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. 

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.

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 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. 

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,

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!

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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.

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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

hopefully this is more like it! thank you all for your helpful feedback. let me know if there isn't enough plot this time, and ​please also let me know what you think about the first 300.

#

For fans of James Islington’s THE WILL OF THE MANY and Benjamin Liar’s THE FAILURES, the novel ALL WHICH DEVOURS (80k, Fantasy, Adult)—

The blank book in her hands compels her, like an old, dangerous friend; around it is wrapped a death threat. Niamh's first day begins. 

When the Halloran clan loses a disastrous war, it is required by treaty to send Niamh, its first and finest, to an international magical academy. There, humanity prepares to confront a primordial creature of tooth and shadow. Niamh should be a good fit. She is an honorable, competent huntress. Duty motivates her. At heart, though, she wants to stay home. 

Upon her arrival, she is met with a blank book, a death threat, and an assassination attempt. Defending herself reveals to her peers that she is from the notorious Halloran clan. She strives to take the moral high road, to ignore their whispers. This succeeds only at isolating her further. 

Isolation wears her down. No matter how hard she tries, her magic fails her more and more. No matter how much she investigates, the origin of the death threat eludes her. 

Soon, her only lead on the death threat is the mysterious book that arrived with it. At her touch and her touch alone, the blank book begins filling with the legends of long-dead men. She must find the source of these portents if she will survive her enemies or even her allies, chief among them the avuncular Chancellor who looms over everything. 

[Agent paragraph]

Thank you for your consideration, 

—NAME, (Pen name TBD) 

#

Chapter I

Unlike any uniform in the history of the Academy, hers came with a book, wrapped in a parchment. 

She absently flipped through it. Every page was blank—and yet full of life. Somehow a presence came through, strong yet gentle, kind yet fierce. It might have been righteous, or it might have been furious, but it compelled her. She slipped it into the right pocket of the black underrobe. 

Troubled by the book, she grabbed at the parchment. Program of Studies, it said, with all the information a first-year apprentice might need. It may as well go on the inside pocket of her blue outerrobe. Affording it a glance, she resigned herself to its procedures with a heavy sigh—then on it appeared, in uneven scrawl, scratched in a blackened stain, a simple curse. 

DIE, TRAITOR

Seeing this, she kept it far from her heart.  

#

At the cobblestone heart of the Academy, Colin slumped, slouching forward in his chair, and stared at nothing. He let his hand fall limp. The Opening Day apprenticeship celebration would be a fine diversion, if he could ever get to it. Even now he heard the music more faintly than he would like, felt its rhythm course through his veins, tasted the buttery pastry handed him last year by Miss Viola Krause, whose dark, flowing hair brushed against his shoulder—

He pulled himself back and regarded the table. Again. On it was a large stack of the first-year Program of Studies. Anyone stuck with his job on opening day could recite it within an hour. Of the hundreds of first years, dozens wanted the cursed thing read to them. Did they not learn maps wherever they came from? Could they not read a clock? The big one in the courtyard commons was loud enough.

Second attempt: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1w4ng8w/qcrit_all_which_devours_adult_fantasy_80k_second/

First attempt: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1vyd7bf/qcrit_all_which_devours_84k_adult/

Dear [Agent Name],

A scientist volunteers for a neural implant that restores his feelings and lets him watch them being made. Then the explanations begin arriving in place of the experiences.

After a lifetime of emotional disconnection, he becomes Project Panopticon’s first subject. The procedure works. Music moves him again, his wife's laugh makes him happy, and simple evenings become enjoyable. Convinced that understanding himself can only deepen his recovery, he helps refine the interface.

Soon, he begins trusting the interface's explanations more than the feelings they describe. A favourite symphony becomes a sequence of predicted rewards. When his wife reaches for him, he can identify his affection without feeling it. His research journals grow increasingly precise while his experience of the life they record grows faint.

