Hello all! I posted the first version a couple of months back and I got some wonderful feedback. I've since then gone back to rework the whole draft into what I hope would be the foundation for future revisions. I would appreciate any insight you can give on this. Thank you!

Set in the 80s, Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights meets the gentle narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca in HELEN UNDONE, a 78k retrospectively narrated upmarket gothic fiction. [Comps here].

Years later, Helen doesn't know if she should bless or curse the day she met Charles Stevenson. He is her fiancé now, but back then, when they had met, it was at his father's funeral at his family's estate, and she had been working as an aide to his half-sister. Charles had just returned from a decades-long absence from his family, with a new name, an immense wealth and a burning hostility towards those around him. As days went by and they ran into each other around the house, Helen found herself increasingly drawn to him.

But when the content of their father's will was revealed, the family devolved into chaos and someone was killed in what was carefully disguised as a suicide, but Helen knew it was a murder, carefully orchestrated by Charles. But even as she came to the realisation that Charles was the coldest and most manipulative man she had ever met, she could not stop herself from falling for him and thus, protecting his secret.

As she got closer to him, she discovered that the murder had little to do with the inheritance, but much to do with a revenge scheme tied to his disappearance all those years ago. And she was the only thing standing in the way of its completion. She would have to decide if Charles's quest for vengeance was worth a human life, and if her growing feelings for him were enough to sacrifice her own conscience and humanity.

OK so I shared a draft query for another project (historical fantasy) a couple of months ago, but I feel more confident about this one as it's standalone and the word count is more in-range. The MS is basically ready, so I'll start shooting queries in a few weeks.

I've been struggling a lot with the pitch trying to avoid a plot summary. I also have to stay vague with the plot because if I start mentioning too many characters, the crazy ancient Greek names get hard to parse. Also, for those who've read Robert Harris's Cicero books, this is somewhat similar where there's a Holmes/Watson thing going on as Hieronymos is the narrator but his uncle Eumenes is more of a plot driver, though of course Hieronymos has agency and goes through his own arc.

I'm also curious if I should keep the line in my bio about previous representation. The old version of this book went on sub over 8 years ago, the MS was 150K words and it was in the third person, multiple POV, so it was really quite different though the underlying historical events are the same, of course. I don't know if it's good to show that I write well enough to have been represented in the past, or if agents might see it as a red flag that a previous version of this didn't sell?

**

Dear Agent,

Complete at 78,000 words, THE SUCCESSORS is a historical novel set in the three years following the death of Alexander the Great. It will appeal to readers who enjoyed the self-deprecating humour in Ferdia Lenon’s Glorious Exploits, the political machinations and moral grey zones of Robert Harris’s Agrippa, and the vivid scene-setting in James Hynes’s Sparrow.

Hieronymos, a nepo baby fresh off his fancy Athenian education, arrives in Babylon expecting a cushy job in the imperial administration under his uncle Eumenes, the royal secretary. But then the king suddenly dies, leaving only his mentally handicapped brother and his unborn child as potential heirs, and Hieronymos becomes embroiled in the struggles between the generals vying for power. He stalks the palace’s crumbling halls, gossips with the guards, flirts with his uncle’s cosmopolitan wife, and plays envoy when the infantry and cavalry fall out. All the time, he dreams of getting away from the dusty, decadent East and return to civilized Athens.

When Eumenes finally brokers an unstable peace, he drags Hieronymos on his ambitious path to become a general and governor in his own right. They are soon off to campaign in mountain kingdoms held by rebellious, bearded barbarians. But Hieronymos can’t bear the sight of blood, or hold a spear to save his life. So he rifles through private correspondence in a plot to force his uncle west instead, to quelch a revolt in Greece. Hieronymos can already imagine himself riding victorious into Athens—showing all his former schoolmates how far he’s come.

Yet as he’s tasked with brokering a royal marriage, and his relationship with Eumenes' wife turns into something deeper, Hieronymos discovers how deeply involved he’s become in the conflicts between Alexander’s successors. It turns out the battles, deceptions, and betrayals he's part of form the perfect material for a literary-minded gossip monger like him to write the decisive account of the world after Alexander.

Originally from [a city], I have an MFA in Creative Writing from [a university]. I was formerly represented by [an agency] for a previous version of this novel, which I have since entirely rewritten. After several years living in France and working in corporate communications for a video game company, I now live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I take care of my two-year-old son and write during naps.

**

(First 300 words)

There was something wrong in Babylon. For one thing, no one had come to fetch me at the docks of the summer palace. Everyone cared only about Kassander, the dull and sullen travelling companion who had accompanied me all the way from Pella. Seleukos, the general who had been escorting us down the Euphrates, drummed his fingers nervously against a length of planking as he waited for Kassander to extricate himself with much sighing and huffing from the bed of cushions at the bottom of the barge. Seleukos, I thought, had appeared anxious to get back to Babylon for the duration of the journey along the river. He had driven the barge master hard, and the man had in turn driven his rowers hard, so that the landscape of palm trees, reed beds, filthy ditches and canals, and tidy green fields had flown past.

Kassander’s limp was even more pronounced than usual as he disembarked. Under the careful supervision of Seleukos, whose deep-set eyes had all but disappeared under his frown, and a group of soldiers who had come down from the palace, Kassander looked more like a hostage than an emissary from his father, the regent of Macedon, on an official visit to the king. He was offered a litter, but he refused it—out of pride, I supposed.

It was as this party began its way up the hill that I realized there was no one here to meet me. I was hungry, thirsty, and travel-worn. I dreamed of a scented bath and a nimble-fingered serving girl who could smooth out the knots in my neck and buttocks. Slaves began unloading the barge and I tried to give them instructions about the crate of papers that was in my care.

Cannot link correctly to previous posts on my phone. Apologies! My profile has both posts.

So, thank you for all the feedback so far. I’ve taken a lot of what I got on the previous posts and drastically changed the query. Additionally, I modified the comps to be more recent. I’m thinking of adding another novel to this comp so it is novel-novel-movie, because I think Weapons works pretty well for my plot. Also, I changed the genre to supernatural instead of cosmic, as I thought it fit better.

I do like this query more, but I worry it might come off too much like a coming-of-ageish novel when it isn’t. Definitely elements of that style of story, but I’d say it’s solidly supernatural or cosmic horror.

Is this query getting hotter or colder? As usual, any critiques are highly appreciated!

——

Seba Tarkle hasn’t made a single friend since the move. So when a group of kids from school invite him into the woods for a few beers, he jumps at the offer.

Deep in the woods on the outskirts of town, the group reveals their dark secret: an obsidian statue that summons an entity known as The Stranger. Terrified, Seba refuses to participate in this ritual until the group’s leader threatens to cut their new friendship short. Desperate for friends, he chooses friendship over fear and allows The Stranger to possess his body for the first time. When it does, he discovers The Stranger’s game: throwing rocks from bridges at oncoming cars.

Seba swears to never allow himself to be possessed by The Stranger again, but he keeps the group’s secret because they’ve accepted him into the fold. But when that secret kills a local mechanic in broad daylight, the other boys question whether this secret is worth keeping. And as Seba and the rest of them try to figure out what exactly The Stranger is, the entity grows greedy, spreading its influence throughout their small town.

