Dear Agent,
I am writing to you about my picture book Motherless Day. It is complete at 600 words and I am querying you exclusively.
Little Kali Krumpets is the only child in Miss Piddlewink's pre-school class without a mother. When her class decides to make cards on the Friday before Mother's Day, Kali decides to figure out what makes a mommy so special. Her friends Emily and Griffin tell her all about there mothers, but Kali isn't convinced. Her dads do the same things, so why are mothers so important?
In the end, she realizes that a mother is just a parent that loves you, just like her two dads. Miss Piddlewink helps her realize all parents are special and that family should be celebrated every day.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
ME
Aug 22, 2010
Query- Eiffel Flower (first revision)
Click here to read the original query.
Dear Agent,
Sorority girl Rose Jastone lives a meticulously planned life. She is the lively social chair of Delta Delta Gamma, a model student, and punk rock enthusiast who can throw on a pair of Chuck's when occasioned. Trying to avoid the responsiblity of planning her post-graduate future, however, she signs up for a care-free spring semester at the University of Paris, Panthénon-Sorbonne.
Paris turns out to be more than Rose's Philosophy major logic bargained for. Stuck dorming with Noemi Brousarre, a celebutante roommate with a few fifth-life crises of her own, Rose is thrown into a world of Parisian drama that makes sorority life seem like a stroll though le Jardin des Tuileries.
Rose finds herself responsible for planning the renowned Crillon Ball and reuniting Noemi with her estranged sister Sonia. She also has to juggle a crack-pot study group and mixed feelings for an enigmatic figure skater. Left mediating the problems of the city around her, Rose wonders if she'll ever bloom into the “Eiffel Flower” Noemi promised, or if she will be stuck following the life-plan her parents and friends have already constructed for her.
Eiffel Flower is a women's fiction novel, complete at 92,000 words. Based on your interview with the blog "Mother.Write.", I felt like my manuscript may be a good fit for your agency. Thank you for taking the time to consider my query.
Sincerely,
Author
Dear Agent,
Sorority girl Rose Jastone lives a meticulously planned life. She is the lively social chair of Delta Delta Gamma, a model student, and punk rock enthusiast who can throw on a pair of Chuck's when occasioned. Trying to avoid the responsiblity of planning her post-graduate future, however, she signs up for a care-free spring semester at the University of Paris, Panthénon-Sorbonne.
Paris turns out to be more than Rose's Philosophy major logic bargained for. Stuck dorming with Noemi Brousarre, a celebutante roommate with a few fifth-life crises of her own, Rose is thrown into a world of Parisian drama that makes sorority life seem like a stroll though le Jardin des Tuileries.
Rose finds herself responsible for planning the renowned Crillon Ball and reuniting Noemi with her estranged sister Sonia. She also has to juggle a crack-pot study group and mixed feelings for an enigmatic figure skater. Left mediating the problems of the city around her, Rose wonders if she'll ever bloom into the “Eiffel Flower” Noemi promised, or if she will be stuck following the life-plan her parents and friends have already constructed for her.
Eiffel Flower is a women's fiction novel, complete at 92,000 words. Based on your interview with the blog "Mother.Write.", I felt like my manuscript may be a good fit for your agency. Thank you for taking the time to consider my query.
Sincerely,
Author
QUERY- GREEN-EYED MONSTER (with sample pages)
Dear AGENT,
After PERSONAL TIDBIT, I believe my urban fantasy novel, GREEN-EYED MONSTER complete at 80,000 words, may be a good fit for your representation.
Rookie detective Lucy Santone measures everything with the black and white rulebook of the Detroit Metro Police Department. Since the Incident, she also sees demons crawling on suspects, a halo above the cleaning lady, and a stalker-angel who claims to be her Guardian. Denial’s easy until the hallucinations try to kill her.
During an arson investigation, she is attacked by a hellion and wonders if her delusions are all that delusional. She learns the burned property belongs to a non-profit organization headed by Levi Johanneson, a hometown athlete who sold his soul for politics.
Levi's not the only player in town, however, another demon is vying for control over the broken souls of Detroit. Lucy can't fight them both, and when each offers her an alliance, she is forced to make a choice: the citizens she swore to protect, or her own ticket to the pie in the sky. Suddenly the rulebook looks a little gray.
