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Comment by Vicki Lemp Weavil on May 5, 2013 at 10:40am

This is the query that led to representation and two publication offers - One of which also led to the wonderful news that CROWN OF ICE will be published by Month9Books in the fall of 2014!

 

Dear _____,

 

Thyra Winther's seventeen, the Snow Queen, and immortal, but if she can't reassemble a shattered enchanted mirror by her eighteenth birthday she's doomed to spend eternity as a wraith.

 

Armed with magic granted by a ruthless wizard, Thyra schemes to survive with her mind and body intact. Unencumbered by kindness, she kidnaps local boy Kai Thorsen, whose mathematical skills rival her own. Two logical minds, Thyra calculates, are better than one. With time rapidly melting away she needs all the help she can steal.

 

A cruel lie ensnares Kai in her plan, but three missing mirror shards and Kai's childhood friend, Gerda, present more formidable obstacles. Thyra's willing to do anything – venture into uncharted lands, outwit sorcerers, or battle enchanted beasts -- to reconstruct the mirror, yet her most dangerous adversary lies within her breast. Touched by the warmth of a wolf pup's devotion and the fire of a young man's desire, the thawing of Thyra's frozen heart could be her ultimate undoing.

Complete at 74,000 words, CROWN OF ICE is a YA Fantasy that reinvents Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" from the perspective of a young woman who discovers that the greatest threat to her survival may be her own humanity.

 

Comment by Carly Cornish on February 2, 2013 at 7:54am

Hey, 

Just wanted to share my query that worked. I've been asked by a few agents to send through the whole manuscript. 

Dear Agent
 
THE STRONG ONE is a contemporary young adult novel, complete at 45,000 words.
 
Joanna Saffell was a ballet dancer. Past tense. Now she’s a bulimic and works in an upmarket restaurant trying to earn enough money to pay for board, car expenses, and an outrageously priced gym membership. Needless to say, this is not what she had planned for her life after high school.
 
If Joanna’s life had gone according to plan, she would be a dancer in a ballet company, still dating the guy of her dreams, and she certainly would not be hurling up every meal she ate. Although being a waitress is not part of any plan she had in mind, the people she meets through the restaurant help her deal with the painful memories she'd rather forget. Eventually, she must make the choice between living in the failures of her past or moving on to create a new future for herself.
 
THE STRONG ONE is a story about learning how to deal with life when it doesn’t go according to plan. It’s about working out who you become when your identity is stripped away. I started writing THE STRONG ONE when I was suffering from bulimia because I wanted to create a character that could beat the disease. I felt, surely, if she could do it, so could I. There are plenty of American novels that deal with the issue of eating disorders (and most are about anorexia), however, I struggled to find a single one in Australia and I believe THE STRONG ONE would appeal to many Australian young adults.

As it turns out, I have fully recovered from bulimia, and I now teach ESL at The Ahliyyah School for Girls in Amman, Jordan. I have a Bachelor of Arts (Languages and Intercultural Communication) from the University of South Australia.  
 
Thank you for your consideration, 

Hope it helps!

Staff Comment by Sheri Larsen on August 8, 2012 at 6:19pm

Yay! Leatrice! Congratulations.

Comment by Leatrice McKinney on August 6, 2012 at 10:54pm

I really am super excited to be able to add my query that worked. I received four requests for fulls, lost count of the requests for partials, won a ton of contests and earned an offer of representation via indirect submission as a result of The Writers Voice contest. Sorry if that last part is a little confusing.

Comment by Ruth Lauren Steven on May 30, 2012 at 7:37am

Here's my query that worked.

I got a request for a full from the first agent I sent this to and signed with her a couple of weeks later.

Comment by Helene Dunbar on February 6, 2012 at 12:59pm

Hi everyone! Adrienne asked me to post my query here. It DID get me a lot of requests but in full disclosure, the agent I signed with found my through Miss Snark's First Victim  (http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/).

Also, I want to give a shout-out to Matthew from the Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment (http://theqqqe.blogspot.com/) for putting my query through it's paces there too!!!!

So....here you go!

Dear [AGENT]:

People say your life can change in a heartbeat, but sixteen-year-old Cal Ryan knows it took longer than nine-tenths of a second for a car to fly over a median and kill one of his best friends. He’s learned that hours were needed for his damaged heart to be replaced with someone else’s. And he’s certain that overcoming his guilt will take a lifetime.

After a drunk driver totals Cal’s Corolla, killing Lizzie and setting in motion a chain of events that ends with Cal requiring a heart transplant, he thinks he’s lost everything: Lizzie; a promising future as a baseball player; and any chance he had with Ally Martin, the girl he’s had a crush on for two years. But when he discovers that his donated heart was Lizzie’s and starts hearing her voice, sharing her dreams, and feeling her desire for their mutual friend Spencer, Cal fears he’s losing the only thing he has left: his mind.