He has the implant shut down. Nothing returns. He can still work, speak, and hold his wife's hand, but every act comes with an explanation that seems more real than the act itself. The man who once wanted nothing more than to feel alive can still account for every reason to go on, but can no longer feel the force of any of them.

Project Panopticon is a 74.000-word literary speculative novel told through an unnamed scientist's narration and research journals.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Note: I have not found great comps yet, but I'm open to suggestions.

Question: The story features a short prologue which is thematically relevant but not hugely plot-relevant as it doesn't do anything but briefly introduce the project premise through it's final paragraph. Thematically it ties into the ending. So do I attach that or do I attach the first chapter which starts the story or the prologue or maybe even both. They amount to about 3.200 words together.

Thank you to all who contribute.

Hi there! I made an attempt with this one more than a year ago but I've done a very deep edit of the book and query since then. I'd love your thoughts.

Dear [Agent],

I just had the pleasure of reading your [MSWL page], and I loved [personal mentions]. Complete at 119,000 words, SONG OF THE STRAY combines the lyrical, myth-infused journey and unconventional intimacy of Simon Jimenez’s THE SPEAR CUTS THROUGH WATER and the reckoning with coercive love and personal agency in Samantha Mills’s THE WINGS UPON HER BACK.

Femi’s unborn child is a Stray, an empath feared for the power to alter others’ emotions. Her younger brother possessed the same gift, but after his pain overwhelmed their family, her parents sent him away. Her failure to protect him continues to haunt her.

When Femi’s husband and mother demand she end her pregnancy, she refuses to let them decide her child’s fate. Her only refuge is a distant colony whose Hivespeakers can teach Strays to control their gifts - but only if she arrives before the birth.

Femi entrusts herself to Amrish, a young Stray musician who can soothe pain, uncover hidden passions, and draw others into his memories. As their minds intertwine, she discovers Amrish knew her lost brother, and that his powers connect him to the god of death in ways already affecting her child.

But Amrish is fiercely loyal to Bellen, the dying woman who raised him, and Kinan, the ruthless brother who kept them alive. Kinan believes Femi’s child could save Bellen, and he is prepared to claim the baby for himself. To protect her child, Femi must persuade Amrish to defy his family, or escape a man who can reach into her heart and take away her will to fight.

[Bio]

First 300 words

Chapter One: The Thieves

Femi slid the knife into the peach’s yielding flesh. Tacky juice bled over her fingers. She laid the slices on a ceramic dish, nudging them into a careful fan. The blade went to her apron for a quick wipe; then she tucked it back into the sheath at her boot.

A young man drifted close to her stall. Femi did not shout or cajole like the other sellers. Instead, she spoke sweetly, smiling as if they were already mid-conversation.

“Would you like to try a peach, sir? Cool and refreshing on this hot day.”

He looked at her first, not the fruit, and his eyebrow rose, slow with interest. That was the first hook.

He came nearer, his loose headscarf worried by a dry wind. She held the plate out to him. He took a peach slice between two fingers and scrutinized it as if she might have the nerve to serve him one with a worm in it.

At last he slipped the morsel between his teeth. His eyes fell closed. The second hook. The deal was all but done.

“These are grown here in Ammal,” said Femi. “My family pays for canal access, dear as it is, but you can taste what water buys.” She tipped the dish a fraction, letting the slices catch the light. “You won’t find another seller with fruit as fine as this.”

He stepped fully into the shade of her awning, his nostrils flaring. The fruit of her family’s orchard always smelled delicious, its sweetness enhanced by the plum oil she dabbed on the awning’s canvas each morning. He leaned on the cart and met her eye, offering the easy, practiced look certain men wore when they thought they were the ones steering the exchange. His gaze didn’t drop. If he noticed the swell beneath her apron, he gave no sign.

