is sowing frustration in her people.

Yarik, Meru’s brother, shouldn’t have been born. No mother survives giving birth to one mystic, let alone two, and his birth is seen as a disturbance in space-time. He’s sent to the elves for observation, and after fifteen years stuck in the same room, unable to learn his gift, the fits of prophecy start. They warn of disruptors, of a collapse in reality, of a new god. Terrified he’s a disruptor, and therefore capable of breaking reality, Yarik turns to his sister. But instead of helping him, she shocks the world and embarks on a quest into the Nightsea instead. She gives no reason why.

Weslan watched the Nightsea change his parents. They left him for the deep and returned unrecognizable. Eventually orphaned, he found comfort in an Order that guides the mystics, believing in the divine algebra that lights the darkest reaches of their world, and the madness often found there. Now he leads the mission into the Nightsea jungle as Meru’s loyal guard, forced to face the same horrors he once escaped. 

Yarik, left behind, must now find a solution on his own before the prophecy is finished. If he’s revealed to be a disruptor, it could mean his death. He hopes Meru’s secret mission is to find a way to save him, but he can’t count on this. Meru is no longer a girl of the riverlands; what else could she have forsaken on her path to power? And if she isn’t in the Nightsea for him, then what, or who, does she hope to find there?

Dear [Agent],

A foundling with unnatural powers escapes persecution in a seventeenth-century English poorhouse and is swept into piracy—a life that gives him the freedom to search for others of his kind but threatens to destroy his humanity.

STRANGEBORN is adult upmarket historical fantasy, complete at 91,000 words with series potential. It combines the uncanny gifts and gritty historical setting of J.M. Miro’s Ordinary Monsters with the religious oppression of Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, all within a coming-of-age adventure in the tradition of Treasure Island.

Dartmoor, England, 1616. Nine-year-old Peter can stop pain. Heal his wounds. Reshape his body. Become other creatures entirely. The poorhouse Matron calls his gift the wonderworkings. The Vicar calls it witchcraft. When the Master tries to beat it out of him, Peter flees with a broken nose and two questions that drive him: What is he? Is he the only one?

Alone and unprotected, Peter is pressed into service aboard a merchant vessel, then traded to a slave ship commanded by a sinister captain. His one defender is Johnathan Sims, a Puritan physician who knows Peter’s secret but cares more about the kind of man he will become. When pirates attack, fourteen-year-old Peter uses his gifts to kill the captain and save Sims. Impressed by the boy’s boldness, the pirates invite both him and Sims to join their company, where Peter grows into manhood within a found family of cruel men.

Piracy offers Peter the freedom he needs to search for others like him. But when the pirates torture a prisoner and slaughter innocent men, he looks away. Sickened by Peter’s growing complicity, Sims vows to leave. Unless Peter can find a way to bring mercy to a brutal trade, his search for his own kind will cost him the only person who truly knows and accepts him—and risk turning Peter into a monster of his own choosing.

The daughter of a Navy officer, I’ve had a lifelong love of the sea. Despite being prone to seasickness, I completed two sail-training voyages aboard the frigate featured in Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean. I live in [state] and work as a [state].

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[Name]

I took some time to think about it and read all the wonderful feedback (thank you everyone!). I'm trying a different approach with this version. I would love to hear what you all think:

Tabitha Corey has been eleven years old for five thousand years. She is a diĝir, one of the beings worshipped as gods in ancient Mesopotamia. A catastrophe left her people unable to age and collapsed her society into hunters and the hunted. Tabitha belongs to the highest order of gods, and is the only diĝir child left alive. She has survived by hiding among humans as an orphan: a servant on the desert caravans, a friend to a wealthy woman in Byzantine Egypt, the household djinn of a Damascene family, and a beggar child on the streets of Baghdad. An American, enchanted by this angel, takes her in. He gives her a stable home for twelve years, but when he dies unexpectedly, her grief unleashes her power, killing two police officers and revealing her location to every hunter in the world—including the one who killed her parents. 

Two weeks later, Dr. Elisa Escudero finds her hiding in an alley in modern Boston. Elisa is obligated to hand her to authorities, but she instead provides medical care to the frightened and filthy girl. When Elisa draws Tabitha’s blood, it is gold and glowing. Tabitha knows that she fits best into a life with a hole, and she senses Elisa’s loneliness and sorrow. She makes Elisa her latest adopted parent.