Similar to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, GREEN-EYED MONSTER is a fantastical twist on detective fiction, researched through interviews with police/arson experts and utilizing my degree in Criminal Justice. I have a synopsis for a potential sequel.
The first five pages are included below. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
NAME
CONTACT INFO
SAMPLE PAGES: GREEN-EYED MONSTER
I imagined myself setting fire to the filing cabinet. Crispy carbon falling around my desk, the tan metal contraption belching smoke from mouth-like drawers. Manila folders, crisp eight-by-eleven-inch papers, meticulously labeled photos, and coroner's reports, all burning in a roar of blood-red flames.
A smile spread low and lazy across my face, tugging my cheeks upwards like a gentle lover, when someone kicked my chair.
"Oh sorry, did I wake you?" he said.
I turned to find Forest scrutinizing me with his unnerving gray eyes.
"Unghs," I affirmed.
He sipped from a steaming mug and set an identical one on my desk. Beads of coffee clung to his silver mustache. His hair had once been a ruddy brown, but now was streaked with gray. The 'stache, however, was almost white, suckling at the coffee as if trying to reclaim its youth.
"You look like shit, Luce."
I frowned, cupped my hands around the hot mug, and said, "You look old."
"I prefer wise."
"You look wizened."
Forest snorted. His eyes panned over the chaos of my desk, scanning the folders piled around a jumble of papers, glossy pictures, and newspaper clippings. I watched him absorb and catalog each piece of clutter, as if I might see the individual wrinkles form inside his skull.
"It's a shit-astrophe in here," he said.
"That your favorite word?"
"How do you find anything?"
"Please, these cases are older than me and colder than Donny. No one gives a rat's patoot about them, except maybe you."
"Things still shit at home, huh?"
"Poor, bad, crappy, buy a thesaurus."
"Guess so," he said. "What were you daydreaming about?"
I let him watch me in silence for a moment, the weight of his gaze pressing against me. I pressed back.
"What are you doing in my office?" I said.
He didn't respond, just gave me a dissatisfied look. The stained bristles of his mustache twitched twice, then went still. His cop-face was on: bland, distant, all business, but I saw an edge of concern tempering his disguise.
"It may not look like much," I said, waving my free hand around the four-by-four square that served as my office. With room only for my miniature desk and the dreaded filing cabinet, I had learned to live within a thicket of boxes. Sure, the door occasionally slammed into my back, and the ceiling fan's blades had been chopped in half to accommodate the floor-to-ceiling box growth. "But it's mine," I finished.
No response.
"Does it say Detective Forest Stephenson on my door?" I said. "No, it says Detective Lucy Santone. Me, mine."
Forest glanced at the paper I had taped to my door. The outline of the old plate could be seen underneath reading, "Detroit Metro Police Department Archives."
Not to be deterred I said, "Look, I got to pee, so if you've nothing important to say, why don't you bug off?"
My partner stared at me, then shrugged. "When you become human again, stop by my office. Drink the coffee." He lifted his mug towards my desk and strolled out.
"That know-it-all," I said to no one, especially not the pretty boy reading in the corner.
Seated with his back propped against the cabinet of doom was the prettiest man I'd ever seen. He stretched his jean-covered legs, so long they extended under my desk and poked out the side, and crossed them at the ankle. Even on one of the chilliest February days on record, he wore battered sandals and a white tee. Sable ringlets, perfectly tousled, crowned his head, and his eyes sparkled like sapphires catching the light. I knew his sun-browned skin would be warm to the touch.
As my eyes passed over him, he glanced up from an old issue of "Car and Driver." A hopeful expression lingered on his face, but I turned my head away.
He wasn't real.
After PERSONAL TIDBIT, I believe my urban fantasy novel, GREEN-EYED MONSTER complete at 80,000 words, may be a good fit for your representation.
Rookie detective Lucy Santone measures everything with the black and white rulebook of the Detroit Metro Police Department. Since the Incident, she also sees demons crawling on suspects, a halo above the cleaning lady, and a stalker-angel who claims to be her Guardian. Denial’s easy until the hallucinations try to kill her.