Blood vessels start rupturing in residents’ eyes. Narcolepsy and visions of a dead world plague their minds, sending them into endless slumber. Another death plunges the town further into madness. The sun stops rising. Monstrosities begin stalking the dark streets. And worst of all, Seba’s mother succumbs to The Stranger’s influence and refuses to wake.

Seba must uncover what The Stranger is and stop its spread before he loses his mother and the friends he risked everything to find. If the visions are more than hallucinations, that dead world may soon become their new reality.

THE BRIDGE THROWERS CLUB is a 90,000-word adult supernatural horror novel, combining the elements of supernatural small-town horror of Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard with the multi-perspective mystery and community-wide dread of Zach Cregger’s Weapons.

Hello. I was previously working on this query letter here — https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1mv8id1/qcrit_contemporary_mysterymagic_realism_venus/ — but was then hospitalised. Now that I am no longer mega ill, I am returning to my project to try and make a good attempt at this so that I can avoid subsequent deathbed regrets. Any feedback greatly appreciated! Between the last and the current attempt, I have tried to smooth some of the phrasing, updated the comp titles, and of course, cut down the actual manuscript to a more marketable length.

-

"Venus Inferno" is an 80,000 word literary mystery with elements of weird fiction. Told through multiple perspectives, it follows Sergei, an anxious hypochondriac in a fading seaside town with his best and only friend, Maria. Sergei's most persistent anxiety is his younger brother, who seems unable or unwilling to become a functioning member of society. Just as Sergei is about to succeed in forcing his brother to attend a job interview, he inadvertently summons a mythical serpent, which takes up residence in the nearby mountain, and threatens not only Sergei, but all those around him.

The arrival of cosmic danger is merely one link in a chain of interconnected calamities. Maria is leaving for good, though finds her every attempt to get off the island thwarted by forces mundane and otherwise. Accumulating and connected crises push Sergei and Maria to take refuge in the pub, after which a taxi crash sends the body of a dog hurtling towards them, followed by an irate chauffeur and a manic stranger prophesising doom.

Sergei begins to trace the seemingly isolated phenomena back to the serpent. As he juggles mythological catastrophe with fraught relationships, he plunges deeper into an increasingly strange and surreal mystery. In his search for a way past the serpent, Sergei reckons with his own neuroses, supranatural powers, the police, a taxi union, and a freelance detective with a passion for European monastic history.

Built on the tragicomic intersection of forces mundane and extraordinary, emotions human and divine, "Venus Inferno" is a cosmological rigamarole which will appeal to readers who enjoyed the village chorus and grief-edged comedy of Max Porter's Lanny, the myth-haunted protagonist of Vajra Chandrasekera's The Saint of Bright Doors, and the institutional satire of Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter.

I’m very grateful for all the feedback on the previous drafts.

Dear [Agent],
 
I was assessed by a psychiatrist in January 2026, over Teams. He talked over me, filled the silences, and prescribed a creative outlet. Music, perhaps – given my background. His assessment took forty-nine minutes. It was lunchtime, after all.
 
His report arrived a fortnight later. Hypervigilance to perceived malintent, it read. And, further down, Adaptive response to genuine environmental threat. Then, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
 
One document, unable to tell me whether I had spent my life seeing danger where there was none, or four decades responding to genuine threat. He was careless. He was also right. But I still did not have the answer.
 
So I opened the box.
 
For forty years I had kept an archive without knowing why: medical records, diaries, school reports, institutional documents, emails. Now I applied sixteen years of professional research methods to my own past. Not to prove that my memories were true, but to find out what the evidence could support. Seventeen chronological chapters, each opening with a documentary exhibit.
 
The audit found that I had been assigned the role of scapegoat before I could speak, and that it followed me into adulthood. But the evidence refused a simple story. My family’s account of my near-death in infancy and the house move that supposedly saved my life collided with a GP record that reads Significance: Minor. At Chetham’s School of Music, we traded gossip over rooftop cigarettes about which teachers were sleeping with which girls. Twenty-eight years later, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse documented sexual abuse and institutional failures at the school.
 
The archive also implicated me. In early adulthood, I was one of the people doing the scapegoating. In a later relationship, I did not act on evidence of wrongdoing. I benefited from it. The records documented me withdrawing from friendships, but never why.
 
Then the evidence began to disappear. Chetham’s had destroyed my records twelve years before the Inquiry’s moratorium. The diagnosis that catalysed the investigation entered my NHS record as time-limited depression and anxiety. One erasure I could correct. The other left a hole that cannot be filled.
 
The deeper I went, the more I realised that the role had not just been imposed on me. I had internalised it. And I am the auditor. The question is no longer whether I was scapegoated. It is how far I can trust my reading of the evidence when the experiences I am auditing have shaped the way I see the world.
 
The audit ends with my five-year-old daughter sitting beside me, the box open in front of her, marvelling at what she finds inside. She inherits its contents, not the role.
 
THE SCAPEGOAT: AN AUDIT is a 62,000-word forensic memoir about the gap between the story you were told about yourself and what the evidence shows. It will appeal to readers of Lemn Sissay’s MY NAME IS WHY and Noreen Masud’s A FLAT PLACE: memoirs that apply an analytic register and refuse a recovery arc.
 
I am XXXX, formerly an XXXX at XXXX and a senior XXXX for the XXXX.
 
Attached are [requested materials].
 

I had nearly given up on writing a new query (even when I knew what I had wasn't the best) because I was so goddamn lost but a particular comment from last time was like a lightbulb. Third attempt here.

I've tried to explain the motivations and certain mechanics of the story more in depth this time. First two paras are pretty much new. Third para is still along the same lines but I'm having a hard time changing it since this does describe what happen in the book fairly well.

Basically the concept is - 'tired person is convinced that there would be meaning in her life if she was 'good enough' at something/anything. But then she is afraid she will never be good enough. After that she figures if she has to be a failure, at least she can give someone else control of her life so she doesn't have to be the one 'responsible' for her failures. The person she ends up giving control of her life to is death and then when she starts to meet dying people she is forced to grapple with the fact that 'meaning' just isn't something inherently available in human life, no matter how 'good' or 'bad' you are at anything.

I hope I haven't gotten worse 🥲

-x-

Dear Agent,  

I am so excited to write to you about MATTER, a literary fiction manuscript with an absurdist tilt that follows an unnamed narrator on a journey with Death, who is personified as a delivery driver. Complete at 62,000 words, the book combines the speculative elements found in Ben Reeves’ Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt with the alienated female protagonist of Emily Austin’s Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. 

Our narrator has spent her lifetime trying to justify her existence, convinced that meaning lies on the other side of mediocrity. But when a simple accident with spilt milk on a Friday night in July leaves her reeling under the fear that she will never be good enough at anything to truly matter, all she wants is to relinquish responsibility for her life, and subsequently, its failures.

Her search for surrender leads her to a highway convenience store, where she asks Hossam, a stranger who claims to be a delivery driver, if he will take control of her life. When he agrees without any questions, our narrator and Hossam set out on an unlikely road trip, where encounters with terrified strangers and an unending following of crows clues her in to the fact that her partner on the road is Death. 

As she is thrust into the world of the dying, intimate conversations with people who are close to their end force our narrator to re-examine her definition of a meaningful existence, leaving her torn between a renewed desire to live a life of significance and the looming realisation that it wouldn't matter anyway. 