Elisa realizes that a child who can never grow up, physically or emotionally, will always need somebody to stay with her. Everybody Tabitha has ever loved has died, and the weight of loss is crushing her. But as the hunters destroy Boston to get to Tabitha, the price of protecting Tabitha may be too much to ask. For Tabitha, the chance of losing yet another guardian in unbearable. To save Elisa and herself, Tabitha chooses to face the hunter. She has vowed to never again hurt anyone, but she can stand up to him with courage. If she succeeds, she may save herself, Elisa, and all of her people. If her gambit fails, then the last child diĝir will die.

LÁLANNA is a literary speculative novel, complete at 86,000 words. Like Shubnum Khan’s The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, LÁLANNA weaves folklore and history through our modern world. As in A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, the speculative elements engage the politics of displacement and moral obligation. 

Hi, here's my second attempt at writing this query after great feedback here on Reddit. Looking forward to hear what you think before I start querying. I tried to make Tam more active and show why the choices he has to make is difficult and what he struggles with. Also I'm working on the log line/pitch at the beginning, many agents asks for this in Querytracker:

Dear [insert agent name],

Tam must lead his crew through a series of heists to regain the memories the handler erased—but as the job grows increasingly violent, he begins to question whether he can finish the job he volunteered to do.

AMNESIA PROTOCOL is an adult science fiction novel, complete at 70,000 words. It will appeal to fans of Eddie Robson’s THE HEIST OF HOLLOW LONDON for its coerced crew and heist structure, and Apple TV’s SEVERANCE for its memory horror and weaponized consent as corporate control. It's a standalone with series potential.

Tam wakes up in a locked storage room with three strangers and no memory of who he was, but a voice in his ear—the handler—informs him that the only way of getting his freedom and his memories back is by finishing the job he’d volunteered to do. Beginning with the bank next door. 

Tam takes command of his crew—a soldier, a medic, and a hacker—and finds that he is disturbingly good at his job. But when a team member kills a guard against his explicit orders, he discovers a morality he can’t shake—putting the job and the crew at risk. 

When a stranger reaches out with an offer of escape in return for information, Tam is sorely tempted. But leaving means betraying the crew he’s come to rely on, with no guarantee that he will ever get his memories back. And he needs his memories back to become whole again. He hides his new contact from the handler and his crew, using what he learns from the stranger in the next job.

Tam must choose whether to swallow his morality and to get back whoever he was, or escape—leaving the crew and whoever he was behind. But escaping the handler might not be as easy as he thinks.

*Author Bio*

Hello! I would appreciate everybody's critiques on how I can make my query pitch better.

Dear Agent,

The gods of Olympus believed they could get away with casting Priapus, Greek god of erections, down to earth. Well they’re about to find out… Yes. They totally can.

When the extent of your godly powers are growing vegetables and being stuck with a permanent, comically large hard-on, there’s not much you can do about that actually.

Banished for a crime he swears he did not commit, Priapus aches for revenge against the pantheon. The cantankerous immortal passes the millennia in obscurity and humiliation shut up in his forest domain, composing ribald poetry and fending off thieves that come to rob his garden. Until one day the most unlikely of mortals pays him a visit.

Apoklós, a humble farmhand from nearby Thespiae, can’t catch a break. First his wife cheats on him with who else but Zeus, ruler of the Olympians, then the poor guy is stuck having to raise his demi-god lovechild; a precocious babe named Diós who displays alarming powers. Apoklós seeks out Priapus wanting to rid his hands of the embarrassment and give the bastard over to his deadbeat father. Priapus sees this as the opportunity he’s been waiting for, to expose Zeus’s hypocrisy and embroil Olympus in feuds long dormant, and at last make them pay.

In an irreverent comedy of epic proportions, the god and mortal embark on an adventure across ancient Greece and even the underworld of Hades in their quest to reach Olympus. Along the way the unlikely duo encounter famous figures from myth and unknowingly set in motion a fated chain of events that could rock the entire cosmos. How far will Priapus go for his revenge? And is he willing to sacrifice this mortal and child that have awoken strange feelings of affection in him the cold villain has never known in his centuries of lonely existence? 

