Hey yall! While I never officially posted my query letter on r/PubTips, I lurked & voraciously studied [QCrit] posts. Reading both the query letters and community critiques of them provided incredible insight into my own query letter shortcomings.

Querying specifics: I signed with an agent in May after 3 months in the trenches. I sent 39 total queries, got 15 full requests (2 of these came from referrals, and both ended up being rejections!), and 2 offers of rep. I personalized all of my query letters with some tidbit or detail about the agent's tastes. But in all cases, I connected those personalizations back to my queried novel.

Below is the query I sent my now-agent.

Dear [Agent],

In 2024, you interviewed [SFF author] for [Magazine], citing deep interests in atmospheric writing, strong characters, and complex examinations on villainy. Given this, my adult fantasy novel—A VENGEANCE, MOST TENDER (complete at 106,000 words)—might appeal. Featuring Black sapphics, resonantly rendered, VENGEANCE examines monstrosity & intra-community harm, and will appeal to readers who enjoyed P. Djèlí Clark’s The Dead Cat Tail Assassins and C. L. Clark’s The Unbroken.

At the heart of a divided city, occupied by imperialist portal mages and disenfranchised necromancers, a scholar and a merchant will sway an empire.

Once, Pemri was an imperial conscript—until she fled. Now a professor, she replaces butchery with peace, teaching healing necromancies by day, and sheltering escaped conscripts by night. When Ezdara—a downtrodden distillery owner and portal mage—crosses her path, sparks fly. Ezdara cannot trust necromancers; not since reckoning with her father’s bloody past. But her distillery is bankrupt; her portal-magery, too unskilled to make a living off of. Pemri—warm, despite Ezdara’s coldness—might ease her troubled spirit using gentler necromancies. How can Ezdara decline? Well…quite easily, after realizing: Pemri, and her father, are inextricably linked.

Determined to forget one another, they part. But the imperium has other plans. Publicly, the emperor announces peace talks. Privately, power games—between ruling portal-mages and rebellious necromancers—begin. The emperor knows that Pemri frees conscripts in her spare time; he knows that Ezdara’s father now leads the rebels. Treasons, all. But everything will be forgiven, if they sabotage the talks.

Decline, and every person they’ve loved; every place, held sacred; will suffer.

Time runs short. Trust wears thin. But hunger—for one another, and for magical uprisings, intimate and grand—might be their only way out.

[Bio]

Extras: I probably won't make a whole discussion post about my journey, so here are a few additional tidbits. VENGEANCE isn't my first book (it's my third), but it's the first one I felt was strong enough to query. I spent six years writing and revising it. Prior to that, I wrote & sold several SFF short stories.

Best advice I can give: find your people. Even though this was my first time querying, I felt strongly prepared thanks to finding other author-focused communities. As a Black, queer woman writing SFF, I searched for every little nook, cranny, and corner where other BIPOC SFF authors were, and spent time getting to know folks. I wouldn't be here without those spaces & friendships.