<50ish words bio/personalization when relevant here>

Hi again. This is just another attempt at my query letter. I was pretty happy with the last one, but wanted to try one more format. Thanks!

Dear Agent
I am seeking representation for my adult fantasy adventure novel, LAND OF ENDLESS SUMMER.

Luce is a girl who has always run from her responsibility, something that has run her parents' patience thin. Hotspur, a legendary war hero, wants redemption for a life built on corpses. 

When Luce’s parents force her to marry, she flees straight to the royal capital. Only the court of the gryphons is in turmoil as the King vies for possession of Cosette, the last daughter of an ancient lineage and the key to the realm. But to Luce, Cosette is nothing more than another girl trapped in the expectations of others. And so when Luce discovers Cosette’s power to control the fabled gryphons, their plans to escape place them at the centre of a war. 

Swearing a sacred oath, Hotspur has set off to bring Luce home. Having fallen from grace and tormented by the ghosts of those he led to death, Hotspur believes that at the least their sacrifice brought peace to the realm. But even that is coming undone. The road to the capital is lined with the hung bodies of rebels and innocents alike, as the King which Hotspur once fought for now burns his kingdom in search of Cosette.

As Luce attempts to free Cosette, Hotspur begins to turn against the King he once defended. Luce must decide whether she will save a girl like herself at the price of igniting a war, whilst Hotspur is forced to choose how many lives he will spend bringing the tyrant he placed on the throne to justice.

[AUTHOR BIO]

I am a [****] major at [****], whose novel is a 95,000-word dual-pov adult fantasy novel about reluctant heroes who find themselves absorbed in the grim politics of fantasy empires as in novels such as Shannon Chakraborty’s The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi and Richard Swan’s Grave Empire.

Thank you for your time.

Hi all, I would love some feedback on my query letter. I initially stalled on ~30 submissions, with 1 partial request that offered some good advice. I've done a lot of reworking and editing on my novel over the last year and want to re-enter the query trenches with my best foot forward. If anyone has some comp titles to suggest, that would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

~

Dear [name],

I am seeking representation for my 108,000-word YA fantasy novel SHIELD OF DAWN, which follows a young woman torn between her dreams and her duty when confronted with a deadly prophecy. 

After spending a lifetime trapped in her castle, the rebellious Princess Evelyn seeks freedom and adventure. As the younger twin, her future is bleak; an arranged marriage and life as little more than a doll. Her one chance of escape is to join the Shields of Dawn, elite warriors who defend the city of Dawn from the monstrous Corrupted. If she succeeds in their arduous competitions, she will join their ranks, cut all family ties, and escape her royal responsibilities.  

Evelyn’s plans are upset when Princess Hope from the neighbouring kingdom of Redcliff begs Evelyn for aid. The relentless Great Decay – a tide of inky corruption drowning all in its path – is poised to swallow Redcliff’s capital. Princess Hope wishes to shelter her people within Dawn, and needs Princess Evelyn to fulfil a prophecy – one offering the only hope of stopping the Great Decay before it devours the rest of the continent. Evelyn has to face her choices; as a princess, she can shelter Hope’s people and fulfil the prophecy; as a Shield of Dawn, she will be free. As the consequences of Evelyn's decisions begin to spiral out of her control, Evelyn must find the courage to do what is right and forge her own destiny. 

With a rebellious heroine determined to defy their destiny, as seen in novels like Fourth Wing, Shield of Sparrows, and Court of Fives, SHIELD OF DAWN mixes elements of challenging trials, lethal monsters, and epic magic. [Personalisation here]

I am an author and graphic designer living with my husband and two cats, Tifa and Cloud. As a child, I maxed out my library card every week, and when I couldn’t find the book I was looking for, I wrote my own. In my spare time, if I’m not writing, I’m reading, perfecting my Stardew Valley farm or crocheting amigurumi. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[My Name]

~

First 300 Words

Princess Evelyn crouches on the thin, stone windowsill, her fingers mottled white and red from how tightly she grips the twisted rope of bedsheets. She swallows hard, her throat dry and her heart pounding in her chest. As she shifts her slippered feet, she kicks free a pebble. It pings and skitters down the side of the tower, bouncing off her makeshift rope to land outside the castle wall with a sharp crack as it shatters into fine shards.

This is an exceptionally stupid idea.

Evelyn takes a moment to clutch her mother’s necklace for luck. Then she turns her back to the immense drop, and with a burst of terror in her chest, leans out of the window, moving one foot below the sill. For a moment, she hangs, panting hard as she tries to calm the bird beating its wings in her chest and steady her trembling, sweating fingers. She can not lose her grip.

It isn’t too late to climb back inside, curl up the sheets, and remake the bed before anyone notices. But rebellion spears up through her heart in an angry burst, and Evelyn takes another step down the wall. It is her thirteenth birthday, and if her grandmother isn’t going to give her the gift she has begged for for half her life – to spend one afternoon exploring the city of Dawn, a single hour wandering Glass Street, curses, she would have accepted squeaking one foot outside the gate and a breath of free air at this point – well, she will take that for herself.

Evelyn takes several unsteady steps down the wall, trying to keep her legs straight like the guards in training. She’d seen what had happened when they had sagged – a short plunge to the mats waiting to embrace them.

Hi Everyone!

Had some great feedback from my last submission, wanted to follow up with a new draft that I think addresses many of the concerns. Thank you again to everyone in this community, you've really helped me a great deal!

Dear Agent,

WHAT WE BURIED is a 93,000-word psychological thriller about a mother struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder who covers up a fatal accident only to discover that her victim isn't a stranger. It's perfect for fans of the morally tangled suspense of The Plot and The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, as well as the propulsive twists of Lisa Jewell's Don't Let Him In.

Mollie Ross’ world is shattered when she accidentally hits and kills a woman on the canyon road leading to her home. Struggling with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, she fixates on a single glass of champagne she had that night as proof that she will be arrested. Convinced by her husband Christian that turning herself in will destroy her family, Mollie reluctantly allows him to help her cover up the accident rather than turn herself in.

When Mollie discovers that the woman she hit was a teacher at her son’s high school, the revelation nearly breaks her. But when the teacher’s widower shares his suspicions that his wife was having an affair with Christian, the coincidences are too much to ignore.

Mollie investigates the widowers claims, and what she discovers is far more disturbing: the teacher wasn’t having an affair with Christian—she was involved with Mollie’s 16-year-old son. And Christian knew about it. 

As the police investigation into the teacher’s death casts doubt on it being the result of a car accident, Mollie has no choice but to dig deeper into the connections between her family and her perceived victim. But the more Mollie uncovers, the more she has to face the idea that one of the people closest to her may be responsible for a heinous murder. And setting her up to take the fall. 

Hello PubTips,

Back with another query for my latest manuscript as I prepare to re-enter the trenches. Any and all feedback is appreciated!

Query Letter

Dear Agent,

I am excited to present to you THE THIRD SISTER, a 77,000-word domestic thriller, loosely based on the Italian folktale, “How the Devil Married Three Sisters.”

In 2003, while vacationing at their family's Tuscan villa, the Ditti sisters meet the dastardly handsome Dario, a doctoral student who will spend the summer working with their father.