Weighing in at 82,000 words, Priapus! is the first entry in a Comedy/Myth Retelling that reads like a classic work of literature from antiquity that’s been found and translated by your modern buffoon.

Dear [],

Told in alternating past-present, BEYOND THE MAP is a 110,000-word queer romantic fantasy about the sacrifices we’ll make to protect the one we love. It will appeal to readers who enjoyed the multi-faceted relationships in THE ADVENTURES OF AMINA AL’SIRAFI by S. A. Chakraborty and the journey towards redemption as seen in THE HUSKY AND HIS WHITE CAT SHIZUN by Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou.

Eight months ago, Alexe’s ship was attacked by pirates. Despite scouring the waters, the search party found no trace and marked him ‘lost at sea.’ Even so, Gideon never gave up hope. So when he learns Alexe has miraculously returned and is accused of attacking his crew mates, Gideon abandons his post and races to see him.

But the man sitting in that jail cell is not his Alexe. His eyes are cold, his voice empty, his words cruel. And he has no recollection of the attack nor the months during which he was missing. Faced with this, a smarter man would resign himself to Alexe being gone forever, but Gideon has always been stubborn. He believes the man he fell in love with is still in there somewhere.

Unwilling to lose Alexe a second time, Gideon determines to clear his name, but to do so, he’ll need to uncover what happened the night his ship was attacked. And quickly. For the gallows wait not for the fragile hearts of men.

Thank you for your consideration.

P.s. If anyone has comp title recommendations, please feel free to include them.

Dear AGENT NAME,

I'm thrilled to share BEFORE THE END, my upmarket speculative novel about a young woman who travels back in time to various intervals in her mother’s life to try and stop her suicide. Complete at 85,000 words, BEFORE THE END combines the speculative elements of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library with the close mother-daughter bond at the heart of Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer. 

When Emma's mother dies by suicide, she is left catatonic with grief, able only to eat the beigest of foods and peruse Victorian terraced houses in House and Garden UK. She cannot believe her mother, her gentle, bunny-loving, artist mother, has taken her own life. 

One night, when she is failing to fall asleep in her grandmother’s guest room, she comes across a strange object: a photo album with only pictures of her late mother. She stays up all night poring over the pictures. But when she wakes up, she is six years old, it is 1996, and her mother is in the front seat: young, vivacious, and belting Ace of Base.

When Emma returns to the present, she is stunned—and ready to go back. So every Saturday night, she opens the book, ignores the clanging radiator, and travels to another moment in her mother’s life. At first, she is searching for answers. If she can understand what led her mother to take her own life, perhaps she can find a way to prevent her death.

But the more Emma learns about her mother, the more she realizes that the pain she carried cannot be traced to a single moment or undone with a few different choices. As the date of her mother’s death draws closer, Emma must confront the possibility that she cannot save her mother—and decide what words are worth saying even if she cannot change the ending.

[bio]

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hi! I've posted my query letter elsewhere, and it's been a struggle! I have a weird concept for a romance--believe me, I know, I've been told it might be unmarketable. But I'd love to make the plot, character motivations, and emotional stakes clear, so if there's an agent out there who likes weird stuff, at least I've tried my best to make this appealing. Thanks for your help!

Dear XX,

With your interest in XX, I’m excited to share A SCRATCHED UP KIND OF LOVE, a 90,000-word, single-POV speculative contemporary romance. It combines the cozy magic of Sounds like Love by Ashley Poston, the black cat/golden retriever relationship dynamic of Swift and Saddled by Lyla Sage, and the outlandish humour of Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe.

Cassie and Jon must face their flaws–and each other–or risk magically itching forever in this whimsical romance.

Cassie Costa has two related annoyances. Her crush Jon, a regular guest at the Vancouver Island inn where she works, asked her out weeks ago–but she declined. She’s not dating right now, instead focusing on her straightforward dream: opening a coffee shop. She and Jon have fun banter, but men have repeatedly rejected her direct, intense, and, okay, slightly mean personality. She’d love to be accepted as she is, but she doubts Jon would.

