THE LETTER:

Dear Ms. (AGENT);

  My 60,700 word YA novel THE UNWELCOME GIFT, chronicles two crucial weeks in the life of a female high school senior. Brianna’s mother had hoped psychic abilities from her side of the family would die out but Brianna’s predictions about insurance scams and drug deals gone wrong convince her mother to tell her she has likely inherited The Gift from her great grandmother. Brianna refuses to believe she is anything but logical and perceptive and fears being a loony, fortune-telling, freak. Events eventually force Brianna to admit her mother is right, and her world is in ruins. Worse, failure to respect the possible dangers of The Gift puts Brianna in a situation where she might not come out alive.

  Brianna is reasonably typical. At five-foot-nine, she hates being so tall; she thinks she’s too skinny;  her German-born, Roman Catholic, lawyer mother picks on her too much; and the love of her life avoids a close relationship because she is the fraternal twin of his best friend. She needs her next door neighbor, a woman older than Brianna’s own mother, to be a non-judgmental substitute grandmother figure. The last thing Brianna needs is to be psychic and have everybody wondering what she knows.

  I am a West Point graduate with a thirty year Army career and a short stint as a college professor behind me, both of which involved extensive technical writing. When I decided to switch to fiction, I took two courses from the Institute of Children’s Literature, the first of which was with BLANK. I joined BLANK in 2007, BLANK in 2009, and BLANKin 2010. I’m active in three critique groups (BLANK League). The sequel to GIFT, in which Brianna solves a murder mystery, is written and has been through a professional revision process. My plan is to write a third book in the series. I own the domain name BLANK but won’t do anything with it until I find a home for GIFT. As a new author, my books and short stories have, not surprisingly, met with rejection from various agents and magazines. The first light at the end of the tunnel is my YA short story, BLANK, which was a finalist for BLANK Literary Award.

  

Your listing in the Writer (Feb 2012) caught my eye. Thank you for your time.

 

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear  

TRUTH OR ADAIR (70,000 words, complete, mystery/thriller, adult audience)

Meet Adair Hartwell.  She’s a new kind of private eye -- comically awkward, generous to a fault and not afraid to eat onions and jalapeños in the same sandwich.

Adair works for long-time gumshoe Sam Flint.  Sam, partially disabled by diabetic complications, handles the cyberspace side of the business from the comfort of the office, while Adair works as his eyes and ears on the streets.

Their latest case starts innocently enough when a master chef consults Flint Investigations about a series of petty thefts connected with his catering business.  Russ Hoffman is convinced that other caterers are conspiring to sabotage him. 

Adair thinks he’s kind of a drama queen, but Sam, determined to retain a lucrative contract with Hoffman for background checks, places Adair undercover to unmask the guilty party.  Before long, a surprisingly complicated array of suspects emerges, including a bejeweled widow with a Hummel figurine obsession, a mysterious young girl who’s anxious to keep her past at bay, a teenage drug addict with a suspiciously thick wallet, a stereotypical slacker with a pricey home theater, and a former high school football star with a strong sense of entitlement and a thinly veiled dark side.

 Truth or Adair is set in Mason City, Iowa, a city of paradoxes: Prairie School and pornography; farmers and bank robbers; churches and drug dealers; high culture and kidnappings; River City and Sin City.

 Adair’s first adventure has a police chase, hot guys, Harold Lloyd, teddy bears, Elmer’s School Paste, sauerkraut, chocolate almond ice cream, and a startling plot twist.

 My name is         and Truth or Adair is my first novel. I have worked as an art museum curator and the director of the literary arts program for the Arts and Humanities Council        .  I live in          with my husband and two daughters.  I volunteer at the public library when I’m not busy driving my children around.

 I believe Truth or Adair would fit into the same literary market as the Sharon McCone series by Marcia Muller, the ABC mysteries by Sue Grafton and the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich.

 (A sample of my story is included in the body of this email.)  OR (May I send you my complete manuscript?)

 Thank you for your time and consideration.

THE LETTER:

 
Dear Ms. XYZ:
Seeing that you have a special interest in stories set in Russia and the fact that _____________ Press has a steady history of publishing books about Russia makes me think my novel could be a good contribution to this process.
My novel, Garden of Weeds, is set in the former Soviet Union and begins in the middle of the 1980s, when the communist superpower is on the verge of collapse - and so is Margarita’s life.
Margarita intends to solve her family’s predicament – the infertility of her beloved husband– by seducing a man to conceive a child. She is determined not to see that man again.
Timur, the man of her choice, is a talented pianist and composer, an amazing intellectual, and holds a charm of blatant sexuality. He makes love and children. He makes Margarita’s head swim.  Finding infatuation where she’s not supposed to, Margarita has to learn the hard way that the choices we make determine our destiny.
 
I tell Margarita’s story through the lens of my own life in the Soviet Union. As a graduate of the Moscow Institute of History and Archives and a witness to the tragic Perestroika events  (which serve as a backdrop to the novel), I believe I am uniquely qualified to tell this story of  human frailty, and a woman’s struggle to reclaim her identity.
 
I am currently a member of the BLANK Writers of America and BLANK Fiction Writers. I placed first in the 2011 BLANK Association Literary Contest and second in the 2010 BLANK contest. A short excerpt from my novel was published in BLANK newspaper.
 
Garden of Weeds is complete at 141,000 words. I am working on another book that touches the same eternal subject – the deception of love and women’s pursuit of happiness.
 
Per your submission guidelines, I have enclosed a two-page synopsis and the first ten pages of the manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review my materials. I hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear:
 
Andrew Von Rueter had chosen a messy death.
 
Or so his widow believes through two and a half years of guilt and self-recrimination, until the day she discovers Andy died by another’s hand not suicide.  The orchestration of Andy’s death has maneuvered Lorca Von Rueter into position as perfect foil in fulfilling a plot originating three quarters of a century before in Hitler’s Germany during the dark days before WW II.  She unravels the what and why of the plot.  But not before she’s swept off her feet by a love that defies time and space.  A love endangered by the knowledge survival or damnation of self and those she loves depends on her destroying one of two men.  Brothers.  Identical twins.  One she loves.  One possesses a demon’s heart.  Which?  Her lover or the brother?  
 
I’m seeking representation for KEEPERS OF THE LILY, a 125,000 word women’s suspense novel.  Please let me know if you’re interested in reading a partial or a complete manuscript of KEEPERS.  I appreciate your time and attention.
 
I’m a member of BLANK Writers, BLANK Writer’s Colony, RWA, and BLANK.  I’ve won awards in both national and local writing competitions, this spring placing third in BLANK Writer’s Colony annual writing contest.  I keep current through workshops and conferences. My training as a psychiatric technician helped with the technical details for this novel.

THE LETTER

Dear Mr. AgentLastName:
 
Lucy Montgomery’s career is on the blink, her bank account is down the tubes, and her love life is in the toilet.  All she wants is to get back on her feet after wasting ten years with a boyfriend who led her on and gambled away her life’s savings.
 
Desperate for work, she accepts a job as a substitute teacher in an overcrowded, cockroach-infested public school.  When a student’s dog goes missing, Lucy agrees to help search for the pooch and soon finds herself drawn into the tapestry of her adopted home of Lawndale, Florida—a town crawling with self-righteous Christians, rowdy rednecks, and retirees who drive their golf carts like bumper cars.
 
As more dogs disappear, Lucy begins to suspect foul play and finds herself doing things she never imagined—interviewing elderly nudists, investigating a gator hunter, dog sitting for retired circus freaks, and seeking counsel from the neighborhood psychic.
 
At the same time, trouble is brewing at school and her love life hits a new low after a series of disastrous dates.  As she approaches rock bottom, Lucy worries that she’ll never find the love and security she seeks, and questions whether she’s got what it takes to help the desperate dog owners who have nowhere else to turn.
 
DOG TIRED, complete at 80,000 words, is a humorous mystery with sparks of romance—the first in a series.
 
I have more than 20 years of experience as an award-winning broadcast journalist and public affairs professional.  I have won several prizes in the El Paso Writers’ League literary contest, including one for a chapter from Dog Tired.  My work has also been recognized by the Society of BLANK Journalists, BLANK Associated Press Broadcasters, and BLANK Association, among others.  For more information about my writing, including samples of published work, please visit www.BLANK.COM
 
I have enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope for your reply. You may also contact me at (INSERT E-MAIL ADDRESS) or  (INSERT PHONE NUMBER).  Thank you for your time in considering my query.
 
Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,( name of agent)

Did you realize that all the frogs in American folklore are male? Mr. Toad and Kermit the frog to name just a couple are both male. The time has come for a female frog with an attitude and her name is Tillie the Frog! Tillie lost her pond when developers plowed it under to build a mall. She is homeless, but Tillie is also an eternal optimist. She gets by with her positive 'froglosophies' like, “Your dream may be a hop away so never give up 'til you croak!”

 The Adventures of Tillie the Homeless Frog tell of Tillie's search for a new home. In the process she invents her ' froglosophies' to help herself and others  stay positive while coping with the environmental disasters plaguing the planet. She uncovers the mystery of the vanishing bees, rescues a ladybug sprayed with pesticide, and befriends an endangered butterfly in search of milkweed that has been destroyed by developers. Tillie and her friends must find a way to save the planet before it’s too late. In the end she calls upon her readers for help.

 I am looking for an agent to help me market my Tillie the Homeless Frog storybook. For the past ten years I have successfully marketed Tillie as a three-dimensional sculpted figurine and have sold over 30,000 sculptures to collectors. I created and own the copyrighted figurines which are cast in the United States in porcelain resin. (see:www.tilliethefrog.com)

Tillie inspires grade school children and many adults with a message of environmental concern and a positive outlook on life through songs, stories, puppets, and T-shirts. Her phenomenal popularity is the result of her up-beat attitude, her concern for the environment, and of course, her wacky amphibious grin that makes people instantly fall in love with her.

If Tillie captures your heart and imagination, and you would like some sample chapters please contact me.

 As Tillie says, “Keep hopping and hoping.”

Gina knew life as a federal agent wasn’t going to be easy, but it’s not half as bad as her personal dilemma. From the day she took her oath, she buried herself in work to occupy her mind and dull the pain in her heart after the love of her life left her for another woman, just prior to their wedding. Not wanting to risk another mind blowing experience of any sort, she handled cases her way.

She never imagined the day an agent would be assigned to assist and protect her. Then some crazy bastard wheels her into mind games, sending rhyming clues to her home that must be solved in order to understand who he is and exactly what he wants. Accustomed to doing things her way, and damn good at it, she’s not trusting or pleased with her temporary partner Joey Zicara and totally annoyed she’s attracted to him

Joey has worked with some tough characters, but after working with Gina a few days, he longs for those other hard-asses. When he senses she’s blocked out something significant that could shed light on the confusing rhymes, he risks breaking the wafer-thin trust she has in him that’s affecting the case. He feels this is the only shot at getting to the bottom of who’s trying to ruin the life of the woman he’s falling for.

The bastard, William Nicholas Mancuso, who is presumed dead, holds Gina responsible for his brother’s life sentence, has plotted revenge down to the last letter containing the final clue. The bank heist, his coup de grace, will be her ultimate failure.

THE FINAL CLUE is a crime/romance debut novel completed at 120,000 words.

I was born and raised in New Jersey and relocated to Florida 27 years ago. Working in law enforcement for the past 23 years inspired me to write this novel for the simple fact that not all things end up the way we always want them to.

 Thank you for time and consideration. I look forward to sharing the manuscript with you upon your request.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear BLANK:

I am seeking representation for an historical novel, about 104,000 words, working title, SIXTH AND CONGRESS.

Disillusioned and frustrated, U.S. Marshal John T. Rankin turns his back on the law and the past, but one wants retribution and the other wants revenge. When the two join forces, they surprise John at the corner of SIXTH AND CONGRESS and kill him. Shortly after, John's family invites the law and the past to meet again at the same corner, only this time they face each other and neither of them wins. This historical fiction novel follows the life of John T. Rankin, his family, his friends and his enemies, from 1863 to 1898. John Rankin was a doctor's son that grew up in the shadow of Texas greatest heroes in Fayette County, Texas. Fleeing the past, he finds his dream of success at his livery stable in Austin, but the past isn't finished with him and John has forgotten that sometimes the law depends on who draws first.

I am a recent member of the Historical Novel Society. John T. Rankin, was my father's third cousin.  I have worked as a sales representative, laborer, foreman, and drilling tools inspector in the oilfields of West Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Geysers areas of Northern California and Nevada. I grew up around livestock, including horses, and have experience with horticulture and building construction both residential and commercial. I have an Associate of Arts Degree and a Bachelor's degree in History with a minor in Earth Science (Cum Laude) I am certified to teach grades 4-8 math, science and social studies and 4-12 English Language arts. I currently teach middle school English language arts and coach boy's football, basketball and track.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Dear Sir/Madam

I have recently completed a 75,000-word humorous, romantic, adventurous suspense novel entitled Seven Days Grace and I hope you consider me for your list. I believe this work is similar to Sophie Kinsella’s.