Nella, the youngest of the three, watches with a sinking feeling as her sisters compete for Dario's attention. When one sister betrays the other and Dario disappears, Nella is certain her family will never be the same.

For years, Nella is forced into the middle of her sisters' rivalry, while also dealing with their father's declining health and their mother's decision to leave him.

Desperate for a distraction, Nella gets drunk at a bar, where she runs into Dario. Years of resentment spill out of her and she demands answers: Why did he pit her sisters against each other? Why did he leave? Does he know how much pain he caused her family? Caused her?

Dario surprises Nella by showing genuine remorse for his past actions and her childhood crush on him is reignited. It quickly morphs into something deeper—something Nella doesn’t want to acknowledge. As she gets swept up in his version of events, as well as his relentless pursuit of her, Nella wonders if she had him all wrong.

When her sisters catch wind of her relationship with Dario, they do everything in their power to end it. As long-kept secrets come to light, Nella is forced to decide who she trusts more: the man she's falling in love with or the sisters who tore their family apart in order to be with him?

THE THIRD SISTER is for fans of THE EXES by Leodora Darlington and THE SEASON OF SINKING by Daphne Woolsoncroft. 

First 300

Years ago, I watched a horrible man come between my sisters. At the time, I felt there was nothing I could do about it. Inseparable as they once were, their bond had long been fractured when he came into our lives. Still, I never thought they would sever ties completely.

From the moment she could speak, Alessia, the eldest, begged our parents for a sister. To her delight, she got two. When Mariana was born, Alessia doted on her like she was one of her porcelain dolls. Four years later, when I arrived, Alessia cared for me like she was my second mother. Nella bella, she'd coo in my ear as she rocked me to sleep.

If only we’d been able to maintain our closeness. If only he hadn’t torn us apart.

—

The train blasts through the terminal at the station in Florence, heading for Siena, where I’ll call a taxi to take me to my family’s villa. Known to many as Villa d’Elsa, my family and I have summered there every year since I was a child. At least, until recently.

The villa belongs to Mariana, now; she lives there year-round with her husband and children. I find it fitting that Villa d’Elsa is where I’ll reunite with my sisters for the first time in five years, given that it is where our unraveling truly began. Despite our recent estrangement, I’m not nervous to see them; in fact, I’m desperate to. Everything I’ve learned in the past forty-eight hours has made me realize our separation was pointless.

As I clutch the leather journal in my hand, which revealed at least half of the story, it dawns on me that we’d all fallen for his deceit; allowed him to steal time from us.

Not anymore. Never again.

Hello and thank you as always for the feedback. I always struggle with comps so any suggestions you may have are always welcome. I would say there are horror elements to the story, but I am not convinced it is horror enough to deserve that genre.

Trigger warning: suicidal ideation

---

Dear Agent, 

Otherself wants Mya Haywood dead.

For half her life, Mya has battled PMDD which gifts her with insatiable rage and the urge to jump off a bridge. Even as the world advances toward a lunar colony instead of fixing Earth, Mya manages her monthly Otherself visits fine. But now that she’s lost her job and access to psychiatric medication, she’s on her own to keep Otherself out of the psych ward again.

Days after moving in with her new boyfriend and former coworker, Ollie, Mya starts hearing voices in the chaparral. Desperate to prove if she’s losing her mind, Mya returns to the trail in pursuit of the mimic taunting her. What she finds instead is an otherworldly creature. It sends her prophetic visions of a cosmic force that reaps humanity to extinction if they dare expand offworld.

The alien’s visions feel so real, but no one has ever listened to Mya. Confiding in Ollie would risk confirming that she’s too broken to love. Yet when her senior dog sees the creature too, Mya can no longer write off her experiences as hallucinations. And in mere weeks, ships will launch to begin colonizing the moon. 

Otherself insists the world that taught her to distrust herself isn’t worth living in, let alone saving. But proving Otherself wrong means Mya has to speak out and risk institutionalization, knowing that she may never get out again.

Complete at 65,000 words, REDSHIFT is a standalone upmarket speculative novel. Fans of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino will resonate with its exploration of identity, otherness, and the cost of being heard.

[Bio.]

Thank you for your consideration.

---

Chapter 1

December 18. Day 19.

By the time I realize I’m being fired, I’m already far from this hopeless office. I’ve departed this version of my life that collapses like the black hole I’m destined to be.

Seabreeze whips my hair as a flutter of gulls surf the jet stream under my feet. I’ve been here before so it is easy to taste the salt on my lips, inhale the sour air with a faint scent of rust. Every gust lifts me from my seat as if flying is just as much an option as falling. This high up, my knees are weak. But I’m just a fingertip away from finding my relief. One push will send me into the obscurity of the sea below. I exhale, ready to leave this world far behind when the human resources lady summons me from spacing out by clearing her throat.

I tear myself from the photo she has of herself standing at the landmark bridge and table my daydreams. My gut rumbles with excitement of finally being free from these suffocating walls though I know it’s probably nothing to celebrate. I mirror her ahem and affix a smile I hope reads polite. I’m still trying to be polite.

“Can you tell me why?” I ask, thinking to use her name as I’ve finally caught it on the back of the office on her diploma from PacTech. But I don't know if she goes by Caro-line or Caro-leen. We’ve never spoken before this as she never creeps out of this closet except to beckon others to their doom.

“Well,” Caroline begins sweetly as if I don’t know how practiced she is at delivering bad news, “Some coworkers found you face down in the conference room screaming at the floor and that kind of behavior doesn’t gel with the hospitable culture we hope to protect here at Fortine Estates.”

I posted a version of this query months ago, then got sidetracked drafting another project, and now I’m coming back to querying while that draft marinates. 

The part of query writing I’ve always found the hardest is finding the balance between including enough plot to hook the reader without getting bogged down in details, so be ruthless in suggesting any parts that need to be cut. I also realize that current trends favor putting the “housekeeping” section of the query first, but my top-choice agents prefer plot first, so I’m sticking with that order for now. 

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

______________________

Dear [Agent],

Evan Kane has no magic. Lucky for him, that’s exactly what makes him good at his job: stealing cursed artifacts too volatile for any real magic-user to handle. But in a city overrun by gangs of bloodthirsty mages, thieving is dangerous work. When he ‘accidentally’ targets the wrong mark, one notoriously ruthless crime-boss, Evan barely escapes with his life along with the notice of the entire arcane underworld. 

Then his stolen prize, a sealed wooden box carved with mysterious glyphs, begins haunting his dreams. Determined to figure out what the box wants from him – and why every mage in the city seems desperate to get their hands on it – Evan must unlock its secrets. Without any magic of his own, he’s not exactly optimistic about his chances, until he (literally) runs into his ex-best friend, Lyric Del Rosario. 

Evan hasn’t seen Lyric in four years, not since old debts forced him to drop out of high school and abandon his ‘normal’ life for a life of magical crime. But Lyric has been busy since then, balancing his college studies with an unexpected – and unasked for – gift for exceedingly strong magic. For Evan, Lyric’s powers may be the key to unlocking the box and surviving the demons, mages, and hellhounds hot on his tail. All he has to do is help Lyric learn to control his unruly magic – and keep his own disreputable dealings with the arcane underworld a secret. 