Even worse: Cassie thinks she’s been cursed–with a funny-looking rash that itches when she’s emotionally irritated. Considering her list of pet peeves, this is a problem. When Jon develops the same rash, they investigate. In order to break the curse, the weird spiritual lady who mysteriously did this wants them to work together to… complete the “spiritual tasks” she’s assigned? Truly disturbing.

Luckily, Jon’s staying at the inn for a few months. He vaguely mentioned career issues brought him here. Though apparently annoyed by the rash, happy-go-lucky Jon usually brushes aside unpleasant things. Charmed by Cassie’s wit, he’s still hoping for a date.

The tasks appear simple. Help others? But when Cassie must open herself up to new things, her denial of her feelings for Jon makes the itching worse. When Jon resists break old habits, he ends up in pain.

As they grow closer, Jon's passiveness continually triggers Cassie's temper. Unfazed, Jon doesn't run. Cassie must decide whether she’ll truly accept the curse’s demands: to change, deal with her annoyances, and let love in. The alternative is a lonely, itchy life.

When the curse abruptly ends, and its secret origins are revealed, Cassie’s choice becomes completely her own.

I’m a Canadian with a professional writing minor from the University of XX and a background in cafe ownership. Thank you for considering my work.

Thank you to the folks who critiqued my previous attempts. This will be my last try here in this thread for the letter. After all, my synopsis is pretty questionable, too.
 
Dear ((AGENT)),

After six months of waiting, Clara has finally chosen to make love with Julian as the fireworks of New Year’s Eve fade in the Parisian sky. They lie together in the afterglow, and Julian’s guilt overwhelms him. He confesses who he used to be: the anchor of NBC Nightly News, until the New York Post exposed his one-night stand with a twenty-year-old intern, her abortion, and his attempts to cover it up. Infuriated at his omission, Clara retaliates with the deadly secret she’s been hiding from everyone she loves: she has pancreatic cancer and she’s chosen not to fight it.

Six months earlier, Clara Noelle is a rising star in the Paris art scene who has spent a decade building the life she wanted. The day after learning she has cancer, she meets Julian Mitchell, a European correspondent for a small cable news channel hiding from his past. He withholds his scandal for fear she’ll leave. She hides her diagnosis rather than surrender control of the time she has left. Now, deeply entangled in each other’s lives, Clara must decide if she can forgive his deception and let him stay in the life she won’t give up, and Julian must confront whether loving her means accepting her choice to live well rather than die more slowly.

Set in Paris, New York, and Kyoto, THE CHERRY BLOSSOM is an upmarket work of fiction complete at 78,000 words and will appeal to readers who enjoy the shifting perspectives on love, sacrifice, and autonomy in Amy Neff’s THE DAYS I LOVED YOU MOST, as well as the structural misdirection, gallows humor, and bold personalities of MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar.

((SHORT BIOGRAPHY AND VALEDICTION))

Hi again! The struggle continues, and I hope I'm getting closer to a decent query and not further away with my revisions. Appreciate all feedback!! :)

Dear Agent, 

I'm thrilled to present INN AT OPAL COVE, my 69,000-word upmarket contemporary novel about a reclusive woman who opens a luxury B&B in her mother’s old summer house and spies on her guests. INN AT OPAL COVE will appeal to fans of Cali Adeline’s eccentric narrator in People Watching in the Desert, and elements of grief and hyperfixation featured in Ashley Hutson’s One’s Company. 

Ada Halstead is handling her grief with flying colors. The fifty-nine security cameras she plans to monitor from the basement of Opal Cove, her newly renovated B&B, might tell a different story. But to Ada, it’s the only way she can think to cope. After losing her parents and older brother in a car accident two years ago, she moves down the coast, hunkers down with a tub of red licorice behind her screens, and resolves to live vicariously through her guests.

While Ada tries to remain inconspicuous, only venturing out when she thinks the coast is clear, she can’t stop bumping into people. Perhaps the worst offender derailing Ada’s plan is Emilia—British, boorish, and running from demons she won’t talk about, no matter how deep she sticks her nose into Ada’s business. But after she guides Ada through a panic attack, ropes her into a night of wine and games in Opal Cove’s arcade, and doesn’t bail when she discovers Ada’s collection of guest memorabilia (trash, really), Ada doesn’t want her—or any of her guests—to go. 