During an arson investigation, she is attacked by a hellion and wonders if her delusions are all that delusional. She learns the burned property belongs to a non-profit organization headed by Levi Johanneson, a hometown athlete who sold his soul for politics.
Levi's not the only player in town, however, another demon is vying for control over the broken souls of Detroit. Lucy can't fight them both, and when each offers her an alliance, she is forced to make a choice: the citizens she swore to protect, or her own ticket to the pie in the sky. Suddenly the rulebook looks a little gray.
Similar to Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, GREEN-EYED MONSTER is a fantastical twist on detective fiction, researched through interviews with police/arson experts and utilizing my degree in Criminal Justice. I have a synopsis for a potential sequel.
The first five pages are included below. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
NAME
CONTACT INFO
SAMPLE PAGES: GREEN-EYED MONSTER
I imagined myself setting fire to the filing cabinet. Crispy carbon falling around my desk, the tan metal contraption belching smoke from mouth-like drawers. Manila folders, crisp eight-by-eleven-inch papers, meticulously labeled photos, and coroner's reports, all burning in a roar of blood-red flames.
A smile spread low and lazy across my face, tugging my cheeks upwards like a gentle lover, when someone kicked my chair.
"Oh sorry, did I wake you?" he said.
I turned to find Forest scrutinizing me with his unnerving gray eyes.
"Unghs," I affirmed.
He sipped from a steaming mug and set an identical one on my desk. Beads of coffee clung to his silver mustache. His hair had once been a ruddy brown, but now was streaked with gray. The 'stache, however, was almost white, suckling at the coffee as if trying to reclaim its youth.
"You look like shit, Luce."
I frowned, cupped my hands around the hot mug, and said, "You look old."
"I prefer wise."
"You look wizened."
Forest snorted. His eyes panned over the chaos of my desk, scanning the folders piled around a jumble of papers, glossy pictures, and newspaper clippings. I watched him absorb and catalog each piece of clutter, as if I might see the individual wrinkles form inside his skull.
"It's a shit-astrophe in here," he said.
"That your favorite word?"
"How do you find anything?"
"Please, these cases are older than me and colder than Donny. No one gives a rat's patoot about them, except maybe you."
"Things still shit at home, huh?"
"Poor, bad, crappy, buy a thesaurus."
"Guess so," he said. "What were you daydreaming about?"
I let him watch me in silence for a moment, the weight of his gaze pressing against me. I pressed back.
"What are you doing in my office?" I said.
He didn't respond, just gave me a dissatisfied look. The stained bristles of his mustache twitched twice, then went still. His cop-face was on: bland, distant, all business, but I saw an edge of concern tempering his disguise.
"It may not look like much," I said, waving my free hand around the four-by-four square that served as my office. With room only for my miniature desk and the dreaded filing cabinet, I had learned to live within a thicket of boxes. Sure, the door occasionally slammed into my back, and the ceiling fan's blades had been chopped in half to accommodate the floor-to-ceiling box growth. "But it's mine," I finished.
No response.
"Does it say Detective Forest Stephenson on my door?" I said. "No, it says Detective Lucy Santone. Me, mine."
Forest glanced at the paper I had taped to my door. The outline of the old plate could be seen underneath reading, "Detroit Metro Police Department Archives."
Not to be deterred I said, "Look, I got to pee, so if you've nothing important to say, why don't you bug off?"
My partner stared at me, then shrugged. "When you become human again, stop by my office. Drink the coffee." He lifted his mug towards my desk and strolled out.
"That know-it-all," I said to no one, especially not the pretty boy reading in the corner.
Seated with his back propped against the cabinet of doom was the prettiest man I'd ever seen. He stretched his jean-covered legs, so long they extended under my desk and poked out the side, and crossed them at the ankle. Even on one of the chilliest February days on record, he wore battered sandals and a white tee. Sable ringlets, perfectly tousled, crowned his head, and his eyes sparkled like sapphires catching the light. I knew his sun-browned skin would be warm to the touch.
As my eyes passed over him, he glanced up from an old issue of "Car and Driver." A hopeful expression lingered on his face, but I turned my head away.
He wasn't real.
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