When Grace Kelly, a newspaper journalist, receives a phone call late on a Sunday night, she is enticed into a dawn meeting the following day with promises of a political scandal so corrupt it will catapult her career if she can crack the story. Grace is given secret and protected information from this anonymous source and she must untangle the web of information contained within and uncover a story that could put the lives of thousands at risk; all while she protects her heart from a private investigator eager to tear down her emotional walls.

After Grace is lured into a hunt around Sydney’s icons to expose the story, she sets herself on a collision course with unknown consequences both professionally and personally. Enmeshed in a mystery she’ll do anything to disclose, she meets handsome private investigator and New Yorker, Jacob Williams, who continually shows up to assist her with the story. However, her self-imposed ban on men and relationships sees her struggle to stick to her vow. Grace is fraught with double mindedness. Will she put up a fight against his charms to protect her heart from further angst? Or will she succumb to his gentlemanly ways that are so intoxicating they would persuade a nun to re-think her vows? And will she crack the story that could catapult her career and see her work for the organisation she has always dreamed of?

In 2007, I won a competition – Pitch to a Publisher (Fiction) – at the BLANK Writer’s Centre (Sydney) based on the synopsis of Seven Days Grace. I hold a Bachelor of Journalism (1998) and have worked for BLANKl Week (an industry business-to-business magazine), The BLANK Gazette (an award-winning rural newspaper) and The BLANK (an award-winning student newspaper, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA).

I hope we can work together. Would you like to see the full manuscript?

Warm regards

THE LETTER:

Dear

“Thanks for everything, Doc, but with all due respect, do one more thing for this old patient. Close the door when I leave and forget me.”

The story of Maggie’s Bliss is told in real time. Her psychiatrist couldn’t restore the three days that she lost as a child. Diagnosed with terminal cancer and just weeks to live, he sends her to a retreat center. There, she’s to journal and get her life affairs in order. Soon she finds the place haunted. She hears and sees strange sounds and eerie beings. Shards of her past pierce her memory.

Determined to fight the insanity, she makes desperate attempts to contact her estranged daughter before she dies. A kind old gentleman befriends her and they have midnight chats on the front steps. The old man helps bring out her past. With the help of humor and a doobie, she’s able to unabashedly laugh out loud.

What she doesn’t know is that people close to her begin to die. A body is found in Phoenix the day she arrives at the retreat center in Indiana. Two old friends of hers, ex-police officers turned semi-private investigators, pay her a visit. When they arrive, they find two fresh bodies at the center. One ex-cop remembers the place well. Bad things happened there. It was a place of un-sacred ceremonies.

Searching for clues, they find an urgent message on Maggie’s computer. It’s a plea for help. Her daughter is being held captive in a maze of lava tubes somewhere in Hawaii. The ex-cops set out to find the killer or killers and most importantly, Maggie’s Bliss.

Thank you for your generous time and consideration.

Interesting idea but this author needs to 'show' not tell just how funny and informative this book will be to its target market-young women

THE LETTER:

Dear Mr. ___,


In a world one step from ours, where secretive magicians, called casters, subtly pull the strings of power, two lovers struggle for possession of an ancient relic that threatens to ignite their families' centuries-long cold war and give the victor mastery over life and death.


College student Kate Hamilton, born without magical ability, has always felt like a pariah amongst her caster kin. When she agrees to guard an old and powerful magical stone for her brother, she is drawn back to a world that holds only danger for a young woman defenseless against the hostile spells of her family's enemies. After the stone's magic transforms Kate into a new and deadly form of caster, she must uncover the secrets and lies of both her family, and her lover, rival family heir Kristof Makris, who struggles with his growing feelings for Kate even as he tries to steal the stone to serve his own ambition. If she is to gain control of the stone's dark power, she must choose whom to trust: her family, her lover, or herself.

My science fiction and horror short stories have been published by  X and Tweet the Meat. I am a member of the Romance Writers of America. My career in marketing and my MBA will be an asset in promoting and marketing my work.


Cast into Darkness is a 95,000-word urban fantasy which should appeal to fans of Kim Harrison, Kelley Armstrong, and Jim Butcher. I have enclosed the first fifteen pages.


Sincerely,

THE LETTER

Dear--

I have written a memoir and am looking for representation.

According to the Amber Alert registry, there are approximately 163,000 cases per year of children abducted by a family member and taken out of the state or the country for purposes of concealment or intent to keep the child permanently. To put that in perspective, that is one child every 3 ½ minutes who is abducted.

Kidjacked is the true story of how I found vast reserves of courage and determination when my two small children were abducted to a Mideast in turmoil by the person I trusted most – my wife Liza. She refused to return from Israel. I was shocked and legally paralyzed as no specific laws required her to bring our children home. After months of heart-wrenching and exhaustive investigation, I devised a plan to reunite with my kids. Successful, the four of us returned to the U.S.  I won primary custody and began to put the pieces of my life back together.  Unfortunately, not satisfied with the court’s decision, she took matters into her own hands by kidnapping our children for a second time. Once again, I was forced to fight for our kids – this time on Liza’s home turf.

Comps: Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody.(WIFE'S NAME)  Reunited in the Desert by Helle Amin. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

I was recently published in Silent Sports magazine and also have a number of articles out to other publications for review.

I attended the NYC Pitch and Shop Algonkian conference in June of 2010. Senior editors from X and Y Asked for the first fifty pages of my memoir titled Kidjacked - A Father’s Story. I sent them on September--, 2010.

Thank you for taking time to review my query.  I would love the opportunity to send my completed 80,000 - word manuscript to you for consideration.

Sincerely,

SIGNATURE

THE LETTER:

 
Rudolf Meier is an intolerant bastard; his adherence to Nazi ideology is as visible as his swastika tattoo.
 
But Rudolf’s belief system begins to crumble in the sweltering heat of the Arizona desert where he picks cotton as a prisoner of war. Years spent in the Hitler Youth have taught Rudolf to believe Jews are swarthy, hook-nosed merchants. They are not cotton farmers who treat him with kindness, invite him for Thanksgiving dinner, and give him books by Hemingway. Now he finds himself in a wrenching moral dilemma as he begins to understand American democracy and individualism amidst the tyrannical hold of the Nazi officers who control the POW camp.
 
My novel takes the reader back to Germany where Rudolf is raised by his grandparents after his parents have been murdered by Hitler's Brown Shirts. Unaware of this secret, as Rudolf joins the Hitler Youth and begins to spout racist views, he is conflicted when he realizes his grandmother despises Hitler and tries to warn him that Jews are no different than anyone else. His grandfather, a supervisor at the largest U-boat shipyard in Bremen, Germany, believes there is food on the table because of the Nazis, and that Rudolf must be a part of the new Germany.
 
As Rudolf grows into a man and becomes a member of the feared U-boat arm of the German navy, his racist views travel with him aboard the U-boat and to America as a captured POW. That viewpoint begins to change as he becomes friends with the Jewish family. It is then that he comes face to face with the repercussions of intolerance when his German officers threaten his life and the lives of his grandparents in Germany because of that friendship
 
As America s seeks solace in new anti-immigrant policies and hate crimes escalate—like the shooting of a congresswoman in Arizona—I was inspired to write my YA novel The Swastika Tattoo, a story about intolerance passed like a virus from generation to generation.
 
Imagine Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain written during WW II in rural Arizona rather than the southern Blue Ridge Mountains of the Civil War era and you might have a taste of The Swastika Tattoo. My novel, while fictitious, is based on Camp Papago Park, the real German prisoner of war camp that was located on the outskirts of Phoenix from 1943 to 1946.
 
I have worked for many years as a professional newspaper reporter and editor. Because of my desire to get the facts right, I spent one month in Germany doing research at the U-Boat Archive in Cuxhaven, Germany. I also traveled to Kiel, Germany where I spent a week interviewing a former U-boat officer who was a member of the Hitler Youth and a prisoner of war. The Swastika Tattoo is complete at approximately 92,000 words.
 
I look forward to hearing from you.
 
Sincerely,

I spent the last six years on my non-fiction manuscript. In August of 2011 I tested the market by mailing a few query letters to agents and publishers. Within a short time, I received rejection notices. I knew in my heart that it was not my material but my inabilty to write an effective query letter. A friend referred me to Marla. Before contacting Marla, I spent days going over every critique and resource on Marla's website. After which I spent the month of November on my query letter. During that time I contracted for three separate private critiques from Marla. I believe that it was Marla's critques and insights that guided me to creating the query letter that has gotten me the recent agent interest. My manuscript is currently being reviewed by more than one agent. Thank you Marla! I feel that, without your help, my manuscript would have never gotten in the door!!

Sincerely,

BLANK

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent:

In reading your blog, I saw you are interested in middle-grade adventures with daring characters. I believe I have written a book that is a great fit for you.
 
It is 1926 and young Freddy’s father says his family can no longer afford to keep him, but Freddy's sisters tell him there's more to it than that. He is forced to leave and learn to support himself. He and his best friend, Rudy, strike out for California to make their own ways in the world and search for Freddy’s uncle who may hold the answer to Freddy ever being able to return home. They have many adventures and encounter everything from bank robbers to night riders to poisonous snakes, as well as people both terrible and kind along the way, but Freddy must finish the journey alone when Rudy suffers a terrible accident. Freddy learns a great deal about himself, family, and home along the way.

 The Incredible Journey of Freddy J. is emblematic of a time when many young people were on their own, traveling throughout the country, trying to find ways to survive, a time before the child labor laws and social safety nets for children that exist today. This 89,000-word coming-of-age adventure will appeal to a broad audience from age nine and up. It could be likened to The Travels of Jamie McPheeters meets Bud, Not Buddy in the Jazz Age.

Fifteen years of teaching taught me what makes young people want to read, and I kept that in mind as I wrote my story. I have sold my writing to BLANK and BLANK Magazines and am an active member of BLANK and BLANK Writers’ Club.

 Below you will find the first ten pages as your submission guidelines suggest. I can send the entire manuscript for your consideration immediately and look forward to hearing from you at your convenience.

Best regards,

Dear  :

Why are so many talented students not graduating from traditional high schools? In this race to nowhere, students and parents alike are abandoning hope of a child earning a diploma in a highly stressful educational system.   In a 1,500 word article, I will present first-hand accounts from high school students addressing the challenges over-scheduled, over-stressed students face while earning their diploma and most importantly, how students can learn to manage the pressures of a 21st education.  Filled with solutions to problems identified by teens, this article will appeal to both adolescents and parents.

 My article can be delivered to you within 2 weeks of your acceptance.

I am a successful writer and educator of at-risk high school students who have moved away from traditional school models to obtain an education better suited to their individual needs.  I am also a BLANK through BLANK. My writing credits include BLANK and the BLANK (BLANK).  I have also published in an anthology of memoirs, BLANK, and expect my first book out in 2012.  A full collection of my writing can be found at www.WEBSITE.com.  

I look forward to your response via email at BLANK or via phone at BLANK.

Sincerely,

Dear Agent:
The date is 19 November 1720, and Mary Read and Anne Bonny, both “quick with child,” fear they may be sentenced to hang in nine days. They become suspicious when a man calling himself Captain Charles Johnson visits them in their prison cells in Spanish Town, Jamaica, and tells them he wants to include their stories in a book he is writing about the most famous pirates of the Caribbean. Starving for food, company, and news of each other, the women decide to tell him how and why they became pirates.

THE TWO FAMOUS PRISONERS OF SPANISH TOWN is a 163,000-word historical novel with two alternating narrators. Mary is an illiterate alehouse brat from England who is sexually abused at a young age. She disguises herself as a male, finds work as a domestic servant, enlists in the British army, is impressed into the Royal Navy, and is tossed out in Charles Town, South Carolina, where she joins a pirate crew rather than starve.

Anne, raised on the coast of Ireland, witnesses the massacre of her village by British soldiers when she is five, and she forms an abiding hatred of the English. She is forced to flee Ireland with her parents to Charles Town where she lives among Huguenots and slave-owning rice planters. To avoid an arranged marriage to a dull planter’s son, Anne escapes with a pirate to Nassau in The Bahamas. She encounters a democratic pirate community there that includes famous outlaws such as Calico Jack Rackham and Blackbeard, as well as the cross-dressing Mary Read. When Governor Woodes Rogers arrives in Nassau, he threatens to have Anne flogged for leaving her pirate husband, so she joins a pirate crew and escapes. While at sea, she discovers that Mary is actually a woman and thus their friendship is born. After a series of adventures together, the women rescue two shipwreck survivors and fall in love with them before they are captured and brought to Spanish Town, Jamaica, to stand trial.

The story is based on the lives of real people. I researched the characters, period, and settings for 16 years. I am currently writing a contemporary mainstream novel.