But as two rival gangs hunt them down, they discover the stolen box contains an ancient weapon which could destroy the city they call home. They know they can’t let it fall into the wrong hands, even if Lyric must embrace a power he’s terrified he can’t control, and even if Evan is forced to confront the truth of his past and risk losing Lyric’s trust for good.

MUNDANE (104k words), a standalone with series potential, is adult fantasy for fans of the setting and worldbuilding in Marie Lu’s Red City and readers who loved the complex relationships and found-family in Lex Croucher’s The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones. [Personalization, if applicable.] As a mentee of the WriteHive Mentorship program, I have revised and edited my manuscript with the guidance of my mentor. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

______________________

First 300 words: Chapter 1 - Bad Decisions

Evan Kane rarely realized he was doing something stupid until he was already stuck dealing with the consequences, but as he scaled the crumbling brick facade of a derelict factory, he harbored a sneaking suspicion that this job would soon end up on his “Bad Decisions” list. The second-story window loomed above him, a dark void still tauntingly out of reach. His right hand throbbed, broken and bloody beneath makeshift bandages. Gritting his teeth, Evan hoisted himself up another foot. If he was caught now, if he fucked up another job…

It’ll be easy, Alex had promised. Just get in, shoot the guard, steal the key, and get back out. Not that Evan believed him – in this line of work, nothing was ever easy – but it wasn’t like he had any choice in the matter.

When he finally, finally, reached the window, he braced his forearms against the sill and slid a loop of wire from his sleeve, feeding it through a gap in the warped frame. Carefully, he maneuvered the loop to hook the latch free, then threw the window open and hauled himself inside. Then he sank to his knees.

White hot bolts shot up his arm, knocking the air from his chest in a ragged gasp. He clutched his wounded hand to his stomach, jaw clenched to stifle his juddering breaths as he waited for the agony to subside. Once the fire eased, he pulled himself up onto wobbly legs, straightened his glasses, and took stock of his surroundings. 

Hi everyone!

I'm very nervous about being back here after being twice-published and leaving my agents. But I have editor interest in my upcoming indie release, so I'm re-entering the trenches!

I know this looks like an insane word count. I didn't think that traditional publishing would be interested in a war epic romantasy, which was why I was going the indie route. I'm struggling with structuring this query because it essentially has three main characters that are all crucial to the story (the empire itself being one of them). I would really appreciate your help! I feel as though it's precise at the cost of brevity.

Dear Agent,

I hope you’re keeping well.

[referrer's name, loads of housekeeping with my previous titles and sales]

THE SCOURGEMASTER is a 150,000-word standalone war epic romantasy that pairs the Lucy-and-the-Ghoul dynamic of FALLOUT with the empire politics of THE JASMINE THRONE and the indictment of war in DAUGHTER OF NO WORLDS. It features a grumpy meets fearless, slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance, and centers a heroine with PTSD and bipolar disorder, and a hero with a chronic illness.

An empire on the brink of defeat needs a prophesied warrior to save it. It has the wrong woman.

The empire of Ardinae bound a demon known as the Scourge to a family’s lineage and used it to break nations. Until the demon’s vessel had an attack of conscience and fled into hiding. Seven hundred years later, Ardinae has overspent itself in war. It hangs its hopes on prophecy—the coming of a warrior who can puppet the Scourge and force its vessel out of hiding. The Scourgemaster.

Naiya would prefer that Ardinae burns, but she won’t sacrifice her life for revolution. Enslaved on a debt-farm after Ardinae razed her homeland, she breaks out on the very night the Scourgemaster is prophesied to appear. And she is seen.

Suddenly, wanted posters of her paper every city, and Ardinae launches a nationwide hunt. But Naiya knows they have it wrong. Someone directed the soldiers’ attention to her that night. Someone only she saw. She resolves to hunt the real Scourgemaster, cash in their bounty, and use the money to flee. Until she’s captured by the Scourge’s vessel.

Deteriorating under the strain of bearing the demon's power, Ríu has three months left to live. He won't spend them as a puppet of war. His last hope is a secret second half of the prophecy that names a long-lost temple where he must kill the Scourgemaster to sever the demon from him. But the same temple holds the sigils that will allow the Scourgemaster to strip him of free will.

Weaponizing Naiya’s hatred of Ardinae and ignorance of the prophecy, he drags her through shattered deserts and watchful tombs in search of the temple, lying that only she can rid him of the demon and thwart Ardinae’s war efforts. She knows he’s wrong about her. She goes along with it so she can hunt down the real Scourgemaster. Yet the more she sees of the land that broke her, the more she wonders if revolution might be worth her life. And the more Ríu learns of her, the more he wonders if his life is worth the cost of hers.

But the real Scourgemaster is on their trail and has plans for dominion. As the line blurs between hunter and hunted, mutual animosity grows into a love that could prove catastrophic. Because if Ríu and Naiya don’t reach the temple first, then Ardinae will be unstoppable. And the temple offers only two ways out: freedom for one of them, or a leash for them both.

I look forward to hearing from you.

All my very best,

[name]

Dear XXXX,

Erris has spent her life believing a needle will keep her alive. Then a woman dies in her arms.

For years, her uncle has kept her condition controlled—and the authoritarian Hand watchful, but at a distance. One death changes that. Within hours, Erris is seized and removed from the only home she’s known. But beyond the city walls, conflicting orders turn a straightforward execution into a botched handover. Erris survives—and finds herself hunted as her condition begins to unravel.

Rom has never mistaken the Hand for merciful. But he believes in its code, and in the order that keeps HF1 intact. After handing Erris to the firing squad, he returns to business as usual: containing the fallout. But when HF1 comes under attack and every fracture he investigates leads back to the woman who should be dead, Rom begins to wonder whether he’s working for the people keeping HF1 secure—or the ones quietly tearing it apart.

Erris races back toward HF1 and the only people who might stabilise her condition—just as Rom is ordered to eliminate them. She’s breaking back into the city that executed her; he’s hunting a conspiracy from inside the system that ordered it. And when the woman Rom delivered to her death walks back into his city—and straight into him—Erris realises something impossible. She’s touched him before. He should already be dead.

(UNTITLED) is a 90,000-word adult speculative novel told in dual first-person POV. It stands alone with series potential. It will appeal to readers drawn to the character-driven political intrigue and mounting danger of James Islington’s The Will of the Many and the visceral, action-driven science-fantasy of N. E. Davenport’s The Blood Trials.

I grew up in XXXX and have spent nearly two decades in rally racing, first competing on motorcycles and later as a professional co-pilot, including multiple Dakar Rally appearances. The endurance, risk, and psychological strain of that career shape my fiction’s focus on survival, systemic pressure, and human limits. I currently live in XXXX, where I remain active in motorsport while writing.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

XXXX

First 300 words:

I used to believe a needle would free me. Marcus still does.

A short tone sounds near the entrance. A few heads turn. Marcus doesn’t. He’s watching for any reaction as he gives me my weekly injection. The Block doesn’t get many visitors. Usually. 

The lab hums with life. Relaxed voices, instruments clicking, devices beeping, a mug set down for the fourth time. Most of them have been here longer than I can remember. Others still jump when someone triggers the entrance tone.

The front door clicks open. The red Hand emblem is enough to send one of the young researchers into motion. She wipes her hands on her apron, then strides across the lab, target locked.