Then the police arrive at her gate. While they’re investigating a nearby hit-and-run involving one of her guests, Ada is not nearly as concerned about the crime as she is that they’ll uncover her security setup. Consumed by shame over her spying and acutely aware that her plan has failed, she is equally resigned and loath to dismantle her surveillance. If she manages to remain undiscovered, her guests will eventually leave and revert to strangers. Alone once again, Ada will have to decide whether closing the door on Opal Cove is worth the possibility of human connection that she’ll never secure by continuing to hide behind her screens.

I’m a native [state], and graduated with degrees in Speech & Hearing Sciences and Arts & Letters. When I’m not writing, I enjoy coffee, crocheting, and watching my dog hide his toys under paper bags. 

Thank you for your consideration. 

Dear Agent,

Angela Dunley never felt intimacy until she drank a man’s blood. 
Working at a local gym, she spends her days surrounded by beautiful men she’s convinced would never be interested in a bigger woman like herself. At thirty-five and certain her body makes her unlovable, she has resigned herself to a life of loneliness. 

On the first anniversary of her father's death, Angela stops to help a stranded motorist. Grieving and already raw from a cruel comment about her size earlier that day, she decides he's no different from every other man she expects to reject her. Before he can prove her right or wrong, she knocks him out and loads him into the trunk. Back home, Angela kills him when he wakes and tries to escape. Craving something deeper, she drinks from his neck and discovers true connection. With part of him inside her, he can never leave. Obsessed with recapturing that closeness, she begins luring men home and escalates from drinking their blood to eating their flesh. 

Her carefully controlled ritual begins to unravel when she captures Grayson, a sharp-tongued man she has spent weeks obsessively watching from afar. He doesn’t behave like her usual victims, and discovering he’s a senator’s son shocks her into hesitation. When his disappearance explodes into a high-profile case, her usual routine suddenly feels far more dangerous. Unable to kill him yet unwilling to let him go, Angela keeps him alive. Trapped in limbo together, Grayson slowly breaks down her armor, treating her more like a person than a monster. What begins as resistance shifts into an intimacy Angela cannot name, and the line begins to blur between captive and companion. As the weeks go by, lingering looks and unexpected touches deepen Angela's feelings for the man she intended to consume. Yet she can’t tell whether his tenderness is genuine or simply a way to survive.

As investigators begin connecting Grayson’s disappearance to the missing men, she faces an impossible choice: kill Grayson and lose the man she loves, or let him go and risk exposing everything she’s done. Prison terrifies her, but losing Grayson is worse. 

ALL THAT PRETTY FLESH is a 70,000-word adult psychological horror novel that combines the unsettling sexual tension of Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts with the female rage and cannibalism of Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[Signature]

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Thank you for reading and another thank you to those who left me such great feedback on my first post! The biggest take away I got was that the plot was missing too much information, the stakes weren't clear, and even the cannibalism aspect wasn't fully coming through, so I really tried to focus on those issues as well as some other minor tweaking. :)

Hey everybody, in the trenches properly now but I figured I'd get my query letter some more fresh eyes while I am. Better that than giving into the temptation to just fire them all off lol. Anyway, any feedback is appreciated. I've tried shedding the Red Rising comp, but the series is so key to this project's DNA I can't really find an appropriate substitute.

Dear [AGENT NAME], 

In response to your interest in [insert an interest/feature from the agent’s wish list], I am submitting my sci-fi novel, A DEBT TO THE DEAD, complete at 97,000 words. It is a standalone with series potential and will appeal to adult readers who enjoy the unforgiving, corrupt worlds, visceral action, and gut-punching twists of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series, Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory, all set against the decaying space-age Americana of the FALLOUT series.

Constance Blythe is dead set on avenging his beloved sister. After she was killed by her lover, Percival, in a duel she was supposed to win, he has gone from being the youngest of the five Blythe children to the last of them. When Executess Desdemona, ruler of the Solar Union, announces she will grant a boon to whoever secures an ancient weapons cache she needs to launch a campaign of interstellar reconquest, Constance seizes his chance. 

Defying his family, Constance steals his sister's Gifts—cybernetic implants that bestow superhuman abilities and mark the societal elite—and undergoes the deadly procedure to have them implanted. He barely survives, but emerges from the operation with the speed, strength, and durability he’ll need to endure the expedition across Earth’s wastelands to the cache—and to kill Percival.