Thank you for taking the time to read this query. I selected you to represent THE TWO FAMOUS PRISONERS OF SPANISH TOWN because of your interest in mainstream historical fiction. The entire MS is available upon request.


Sincerely,

Dear Agent,
 
Nadia’s Ring follows the life path of a Polish Catholic girl, Nadia Zygmunt. The story begins in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1939 and ends in Detroit, Michigan in 1969.
 
Nadia is eleven-years-old when she watches Nazis break into her father’s Warsaw grocery store and push him down the basement steps.  She helps her mother care for Jewish children hidden in the attic of the family home. In six years, Nadia changes from an innocent child to a shrewd freedom fighter, able to shoot and kill two Nazis. Her work for the Polish Resistance and the frequent lovemaking she and her boyfriend, Henryk, enjoy keep her sane. When the war ends, she marries Henryk and immigrates to Detroit, not prepared to deal with the problems she will experience in her new country.  She eases her loneliness and unhappiness by fantasizing about Marcus, a kind, gentle Jewish refugee whom she first met in Warsaw and then again on the ship to America.
 
In 1967, the Detroit race riots, which occur shortly after Henryk’s death, raze through Nadia’s neighborhood and reignite the terrors she experienced as a child. She is hospitalized for severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Once she is well, she organizes a community garden to heal the polarized relationships between blacks and whites. When Detroit newspapers broadcast her role in the project’s success, Marcus, now a widowed journalist for the New York Times, contacts her, and the two reconnect.
   
I’ve been a community health nurse for forty years, most of it in the Detroit metropolitan area, and have professional experience in treating the mentally ill. The book is based on stories of several patients traumatized by either WWII atrocities or the Detroit riots. The American Journal of Nursing and Nursing2004 through Nursing2011 have published many of my short, creative nonfiction stories.  Three were contest winners. Four accepted works await publication in the coming months.  The completed 116,000 word manuscript of Nadia’s Ring is available upon request. Thank you for your time and attention.
 
Best Regards,

THE LETTER:

Dear *Agent*,
 
 
Through childhood into adolescence, Darrel’s night terrors escalate until one night his dream physically catapults him into a world where school bullies and a missing dad are the least of his problems. Darrel has down-dreamed, slipping into another world, in which he witnesses his father, a dark-hooded figure, commit ritual atrocities on other beings.
 
Thus begins Darrel’s quest to sort dream from reality and attempt to save the father he remembers, the one who exists in his heart and memory, from what he may have already become. To do this, he must discover and utilize the ultimate means to annihilate the dark forces that threaten this strange fantastical world as well as his own.  
 
THE SWORD OF DRAGONBLOOD is a middle grade adventure/fantasy complete at approximately 53,000 words. This book will appeal to readers who enjoyed Inkheart by Cornelia Funk.
 
I am a member of the BLANK of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and the BLANK Writer’s Guild. Per your policy, I have enclosed an SASE as well as sample chapters for your review. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
 
Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear

I am seeking representation for my completed 49,000 words memoir, LIFE WITH PAROLE.

At six years old I should have been living a normal life like any other child, instead I found myself watching pornographic movies and being molested by the man who helped bring me into this world, my own dam father.

The memoir of BLANK, who at the age of six years old incest became her first real sexual experience by her biological father. At the age of eight, she finds the courage to tell her mother about the abuse and her father was sentenced to life with parole. Even when the perpetrator is caught and punished her life swirls out of control damaging her teenage years to adulthood. With the emotional denial of molestation, she fails to realize how it is shattering her life and behavior.

She became involved with multiple men, joining a gang, committing criminal activity daily, and leading a negative lifestyle that landed her in and out of jail. She was the innocent victim to a violent crime and sadly the reaction to her personal trauma came with a price that she had to pay. This book tells a powerful story and contains raw materials but is educational in many aspects, so the reader is not only drawn into the story but learns life lessons as well. She express the real life emotions of being molested. Janelle survived her ordeal and she found a voice. Although she has found a more healthier lifestyle and is healing, she realizes that at the end of the day she received the same sentence her father got, Life With Parole.

The market for this book will be mothers,fathers,every child abuse survivor in the world, readers of memoir genres, and for all who wants to protect their greatest treasures in life, their children. My topic of national interest demonstrate that I am the expert to write this book as incest is one of the subjects that cant in many ways be described without first hand experience.

I am a active member of the nations largest anti- sexual assault organization RAINN. (Rape Abuse Incest National Network) Also a member of a smaller organization in BLANK which is a small support group supporting child abuse survivors. I speak at different conferences and workshops around BLANK to help bring healing to many child abuse victims in the world.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear BLANK,
 
May I introduce you to the world of, THE BLACK NIGHT RAVE?
 
Keil is the escaped freak experiment. Nicky is the grieving scene girl. Rachel is the oblivious prep. Skyeler is the exiled mage.

When their lives collide at the Black Night Rave, they find that they have a connection deeper than the magic that surrounds them; they are mages of grave importance, the four mages chosen at birth to be the protectors of the Realms. Once a dark mage breaks through the protective boundaries of the rave and threatens the lives of the people gathered there, they get the chance to prove their worth as the Chosen. Can these untrained mages use their just discovered magic to defeat the monstrosity called Nightmare?

THE BLACK NIGHT RAVE is a YA urban fantasy novel complete at 69,000 words. While the focus of the novel is on Skyeler, the story is written from the viewpoints of all four of the Chosen, and it features two LGBTQ protagonists. Furthermore, BLANK Literary Management, LLC, The BLANK Partnership, the BLANK Agency, and The BLANK  have all requested partials of my novel. In addition, I am busily writing a sequel novel entitle THE BLANK that I estimate will be between 70,000 and 82,000 words.

As for myself, I am active in both my community college’s writing community and Gay-Straight Alliance and I am openly gay. I am attaining an AA at BLANK College in BLANK and have been accepted to the University of BLANK and will be transferring there Fall 2012 to attain first a BA in Creative Writing. In addition, I have had two pieces published in my college’s award winning art and literature magazine and I write for “The BLANK”--the premier media source for LGBTQ news in the BLANK area.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. I anxiously await your reply.
 
Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

(sorry, not 55th...86th QQC!)

THE LETTER:

Dear:
 
Lorca Von Rueter had planned on being a wife, a mother, and a school teacher.  Never a widow with a family to support.  Her husband Andy’s suicide wrecked economic havoc on the family.  When two “old dears” present Lorca with a too-good-to-be-true offer of a teaching position in their posh school in Switzerland, she jumps at the chance.  The romance of Europe and financial freedom crumbles when a number of facts emerge.  One: Andy’s death was premeditated murder, a set up to entrap Lorca.  Two:  the Academie da Lis has a checkered past, involved with human experimentation and research conducted during WWII.  Lorca’s genetic inheritance links directly with these experiments.  Three: Lorca’s genes are needed to complete the project started three-quarters of a century before.  She unravels the truth, confronts the potential evil within her and the lethal impact such evil will have if released upon modern society.  By then she’s swept away by a love that defies time and space.  A love threatened by the knowledge survival or damnation depends on destroying one of two men.  Identical twins.  The love of her life or his brother?  
 
KEEPERS OF THE LILY, a 125,000-word suspense novel, focuses on whether fate or free will determines a person’s destiny.  Red herrings conceal the truth until the end where the tale concludes with a Harlan Coben-type twist.  The novel is complete.  Please let me know if you’re interested in reading a partial or all of KEEPERS.  I appreciate your time and attention.
 
I’m a member of BLANK Writers, BLANK Writer’s Colony, RWA, and BLANK.  I’ve won awards in both national and local writing competitions, this spring placing third in BLANK Writer’s Colony annual writing contest.  I keep current through workshops and conferences.  My training as a BLANK technician helped with the technical details for this novel.

THE LETTER:

Dear  Ms. So and So:
 
Holly has lived with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder for twenty years - her first panic attack struck during a bathroom break in the seventh grade. Each time she fights waves of nausea and terror, she fears she’s as crazy as her bi-polar father who once threatened to kill her.

Her illogical solution is to leap into the stress-inducing, soul-crushing, competitive world of broadcast news in L.A. Equally unlikely was falling in love with a handsome Navy operative who disarms bombs. But when he proposes, she’s forced to make a choice between a career that gives the illusion of sanity, or embracing a fulfilling balanced life.

As a former journalist with nearly fifteen years of professional writing experience, I have many contacts in the news industry who would be interested in endorsing this book. I have also worked in PR, promoting authors and their books.

At 85,000 words, Could Have Been Holly Wood is the funny, harrowing, professionally edited memoir, of a girl’s relentless pursuit of her happy ending. If you would like a book proposal or sample chapters, I can be reached at BLANK or emailed at BLANK

 

THE LETTER:

Dear [Agent]:

I’m writing today [customized introduction: “to follow up on our conversation at such and such conference” “because I admire the work of so and so...”] I hope you will consider representing my recently completed 55,000-word travel memoir, Riding Free.

Can a photograph change your life? Mine did when I discovered a set of naked photos of my grandmother. All my life I’d been compared to my Grandma Pat, but shortly after her death, when my mother and I discovered the photographs among her effects, I realized I was nothing like her.

I’d just gotten out of a stifling marriage and was finally free, but didn’t know what to do with my freedom. So with Grandma Pat as my guide, I set out on a voyage of discovery to Ireland, the land of our ancestors, to ignite the passion that was lacking in my life. I danced with horsemen (and women), communed with priestesses, and had mind-blowing Harry Potter sex in an ancient Irish Castle.

But when I returned to California for my parents’ 50th anniversary party, I learned that my ex-husband had already re-married, which undid all the progress I’d made in Ireland. So I set off on another kind of adventure: to an alternative lifestyle resort in Jamaica. After a religious experience (yes, I’m probably the only person who has a every had a religious experience at a swingers resort) while volunteering at an orphanage, I discovered that as much as I wanted to be like my Grandma Pat, I was much more like my mother. Riding Free tells the story of my travels and how by trying to be more like my grandmother and not like my mother, I learned to just be me.

Currently a resident of BLANK, I hold a BS in Physical Therapy from BLANK State. After working as a physical therapist for many years, I now volunteer at the BLANK Hospital and do extensive work with the Wounded Warriors Project. In addition, I created a special program for the women of war: those injured or married to a Wounded Warrior. I keep my passion for writing going by taking writing classes and workshops at BLANK and by blogging at www.BLANK.com.  

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,

Would High School mix with a group of angels? You will soon find out.

Sixteen-year-old Gabrielle had started a new school in a new town, and she’s getting used to it. She’s worried that she will not make any friends at all in this town, until all of that changes when she meets Levi. Levi, who happens to be an angel, who was sent to protect Gabrielle from evil that high school has to offer. If Gabrielle thinks that there’s evil in high school, you haven’t seen anything yet when three fallen angels have come to her high school to come and destroy her because she has been associated with Levi, who has been romantically connected to, and she doesn’t want to be sacrificed for that.

She does everything to protect their closeness to each other, but she thinks that there is another person who is an angel; one of her friend, Michael.

DANGER COMES WITH WINGS follows Gabrielle and Levi as they define their relationship while guarding against potential danger. The teen years can be difficult enough without dodging fallen angels out to get you. DANGER COMES WITH WINGS combines the concept of guardian angels with a snapshot of high school life with a mixture or romance.

DANGER COMES WITH WINGS is a YA fantasy complete at 40,000 words. Thank you for your time.
 
Sincerely,

The LETTER:

Dear agent,  (Name would be submitted)
 
 
Whenever Callie Richards considered the consequences of having sex, she figured on a grounding and The Talk. Having a killer sorcerer stalking her -- not so much.

Callie's first sexual encounter with the boy she loves awakens her ancestral powers. She's a witch, and her family's got serious baggage. For centuries the sorcerer Bellary has hunted down and tested the most adept members of her line, often resulting in their deaths, and he‘s coming for Callie next. Bellary's talent of draining magical energy from his victims and claiming their powers for his own has made him the most dangerous sorcerer in history. But to be truly invincible as a master of all the elements, he must wait for Callie's magic to fully mature. That gives her some time, but not much.

Callie gathers a coven to fight Bellary, but their inexperience puts them at a deadly disadvantage against the powerful sorcerer. Their vulnerability is brought home when Bellary murders Callie's human boyfriend, in an effort to test her ability’s. It's up to Callie now to become the witch she was born to be. Because if she fails to master her powers before Bellary seizes them for his self, the world will be his to control.

CRY OF THE WITCH is a 106,000-word YA urban fantasy, commercial fiction, general fiction, or mainstream genres. This is a single submission has not been submitted to any other agency. Further information is available upon request including a full synopsis, I eagerly await your response to my project.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Dear BLANK,
 
Now that Matt Pettis has quarterbacked tiny Bishop Conrad High into the championship game, what is he supposed to do about “Bad Bear” Spackelford, the meanest player in the state, lined up directly opposite him?
 
