Yet Another Installment of Query Madness

I promised another query letter critique today, and at last, I deliver on my promise. Today's sacrificial lamb is Leigh, one of my wonderful critique partners. You'll find the other half of this conversation over on Erica's blog. (I'll wait here while you click and bring up Erica's post.)

Back? Great!

Before we begin, I want to say that of the queries we've worked on so far, Leigh's actually went through the fewest number of revisions before we decided it was "final."

First, Leigh's comments on the process (otherwise known as how we put her through hell!):

What the heck are these 400 pages are about? That question bounced through my mind all week as I worked on my query. Suddenly my book was a plotless blur. I looked over my charts. Graphs. Notes. Index cards. Little by little it came back to me.

Through the process of digging out the (basic and obvious) plot, I realized two things:

One: A query needs to be specific but simple.
Two: It needs to have ROMANCE (Oh yeah...) and conflict.

Sounds easy, doesn't it. ;-) I still don't feel like I have found my 'magic hook' yet. I'm waiting for that perfect sentence that will have editors begging for more. Hopefully it will come to me in some unexpected moment. But I do feel like I have a solid, workable query that I can rely on.

Thanks ladies! I am grateful for your help!

All right, here's the first version of the query letter, with numbers corresponding to Erica's inimitable comments.

My completed manuscript, The Unbound Heart, is a 101,000 word historical romance set in 1828 England. Saturated with danger, intrigue and desire, it is suitable for the...romance line.¹

Threatened with the exile of her people, Onatah Elizabeth Dillon journeys to London determined to print a special edition of her late father's famous travelogues.² A mixed blood woman-part Seneca Indian, part English-she intends to raise money and purchase her people's land. Unknown danger³ lurks in London, and Elizabeth finds herself under the domineering protection of The Marquess of Blakemore.⁴

Determined to solve the mystery of his brother's murder ⁵ and atone for his past mistakes⁶, Blake cannot understand why his quarry is trailing the intriguing American.⁷ As their ambitions blend and clash⁸, Elizabeth and Blake are drawn into a dangerous world of unbound desire.⁹

An active member in my local RWA chapter and two critique groups, I have been writing for seven years. ¹⁰ I have a BA in EnglishLiterature, with a minor in Creative Writing, from Tufts University. My poetry is published in several small literary magazines, including "4x4" and "Queen's Head and Artichoke".

I look forward to your response and have the completed manuscript available upon request. Thank you so much for your time. ¹¹

And now, on Erica's blog, you should find the final query letter. My comments on this version are below:

1. Yay. A hook!
2. Great, her heroine's external goal, motivation, and conflict are clearly spelled out.
3. And an internal goal, motivation, and conflict, too.
4. This is funny. Hmmm, maybe the manuscript has some amusing moments in it, too.
5. More external conflict. Hey, this thing actually has a plot! Awesome.
6. And now we see the romantic conflict as well. Sweet. In one intermediary version of this, there was no mention of the hero at all in this paragraph and I commented that there didn’t seem to be any hint that the heroine knew he was alive, much less that she wasin danger of falling in love with him! This resolved that problem.
7. Introduction of the hero, including his external goal and motivation. Superb.
8. Ah, so his goal and hers intersect somehow. Intriguing…
9. Mmmm, conflict. Juicy conflict, too!
10. Uh-oh, the l-word. He’s in trouble now! I’m interested. Wonder if this thing is finished yet...
11. Nice set of credentials. She’s serious about romance writing and has a contest final under her belt. She has a BA in English lit so she can probably string together a grammatically correct sentence. And, wow, some poetry credits. Not bad!
12. Okay, now I know the target market. (Note: This query is being sent to an Avon editor with a contest entry, so it makes sense for Leigh to mention Avon here. She’d want to take out the reference to Avon if she were querying another agent or editor, since she obviously doesn’t want to limit herself only to Avon as a publisher.
13. And it’s completed, too! Yippee!
14. Aw, she’s also polite. Where’s her address so I can request the full?

That's all, folks. I think Lacey and Erica have one more for ya next week, but as far as I know. Unless, that is, someone else wants to play. Then again, maybe since I have a big, fat "R" tatooed on my forehead, you won't want to play with me any more!