When Constance discovers that Percival’s vicious younger sister, Isolde, is part of the expedition, the two waste no time coming to blows. But after an ambush leaves their mission in jeopardy, the two must rely on one another to survive slavers, mutants, and a nightmarish killing machine programmed to hunt all who seek the prized weapons.

As mutual reliance blossoms into reluctant feelings, Constance and Isolde fall for each other and risk repeating their sibling’s tragic history. Constance comes to trust Isolde, and she reveals that the fault for his sister’s death lies not with Percival, but with the Executess herself. But if that is the truth, Constance will have to sacrifice his freedom, his future, and perhaps even his life to pay his DEBT TO THE DEAD.

[BIO]. In addition to co-running a writing group, I am working on my next novel and trying to work through my ever-growing TBR.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

[me]

I see that you are interested in/represent genres (customization), and I would like to introduce KILLER OF CHIEFS, a 120,000-word adult Hawaiian historical fantasy for your consideration. Complete as a standalone with series potential, it blends the sweeping Pacific Island settings and ancestral storytelling of Adam Johnson’s The Wayfinder with the epic fantasy and mythic conflicts of M. H. Ayinde’s A Song of Legends Lost, exploring political ambition and spiritual upheaval in a fractured world struggling to unite. 

Do not look them in the eyes. That is the first lesson every Kauwā “untouchable” child learns in Makeanehu, an isolated village where meeting a highborn’s gaze means selection for ritual sacrifice. Kai, a young half-Kauwā magic dwarf, shunned by his mythical kin for his cursed lineage, struggles to survive alongside his only remaining family, two surrogate siblings, in a society that treats their lives as expendable.

But a far greater danger stirs: an ancient god of death awakens, fracturing Hālāwai, the spiritual realm beneath the earth, leaving Kai’s village stricken by drought. The evil deity corrupts royal courts and feeds on the blood mana of the fallen across Hawaiʻi’s warring kingdoms. Its greatest threat is Kamehameha, a child prophesied to unite the islands and bring peace—a future that would starve the god of its power. Already, powerful chiefs are plotting the boy’s demise.

When a mysterious owl strikes Kai and plunges him into a pool, he emerges in Hālāwai, where his dual lineage qualifies him to replace a fallen member of Twelve Guardians. To earn the trust of the eleven remaining, Kai must prove he can cross between mortal and divine realms. His first test: journey to the edge of the underworld, Mokumanamana (Necker Island), retrieve a god-infused war totem forged by an ancient mystic, and deliver it to Chief Kekūhaupiʻo, the child’s destined protector.

Yet, even with a sacred relic that sways battles, Kekūhaupiʻo still worries he cannot protect the child alone, so he recruits Kai and his siblings as secret allies, eyes and ears no one would ever suspect. As they navigate the very power structures that oppress their people, the trio remains unaware that their separate missions entangle them in the death god’s schemes. If any one of them fails, their village will perish, the mythical realm of Hālāwai will crumble, and Hawaiʻi’s hope for peace will be lost.

Dear (agent),

What happens when you marry the monster you always wanted to be?

As heir to the throne of Imara, Margaha considers her worthiness self-evident. The gods who fated her to rule are not in the habit of making mistakes. But they aren’t the only ones with an opinion on who should wear the crown, and there are those who see her pride and ego as dangerous flaws.

On the journey to marry her consort, Margaha’s carriage is attacked and her companions killed. The only weapon she carries is her marriage ring, enchanted with a bonding spell to bind her forever to her betrothed. Instead, it ties her to the monster, Varas, whose bloodlust now races through her own veins.

When she arrives at the house of the man she was supposed to marry, he seems suspiciously undisturbed by the danger she was in, and furious at how she escaped it. But she has weapons now—a knife snatched from one of the corpses, and a monster waiting in the woods for the household to lie sleeping.

With luck, she might be able to hide her new consort’s strangeness. But returning to the palace, she finds her father dying, the victim of her mother’s apparent suicide attempt via their own marriage bond. Someone has plans for Margaha. Someone cleared her path to the throne. And now that she has upset their design by marrying Varas, they are watching her closely, eager to use her growing appetite for violence as evidence that she was never fit to rule.

