My interest in what hooks and what doesn't is why I contacted several agents and asked "Can you share a letter that hooked you on a project?" What I didn't expect to hear from literary agents was what I heard many say, "Gee, I don't have any."

Really? 

Emmanuelle Alspaugh, of Judith Ehrlich Literary Management was glad to participate in this series and offered a query letter that was short, sweet and hooked her! When writer Alissa Johnson sent Alspaugh the pitch for her novel As Luck Would Have It, Johnson was a non published author. "That Alissa could deliver the required information in few words I think is brilliant," Alspaugh says. Luck was published in 2008, and Johnson's second novel, Tempting Fate, debuted in January 2009.

Of short query letters, Emmanuelle Alspaugh says this: "Agents read so much that I think a short succinct letter that provides all the information an agent needs and no more, no flourishes, so to speak, sends the message that the writer understands an agent's time is limited and has our needs in mind."