What is he supposed to do when she’s a girl?
 
And what is he supposed to do when he’s in love with her?
 
Bad Bear (comedy/drama, 110,000 words) features Dee Spackelford as a once-in-a-generation girl athlete whose gridiron talents have made her a celebrity. As her unlikely suitor, Matt finds himself thrust into the spotlight, usually to his embarrassment! Now, as the nation watches, the sweethearts square off in a Billie-Jean-vs.-Bobby-Riggs spectacle for the championship. Can their romance survive? And whose team will win?
 
I have served many years as Critique Committee Chairman of BLANK Writers Association, where I have coached numerous writers to publication. My novel BLANK (BLANK Press, 2010) is available through Kindle, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
 
Thank you for your kind consideration.

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,
 
How do we measure the worth of a life? This is the central question of my novel, Broken Chocolate, a work of literary fiction set in modern day New Haven, Connecticut. The story opens as the mother of gifted and popular fifteen-year-old Zoe learns that her daughter has been critically injured while out for a run. Zoe sustains permanent brain damage, and her large family must come to grips with the fact that she will never fulfill the bright future that had seemed to be inevitably hers.
 
The action of Broken Chocolate unfolds through the eyes of three people: Zoe’s father, Dr. Sam Silversmith, is a regional expert in traumatic brain injuries, who finds this sudden irony excruciating; her twin brother, Zev, is profoundly shy, but his psyche is intertwined with that of his outgoing and accomplished sister; and her mother, Olivia, is a pastry chef who comes to question her own resolutely optimistic world view in the face of Zoe’s torturous recovery.
 
As they endeavor to reframe their fractured expectations, her family comes to question their response to what has happened: should they continue to lament Zoe’s lost potential, even if she appears to be reasonably happy and does not comprehend what she has lost? In looking for answers, they realize that the change in Zoe’s trajectory has altered the way in which they measure their own lives as well. As it reveals the remarkable resilience of hope, the story is also an anthem to the joys and sorrows of raising children.
 
I came to this subject through nine years of managing my husband's medical practice, where patients with severe brain injuries are treated with great care. I have also done graduate work in literary analysis and in neurological speech pathology, and have raised four children of my own. It is my hope that fans of Ann Patchett’s tender character treatment and of Alice Hoffman’s enchanted reflections on family life would enjoy reading Broken Chocolate as well.
 
I am pleased to provide any portion of my 165,000-word manuscript that you would care to read. Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely yours, ______

THE LETTER:

Dear  Agent;

Seven years ago I married the Hall of Fame, Oscar-winning songwriter BLANK, and finally got it right.  I also had time to write. After telling and retelling my wince-worthy life, I decided to write down the grueling truths. Hey, why is everyone laughing?   Please consider my 30,000 word memoir, “It Sucks to be Vain and Poor,” for publication.

Instead of chronological sequence, the book is laid out into categories. Shakespeare said, “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” Maybe not enough time has gone by, but I sliced my gut and spilled it on the page anyway.

It begins with running away to the Beverly Hilton Hotel and hiding out in a banquet room, ending up at the police station. The craziness continues at a Mexican University, where I graduated with a degree in psychology.  Next came a career as a professional musician performing in L.A., Japan, and even Casa Blanca.  I have two remarkable children; one got her Master’s Degree before she was twenty-three, meanwhile her brother  was in the grips of a heroin addiction. Does that disqualify me from being, “Mother of the Year?” Am I good at marriage because I was married four times?  Or, just accustomed to the aisle, since my dad was married six times?

In ten years I’ve earned two honorable mentions from the BLANK Competition for my personal essays “Daddy’s Last Ride” and “1,700 For Lunch, No Problema.”  My novel, BLANK, won a 2011 BLANK Excellence Award.  I was a finalist in the acclaimed storytelling competition BLANK GrandSlam, performing the title story, “It Sucks to be Vain and Poor.”


Thank you for taking the time to review my work. I’ve attached twenty pages.


Sincerely,

THE LETTER

Dear____,


I am seeking professional representation for my 100,000 word international suspense thriller Bella Ciao.

A famous Italian journalist is murdered in her family’s Venetian palazzo in 1985. Twenty-three years later, her diary turns up and unleashes a chain of events involving blackmail, violence, and sexual chicanery. The story begins in Stockholm where DAN JORDAN, the journalist’s widower, has gone to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His stepson unexpectedly appears saying he just received his mother’s diary from his dying grandfather who had kept it hidden. Showing Dan a misleading excerpt which suggests that his mother wrote Dan’s novel Bella Ciao, he demands half the Nobel money. Dan refuses but promises to buy publishing rights to the diary.

The stepson is murdered hours later, and homicide detective ANNIKA STENSON finds the excerpt in his hotel safe. She suspects Dan murdered him to avoid blackmail. The diary disappears from the palazzo, but Annika finds a flash drive where the stepson downloaded a copy. She learns that Dan did not steal Bella Ciao and that the current Italian Prime Minister, DARIO FANTONETTI, was laundering money for the mob in the 80s. She concludes that Fantonetti was behind the murders of the journalist and her son and the theft of the diary.

Dan is cleared, but the Swedish Foreign Minister, fearing a diplomatic incident, insists on giving the flash drive to the Italian Ambassador without exposing its contents. Annika gives a copy to Dan in defiance of the minister, thinking it can help him save his reputation after a tabloid accused him of plagiarism and  caused the Nobel Committee to withhold his prize. Determined to expose Fantonetti’s crime, Dan goes to Venice. A magistrate tells him the diary doesn’t contain enough evidence to indict the Prime Minister, so Dan uses a Wikileaks-type website to publish the diary’s disclosures, hoping to disgrace him.

The Internet attack provokes a furious response from Fantonetti. He orders the Italian Intelligence Service and mafia thugs to stop the revelations, and this leads to a train wreck impacting the lives of people caught up in Dan’s quest for revenge. By the time Dan realizes the consequences of his actions, the vendetta has developed a life of its own and it’s too late to stop it.

Bella Ciao will resonate favorably with fans of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I am a retired businessman with many years’ experience in Sweden and Italy. Fluency in both languages gives me a deep understanding of Swedish and Italian cultures. Friends in the Stockholm Police, including a female homicide detective, have provided valuable research data.

Thank you for considering my work.

Dear                            ,

 When a group of teen-age boys engage in a secret nighttime mission to save the wildlife in the canyon, they discover a bully’s secret and now, they’re next on his list to be murdered.

 
 Brian Colter is a bully. Everyone knows that. Everyone also knows that he probably offed his ex-wife Veronica and the driver of the rare muscle car buried in the canyon’s hard-pack behind his house. The rumor is that Colter buried Veronica and Jacob Barnes in Barnes’ Boss 429.

When a neighbor begins trapping raccoons and encourages other neighbors to do the same, the boys plan a nighttime cage raid. Everything goes well, until Colter almost discovers them in his yard and the only place for them to hide is inside his shed. There, they find Jacob and Veronica’s love letters, a revolver and a single key etched with the word “FORD.”

 Armed with evidence that can put Colter away for life, they wait to make their escape. But, with one wrong move , they’re caught. Now they’re in a race for their lives through the dark canyon and Colter wants their blood.

 I am a wellness columnist for BLANK Today Magazine and a freelance wellness writer for BLANK.com. In 2009, I received an honorary mention in the “78th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition” for a racy, adult-literary short story called, BLANK. I am a 5-year member of Writer’s BLANK, a writer’s critique group, as well as a storyteller at BLANK Tales, a monthly event that is stylized after The BLANK.

 Cage Raiders is my 65,000-word YA adventure-suspense novel about friendship, family and courage. I would be delighted to send the full manuscript for your review and I thank you for your time.

 

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear BLANK,

Siblings have been abusive since God first played favorites with Cain and Abel. From the beginning of time, siblings have fought over toys, food, parental love, and property. Historically, there are no first-person books from an actual sibling abuse survivor. Brief glimpses of sibling abuse show up in literature. Violence from a brother is the focus of the beginning of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.  In Brokeback Mountain, written by Annie Proulx’s, the cowboy Ennis del Mar describes what his an older brother did to him: "slugged me silly ever' day." Anonymous testimonies of sibling abuse are often related in one sentence or one-paragraph statements. Girl In The Water: A True Story of Bullying and Sibling Abuse is an unprecedented book and will fill the void on the bookshelves.

Nearly 1 in 5 students in an average classroom is experiencing bullying. Each year, however, 19 million children are abused in their homes by their own sibling(s). Nearly two million children use a weapon as a means of resolving a conflict with a sibling. Siblings commit 10 percent of the murders that occur in the American family. Research has shown a solid link between bullying and sibling abuse. Bullies come from the American home. Girl In The Water: A True Story of Bullying and Sibling Abuse is “timely” and important to the present epidemic of bullying. It breaks the seal of the untold, terrifying world of sibling abuse and how it is connected to bullying. The reader is led on a journey back to my childhood—where I am confronted with my three sisters, classmates, and parents. This story resembles the scariest fairy tale and reveals the dungeon secrets of my own home. My first bully was my own sister. I was almost murdered by her. Because of sibling abuse, my ascent into adulthood was as arduous as climbing Mt. Everest. My story captures the reader’s imagination with how I struggled to survive. It will inspire over 80 million American adult survivors of sibling abuse to share what has is beneath the surface of their own lives. As a survivor of sibling abuse, I awakened from a destructive life to a life of hope and became a national trainer and activist.

Girl In The Water is the logical choice for the publisher who wants to tap current reading trends. Worldwide, adult survivors of sibling abuse will open to it as a groundbreaking, healing touchstone. Included in the contents is a reference section with straightforward guidelines for adult survivors of this type of abuse. The appeal of this book is further amplified because it can be utilized for parents who want education on prevention/intervention strategies against sibling abuse and bullying. Reader response is likely to be considerable and will surely activate successive printings. For additional sales, it can be printed to fit “self-help” and “support-group manual” formats. The forecast for Girl In The Water is long-term commercial sales projections, both in America and in foreign markets. With minor updates it could be kept in print through numerous editions. The positive speculation is that it will sell by “word of mouth.”

As a national trainer, I have an endorsed background in imparting information about bullying and sibling abuse. I received my Master’s Degree from the University of BLANK. I have two books that have been adopted by a publishing company. Additionally, I have appeared on radio, newspapers and television. I can help you promote this book.

I want to thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
BLANK, M.S.

Dear Mr. 

  When I read, “CNN Traveller marries the best in travel journalism and photography with the news values of CNN,” in the Writers Market I knew it was the best publication for my article titled Time Shares – Do You Feel Blessed or Bamboozled? Your website news article about Sol Kerzner taking part in a one-to-one interview at the ITLM in Cannes in December  to discuss what has changed in the world of luxury travel in the last fifty years led me to believe that my piece could not be timelier.

THE ARTICLE

“Time Shares – Do You Feel Blessed or Bamboozled” is a behind the scenes, interview based piece that takes a serious look at the advantages and pitfalls of Time Share ownership. According to interviews I have already conducted the people that own time shares are a disparate group. Despite the fact that I am one of the people on the bamboozled side of the fence my goal is to conduct unbiased interviews with other time share holders in order to get to the heart of the issue.

 I’ve encountered many people that were sold on the fact that Time Shares are member’s only resorts and as it turns out members seem to be the only people that can’t get a reservation unless they book them one year in advance. In the three years that we have owned our time share my husband and I have been able to use it once. The resort is gorgeous, the employees are top notch and my spa treatment was the best I have ever experienced. The reservation process is however quite another story. I will be going to Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach again on November 13^th 2011 and plan to make it a working vacation. My goal is to speak with numerous people to find out how they feel about the value of membership. I will also conduct interviews with those who booked their stay through other means such as Expedia and Orbitz and inquire about their costs and experiences as guests of the resort.

 

My piece will include an interview with Dan Cobb an attorney with Direct Transfer, a company whose sole purpose is to get people out of their time shares. Most people do not realize that maintenance fees are passed on to their heirs regardless of their ability to pay. Mr. Cobb has many examples of what can happen to people’s estates when time shares are involved.

 I realize this is a controversial subject for a travel magazine but if a behind the headlines, intriguing and thought provoking article is what CNN Traveller is looking for I believe this is a perfect fit. I will of course have numerous photos to accompany the article.

CREDENTIALS

My writing credentials include articles in BLANK Press, BLANK and BLANK magazines. Many of my editorials have been featured in BLANK'S  local Pinnacle and Freelance News Papers. I am currently taking a writing course through the Christian Writers Guild and I enjoy The Southern California Writers Conference annually.

            Thank you for taking the time to review my submission and I look forward to hearing from you.

Dear ________________:

We met at the Taos Writers’ Workshop in 2006. During our consultation, you read a chapter of my memoir in progress Falling Away and expressed an interest in reading my work once I had completed the manuscript. I am hoping your offer still stands.