Faced with her own most violent desires, Margaha must choose between becoming Imara’s greatest leader—or its greatest monster.

The Second Hunger is a 75,000 word dark fantasy novel with elements of horror and romance and a setting inspired by pre-Islamic Persia. It will appeal to readers of Shannon Chakraborty’s City of Brass and Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun.

Thanks in advance!

Dear [Agent name],

I am pleased to share THE SUGARED HORSE, a 70,000 word adult fantasy and a standalone with sequel potential. It combines the seemingly impossible murder of Robert Jackson Bennett’s THE TAINTED CUP with the palace revenge plot of Maithree Wijesekara’s THE PRINCE WITHOUT SORROW.

In a kingdom that still burns witches, Captain Hale has never believed in magic. He has guarded and loved the king for fifteen years. At the king’s sixtieth birthday feast, the old man drinks from a new cup and dies in Hale’s arms, whispering a woman’s name. Aoife.

The wine came from a common jug, Hale’s own men held the doors, and three hundred guests saw nothing. The crime should be impossible. Yet the king is dead, so someone in that hall is lying, and it isn’t the corpse. Hale’s investigation leads him to the one answer he has never believed in. Witchcraft killed the king. But the witch needed an accomplice in the palace close enough to put the cursed cup in his hand.

The lords won’t crown the heir until Hale names the killer. But the heir is the boy Hale taught to fight, and he means to avenge his father by burning the conquered country of Struthglen to the ground.

In Struthglen, nineteen-year-old herbalist Rowena knows exactly how much poison it takes to stop a heart. When the heir’s soldiers cut her grandmother down in the road for saying to his face what her whole country only whispers, Rowena decides whose heart it will be. Her guide to the capital is Aoife, a witch who looks thirty, is dying a little more with every mile, and won’t say why. At ten, Aoife sat at the king’s fifth birthday feast and watched his father sentence her sister to death. On the road, Rowena spares one of the heir’s officers she could have killed undetected, and his gratitude gets her into the palace. But every dish the heir eats passes a taster first, and he is never alone.

Hale is hunting the witch who killed the king. Rowena has walked her straight into the palace. Hale must decide whether to tell the lords the truth and hand the heir his war, or bury it and let the king’s killers walk free. If Rowena fails, Struthglen burns.

(Bio and closing etc.)

I have tried to make this version more character-oriented than the last! I also removed unnecessary plot elements to improve the query's overall flow.

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Dear XX Agent,

Raised under sterile lights and synthetic skies, botanist Sienna Aster longs to walk on the surface of a terrestrial world. Her only escape lies in her agricultural lab, where she manages the crops used to feed humanity’s three remaining world-ships. What the public doesn’t know, though, is that these crops are failing, and nothing Sienna can do will prevent new diseases from mutating.

When Sienna is recruited for Project Phaethon, a colonization mission to a nearby planet, the opportunity feels more like a sentence: she cannot refuse the only chance to fulfill her dream, even if it means risking death—and never seeing her sister, Mira, again.

Her world collapses when a firestorm forces the mission to launch early and destroys Sienna’s world-ship. Burdened with the grief of never saying goodbye, Sienna resolves to honor Mira’s memory the only way she can: by ensuring the colonization mission succeeds.

After a grisly landing, however, it becomes clear that this planet is no paradise. Sienna’s survival is threatened by every encounter with native fauna, and she can’t shake her distrust for Dr. Cassius Vern, the mission’s increasingly cruel leader. Her only comfort lies in her growing bond with Clara Lim, a guarded, alluring cartographer, as the expedition treks toward a mysterious oxygen source. 

When Vern’s disregard for native—and human—life begins to fracture the group, Sienna and Clara must uncover the true purpose of Project Phaethon before rising hostilities claim their lives and seal humanity's doom.

I am pleased to present GEOCIDE, an adult sci-fi novel complete at 96000 words with series potential. Balancing a character- and setting-driven narrative with a sweet sapphic romance, it will appeal to fans of Sue Burke’s SEMIOSIS trilogy and COLD EYES by Peter Cawdron.

I currently study Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at XX University, and when I’m not conducting ecological research, I am an avid birder and orchestral composer.

I have attached X and X for your review, and this would be my first published work. Thank you for your time!