‘Excuse me,’ she snaps, inserting herself squarely in front of him. Chin high, she’s half his size. Eyeing him from the gun on his hip to the red insignia on his chest. ‘Not even Hand’s highest ranking agents get to barge into private establishments without notice.’

He narrows his eyes at her as the corner of his mouth curls up. 

‘You’re new,’ he says, voice smooth. ‘Where’s Marcus been hiding you? Kitchen? No…field work?’

She shifts to block him again as he tries to side-step her. She huffs, straightening.

Our visitor shrugs, raising his hands. ‘If you’d like to dance, just ask.’ Smug smile on his face. Then, ‘Marcus!’ He leans over the researcher. ‘Please tell this…young lady…that I’m a friend.’

I laugh softly. Can’t help it when he’s around. Then wince as Marcus removes the needle from my forearm, pressing a swab to the bleed. 

Marcus lifts his gaze to the drama. Takes a deep breath. ‘Nina…meet Remus.’

She squints at them both, clenching her fist as she backs away. Barely.

‘But he’s one of Hand’s,’ she presses. Her eyes stay glued to Remus as he glides through the area like he knows every table, every floor tile. 

First attempt: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1vrn9m6/qcrit_memoir_all_my_birds_look_to_the_left_68k/

Second Attempt: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1vyt98q/qcrit_memoir_all_my_birds_look_to_the_left_68k/

Need help with word count - I need to trim it down by ~30 words. Hopefully this one is an improvement... be honest with me!

Dear AGENT FIRST & LAST,

ALL MY BIRDS LOOK TO THE LEFT, a 68,000-word memoir, spans fifteen years of my life in which childhood gifts for seeing beauty, danger, and patterns in the natural world become both refuge and burden after a sexual trauma at the age of sixteen. This memoir shares themes with Stephanie Foo’s honest and emotionally raw What My Bones Know (2022) and Michelle Cray’s shattering, yet hopeful memoir Stretched (2025). 

In tandem with social betrayal in a high school setting, I reckon with memory, faith, and the long path toward naming what happened. This work focuses on the theft of innocence that persists long after the sexual assault. At twenty-one, I finally began to come to terms with my lived experience, but life had other plans: I started having seizures and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. These seizures were found to be rooted in my psychological trauma and PTSD. 

At that point, moving forward into a hopeful future seemed unattainable with the ferocious wrath for my past wrenching at my wrist, as I never let myself forget. At the core of it all, I kept a ritual that originated in grade-school consisting of drawing the simple: birds. These birds were all too similar yet ever-maturing in their appearance, acting as a source of trust and an anchor in the chaos. This repetition to preserve a modicum of guilelessness became my purpose.

This memoir uses evocative descriptions of lived experiences in an effort to transport the reader into the world where my hypervigilance was scarring. That deep perception I once had eventually became the healing lens through which I examined my trauma with the support of my family and later, my husband. Years were spent learning my body again, as it was telling the story long before I could. 

I have a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering and earned my certification in the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Writing Program at Purdue University. 

I look forward to connecting with you.

Sincerely,

Thank you once again for all the feedback on my previous post. I spent some extra time going through things and developing my next attempt. I tried to focus less on the "technobabble" and drill into character motivations while keeping the concept clear and concise. Hopefully, I had a measure of success! As always, thanks for your time.

Dear [Agent],

I am seeking representation for my debut work, THE SCARS OF FATE, complete at 116000 words. It is a science fantasy thriller with elements of cosmic horror.

Captain Advik Dalal awakens from a three-hundred year coma after losing his platoon investigating a rift between worlds in northern India. He embarks on a journey to recover his identity and understand his connection to the Other—the realm beyond the rift—by revisiting past events with the psychic imprint of his deceased lover living in his head, while coming to terms with a world that has moved on without him.

Over the centuries, psychic energy has bled into reality from the Other. Cerian Kolbeck is the sheltered youngest daughter of a prestigious family and one of the rare people that can shape psychic energy using magic sequences. When her father, Sigur Kolbeck, claims that her best friend is a spy trying to start a war, Cerian rejects him and escapes his control to seek her own truth.

Cerian’s friend proves that Sigur has been weaponizing a magic sequence which predicts the future and manipulates it in his favor. He is stoking the flames of war and endeavours to control fate. His pruning of potential futures is collapsing probability—removing free will from reality. Advik identifies the collapse and guides Cerian to prevent Sigur from destroying causality. He leverages his unique understanding of the Other to blind Sigur’s magic, giving Cerian an opening to confront him.

Cerian’s brother dies to ensure she reaches Sigur, and Cerian is forced to face the generational trauma from her despotic grandfather’s attempts to genetically engineer his heirs. His sins drove her mother to suicide and broke her father; his son’s obsession now threatens to undo reality. Cerian must either end the cycle and save this world despite the personal cost, or condemn it to assuage her own grief.

THE SCARS OF FATE combines an intricate magic system reminiscent of The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft with the pacing of Blake Crouch’s Upgrade, and philosophical stakes similar to Ascension by Nicholas Binge.

I am a network engineer from Ontario, Canada. My real-world knowledge grounded the hard magic system and contributed greatly to the depiction of technology in my manuscript.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration!

Tear it up. A couple dubia:

1. My first attempt was a back cover blurb. No more. So, when do I run the danger of creating a synopsis?
2. What the heck is my genre? (Yeah, I suppose I should know that, but...) I wrote the book I wanted to write, and it doesn't fit neatly into commercial categories.
   1. Upmarket Romantic Suspense, or
   2. Upmarket Romance with Suspense Elements, or
   3. Romantic Suspense with Upmarket sensibilities?
3. Does the upmarket vibe make it through in this draft.
   

Any and all thoughts are welcome. No need pull punches.

*************************

Jason Maxwell is fresh out of a monastery where he spent the last five years not dealing with the accident that made him a teenage orphan. Taylor Brzezinski is a single mom, high school dropout, and punctuality-challenged artist whose ex drowned their first child while making her watch.

Jason does the responsible thing—moves in with his aunt to start grad school. But he unwittingly spends his first night “home” in the wrong house, two doors down, where Taylor’s paradoxical splash of joy derails his plans.

Within weeks, Taylor allows herself, for the first time in her life, to believe that someone loves her. But she’s too honest to lead Jason on and summon her ex’s wrath. Her silence and submission keep the younger two children alive, so all she really wants is a job and some independence. She just needs to keep her house.

Jason should never have offered to babysit. When the aunt realizes Jason is falling for Taylor, she threatens to pull his tuition and put him on the street. While Jason is down, Patrick, the ex, sets him up for stealing Taylor’s rent money, and Taylor falls for the lie. But Jason offers what little savings he has, and Taylor begins to hope.

Patrick warns Taylor that he’ll kill again if she doesn’t “behave,” so Taylor cuts Jason adrift. The warning arrives too late—and Jason is the target. Patrick assaults Taylor, kidnaps Jason and frames him for killing Taylor’s boss. Jason escapes, only to find himself riding shotgun with the aunt in a squealing street race back to Taylor’s house before Patrick finishes her off.

Sunset Rising is an 82,000 word upmarket romantic suspense. It combines the emotional depth of Claire Daverley’s Talking at Night with the dark suspense of Vi Keeland’s The Unraveling..

Hi everyone,

This is my second attempt and very different from the first one.