My 60,000 word memoir, Falling Away, tells the story of my teenage years during the 1970s. My father died when I was fourteen years old and my mother began a relationship with another man, a man who stalked and abused me.  When I told my mother, she refused to believe me or protect me.

Years later, my mother and I reconciled. But always our past would intervene on our present, causing me to pull back. When Mom developed Alzheimer’s disease, I became her primary caregiver, attempting to keep her safe even as I struggled with the memories of her inability to do the same for me when I was a child.  Falling Away weaves the story of my teenage years with the story of our adult relationship as I attempt to forgive my mother for the events in our past.

Since our conference at Taos, I have completed an MFA program at BLANK College in Boston where I was fortunate to take classes from Sandra Scofield. I teach memoir at the BLANK Center in Minneapolis.  I have published several chapters of my memoir, twice receiving the Carol Bly Award in Creative Nonfiction, along with many other awards and publication credits.
I have included the first few pages of my manuscript at the bottom of this e-mail. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
 

 

DEAR BLANK;

When a curious Emma Brown follows a crow over a half-hidden path in the Arizona desert to a village, the story collector finds a tale that will change her and the residents forever.

Emma searches for a new life. Running from heartache, she leaves her job and takes to the road to gather stories of America’s Greatest Generation. On September 11, 2001 she arrives in Weeping Women Springs, a village devoid of children, but filled with old women still living in the past. 

The mystical Spring feeding this Arizona town provides hope and vitality to all who drink from it, except the women since the war deaths of their men folk. The women plunge into grief so deep they retreat from the world.

Fifty years later, Emma meets Maxine, a widow, who slips in and out of dementia and Liv, a stern woman who wants Emma to leave. Both women are intent on hiding the newcomer’s presence from the other residents. Against their wishes, Emma chooses to stay and unravel their mystery. When Emma is attracted to Brad, a man escaping his own past, she has a choice to make: stay in this place, which promises love and community, or continue running.

Spanning more than fifty years, Weeping Women Springs weaves historical vignettes of the townspeople with Emma's story. It explores the extremes of heartrending loss, and the effects of life-altering choices.

  My short stories have been published at BLANK Journal and BLANK Publications.

Please consider Weeping Women Springs for your Historical Fiction Pitch Contest. This historical novel set in a fictional Arizona town during World War II is complete at approximately 72,000 words. Thank you for your time.

In 2010 newspapers nationwide printed over 36,000 stories related to sex crimes. Senator Scott Brown, actor Tyler Perry, Dancing with the Stars celebrity Cheryl Burke, and Precious actress Mo’Nique, are just a few well known personalities revealing stories of sexual abuse.  Allegations within the Roman Catholic Church, and the use of the internet by sexual predators, have caught the attention of every major network. Media exposure of these high profile cases has opened the door for others to break their silence of sexual abuse.

But what happens next? Breaking the silence is only the first step. How does one navigate the journey to healing once the wounds are exposed?

Say It Out Loud: Revealing and Healing the Scars of Sexual Abuse provides proven strategies for healing.  More than seventy personal journal entries authenticate the strategies presented in the 55,000 word manuscript, making Say It Out Loud unparalleled in a market aimed at victims and their families, therapists, and educators.

I hold a Bachelors Degree in Special Education and a Masters Degree in Counseling. My professional credentials combined with personal experience in therapy, give me both objective and subjective perspectives of the therapeutic process, making me uniquely qualified to write this book.

I write a Health and Wellness column for BLANK.com, online local news published by the AOL/Huffington Post Media Group. I’ve written for the  BLANKNetwork’s online journal; blog on BLANK.com; and maintain a website: 

THE LETTER:

Dear Ms. Agent;

It was a pleasure meeting you after the publishing panel at Queens University in May.  Thank you for taking the time to read my query letter.  

Fade to Black, my 64,000 word memoir is a love story shattered by medical mistakes. 

One hundred thousand people die every year from hospital errors: a fact I didn’t think I needed to know on my ninth wedding anniversary.  Unfortunately, my screenwriter husband and I were spending that special day at a hospital where he was about to have minor surgery.  Before they wheeled Allen away, I embraced him and said, “Happy anniversary.” He whispered to me, “Next year, I’ll take you somewhere even more fun.”  His quirky sense of humor was the reason I had fallen in love with him, married him, and even wrote screenplays with him, hoping our stories would resonate with others. 

Being a naive spouse, I believed my husband would easily recover from surgery. But one operation turned into three and then spiraled into four months of medical mistakes.  My blind faith in the hospital disintegrated as the mistakes mounted and I worked to keep Allen alive through the GI bleed, the tear in his brain and other problems brought on by negligent care.  Finally, the shot of insulin he wasn’t supposed to receive led to Allen falling into a coma that he did not recover from.  Placing my husband in hospice was the hardest thing I ever had to do.   

After his death, I had to write the most important story Allen and I would ever tell: our journey through the many flaws in our health care system, in the hope that our struggle will put a human face on medical mistakes. 

With a BFA in theater and years of writing screenplays with my husband, I have taken numerous courses in memoir writing at UCLA and received my MFA in creative writing from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am an active member of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society and I lead a weekly writers’ workshop in memoir.    

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your response. 

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent:

Soup Happens is BLANK's 60,000 word monomythic memoir.  It is set among two widely publicized events──Hurricane Katrina and the “Soup Nazi’s” franchise giving her story strong competitive advantage.

Thirteen year old Debra and her family escape the rising water of Hurricane Betsy.  Forty years later storms develop in the Atlantic and Caribbean coinciding with the trouble brewing in Debra’s marriage. Before she recovers from her husband’s betrayal, epic disaster strikes when Hurricane Katrina destroys her home and way of life in Louisiana.

Her quest begins as her journey takes her to Colorado.  In an attempt to start over, Debra and her husband David open a “Soup Nazi” franchise in Colorado Springs, unaware of the perils before them. Strong arm tactics expose the Franchisor’s true identity and create a financial fiasco for the franchisees, forcing Debra and David into bankruptcy.

The couple faces the terrifying threat of homelessness and relies on charity for support.  Marital problems resurface with the overwhelming struggle to survive.  Employment moves them to Golden, Colorado.  Isolated from family, they remain dependent upon each other as they grow further apart.  The plummeting economy and the strain of anxiety unleash the formidable foe of fear but change is inevitable.

The Seinfeld Show’s popularity in American pop culture, the franchisor’s alleged ties to organized crime (United States v. Lino et al.) and Soprano like personalities, along with Debra’s journey of personal survival and growth through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a failing marriage widens Soup Happens' crossover appeal.

AP reporter David Caruso reveals the “Soup Nazi’s” troubled franchises in his article on eight early closures.  Since that article, forty stores have closed.  Debra was interviewed by The Gazette and The Independent newspapers.  Fox21 news did a feature story on Debra which aired Christmas Day 2006.

Although a new author, Debra’s experience and diligence in crafting Soup Happens give her voice authenticity.  She has numerous media contacts and is in touch with several former SoupMan franchisees.

Your interest in great memoir and reputation of working with “newbies” is why I am soliciting your representation.  Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Dear Mr./Ms. Super Agent

 When Stones Speak: Was Jesus Wrong? Is an action thriller set in a biblical landscape.  Readers of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons will want to read it.

Dr. Michael Hannigan has spent 60 years perfecting his Quantum Camera, an amazing invention that retrieves the images left over time.  His dream, as a devout Catholic, is to show the world the miracles that Jesus performed.  Unfortunately at 83 Dr. Hannigan is too old to carry the 70-pound camera around Israel.  He needs his friend and personal trainer’s assistance, but Chuck Palmer is an atheist.  He is convinced that the stories about Jesus are folklore, and fears that Dr. Hannigan will be devastated when he finds out the truth.  

With the help of a beautiful Biblical Archaeologist they set out to find the Messiah and soon discover they are being watched.  Billy and Bobby Moss work for the Society of Evangelical Christians (SEC), the five most powerful televangelists in the world.  They will stop at nothing, including murder, to ensure that Chuck and Dr. Hannigan’s incredible discovery stays buried forever.

When Stones Speak: Was Jesus Wrong? is a 146,000-word adventure/thriller.  The completed manuscript is available upon request. Thank you for your valuable time.  I look forward to hearing from you soon and have enclosed a SASE for your convenience.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,( name of agent)

Do you realize that all the frogs in American folklore have been male?  Mr. Jeremy Fisher, Ping, Mr. Toad and Kermit the Frog are just a few. The time has come for a female frog with an attitude and her name is Tillie! She lost her pond when developers plowed it in to build a mall. She may be homeless, but Tillie is an eternal optimist, getting by with her positive “froglosophies” such as, “Your dream may be a hop away so never give up 'til you croak!”

I am looking for an agent to help me market Tillie the Homeless Frog books, puppets, animated musical, and children’s game. For the past ten years Tillie has been successfully marketed as a three-dimensional sculpted figurine with over 30,000 sculptures sold to collectors. The figurines are made in the USA from porcelain resin. (see: www.xxx.com)

The story books tell of Tillie's adventures as she searches for a new home and, in the process invents her froglosophies to help herself and others stay positive while coping with the  environmental disasters plaguing the planet. She discovers the mystery of the vanishing bees, rescues a dying ladybug sprayed with pesticide, and befriends an endangered butterfly in search of milkweed that is destroyed by developers. Tillie and her friends must create a plan to save the planet before it’s too late. In the end she calls upon the readers for help.

Tillie will inspire grade school children with a message of environmental concern and a positive outlook on life through songs, stories, puppets, and T-shirts. Her phenomenal popularity as a figurine resulted from her froglosophies, her concern for the environment, and, of course her wacky grin that makes people instantly fall in love with her.

If Tillie captures your heart and imagination, I'd be happy to send you sample chapters. I look forward to hearing from you.

 As Tillie says, “Keep hopping and hoping.”

THE LETTER:

Dear Ms. Agent;

It was a pleasure meeting you after the publishing panel at Queens University.  Your description of the relationship between an agent and an author reflected my own feelings about the importance of that collaboration.

 Over a hundred thousand people die every year from hospital errors: a fact I was not familiar with when I fell in love with a screenwriter who kept me laughing every day.

Fade to Black, my 64,000 word memoir, is a love story shattered by medical mistakes. After nine short years of marriage, my husband, Allen, had a minor surgery that spiraled into four months of medical mistakes. Through the GI bleed, the tear in his brain, and other problems brought on by negligent care, I worked hard to keep my husband alive.  Finally, the shot of insulin he wasn’t supposed to receive resulted in Allen falling into a coma that his doctor described as “his body is healthy but his mind is gone”.  The decision to continue his life was up to me. Would Allen want to live as just a body in a bed, his mind forever trapped in nothingness? 

 Fade to Black puts a human face on medical mistakes as it chronicles my husband’s story in the hope that our struggle – the good, the bad, and the eye-opening – will help others avoid the same tragic fate.

With a BFA in theater and years of writing screenplays with my husband, I recently received my MFA in creative writing from BLANK University in BLANK, North Carolina.  I am an active member of the BLANK Writers Society and I lead a weekly writers’ workshop in memoir.   

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent

In 2005 the US Government spent $468 Billion on health care cost to fight addiction; however, in 2009, there was an 8% increase in addiction, 21.8 million American used alcohol and drug regularly. At that rate, today would be 22.6 million. Have you ever wondered with all the money spent, people still can’t seem to quit using drugs?

On September 21, 1990, I had a very unusual experience when I decided to renounce my $300-$400 a day heroin and cocaine addiction. While attending intercessory prayer; prayer leader Sister Upshaw prayed for me to be set free from my addiction. All of a sudden I was thrown to the floor on my knees by an invisible force. An angry voice not mine; spoke through me saying, “NO-NO-NO, I’m not coming out.” Suddenly, I felt this burning heat sensation of an invisible force tearing through my flesh as it stepped out my body with a loud growl like scream. After no relapses, and no desires to ever use drugs again, I realize that it is more to addiction than the “Disease Theory of Alcoholism.”

ALCOHOLISM, WRONG DIAGNOSED: ADDICTION, THE HIDDEN TRUTH, Based on True Events, is a self-help book intergraded with biblical truth, clinical understanding on addiction, and personal experience. It reveals the true nature of addiction, and how to overcome its powers by appropriately approaching God. It exposes Alcoholic Anonymous (AA) fallacy of a higher power and spirituality, and its success failure. The book also answers the question why many addicts cannot embrace A.A. philosophy nor recover by its method. It shows family members how to avoid being consumed by the organizing principle of addiction. Three other books are forthcoming.

A former heroin addict, 7 years to cocaine, 20 plus years’ alcohol usage, former A.A. member, 20 years of sobriety, a former California Certified Chemical Dependency Counselor (Registered Addiction Specialist), 16 years Substance Abuse counseling, and five years pasturing qualifies me to write this book. Founder and Group Facilitator of: BLANK, and the Co-Founder and former Director of the BLANK. I am a member of the BLANK.

