A writes: our query letter

I did a post on query letters a couple of weeks ago and as promised, here is our query letter. Hopefully, it gives you a few ideas! 

Dear [ ],

Gamenian is a complete Science Fiction novel of 78,000 words aimed at young adults and science fiction space opera lovers.  Fast paced and character driven, Gamenian explores the games we play with each other, the lies we tell, and the search for forgiveness. It follows a young woman as she seeks to reconcile the idea of a higher power with the actions of a broken humanity.

Freedom is a lie. It’s been four years since Tori escaped the desert planet of Esandira and her life as a drug-mule and assassin for a dictator named Craik, but she is as enslaved as she ever was. While she is physically free, inside her mind the past blurs with the present and she’s desperate for a cure from the faces that only she can see, and the voices that only she can hear.

The fragile life she has created for herself is simultaneously destroyed by an unorthodox bounty hunter named Ash, and Lethar, an assassin sent by Craik, forcing her on a reckless journey to escape from her demons. Her past is no longer inside her head and with her control slipping, the last thing she needs is a 17-year old Way Seeker stuck by her side, but that’s what she gets in the form of Spencer. Spencer doesn’t want anything to do with her, and while she shares the sentiment, their lives are twisted together by the death of a mutual loved one.

Both Ash and Lethar are relentlessly tracking their every move and she’s getting tired of running. Spencer believes Tori's only true freedom is from the Almighty, but she isn’t so sure. There’s only one out that she can see - Craik must die. It’s a dangerous cat and mouse game, but the closer she gets to Craik the more her dark secrets begin to surface and the more she begins to question the path she has chosen. 

Bonita and Alethia are Australian sisters who share a passion for stories, whether it’s reading them or writing them. Bonita graduated in 2009 from the University of Canberra with a BA in Journalism.  Since then she has been busy publishing on a variety of platforms on the internet. She writes and edits content on three different blogs, twitter, Instagram, and is currently building an online portfolio to showcase her works. Alethia is currently studying Medical Science at the University of Canberra and frequently blogs.

Thank you for your consideration, we look forwards to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. 

Obviously, the original wasn't in italics ;) Looking back, I'm pretty happy with the letter we created - we ended up using a lot of it on the back of the book. A lot of people with opinions on query letters - some people say to put the book info first (genre, word count etc) while others say to put it in later. Personally, we decided that putting it in before would be helpful and ran with that. 

For me, writing the story plot was easy - I knew my book and straight from the start I had a pretty good idea how to present it. After doing a lot of research into formatting the plot, I found it relatively easy to write. The rest of it, like how to write credentials when you have none, what to mention, what not to mention etc just took a LOT of research. I've posted some of the links in the earlier post on queries that I did, but they were really only some of the crucial sites I found. I found a lot more of random articles, or random paragraphs within articles, that were very helpful, but there were too many to actually write a post about!

Hopefully, this gives you all some ideas on what to do with your query! As I've said before, I'm in no way an expert on query letters but I'm happy to answer any questions you guys might have. 

A writes: the query letter

A while ago on my personal blog, I did a post on writing query letters and I thought I would also share it here. I'm in no way an expert on query letters; I have, in fact, written one. But what I also did is a lot of research, so I'm hoping to save you a bit of time by sharing the four main websites that I found particularly invaluable. I'm also planning on posting our query letter in the next week or so to show how we wrote ours. 

Anyway, to start off my research, I spent a good deal of time in the archives of Query Shark, and Miss Snark (who also helped write the synopsis!). These two websites have some great ‘what not to do’ feedback as well as what works in a query letter. But the reason I love these two websites is because once I learned what not to do I was able to figure out what I wanted my query to look like. Writing the first draft of the query was relatively easy after reading through many, many pages of awful queries. 

In addition, JM Tohline has some great tips from agents about what they look for in a query letter on his website. And last but not least, the agent query website also talks about formatting etc your query once you’ve written it.

If any of you have any websites about query letters that you've found helpful, let me know in the comments! As I mentioned earlier, I am by no means an expert on this and I'm always looking out for more hints or tips.

Speaking of, the best tip I can give you is to read the requirements carefully; some publishers we’ve looked into requested marketing info such as target readership etc. In the end, however, no matter how much research you do you just have to sit down and write the thing. And then spend an awful lot of time editing, proofreading and making sure that there are no errors. Because at the end of the day, the query is your first meeting with a potential agent or publisher and you'd better make sure the impression is a good one.