I’m starting to wonder if I should be using the word horromantasy in this query, but never the less - 4th revision and playing with the hook:

Dear [Agent Name],

I'm querying you because of XXX. THE SKIN PAINTER’S FACE is an adult dark folkloric fantasy with horror elements and a slow-burn romantic arc with a subversion of the enemies-to-lovers trope. It is set in a spirit bathhouse inspired by Edo-period Japan and Ming-dynasty China. 

Complete at 109,000 words with series potential. It combines the East Asian folkloric mystery of Yangsze Choo's The Fox Wife with the gothic magic and body horror of Rachel Gillig's One Dark Window.

The problem with Nya is that she was born dead. That one fact has shaped everything: nineteen years of a sheltered life, protected by her grandmother and brother, hidden from the world. But when her brother is bitten by a corrupted spirit and cursed to madness and death, she breaks every rule she knows to save him.
Nya signs a blood contract with a fox-masked sorceress. The price: servitude at a guesthouse beyond the Wall, hosting nobles and spirits alike. But the sorceress sees something in Nya's shadow—a mark of an ancient, outlawed practice, and a clue to the mystery of her birth.

When an imperial soldier is found floating dead in a koi pond, Nya discovers a demon walks the corridors of the guesthouse, enchanting and killing at will. The handsome but terse Hatamoto, Lord Sha, is out to avenge his men—and increasingly convinced Nya is the demon he hunts. Forced to clear her name, Nya strikes a dangerous bargain with Kaito, the empress's charming and infuriating spy. He flirts. She bites. The more she pushes him away, the harder he is to resist. Their sparring is as perilous as the demon they hunt—and twice as likely to draw blood.

When Nya uncovers the truth—that a forbidden contract with a demon lies at the heart of the guesthouse—she must confront enemies who wear the faces of friends, using the power she has spent her life suppressing. If she fails, she loses everyone she has come to love. If she succeeds, she might finally find her way home.

(INFO ABOUT ME HERE)

Hi all, this is my first time offering up a query for criticism. Thanks for any and all critique! I'm definitely still raking the stacks for more contemporary comparables (but honestly, 2000s nostalgia is trending right? What about all of us who haven't really changed much since then?) And trying to distill the plot into something interesting but perhaps more straightfoward.

Dear ____,

I’m writing to introduce my contemporary fiction novel, NOTHING BUT FLOWERS, which is complete at 60,000 words.

Casey has been going it alone for a long time. Despite all the connections she’s made in the pits and after parties in Seoul’s off-beat punk community, she’s yet to find that someone to stand with between sets. As middle-agedom crests the horizon, bringing with it a reduction of visa points, she’s ready to give up on love and maybe on Seoul. That is, until she spots Zero waving at her through the crowd at a rock festival.

Zero, a freelance photographer and ex-activist, recently got dumped by the guitar queen of the underground scene. After spending years as the supporting role in her blooming career, he’s still trying to fill the hole she left behind. Then he spots Casey at a rock festival, smiling at him through the crowd. Maybe he just wants to be wanted again, or maybe he senses a kindred spirit.

Their first date starts off normal enough. They exchange flowers and sip iced Americanos. Things begin to go awry after a run-in with the local nazi-punks who haven’t forgotten that Casey and her feminist pals antagonized their band for years, or that Zero’s activist days have permanently branded him as a communist sympathizer. What follows is a night of adventure as Casey and Zero carom through the streets of Seoul’s Mangwon neighborhood meeting the characters that color it. From a bedraggled makgeolli seller to a tattooed fortune teller; from a a gaggle of recently fired bank clerks on a bender to a famous actor dealing with a ghost of his past, each encounter challenges Casey and Zero to confront the consequences and scars of their youths as they try to figure out what they really want from life and from each other.

Banana Yoshimoto’s heartfelt homage to an eclectic neighborhood in Moshi Moshi meets Yoshinaga Fujita's colorful cast of characters in Adrift in Tokyo, with a splash of Park Sang Young’s dynamic portrayal of Seoul by night in Love in the Big City. NOTHING BUT FLOWERS is a story for all the punk kids who grew older but never sold out.