I am confident this book will resonate globally with a great many addicts, and the family that love them; AA defector, Christian’s counselors, pastors, possible paranormal readers. I have book reviews as far as Australia, New York, Texas, and Ohio. I have a platform on Face Book and Twitter. I am currently in the middle of securing a major endorsement.

If you’re interested, I’m prepared to send you a copy of the completed manuscript. Thank you for taking the time to review my query. I can be contacted at

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,

Nadia: An Immigrant’s Struggle for Self Identity follows the life path of a Polish Catholic girl, Nadia Zygmunt. The story begins in Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1939.

Nadia is eleven-years-old when she discovers her parents are harboring Jews. She helps her mother care for Jewish children hidden in their attic until her father can produce forged identity papers for their escape. Suspecting his underground activities, the Nazis break into his grocery store and shove him into a coal bin in the market’s basement. Finding nothing, they leave him to mend his wounds.

Between 1939 and 1944, Nadia changes from an innocent child to a shrewd freedom fighter. Her work for the Polish Resistance with her boyfriend, Henryk, gives her a sense of purpose. When the war ends, she marries him and immigrates to Detroit. He focuses on fitting into his new country and living the American Dream.  Assisting him with his endeavors isn’t enough for Nadia; she feels emotionally abandoned and eases her loneliness by dwelling on her childhood friendships and losses. She fantasizes about Marcus, a kind, gentle Jewish refugee from Warsaw, whom she met on the ship to America.  When she realizes she will never bear children, her disappointment escalates, manifesting in bursts of anger at her husband with his insensitive demands.

In 1967, the Detroit race riots, which occur shortly after Henryk’s death, reignite the terrors she experienced as a child. She hides under the bed, wears the same clothes day after day, fails to eat, and won’t answer the door until a health department nurse gains her trust. Nadia is hospitalized for what now is referred to as post traumatic stress disorder. Once she is well, she regains a sense of purpose. Using her gardening skills that at one time were only a hobby, she organizes a community garden to heal the polarized relationships between blacks and whites. When the Detroit newspapers broadcast her role in the project’s success, they highlight her past wartime heroism.  Marcus, now a journalist for the New York Times, contacts Nadia when he reads about her accomplishments.

I’ve been a community health nurse for forty years, most of it in the Detroit metropolitan area, and have professional experience in treating the mentally ill. This book is a composite memoir of several patients traumatized by either WWII atrocities or the Detroit riots. The   BLANK and BLANK  have published my short, creative nonfiction stories.  Three were contest winners. Four accepted works await publication in the coming months.

The completed 116,000 word manuscript of Nadia: An Immigrant Struggle for Self Identity is available upon request. Thank you for your time and attention. 

THE LETTER:

THE LETTER:

THE LETTER:

Dearest ___

I am seeking publication of my fictional novel, LOOKING FOR ME, a drama suffused, literary narrative entwined with a bit of humor, suspense, and dark realities, topped with an urban twist.

Raised by her Big Momma, with love, wild imagination, and an inward light as spectacular as the morning sun. Now, Big Momma is dead, and seven-year-old Mona is thrust into the Foster Care System. Her inward light doused by her foster father’s darkness, she suffers an infliction of sexual, physiological, and physical abuse too horrid to speak of. Pushed beyond her limits, Mona finds herself in the last place she’d hope to be. The morning she lowers her head and snorts drugs through her nostrils, she enters her final decline.

Her life tragically shaped, abandoned by her husband and she does not know the whereabouts of her only child. Raped and left for dead, soaking in a pool of blood and the urine of her assailants, fate intervenes. Mona’s wounds are bandaged and the tedious journey of physical and emotional healing begins. Mona riots against herself and the voices in her head desperately trying to find her “authentic self”. After rehab, bouts with relapse and struggling to confront her demons, she is offered the job of facilitating a women’s group held in the basement of her church. But these are not just ordinary girls. Their scripts don’t include sugar and spice and everything nice—quite the contrary. Resistant, and defiant, the girls make Mona’s job next to impossible. They have lived it, done it, and been through it all. Worn out, and beaten down by the tragedies of life, the meetings are the end of the road—the last pit stop for them. But for Mona, the newly appointed facilitator, the meetings are where it all has to begin.

Ultimately, LOOKING FOR ME, is a story of inspiration, resolve, of a woman digging deeper than she thought possible trying to find the strength not to completely crumble. Colorful and graphic, a brutally honest exploration of topics considered taboo and too racy for most traditional Sunday morning sermons.

LOOKING FOR ME, is completed at 75, 356-words, and the first in a planned trilogy. LOOKING FOR ME 2, is plotted and partially completed. In the end, will Mona reunite with the love of her life? Will she find her daughter? Fail at facilitating the group? And, lastly, will she find the most valuable thing she had lost—herself?

Now, about me in a nutshell; I began my writing career at the tender age of six. True. Stapled notebook paper in booklet form, I was sure my four page masterpiece would be a bestseller. Allow me to toot my horn by briefly stating, I have won and been a finalist in numerous contests, recently, receiving the 2010 first AnnualBLANK  Creative Writing Award.

Tempted yet? I'd love to forward the completed manuscript. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

THE LETTER:

Dear

In 2010 newspapers nationwide printed over 36,000 stories related to sex crimes. Senator Scott Brown, actor Tyler Perry, Dancing with the Stars celebrity Cheryl Burke, and Precious actress Mo’Nique, are just a few well known personalities revealing stories of sexual abuse.  Allegations within the Roman Catholic Church, and the use of the internet by sexual predators, have caught the attention of every major network. Media exposure of these high profile cases has opened the door for others to break their silence of sexual abuse.

But what happens next? Breaking the silence is only the first step. How does one navigate the journey to healing once the wounds are exposed?

Say It Out Loud: Revealing and Healing the Scars of Sexual Abuse provides proven strategies for healing.  More than seventy personal journal entries authenticate the strategies presented in the 55,000 word manuscript, making Say It Out Loud unparalleled in a market aimed at victims and their families, therapists, and educators.

I hold a Bachelors Degree in Special Education and a Masters Degree in Counseling. My professional credentials combined with personal experience in therapy, give me both objective and subjective perspectives of the therapeutic process, making me uniquely qualified to write this book.

 I write a Health and Wellness column for BLANK.com, online local news published by the BLANK Media Group. I’ve written for the BLANK and BLANK National Network’s online journal; blog on BLANK.com; and maintain a website: BLANK.com – Offering Hope to BLANK.

Dear Agent

Some things in life never turn out the way we want them to.

Agent Gina Russo can’t get past the heartbreak of her life. She flips when a yellow rose is delivered to her home three years later reminding her of what happened.

William Nicolas Mancuso, whom is presumed dead, vows to tangle with Russo whom he holds responsible for his younger brother’s life sentence and to free the unbearable guilt he lives with.

Agent Joey Zicara, is assigned to assist Russo and extremely attracted to her, but she drives him crazy with her stubbornness and lack of trust as they race to stop Mancuso.

Agent Russo is furious with Mancuso’s ridiculous game and how personal he made it.

Mancuso is ecstatic he’s ten steps ahead of her and causing chaos in her life.

Agent Zicara is determined to discover who Mancuso is and figure out what the hell Russo’s problem is as he tries to win her over.

THE FINAL CLUE is a 130,000 word debut crime novel, the first of a possible series. Filled with action, twists, and turns, combined with a touch of humor and leaves one wondering what the hell went wrong.

Dear Ms.__; 

Eight-year-old Jerusha and her family are among the Jews who survived the Babylonian Exile and returned to Judah. With the altar rebuilt in Jerusalem, the Jews gather to reinstitute the sacrifice. Unfortunately, Jerusha learns it is her pet lamb who will be the sacrifice for her family.

Jerusha is a historical children’s fiction book that will open a window into the history and culture of the Jewish nation for children ages 7 to 11 (read-aloud for 4 and older). When I read Etta Wilson’s blog entry about the lack of Christian children's literature involving children of other cultures, I realized my book could help fill that void.

I am a homeschool mom profoundly convinced about the power of high-quality children’s literature, and I came to write Jerusha’s story when my Community Bible Study class went through the year-long study Return to Jerusalem. It gave me an in-depth look at Jewish history and its inextricable ties to Christianity, which I wanted to convey to the 8- to11-year-olds I was leading through the children’s version of the study. I felt the urge one week to do something for the kids other than a plain lecture about the weekly Bible reading, and this story was the result. Also, my pastor, who lived in Israel for several years, has read it for cultural and historical accuracy.

For marketing, I believe the key will be readings at schools, libraries and bookstores; it started as a read-aloud, after all. As a plus for accomplishing that as well as radio and newspaper promotion, my community is extraordinarily supportive of local enterprise. This book could find a place on the booklists of literature-based homeschool curricula that cover the historical period of the Old Testament. I’m also active on the internet, which will help marketing efforts.

My short story “BLANK” was published in BLANK , edited by BLANK. Even more pertinently, I have been writing stories practically since I could read, though I am just now getting serious about submitting my work for publication. I would be glad to send the manuscript for Jerusha to you.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear XXX
> What would you do if you were a counter-terrorism agent, and you came
> face to face with the bomb-maker who killed your sister three years
> ago? You know he’s guilty, but right now, your life – and his – are
> threatened by a forest fire that has you both almost encircled. Do you
> do the legally right thing: arrest him and get the two of you to
> safety? Kill him on the spot? Or disable him and leave him to an almost
> certain fiery death?
> I am seeking representation for a 70,000 word terrorism thriller.
> Cameron Oakwood is an intelligence analyst in Melbourne Australia.
> Three years ago his sister and nephew visited the dentist two doors
> from the office of a politician, when an anti-immigration group set off
> a car bomb. The bomb maker has never been identified. No one has been
> convicted over the case. Cameron’s family blame him for not warning her
> to stay away from that building, because he knew the politician had
> received multiple death threats. Cameron has become brooding,
> disaffected with his workplace, is unable to accept his family’s
> rejection of him, and he is developing an addiction to booze and
> tranquilisers. His biting humor and intolerance of bureaucracy are
> making it difficult for those above him to tolerate him.
> Jodie Finch is an American FBI agent on an exchange program, working
> in Australia with Cameron in the lead-up to a major international
> sporting event – the “Pacific Games”. Jodie is attracted to some
> qualities in Cameron: his humor, and sense of honesty and ethics. At
> the same time she is disturbed by his ruminations about his family and
> his not-so-covert addiction problems. She wants to help him, but is
> afraid of becoming involved with a work colleague, especially when she
> cannot solve his personal problems.
> A Japanese religious cult with branches in Australia plans to attack
> the Games with a genetically engineered virus unless members of their
> group are freed from prison in Japan. As Cameron and Jodie track down
> the cult members in Australia, they make an unexpected discovery about
> the identity of the bomb-maker, and end up in a confrontation that may
> leave all of them – cops and terrorists - dead.
> I live in Melbourne Australia, where the book is set, but have
> attended the Southern California Writers Conference for several years.
> The manuscript has been through several professional evaluations, each
> resulting in major improvements, and has had a recent thorough copy
> edit. The last manuscript appraisal and copy edit was been done by XXX.
> If you are interested I would be happy to hear from you.
> Yours sincerely

THE LETTER:

Dear (agent),

The struggle between deities for the title of Supreme Being has taken a new twist. The creator gods resorted to use of a lesser technology—first shaped millions of years ago—and her present name is JEN.

 Jen—a young archeologist and her four friend’s—band together to defeat SETH, a bitter Egyptian god, to ensure the freedom of all human and alien races in the galaxy. Seth’s goals include, destroying any who opposes him, enslaving all habitable planets and taking over as the supreme deity. Her job is to think outside the box, rally the troops and defeat an extraterrestrial race under Seth’s control and a few depraved gods…Yikes!

I am pleased to submit my 119,000 word manuscript—MYSTERIOUS GIFT—a YA/ adult crossover, science fiction / fantasy, set in contemporary United States, Egypt and an alien galaxy. This is the first novel of my Darkside of the Medallion trilogy where gods teach mortals to fight their battles against usurpers.

People who enjoyed reading Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & the Olympian series and his new, Kane Chronicles will like this adventure. Along with a passion for Egyptian archeology, my credentials include a BA in History, participation in several archeological field digs and twenty years as a Naval Flight Officer. The above knowledge adds credibility to this fast-paced book. I understand the value of multi-platform book marketing.

I would be glad to send you my stand-alone manuscript. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

The Baby boomers are dying.  One by one, a revolutionary  generation, weaned on the wealth of America, will have to confront its own death.  Beautifully Absurd is a 100,000 word medical novel, revealing the complexities of the end of life for our new generation of senior citizens.

After a debilitating stroke, Paul Mathews, a divorced father and a defunct writer, awakes in an ICU, immobile, tethered to a ventilator and unable to communicate.