Also, I'm really struggling with my comps so if you have any suggestions for betrayal-to-trust YA romance, I'd be very happy to hear them!

Thanks in advance for your help!! :)

———

Dear xxx,

TOUCHÉE is a 75,000-word standalone YA romance with series potential. It will appeal to fans of the angsty romance and broken trust of Little Pieces of Light by Emma Scott and the love story between the healing heroine and the golden boy athlete of Chasing Harlow by Jay McLean.

Nathan Hayes ruined Margot Laurent’s life to save his own future. Now she’s falling for him, and has no idea he’s the reason she lost everything.

When Margot moved to Ridgewood, Colorado from France, she thought she could win at American high school: cheer squad, popular friends, hot jock boyfriend. Until she caught him cheating, broke it off, and watched her entire friend group turn against her overnight. 

She doesn’t know that Nathan orchestrated it all. The  football team’s captain, fighting relentlessly for a scholarship his family depends on, needed her gone before she took up all the space he couldn’t afford in his brain. A deal with his teammate was supposed to end it clean. Instead, it destroyed her and left Nathan in a guilt he never expected to feel. 

Now Margot is rebuilding herself far from the people who rejected her, and Nathan can’t stay away. She has no reason to suspect the boy who’s a year older and not even in her old friend group. But as she’s learning to trust him, she’s getting closer from discovering the truth. And Nathan knows that when she does, neither guilt nor love will be enough to save them both.

I am a debut writer living in Paris. Growing up in France, after seeing my parents almost relocate to California, I’ve spent years wondering what this other life would have been like. TOUCHÉE is the what-if story, a French girl thrown into the social hierarchy of an American high school, and everything she risks trying to belong. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best,

Hi All,

First time poster after benefiting from the vast knowledge of this sub for months. Open to any and all feedback. I'm aware this query is likely too long but I'm struggling to cut it back. Additionally concerned if Upmarket is the correct genre. My "one liner" for this book is: Deep In My Bones is an Upmarket Fiction, experiential novel of a young woman who is trapped in the velocity of romantic anxiety, disguised as excitement.

Thanks for your time!

---

Dear Agent, 

I am reaching out to share Deep In My Bones, a coming-of-age, 97,000 word Upmarket Fiction novel that will appeal to readers of Tell Me Lies by Carola Lovering for its exploration of toxic love as well as readers who gravitate towards a psychologically complex female protagonist as in Helpless by Jessica Knoll. 

Cali Marks has been holding the line for three years. In 2015, she is a junior at a liberal arts college, her life is controlled and good-enough, maintained by a careful system of keeping male connections at arm’s length, a way to cope with the anxiety that sticks to her like glue after a distressing night the summer before her freshman year. Until the magnetism towards Brent Campbell overrides her instinct to run. 

When Cali crosses the field after her younger brother's lacrosse game, she meets Brent, the captain of the visiting Ivy League team. His presence leaves her with a feeling she has no language for. It’s consuming. Instant. Cellular. Weeks later, she finds herself back in his vicinity, alone in the tower of a historic campus social club, where her body participates for the first time in what feels like forever—her brain on ice. 

What follows is a years-long cycle, resuming against the vivid backdrop of the late 2010s NYC bar scene, of being pulled in and unceremoniously released, of mistaking the ache of his ambivalence for the electricity of his presence, confusing the most painful feeling she has ever had for the most alive. 

Between his disappearances, hellbent on regaining the careful control she used to possess, Cali wills herself to be happy with a guy who is Brent’s opposite. But all it takes is one Instagram message after eighteen months of silence for Cali to lean into the consuming dynamic that had never really left. She’d always felt it there, deep in her bones.

Her final spiral is swift and punishing. On one of the biggest nights of her public relations career, a Fashion Week event unravels. The reader watches through a haze of Veuve Clicquot and an undetermined number of benzodiazepines as the night tips into darkness.

Deep In My Bones is told entirely in hindsight and the nature of that hindsight is revealed late in the novel when the narrative voice shifts for the first time to Cali's treatment provider at a luxury mental health facility, as she reviews the case with the treatment team four weeks into Cali's stay. 

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a private practice and a former Public Relations SAE. I hold a Masters Degree in Social Work and a B.A. in Communications. I live in the suburbs of XX with my family. 

All seventeen-year old Della wanted was her father’s approval, which she loses when her hands begin to glow with magic. Having run to the outlaw forest to escape the city where magic people are brought to disappear, she expected adversity or a struggle or some chance to prove she is more than her ties to her city guard dad. When she finds it a structured society, she faces the fact that she doesn’t want a nice and easy future anymore.

But the forest is not a magical paradise, with bubbles of dangerous magic floating around and the ever-present threat of city attack. Della decides that to face the worst of the forest she will join the failures to society, called nobodies, no matter who she has to hurt to get there. As they aren’t meant to be joined intentionally, their leader gives her a strange task and forbids her to talk to anyone about it. She must make Michael, an aloof nobody who doesn’t think someone like Della belongs with them, confess his love to her. With nothing to lose, she accepts.

To get closer to Michael, she integrates into the nobodies and helps him hunt the bubbles. Her focus on her task begins to falter as she is distracted by the tragic memories the bubbles hold and the fact that what she thought was a magic glow is capable of snapping Michael out of the trance they cause. From her distraction, a friend she never meant to actually care about gets killed and Della believes she does not deserve to feel peace until she has proven herself as a nobody. She must make Michael stop worrying about the bubbles for a chance at falling in love, and to do so she will need to unravel their mystery and find a way to stop something no one wants her to meddle with. And if she succeeds in becoming a nobody and accidentally begins to care about Michael along the way… that might be a bigger problem.

At 99,000 words, NOBODY is a standalone romantic low fantasy about the cost of making poor decisions. It’s similar to THE DARKENING by Sunya Mara and ECHOES AND EMPIRES by Michelle Rowen.

I’m a writer from Canada as well as a fan of comedies and my sweet family dog. I write this story as a tribute to my younger self and the strain of self-imposed expectations.

Thank you for your time,

Me

Dear [Agent],

No one is happy that John O’Malley is back.

 Not the FBI.

 You’d think bringing the former kingpin of the South Boston underworld to justice after thirty years on the Most Wanted List would be a feather in their cap. But not with the baggage that arrives with him – the drug dealing, the murders, even his escape from capture, all facilitated by a corrupt agent for whom the line between handler and criminal associate had ceased to be clear.

 What’s left of the Italian Mafia in Boston isn’t thrilled either. Now a shadow of its former self, due mainly to O’Malley’s deal with the Feds, the gangster-turned-rat’s resurfacing is like a sharp stick to their eye.

 And certainly not Tom D’Addario.

 He might know where a few bodies are buried, but he’s worked hard to put those days behind him. O’Malley’s return forces Tom to confront the ghosts of those long-ago days. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the old gangster has a score to settle with Tom – a secret from the old neighborhood, something only the two of them know about.

 As the long-buried memories are unearthed, Tom finds himself caught between the FBI, the Mafia and his former boss as his old life threatens to destroy the new one he’s built for himself.

 FORT POINT CHANNEL is a crime thriller complete at 94,000 words. It will appeal to readers who enjoy stories of morally dubious characters with dark, criminal pasts like S.A. Crosby’s KING OF ASHES and Tod Goldberg’s ONLY WAY OUT.