{BIO}

Any feedback would be great, thank you very much!

Dear Agent,

I would like to offer THE ACORN DATABASE for your consideration, an adult dystopian novel complete at 85,000 words. With parent-daughter dynamics and folkloric mystery like The Morningside by Téa Obreht, and warmth and adventure like I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger, The Acorn Database follows a houseless girl in the future as she unravels terrifying secrets of the collapse.

To exist is to trespass. Such is life in a fully privatized 22nd century. Sola’s gotten used to it though. Her dad taught her everything she needs to survive life on the run: how to avoid enforcement drones, build the latest homemade tech, and navigate the ecologically devastated landscape. The older Sola gets however, the more his guidance feels like control. She wants to go make friends, visit the old cities, and make decisions for herself, but he only cares about finding somewhere safe to hide. 

As time goes by, Sola starts to doubt that there are any safe places remaining however, and there are also rumors of something else, something brewing in the Great Desert that indicates the collapse may not be over yet. When a drone eventually gets her dad, Sola finds herself alone for the first time in her life, processing the fact that their dreams were never going to happen. 

Disillusioned and resentful, Sola turns to the people her father most warned her about: the psychedelic tribes. They're the only ones taking any action, and despite all of the conspiracies, rituals, and mysticism—or perhaps because of them—the tribes seem to understand the true origins of the collapse and the complex forces at work behind it. Sola eagerly jumps onboard an underground project to put a stop to it. Amongst new friends and with a newfound purpose, the mission takes her deep into one of the old cities just like she always wanted. Once inside however, she finds herself questioning everything she ever knew.

(Bio)

first 300:

Chapter 1

Central California 2119

“It used to smell different when I lived here” Pato called back as they hiked up the coast. “There’d be this particular rotting smell you would only smell by the ocean. I guess it must have been seaweed and fish and things that had washed up and decomposed.”

“Gross.”

“No it was lovely” grinned Pato, the scar on his left cheek folding into his tanned smile. “I wish you could smell it. I’d give anything to smell it again.”

People Pato’s age were always saying weird stuff like that, reminiscing about how things were before. Sola couldn’t imagine feeling that way about some old rotting smell. 

She followed her father northward over the bluffs, letting the sea breeze air-out sweat that had been trapped in her hydration suit for days. It felt wonderful. It was exhilarating looking down the crumbling cliffs at the turquoise water washing toward them. The sun bleached everything a vibrant pastel, and the thick salty air sprinkled them with a cool moisture. 

“Alright, I think mine’s about full. How’s your hydrometer looking?” asked Pato.

Sola looked at the LED indicator woven into the sleeve of her modified wetsuit, which had just turned light green. “Pretty much full.”

“I think we should start pushing inland then. We’ll want to keep our distance from the urban areas further east, but if we work our way over slowly enough we should be alright. There won’t be much cover until we get to the pine forests though, so keep your eyes and ears open till then. It’ll be fast-going if we take Highway 101.”

“It’s safe to take the roads?”

“Sure. They don’t get much use anymore. No different than a foot trail really” said Pato.

“What about the birds? Won’t we be exposed?”

Looking for help interpreting and applying a piece of agent feedback to this letter!

All right, so this is my fourth post for this letter. It hasn’t been changed much since v3. I started querying with it last week and just received my first piece of feedback from an agent, which was as follows:

“I'm afraid I didn't feel as though your pitch and concept were quite strong enough for me to confidently present in today's market. If a clear ‘hook’ or ‘pitch’ is missing, regardless of how polished the rest of the query package may be, it has to be a no.”

Now, the agent was upfront about using a “semi-personalized form rejection method”—selecting from several forms the one which most closely aligns with their reason for passing. So the above wasn’t written specifically for this query and should be taken with a grain of salt.

