GENREALITY

I found my agent using a one-page query letter.  People often seem surprised that I did so.  In fact, the process worked pretty much like all the Writers Digest and how-to advice tells you it’s supposed to work.  And yet, some people don’t want to believe it.  They’ll spend large amounts of time and money going to conferences, attending pitch sessions (I heard someone was even starting up a workshop to teach people how to pitch at pitch sessions), schmooze in person, because they believe that without that personal, aggressive networking, they’ll never land an agent.  I’ve never heard an editor or agent say that they took on someone’s manuscript after an in-person pitch session.  It’s simply not necessary to go through that.  It doesn’t give you a leg up.  You’re better off with the query letter.  It’s the established system by which agents find new clients.

No, it’s certainly not easy finding an agent with a one-page letter.  This is mostly a function of there being lots and lots and lots of people looking for agents.  It took me four tries — I landed an agent with my fourth novel.  It still took a dozen letters before I got a nibble.  This is where the persistence really comes into play.

Here’s the letter I used:

[my address]
[my email address]
[my website URL]

November 22, 2003

[The Agency's Name and Address]

To Whom It May Concern:

I am seeking representation for my novel, Kitty and the Midnight Hour, which is complete and available for review.  A sequel is in progress.

My short stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Talebones, and Polyphony and have received Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Year’s Best Science Fiction.  I am a 1998 graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop.

Kitty and the Midnight Hour is supernatural/dark fantasy, in the spirit of works by Laurell K. Hamilton and Tanya Huff.  Short stories featuring the main character have appeared in Weird Tales:  “Doctor Kitty Solves All Your Love Problems” in Summer 2001 and “Kitty Loses Her Faith” in Fall 2003.  I recently sold “Kitty and the Mosh Pit of the Damned” to the magazine.  The first story is available on my website, www.carrievaughn.com.

Twenty-four year old Kitty Norville is a werewolf who hosts a late-night call-in radio show, The Midnight Hour, offering advice and opinionated conversation to her audience of supernatural beings and non-supernatural listeners looking for a vicarious thrill.  The show brings her fame, and fame brings its own headaches.  Rivalries threaten to tear apart her pack, a werewolf hunter sets his sights on her, and a police detective persuades her to help solve a series of gruesome supernatural murders.

Thank you for your time in considering this proposal.  Please let me know if I can send you the manuscript of Kitty and the Midnight Hour.  I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely:

Carrie Vaughn

Breaking it down:

Introduction:  very short.  That’s the theme for the whole letter.  Ultimately, the manuscript will speak for itself.  The goal for the query letter is to prove that you are a professional who can string grammatically correct sentences together in your chosen language, and that you have a good idea for a book.  Don’t get fancy.

Publication Credits:  I found that my short story credits, while not getting me entirely out of the slush pile, did get me to the top of it.  I got a better response to my query letters after I started selling short stories.  It was a signal that told agents that I was committed to the genre, I had a foot in the door in the field, and that I could create sellable fiction.  However, if you don’t want to write and sell short stories, don’t do it.  This isn’t a requirement.  If you don’t have any previous publication credits, don’t make them up.  Only list credits if they’re from reasonably well-known publications that will tell something about you and your experience.  Otherwise, just don’t say anything.

The Pitch:  This is the Hollywood pitch.  The one sentence description that shows how your work fits in the marketplace.  Also relevant to this particular manuscript was the fact that I’d sold short stories with the same character, showing that there was a market for the stories.  I’ve heard that some agents hate it when authors try to relate their works to other authors, because they see a lot of people comparing themselves to Stephen King and J.K. Rowling in a misguided attempt to label themselves as potential bestsellers when in fact they’re really not.  The authors I chose to use as a comparison have a very specific set of books, and my attempt was to show that there was already an audience for books featuring vampires and other supernatural creatures — just like my book had.  Again, keep this section short and be honest about where your work fits in the marketplace.  (You’ll notice I didn’t use the term urban fantasy, because in 2003 it wasn’t really being applied to these books yet.)

The Summary:  This is the section that gives writers the most trouble.  How on earth do you condense your 400 page manuscript into one pithy paragraph?  I thought of it like this:  What would I put on the back cover blurb?  You’re not retelling the whole story here — save that for the three-page synopsis you’ll include with the manuscript.  The point of this paragraph is to set the tone for your story, get across the gist of the novel, and hook the reader — like a back cover blurb.  And please keep it to one paragraph.  Agents are very busy and you’ll only have their attention for a minute or so.

And a brief sign out.

Why I think it worked:  This query got me requests from two agents to see the manuscript.  The manuscript then sold itself because I’d been working on it for a year and it was as absolutely as good as I could make it (although I spent another year revising to my agent’s and editor’s specs).  I think the query worked because it identified a specific, recognizably popular market for the novel; it described a story that had a specific hook (the werewolf talk radio show); and it showed that I had a track record.  It was enough to get me a chance, and that’s all a query letter is supposed to do — get your foot in the door.

Some other comments:

Life Experience:  I didn’t include this in my query letter because it wasn’t relevant.  But if you’re a former NYPD Detective and you’ve written a police procedural, absolutely include that in the query letter, probably after the novel summary.  If your book is about the lives of astronauts and you work for the NASA astronaut training program, tell the agent, because that’s relevant and interesting.  If your experience isn’t relevant, leave it out.

Follow the agency’s guidelines.  If they want e-mail submissions, send via e-mail.  If they want snail mail, send via snail mail.  Include an SASE.  Do they ask for a partial? (First three chapters and synopsis, usually.)  Send only what they ask for.  Deviating from the guidelines will only piss off the agent and get your query tossed.

Keep records about what you sent to whom and when.  Query, partial, full manuscript, etc.  Record replies.

Actually finish the novel before you start querying.  I’ve heard too many stories about writers who started querying before the book was finished — then got a request for the whole manuscript within days of sending out the query.  Because Murphy’s Law rules the universe.  Save yourself the agony of writing 30,000 words in a week and sending out a crap manuscript, or the agony of admitting to the agent that you aren’t finished yet.  There will still be agents out there when you finish, honest.

Don’t stress.  Really.  Send your queries, move on to the next item on the to-do list.  Some agents that you query will not reply.  That’s just a fact of the business.  It’s not personal.  You’ll get rejected, and sometimes the agent will give you a reason — and the reason will baffle you.  Just let it go.  Move on.  Write the next novel while you’re querying for the last.

Ironically enough, I initially found an agent through a personal connection — a friend had joined a new agency and was looking for clients.  That turned out to be a bust.  It was hunting for an agent the difficult, old-fashioned way that really paid off.

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