Query Qorner: Alex Myers

(The lengths to which I'll go for a little alliteration, my goodness.)

Welcome to a new feature! Where every so often I'm going to offer a query letter that worked, a query that grabbed an agent's attention and wouldn't let go until after the paperwork was signed.

Remember, folks: Your query is your only chance to make a good first impression. That's why we have a whole service devoted to getting it just right.

And that's why, to celebrate this new feature, I'm knocking $25 off any query critique from now through February. I'll even include your novel synopsis for FREE! Reply with the code QQ (Query Qorner, obvi) to get started.

(See, it pays to subscribe!)

Our very first Query Qorner features WriteByNight writing coach and consultant Alex Myers. Alex has been with WBN for a little more than a year but has already become a fan favorite. He's also the author of four published novels.

But at one point, he was the author of zero published novels. And in an effort to gain representation for his first book, he sent out the following query letter:

I am seeking representation for my historical fiction novel, To be Deborah, complete at 107,000 words. 

 

Twenty-three years old, Deborah Samson can feel fate closing in on her.  It is 1782 in a small town in Southeastern Massachusetts, and Deborah is a weaver, a summertime schoolteacher, a freethinker who wants more than what society offers women.  Disguising herself as a man, she runs away, pursuing the elusive ideal of freedom as she searches the streets of New Bedford and Boston, looking for a better future.  It is the Continental Army that offers her a true escape, and she signs on as Robert Shurtliff, drawn in by the rich enlistment bounty and the opportunity to travel outside of New England.  Soon, she is on the march to West Point.

 

Hiding her true nature from her companions, Deborah keeps up a desperate masquerade as she learns how to be a soldier.  In the waning months of the Revolutionary War, she fights in skirmishes throughout Westchester County, but the biggest battle rages within her own spirit as she comes to terms with who she really is. 

 

For the past fifteen years, I have been active in the transgender rights movement, appearing on Primetime Live, in Details Magazine, the Washington Post, and other media outlets.  As an undergraduate at Harvard, I gained national publicity for my fight for transgender rights and have gone on to publish many short pieces of nonfiction about transgender identity in venues such as flashquake and Conte, as well as winning the Tiny Lights Personal Narrative prize in 2008.

 

228 years ago, my ancestor Deborah Samson was fighting a much different battle than what I have experienced.  When I was a child, my grandmother told me Deborah’s story – of how she was a fierce patriot who loved her country so much that she wanted to fight on its behalf.  However, I heard a very different story, the story of a woman who felt constrained by social conventions, who wanted to be free, and this was a story that I understood very well; this is the story that To be Deborah tells.

To Be Deborah went on to be titled Revolutionary and was published by Simon & Schuster.

That doesn't necessarily mean Alex revisits the letter fondly. "I read this and absolutely cringe," he says. "I wrote it in 2010 and wouldn't suggest writing a query letter this way now ... way too much time on the lead-in and not enough on the true substance of the book."

Hey, we can all empathize with a writer cringing at his own work.

Still, Alex thinks his query nailed it in one regard: "The one aspect that I would emphasize is the link of the personal story to the work that you are trying to sell."

That's something we hear from agents often: What makes you the ideal writer of this book?

So, I ask you: What makes you the ideal writer of your book? And how do you convey it in your query? I'll post some answers next go-round.

If you'd like to become a candidate for a future Query Qorner, send me your letter, let me know which agent you signed with, and include a link to the book.

Your Turn: Simultaneous Reads

I haven't read a lot of nonfiction lately. Of those thirteen 2023 books, ten were novels and three were nonfic. And I'm actually surprised it wasn't closer to 13-0.

(My fellow Milwaukeeans: Does 13-0 mean anything to you? No? How about 12-0 and a particular Easter Sunday in the '80s?)

I always need to be reading some kind of fiction, so if I want to read any nonfiction it has to occur simultaneously. And I'm almost always more invested in the fiction, so the nonfic has to be a real grabber to keep my attention.

Hopefully Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is a grabber, because that's up next.

So: Do you ever read more than one book at a time? In what circumstances? Can you successfully read more than one work of fiction at a time? (I can't.)

I'll run some favorite responses next time.

Writerly Quote of the Week

"Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences."

-- Sylvia Plath 

Happy writing!