Paul's new world is one of beeping machines keeping him alive, hospital staff who attend him and a television as a constant companion he cannot turn off.  Yet, his level of isolation mirrors the last twenty year of his life, in which Paul chose solitude over intimacy.  HIs only living family are his ex-wife, Sarah,  and his son Jacob, and the last time he saw either one of them was two years ago at Jacob's wedding.  Paul desperately wants to see Sarah and Jacob again, but the only contact information the hospital has is a non-working number.  Since Paul has nobody to speak for him, he is left in a state of abdication to the medical system, where Paul’s left with recollections of his life and his struggle to find peace; a struggle that began long before his stroke but now takes on a different kind of urgency.  How did Paul get here?     Nurses, doctors, and an old neighbor help Paul to assimilate the rebellious young man he was with the dispirited and withdrawn patient he has become.  

While health care is a right, death is a fact.  The choices Paul made, or neglected to make, in life, leave him in limbo, neither dead nor truly living.  As for many Americans, it will be in the hospital that Paul must put together the disconnected pieces of his life.

I am an internist practicing medicine in BLANK for the last 10 years.   I graduated from BLANK Medical School, did my residency at BLANK and am currently an Assistant Clinical Professor of BLANK at BLANK. This is my first book.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

BLANK MD

THE LETTER:

I am seeking representation for my completed 48,000-word young adult novel; It’s Colder Than An Ice Monkey Out Here!

Snerly J., an army sergeant, travels to Alaska, a tour he is initially excited about until he journeys there and finds nothing but trouble, beginning with his flight there. Hardly settling into his assignment, he is given a mission along with a team of mechanics to retrieve a broken down vehicle left behind by an engineering outfit, during one its training missions. In lieu of that mission, he is given an unusually secret mission by a psychotic Commanding General to retrieve an item he lost while on a different training mission.

Snerly and his team run into all sorts of strange situations as they journey to northern Alaska. They get a real true feel of the Alaskan wilderness as they also encounter some wickedly strange creatures along the way. Snerly and his team are successful at accomplishing both missions however, when they return to base, Snerly finds this assignment is “Colder Than An Ice Monkey” when he confides in Master Sergeant Toughman, his boss, about the secret assignment he receives from General Johnson.

 Recently, I completed an extensive twelve-week course with Author BLANK whose guidance was invaluable in revising this work. I also earned a “Breaking into Print” certificate from BLANK Writer’s Group in 2009.

 
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

THE LETTER:

Dear (specific name of agent)

Jewel of Ramstone is a completed, 130,000 word, historical romance about a maiden without a past.

A woman awakens alone and wounded in a dense forest. Coming face to face with a huge brute, Galeron, she attacks him with a sword, only to learn he is the one who discovered her in the forest and watched over her. Inner fear warns not to trust this knight, but she finds herself drawn to him just the same. His kindness and concern wins her trust and she eventually confides that her recollection of her name or anything of her life before the morning she woke in the woodlands is lost. After removing the hood, which hides her long, auburn locks, Galeron dubs her 'Ruby of the forest'.

Galeron tends her wounds and in a weak moment, tends her with his passion as well. Her heart shatters when he confesses his binding marriage agreement to another. With nowhere to go, she agrees to ride with him to his home of Ramstone, only to be left behind when he leaves the next morning to collect the woman he is to marry.

Ruby is battling on two fronts: her love for Galeron and the disturbing glimpses into her past. She refuses to add to her misery by waiting for Galeron to pass through the gates with his betrothed. Ruby strikes out on her own in the nearby village, but each accomplishment toward a new life pulls her further away from a man she cannot have.

My publishing credits include a novella, BLANK, (under the pen name,), released December 2009 by BLANK Press, and an article, BLANKThe Buffalo News, April, 2008.

I have carefully narrowed my queries to a few agents whom I thought would best represent my novel. May I send Jewel of Ramstone for your consideration?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,
 
Who would’ve thought my mentally impaired brother would teach me independence and the puppy I adopted to save my marriage would save me instead.
 
Loveyoubye is a memoir that begins when my husband of twenty-five years disappears then returns, without explanation or apology.  More than once.  Sure, there's been trouble in the marriage before, that's where the puppy came in with her own set of problems, all of them medical.  Until now, she was working her magic.  Just as it seems nothing can go right, I’m faced with a crisis in my native South Africa where I must return to rescue my brother, source of a lifetime of guilt.  I make the journey.
 
My struggle to help my brother gives me the key to my past and my future.  I vow to live my life with two questions uppermost in mind: Is this making me happy?  Is this moving me forward?  I return to California resolved to change my life only to realize that it’s not that easy. With the help of my remarkable dog—who survives beyond all odds—and my newfound mantra, I summon the courage to move forward.
 
Recalling the intimacy of the memoir, Breakup: The End of a Love Story and the Swedish movie, Scenes From a Marriage and, in the literary style of Don’t Let’s Go to The Dogs Tonight, this story is about holding fast and letting go.
 
I'm a fourth generation white African who finally made it to America, country of my dreams where I now write about the wild old days of my childhood as well as the wild new days of my chosen life.  I’ve taken several writers workshops nationally, including one at the University of Iowa and a number of memoir workshops.  An excerpt from Loveyoubye appeared in the anthology,BLANK May of 2010.  In 2007, I took second place at the Maui Writer’s Conference and in 2002 I was awarded “Best Fiction” at the San Diego Writer’s Conference.   
A completed manuscript of Loveyoubye at 63,000 words is available upon request.  Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to hearing from you.

THE LETTER:

Re: Non-fiction Memoir Humor Book. Word count: 41,870

Dear

 In Lusty Wench and Stud Muffin, I am forced “out of the closet” at the age of sixty-seven (after a forty-year marriage) to learn about “real” sex. And it was the most humiliating thing that ever happened to me. But now I know who “Oh, God!” is, and it wasn’t my deceased husband. Prior to discovering “Oh God!” my life was without climax, and there was darkness upon my body. Then I heard a voice say, “Let there be life.”  There was life. And it was good, very, very good, all because of a Christmas gag gift-- an adult toy. Now, having the libido of a teenager, the soul of a master, and the body of a mattress, I have finally conquered my past sexual hang-ups. As a result, I am humorously sharing my personal life experiences on how I came to discover sexual freedom… via the Energizer Bunny.

In my thirty-three year writing career, I have been published in ten anthologies, and sold over 1600 manuscripts to newspapers and magazines. I am actively involved in my local and state writers' organization (which includes 12 other states) with over a 1,000 members and 60 writers' clubs. I have affiliations with radio stations, cable television, craft fairs, conferences, bookstores, newspapers, businesses, universities, and metaphysical groups. And, I have an address book of over six-hundred. I am also on Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, Yahoo, and Agent Query Connect.

Thank you for your valuable time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Appreciatively,

THE LETTER:

Dear ______:

In Shroud of Lies private investigator Rhonie Lude accepts a typical watch, report, and get paid job that changes abruptly when the person she’s tailing becomes a suspect in a murder. Days later Lude’s subject is found dead in her home while under police surveillance. The evidence at the scene and the coroner’s claim of suicide don’t match, the homicide detective refuses to investigate the crime, and when Lude pushes for answers, she encounters a personal attack by an unknown assailant.   

While working the case, Lude pursues her commitment to weekly visits with an elderly friend Evy who loves nothing more than hearing of Lude’s cases, but her interest in this murder quickly becomes an obsession. Lude is aware Evy’s mind is fading, yet is stunned when the woman’s irrational, senile ramblings become clues to the killer’s identity. Lude is sucked into a mud-hole of lies. The layered threads twist together in a deadly showdown between her and the killer, a cop with mob connections, but the eventual discovery of Evy’s true identity is far more chilling than learning the killer is only a whisper away.

Shroud of Lies is a fast-paced, a 75,000-word character-driven mystery set in 1962 Hollywood. My two previous novels were published by independent publisher, xxxxxx.BLANK ( 2008) garnered the 2009 bronze Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY). BLANK(2007) received honorable mention at the 2008 New York Book Festival. My credentials include a BA in journalism/public relations and experience in caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s which allowed me to witness its devastating mind altering affects.

 Enclosed are (whatever the agent requests). I’m prepared to forward the completed manuscript if this project matches your interest as well as your agency’s current needs. Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,  

THE LETTER:

Dear (agent)

Thanks for considering my 83,000 word, commercial adult novel, EVENINGS and MOURNINGS.  (I justify each submission with something personal or a reference as to why my mss. fits the agency’s web-based preferences)

Life includes mistakes…and sins. To federal judge, Jordan Carpenter, his wife’s abortion at age forty-two is neither. To Diane, agreeing to have it is “the indelible stain” on her life. Another pregnancy – supposedly impossible – follows in three months, producing their second son, a child with Down Syndrome. Seventeen years of marriage end, but not in the usual way.

Little about the Carpenters is usual. Jordan, a huge man, has amassed a fortune as a class-action trial lawyer, a career he loathes. He escapes to his image of respectability by writing enormous checks, not all of them legal. He also tomcats, with permission; women his wife refers to as his “evenings.” She continues to share their sterile mansion, but years of deepening hatred and isolated nurturing of their challenged son have spawned a creeping madness.

A hit-and-run accident drags the Carpenters’ defects into the light. Jordan’s amateurish cover-up launches a dizzying spiral that includes treachery by his current mistress, a bloody clash with the victim’s family, an incomprehensible murder-suicide, and the emergence of the only noble Carpenter.

Tales about moral dilemmas are timeless. Power, money, sex, loyalty, and abortion expose the main players in EVENINGS and MOURNINGS to choices and consequences throughout the story, with unpredictable - sometimes startling – outcomes.

I committed to full-time writing in 2004 after selling a successful New York financial services business. EVENINGS and MOURNINGS follows years of absorbing the writing craft in numerous workshops and critique groups. My stories have won (2007) and placed (2008) in the Florida First Coast Writers’ short fiction contests. Others have appeared in Stone’s Throw magazine (twice) and Deadpaper.

If you’d like to see more, I can send a synopsis, sample chapters, or the entire manuscript.

Regards,

Dear BLANK

Searching for the publication of Free-Roamers: Mourning Grove, a young adult novel in the anthropomorphic field.

Upon the Great Plains, during a time that only our ancient ancestors could know, there lives a species that thrives in seas of herds: bison, or Free-Roamers, as they call themselves.

The Ice Age has ended, and with the birth of today's modern bison, Prairie, a calf, is nestled in the heart of the plains in a valley known as the Sun Bowl. It is there where she grows up, but under an array of unnerving circumstances--the mysterious vanishings of several male calves, including her close friend Thicken--she leaves the safety of her homelands and travels out into the vastness of the Great Plains. Soon finds herself traveling the distant lands to fulfill a promise, and possibly a strange lore. Unbeknownst to her, Thicken and her father Blackmor, the leader of a famous bachelor-group, are working to settle things with the strangers who steal young bulls. A storm of unusual events is churning that could defy their species' future, and that has always intertwined Prairie with a rather eccentric family tree.

Free-Roamers: Mourning Grove is an anthropomorphic novel for young adults. It is fantasy intertwined with realism to give the ultimate illusion that you are actually “watching” realistic bison and animals. The time of the story lingers at the brink between two eras, around 5,000 years prior to today, during an era at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch when the Ice Age fauna have all but died away, and today's modern animals have basically entered into the world at the threshold of the Holocene Epoch. The book is approximately 290,000 words, although I would consider cutting it in half or thirds upon request.

 Now, about me? Ever since I can remember, I've loved writing. I started from writing "books" by drawing pictures and scribbling misspelled words on pieces of paper, and eventually moved on to typing stories on the computer. At 11 I wrote my first full-length book, and at 13 I wrote another, much larger novel. A few others have come to life at the tips of my fingers since then, including Mourning Grove, a novel I wrote when I was 18.

If your curiosity should strike, I've included an attached synopsis, as well as the first chapter and possible prologue.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Dear Mr. BLANK:

For high school students in rural eastern Washington, there are few things more important than sex, drugs and rock and roll.  Unless it’s football.  In this tale that’s Friday Night Lights meets The Outsiders, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary as the teens of Riverton High face off with opponents and their own inner demons.  As a high school teacher and coach for the last two decades, I feel qualified to tell the story.

I graduated from Eastern Oregon University with a B.A. in history.  I teach in the remote woods of eastern Washington while actively pursuing my writing career.  My poems and short stories have been published in magazines like BLANK, BLANK, and BLANK and my two latest anthologies are BLANK and BLANK, Volume 2.

4^th and Forever centers around small-town quarterback LANCE “TUFF” STRATTON.  A cocksure senior, TUFF is confident with the help of lineman BRAWNY BRIGGS and the guidance of football coach RAY THOMAS, his team will make the playoffs for the first time in school history.  But small towns harbor dark secrets.  Alcohol and bravado are a bad combination that leads to tragedy.  Can the team pull together despite the adversity?