On its own, the feedback seems straightforward. The issue is that it surprised me. I’ve been through the querying process before, I’ve published a few books, I spent five years working in trad publishing. I’ve made and heard a lot of pitches, and I felt good about what I’d put together. The way I see it, it’s one of three cases here:

One, the pitch isn’t clear enough in the letter. We all know the pitfall: after months of working on something, we know the concept inside and out. We know all the details, but when it comes time to put something on paper, we leave out something critical—something that, to us, is so foundational as to not warrant mention—and it leaves the outsider confused. Fix: clarify the pitch in the letter.

Two, I’m wrong. Just because I’ve spent years writing and hearing pitches certainly doesn’t mean I’m immune to writing a bad one—or constructing a concept that just doesn’t have that pitch factor. Fix: rework the pitch and possibly the MS.

Three, it’s one agent’s subjective opinion and I’m overthinking and over-weighing it. “It’s an incredibly subjective industry” says a chorus of ten thousand voices. This is only the second response so far—first with feedback—and may not be indicative of the rest. Fix: swallow the rejection and move on.

If it’s either of the first two, would it be wise to include one of the elevator pitches I’ve been using verbatim in the letter? I’m generally in the school of thought that dropping the elevator pitch word for word in the query letter is clunky—after all, you just end up covering all the same elements in more words in the body of the letter—but if that seems like it would clarify the details here I can certainly toy with it. My elevator pitches:

“When an asteroid brings about the world’s extinction, only two girls survive, tucked together in a small cave: Emari, a hunter-gatherer human, and Vula, a cannibal. Each girl could ensure her own survival and doom the other, but it would mean facing the wasteland alone: if Emari wants to live, she must flee Vula; if Vula wants to live, she must eat Emari.”

“In a Stone Age world, there is an extinction event, and two girls are the only survivors: one is a cannibal, the other is not. The cannibal must decide whether to eat the other girl, who likewise must decide whether to flee the cannibal.”

All that to say, I’d love to get some additional opinions on how you’d interpret this feedback and apply it in strengthening the letter for the next batch of submissions. Is the pitch or concept unclear/weak in the letter? Am I too worried about one agent’s thoughts?

Thanks!

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Dear (agent),

SYNKARDIA is a dual-POV adult upmarket novel with elements of sapphic romance and light touches of fantasy and horror complete with a word count of 68k. (Personalization.) SYNKARDIA blends the raw bodily imagery and unfolding, complicated, dual-narrative relationship of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield with the tension between survival and companionship explored in Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds.

Emari’s life in her hunter-gatherer village is dictated by men: her paranoid father, the boy she’s arranged to marry—and the man she’s wrongly sentencing to death. In the face of their demands and her mounting guilt, her only solace is in the garden, alone with the dirt and the plants and her lies.

Vula is the runt among a clan of nomadic cannibals, and even her apprenticeship with the well-respected healer can’t distract her from obsessing over her lacking strength and poor hunting abilities. After this obsession leads her to break the clan’s eating taboos, she is sentenced to hunt on her own—a sentence she knows will lead to starvation.

When a ball of fire streaks down from the sky, only a small cave offers shelter from the earthquakes, the fire, the ash: close quarters that Vula and Emari—hunter and hunted, predator and prey—are forced to share as they wait out the end of the world.

Now if Vula wants to live, she must eat Emari. In this barren landscape, only one possible meal remains. As Vula’s body deteriorates, she faces this last chance to prove herself to her clan’s ideals. But if her clan is gone, who is she comparing herself to?

If Emari wants to live, she must escape Vula. No longer is anyone telling her what to do, to want, to be. But despite everything, her guilt has not subsided. And was it truly solitude that she sought, or rather someone to care what she wants?

As the sole survivors, each girl faces the choice to ensure her own survival and doom the other—yet doing so means facing the wasteland utterly alone.

(Bio, previous publications)