Cal struggles to redefine himself amid these new, chaotic feelings. But, as he slowly rebuilds his confidence, he discovers that friendship has the ability to overcome any obstacle and that what he’s looking for has been inside him all the time.

GHOST LIGHT (65,000 words) is a contemporary, realistic, young adult novel.

A member of SCBWI and YALITCHAT.ORG, I am a marketing manager/editor for a nonprofit organization, as well as a freelance music journalist for Irish Music Magazine (Dublin, Ireland). I have extensive non-fiction writing credits which include the 2006 biographies for “Celtic Women” (EMI/Manhattan) and articles in multiple encyclopedia series for Thompson Gale Research (Cengage Learning) including “Exploring Law & Society” and “Great American Court Cases”.

Thank you, in advance, for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Helene Dunbar

Comment by Adrienne Gelbart on February 2, 2012 at 4:54pm

Welcome Janet to the Queries that Work Group. There a number of Queries her that you can look through to get the help you need. Hopefully we will have more posted soon! If you have a successful query please post your winning query in the comments section.

Don't forget to pop over to Query Kick around, if you need feedback on your query!

Comment by Adrienne Gelbart on December 6, 2011 at 12:00pm

Wow, Heather, Lori, Congratulations!

Thanks for posting here in Queries that Work. Your queries will help those in writing the daunting query and serve as inspiration to us all. Congrats again!
Adrienne

Comment by Lori M. Lee on December 6, 2011 at 11:38am

Here's my query :) So far, I have two agent offers with several others still reading the full. I'll be making my decision this weekend ^^

---

I'd like to submit for your consideration my YA cyberpunk fantasy HARBINGER.

People are disappearing in the city of Ninurta. Like the rest of the citizens, seventeen-year-old Kai pretends not to notice. With her own survival to worry about, she doesn't have much concern to spare. But when her brother vanishes, Kai will do whatever it takes to find him, including using the ability she promised her brother to keep secret—Kai can see and manipulate the threads of time.

With the help of an annoying and distracting friend—distracting because he's beautiful, and annoying because he knows it—Kai discovers a secret war between Ninurta's governor and a rebel named the Black Rider. The Rider has been kidnapping Ninurtans and transforming them into cybernetically enhanced soldiers called Golems.

Kai sets out to find the Rider and discovers a shocking secret: the Rider is actually the Harbinger of Famine. And Kai? Not as human as she thought. Now, Kai will have to face down the Harbinger and uncover the link between herself and the secret war before her brother gets sent for dehumanization.

Equal parts sci fi and fantasy, HARBINGER is complete at 75,000 words. My short fantasy fiction has been published in Daily Science Fiction, and I have a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

Thank you so much for your time, and I hope to hear from you soon.

---

Comment by Heather W. Petty on December 6, 2011 at 11:16am

I actually do have new query to share. I ended up changing agents last month, and this is the new project I queried. 

I only queried 25 agents with this. Of those I had five non responses and 10 requests for pages. I ended up with three offers of representation and chose to sign with Kristy King and Writer's House! (Still super excited. She's amazing.)

My query is below: 

I am currently seeking representation for my 50,000 word YA Mystery novel, RHYMES WITH GRIM, the story of a quaint English village and the serial killer nobody knows is there—that is, with the exception of Lady Geraldine Plumb, the 16-year-old daughter of a Duchess and Grim Reaper-to-be.

One would think the Lady Geraldine would have enough to occupy her time, trying to eke out a somewhat normal life under the watchful (ever judgmental) eye of the Duchess, while failing miserably to fend off the charming and rather irresistible advances of her newly-empowered, Reaper best friend, James. All of this while protecting her deepest secret, that she is desperately seeking a cure from her Grim Reaper lineage before she dies and becomes one.

However, when a bizarre set of fatal accidents befalls the villagers of Port Sythe, Geraldine starts poking around the edges of the crime scenes, dodging the gossipy hens of the village as well as her mother’s most beloved informant, Detective Inspector Rott, who is sure to report her indiscretion. Still, when every day brings another supposed accident, and each of the causes appears to follow the pattern of an obscure American nursery rhyme, Geraldine has to choose whether to play detective or play it safe, protecting her life until she can discover the cure for her Grim affliction.

Compelled to action, she enlists the help of a reluctant James and the endearingly awkward Special Constable Toby Parkins to suss out the mystery, never once imagining the killer would dare come after someone close to Geraldine, or even Geraldine herself.

The killer really should not have made it personal.

One must never anger a Grim.

<bio goes here> 

Per your submission guidelines, I've included the first chapter (10 pages) of my manuscript.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Heather Petty

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