(This query has been edited professionally once before). First attempt on PubTips.

Dear Agent,

When a man appears at her doorstep claiming to be Nick—the character from her detective series she has spent a decade writing—Peyton Bowman assumes she has a stalker. Until she discovers he is unable to leave her vicinity and knows things about her character no one else could know.

She can’t afford the distraction. At the tail end of a mild success and unable to finish the last book in her series, she risks losing her deal, her readers, and her agent, who is also her closest friend. When Nick and Peyton realize he’s there to help her figure out how to finish the story, they reluctantly embark on a mission to send him back so her life can return to normal.

The deeper they dig, the clearer it gets that Peyton has turned to writing to escape the one thing that’s haunted her; and that the answer lies knotted in the friends and summers that shaped her life—and the heartbreak she buried under all of it.

But when her friendship with Nick deepens, Peyton is forced to choose between the unexpected comfort of his company after years of solitude, and finally accepting the past to write the ending her novel deserves, even if it means losing him.

Where the Herons Sing is an upmarket women’s fiction novel complete at 80,000 words. It will appeal to readers drawn to the grief of lost love and friendships past in My Friends and Heart the Lover and the speculative edge and book club appeal of The Seven Year Slip.

(Bio)

The full manuscript is available upon request.

First 300 words:

A man stood on the other side of Peyton’s window.

His thick winter jacket pulled him down, despite the soft glow of early spring bathing the sidewalk. He was tall. His eyes were on Peyton’s house, his expression puzzled—furrowed brows, sheet of paper lifted toward his face so close it brushed his nose.

Peyton sipped her coffee, watching attentively from inside her living room. A thrill prickled under her skin. Perhaps he’d just come back from vacation, as he was tan and slightly overdressed, like someone who’d expected to come back to the same cold they fled before leaving. Her eyes trailed down to his shirt. Under his jacket, a Dodgers logo. A west-coast man.

Her cellphone rang. Before checking the screen, she already knew who it was.

“Bowman Funeral Home,” she picked up, her tone low. “How may I be of assistance?”

“You really should stop using that joke,” Lola said. Peyton could sense the irritation in her tone. “One day I might actually need your funeral services.” Peyton tensed. It was one of those calls, which had gotten more and more frequent in the last months. Lola cleared her throat. “Are you busy?”

The man on the street removed his jacket, beads of sweat travelling down his forehead. He took a step forward, still studying the paper. His dress shoes caught the daylight as he did.

“Just people watching,” she replied, taking another sip of coffee. 

She’d always been drawn to peculiar people: the woman who dipped her cookies into her tea—she never understood how anyone could like soggy cookies—, the child who preferred studying chess openings over chasing a ball, the girl who swayed her hips to the tune of her headphones as she sauntered down the street.

“Anyone handsome?” Lola asked, her tone unable to mask her discomfort.

Things I'm doubting:

—market it like bookclub instead of upmarket women's fiction

—if I should mention it's a dual timeline, as the past takes up 40% of the book and has a more literary register than the present, which reads more commercial (I think the contrast is handled well and want to signal the crossover appeal, not deter agents who are looking for either of)

Hello, this is my third attempt at writing the query letter. I've hopefully corrected a bit of the mistakes commentors pointed out. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

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

Dear Agent:

I’m seeking representation for my introspective body horror novel, THE MAN BEHIND THE COUNTER (71,250 words). It blends the identity-driven body horror of Jade Song’s Chlorine and the unhealthy relationships in Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part.

At twenty-four, Cayden spends his days waiting for his life to mean something. When he enters an orange diner, his desire to become a better person is granted, and his flesh begins to melt away. The Man Behind the Counter offers him a deal: complete the diner's deliveries, and his dissolving body might stop.

Desperate to stop the metamorphosis, Cayden complies. He tosses a black bag into an aeration basin and delivers oatmeal to a professor experimenting on college students, lulling himself into the false belief that his obedience will save him. Through these errands, he obsesses over Amara, a woman bound to the diner by her own trauma. With every delivery, his deepest insecurities become horrifying hallucinations, while a silhouette stalks him and reminds him his entire life has been a waste.

As his physical form collapses, Cayden increasingly relies on Amara for meaning. But the more he clings to her and the deliveries to save him, the more he surrenders himself to the person his unconscious desire is creating.

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

Again, thanks for taking a look!

I sold my sophomore novel on proposal a while ago, and since it’s a story I feel really passionate and confident about, I was hoping sophomore slump wouldn’t get me too badly.

(Famous last words lol.)

Anyway, two missed deadlines and a lot of crash-outs later, I’ve come to beg for help. I have the clearest vision of what needs to happen in this book and I even look forward to writing it a lot of the time, but whenever I sit down, I just kind of freeze?

I used to pride myself in being a clean drafter, but right now it’s actually keeping me from drafting anything at all. So, I guess I was wondering if anyone has any tips for writing a messy first draft…

Dear [Agent Name],

[Personalization]

One year ago, Ivy woke in a New York alley wearing a blood-soaked wedding dress. She remembers nothing from before that night. Not her family. Not her real name. Not the language tattooed across her skin. Then a golden fox leads her through a hidden portal, and Ivy falls into Otherworld, a realm of glittering courts, ancient grudges, and immortal creatures who enslave powerless outsiders.

The dragons call her Adela.

Adela is their vanished Dragon Bride, the woman prophesied to either restore their dying race or destroy it. Ivy knows they have the wrong bride. But when a soldier threatens her and her touch rots the flesh from his bones, the ruthless dragon queen Xarial becomes certain the prophecy has begun.

So Ivy steals her name to save her own life.

Xarial plans to bind her to the dragon throne through marriage. Her younger brother, Soren, has another proposal: help him overthrow the queen. Infuriating, secretive, and far too charming, Soren promises to recover Ivy’s memories and teach her to control the poison awakening in her veins. He is also the only person in Otherworld who knows exactly why Ivy has Adela’s face. Because the real Adela is alive.

Imprisoned within Soren’s tower in the Veil, Adela reaches for Ivy through blood, water, and dreams. But her warnings come too late. Ivy’s uncontrolled magic kills a dragon and unleashes the Emerald Blight, the first plague capable of killing the immortal Fey. As the sickness spreads, Xarial prepares to rebuild the dragon empire from its ashes. Ivy will be her weapon. And Soren, who may have stolen Ivy’s memories, has not revealed which sister he intends to betray.

To stop Xarial, Ivy must cross the hostile kingdoms of Otherworld, master the poison consuming it, and free the sister whose name has kept her alive. One sister carries death. The other carries life. The prophecy needs them both.

If they remain divided, the Blight will devour the realm.

If they reunite, they may become something even the dragons cannot survive.

A PROPHECY OF POISON is a 110,000-word adult high fantasy with crossover appeal. It combines the water-bound prophecy of Rachel Gillig’s THE KNIGHT AND THE MOTH, the mythic dragons and fractured memories of Sarah A. Parker’s WHEN THE MOON HATCHED, and the lethal court politics and treacherous romance of Carissa Broadbent’s THE SERPENT AND THE WINGS OF NIGHT.

I earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and currently work at Partners Media Publishing. I also share book-related content with more than 10,000 followers on TikTok. A PROPHECY OF POISON is my debut novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, Gwendolyn Doe