What sets this novel apart from the crowd is that it is based on eight-man football instead of the standard eleven-man fare.  As small towns dry up economically across the nation, school populations dwindle and eight-man is becoming increasingly popular.  There are ZERO eight-man football novels focused on the massive junior high and high school markets.  My own players simply don’t read, but when they have to, they want the Three G’s: guts, girls and glory.  4^th and Forever has what they need.

 I have been an eight-man football coach for eight years and in the schools for twenty.  I see what the boys are lacking in reading material and what can turn them on.  I feel that with your help, 4th and Forever would get a very good reception across the country.

Thank you for your time and any consideration you give 4^th and Forever.  I can be reached via email at BLANK or through my website BLANK or by phone at BLANK.

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear agent:
                                                               
     I hope you will be interesting in reading more from my first novel entitled Time Rider, a 70k plus word ghost story/mystery.

     Some secrets refuse to stay buried even after 73 years. An unexpected trip to a forgotten family cemetery throws Maddison Webster on a trail of ghostly encounters. While searching for her paternal great grandmother's headstone Maddison and her mother are stunned when a chilly October wind gusting off the river suddenly sweeps up the leaves into a mini tornado and dumps them down the center of the cemetery forming a direct path to Sadie Stonegate's grave. Coincidence?  Maddison thinks not after an unsettling feeling washes over her while standing at another ancestor's grave, leaving her visibly shaken. When her mother notices Sadie's death marked as 1936 instead of 1933 it sets the wheels in motion as Maddison, a fifth grade teacher with a passion for local history, becomes entangled in a well kept family secret that threatens her grandfather's life. 

     More unusual events follow as Maddison learns about the Stonegates, a prominent family of West Carrington, Maine who made their fortune during the textile mill era. Questioning her grandfather Ernie gets her nowhere.  He isn't talking.  The subject becomes taboo as the family tip toes around him as he recovers from knee surgery in the family owned nursing home. Things heat up when an old nemesis enters the picture. Charlotte Stonegate, Ernie's 96 year old step mother, joins him at the home and pushes him to the brink of physical and emotional despair.  Ernie's health rapidly declines as he is forced to relive the horrors of his childhood as Maddison scrambles to unravel the past.  Enlisting the help of her husband Jake, a software engineer and video game enthusiast, Maddison searches for answers through Jake's TimeWare program, an interactive computer game that plays out possible scenarios she hopes will bring her closer to the truth.  Jake's lab soon takes on a life of its own and Maddison learns of a tragic event involving Sadie in the fall of 1936.  Is TimeWare playing out the truth or random possibilities?  Or, is someone other than Jake at the controls?  With the help of a long lost family member Maddison finds more than she bargained for and a connection to an unexpected source. Will her answers come in time to save her grandfather from spiraling into an even darker place?  Will Ernie finally unearth the truth in time to save himself? 

     The inspiration for this story came while researching my own family history.  I was about to take my first plunge into the National Novel Writing Month, an annual month long event where participants must write a 50k word novel in 30 days.  I needed a storyline and quickly drew from my ancestor's mysterious past, filling in the background as I went. Time Rider is the first novel resulting from this event.  The Stonegates is the second and is the prequel, taking the reader back to the 1930s where we learn the details of Sadie Stonegate's life and the Stonegates themselves.  I am a published writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.  Credits range from various print and online publications. Sample chapters can be furnished upon request.  Thank you for your time.  I look forward to hearing from you soon. 

Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear AGENT:

When Reggie, a former combat medic, comes within seconds of committing suicide, the last mental image to haunt him is that of Maggie, the love of his youth.  If only he had found her, he might have had a chance with living.

True Companion, 70K words, is Reggie’s memoir.  Surrounded by the trappings of success, big houses and fancy cars, he finds his will to live undermined by an indefinable guilt.  Twenty years before PTSD had a name, Reggie is stewing in it.  And having married a woman he doesn’t love only makes it worse.  Desperate to find happiness, he must find Maggie; he must try one more time.

The audience for True Companion is anyone who has ever Googled a lost love, and the thousands of veterans of our wars, including those now coming home from the Middle East.  I would be pleased to send you a copy of the manuscript if the attached sample interests you. Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to hearing from you.

I have studied creative writing under BLANK (recent U.S. Poet Laureate), BLANK, and taught creative writing with BLANK. My master’s thesis on BLANK was published in Ironwood, I have published poetry in small press publications, and was a writer/editor with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 27 years.

Sincerely,

Consider this scenario,(delete)

Ms. (insert agent’s name) :

 June 2011. The United States Supreme Court session draws to a close. The then-seventy-five-year-old Associate Justice Antonin Scalia abruptly announces his retirement. In the Halls of Congress, in the White House, in university law schools, in barrooms and at church socials, on the Nation’s radio and television talk shows from FOX to MSNBC – All Hell Breaks Loose.

The battle to replace the Court’s most conservative justice (maybe the most conservative justice in the entire history of the Court) by the Nation’s liberal President (maybe the most liberal president in the nation’s entire history) erupts. Imagine, if you can, the on-going and never-ending debate as the nomination and confirmation process continues perhaps even into the presidential election year of 2012.

Wouldn’t you love to have a book on the history of Supreme Court nominations – a book such Second Thoughts: Presidential Regrets with their Supreme Court Nominations – ready to hit the market place?

And presidential regrets there were – in abundance. For instance, Harry S Truman referred to one of his Supreme Court nominees as a “dumb son of a bitch. He’s about the dumbest man I ever run [sic] across….”

            President Eisenhower said his nomination of a candidate “was the biggest damn fool thing I ever did.”

President Theodore Roosevelt said one of his nominees had “less backbone than a banana.”

            Second Thoughts: Presidential Regrets with Their Supreme Court Nominations is the never-before-told story about questions American presidents surely pondered as they looked back on some of their Supreme Court nominees. From the time of President Washington’s appointment of the first Supreme Court in 1789 down to the present day, retrospective questions about the 161 official appointments abound. For instance, why wouldn’t a President regret nominating an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court who later spent time in an insane asylum? Who named a justice who was later arrested for murder? What presidential nominee went to debtors’ prison – twice? And which president had to regret nominating a man who, after the Senate confirmed him as a Supreme Court justice, was found to have been a lifetime member of the KKK? And what  is a president to think when one of his nominees is accused of having sexual relations right there in his Supreme Court chambers?

Second Thoughts - running to 307 pages and 79,542 fully-words fully documented – is my fifth book. One of them, BLANK, published by the University of BLANK Press, won the coveted Violet Crown Award presented by the Writers League of Texas for the best in non-fiction by a Texas writer in 2005. My most recent, BLANK, is now published by BLANK in BLANK, Louisiana.

The legal issues covered in this book have all been reviewed, verified, and corroborated by a highly respected former defense attorney; one whose courtroom credits include trying the case that ultimately led to Roe v. Wade. He has shepherded me across the legal shoals and with his legal expertise and my newspaper reporter background, the manuscript will easily stand the test of any peer review.

I’ve been graduated from BLANK University (BA-Communications) and BLANK University (MBA). My writing skills were developed during the 20 years I spent as a newspaper reporter-writer-editor (for The Philadelphia Inquirer) and as a writer-editor for the BLANK Company stable of trade journals. I am the creator, writer, and co-host of a weekly public radio program on BLANK University’s KAMU-FM station. I've been a guest lecturer at BLANK State University and at the University of BLANK and I teach several courses for the City of College Station’s Xtra-Ed program.

Second Thoughts is available for your perusal as a just-completed manuscript or, if you so desire, a formal Proposal is also ready. As a media-labeled “author and historian,” I send thanks for your consideration as I wait to hear back from you at your earliest convenience.

author's name

Dear__________:

This author mixes narrative non fiction & fiction.
Heads up to all: make sure you know in which genre you're writing.
Also, here's another example of credentials and writing not presenting congruency.... If she's making me wonder, chances are an agent will also wonder..and that's not a good thing.
Writing is rewriting.

THE LETTER:

Dear

When my mother passed away in April 2006, my world crumbled down around me. One by one, tragedies befell me until I too was dead. Sifting through those pieces of my broken life, I lost hope and I could barely breathe let alone muster the strength to live. However, I found the strength, in the words and advice my mother had given me long ago.

My mother had a saying that she lived by, "The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work." I thought of these words often as I struggled after my losses and with them came other words of comfort that she had showered me with as a child. She never knew when the advice was given, I would one day have to rely on those words as she lay dying and again as I dealt with her death.

My novel, "The Rainbow Won't Wait..." is a loving tribute to her advice. In this 25,681 memoir, you will find comfort, healing and one of the main reasons why I am alive and thriving today. It also recounts the heartache and day-to-day struggle of caring for a dying parent and how an obstinate daughter found the maturity to come to terms with her mother's illness and finally make peace with her in those final months.

As for me, I have been a feature writer and columnist for the past ten years for The BLANK Citizen. I am also a play critic for The BLANK Gazette as well as a freelance journalist for BLANK Studio with my articles appearing on BLANK.com and eBLANK. I am also the author of BLANK, a vampire novel which was published in 2004 and the short story BLANK Monster which was published in the anthology BLANK in 2005.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

THE LETTER

Dear __:                                                                                                                                  

Australian koalas do not belong in Istanbul, so when tourist Kate discovers one in a box, she knows it’s a smuggler’s prize.  On impulse she rescues the animal. Then she finds out the smuggler wants it back, while the enigmatic man chasing the smuggler wants something else altogether. 

This is the opening situation in the Translight Trilogy -  Light Thickens (82,000 words), Vaporous Night (45,000 words), and Encounter Darkness (52,000 words) – a three-part science fiction story that presents a beginning, a riotous rise in conflict, and a resolution.    

Light Thickens  establishes the conflict between grad student Kate Sanger, a skilled teller of tall tales, and the stranger Kurt Daron, a dangerous derelict with technology from the future.  Daron first appears in pursuit of the smuggler but, confused by Kate’s slight-of-hand, employs the threat of death to make her reveal the secrets of time travel. Kate thinks the only way to stay alive is to use her tale-telling skills to make Daron believe she knows those secrets. It’s a match fueled by deception. 

In Vaporous Night, Kate sends Daron on a wild goose chase to find a non-existent time machine. Her plan to use Daron’s absence as an opportunity to escape is foiled, however, when Daron insists on taking her along. They spend two days searching  a crowded amusement park before Daron discovers it’s all a hoax.  His humiliation and disappointment do not bode well for Kate.

In part three, Encounter Darkness , it’s payback time.  Daron’s scheme to humiliate Kate includes turning “the little witch” into one of the dispossessed, but Kate has resources he hasn’t allowed for, so she manages to turn the tables. While the escalating feud propels Kate’s aptitude for mischief to stunning new levels, it also pushes her into a moral darkness she may not escape. 

Would you like to take a look at the manuscripts? 

Also, the letter does not mention the title of the book-problem #2.
40,000 word manuscript is skimpy for both a memoir and/or novel-could be problem #3.
Last problem, what's this story about? We know the protagonist is angst riddled but why?

THE LETTER:

Dear ___

What if a brilliant young engineer, quiet, idealistic, fiercely
independent, but emotionally wounded, has to choose between conquering his
world or surrendering to a woman?

Carl was a rapscallion fresh out of college and a little too sharp. Vesta
was a country girl. No one who spoke with Carl for more than ten minutes
could merely "take him or leave him." With an IQ of 136, a subtle sense of
humor, and an SQ (Social Quotient) off the chart at the low end, he left
an impression.

He knew that true love has to take a chance, and he paid the price. The
story, set in the tumultuous early years of the computer revolution, opens
as Carl takes a long, life-changing walk. His walk begins a seven-year
odyssey of professional triumph, social misadventure, emotional healing,
and considerable soul-searching. Carl perseveres, only to find himself at
a juncture with no turning back, where he must face the moment of truth.

I know Carl's life because I lived it. The Computer Science jokes, the
poems, and most of the tears are mine. My previous publications include a
nonfiction book: BLANK, (BLANK Book Co., 2006),
five personal narratives in organization newsletters, and 13 technical
papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Thank you for considering this. I can send you my 40,000 word manuscript
in print and on a CDROM.

Sincerely yours,

name withheld

I'm hooked! Pitch it!

THE LETTER:

Dear _______:

Tom Sullivan is a man—okay, a seventh-grade boy—with a plan. Being the
shortest boy in his class is definitely not on, especially when the
class tough guy Pete Willowby slams him with the nickname Shorty and
just won’t let it go. Tom develops a list of the five things he must
do to grow taller ASAP. Green drinks, medieval torture racks—he’ll do
it all if it will make him taller and get Willowby off his case. It’s
the final humiliation when Willowby plasters Tom’s growth plan all
over the school. Tom snaps and hatches another plan—a venomous scheme
to take the bully down. Things get wildly out of control and more than
just the bully get hurt, leaving Tom with only one choice to reverse
his shocking transformation from nice to nasty—a face-to-face showdown
with Willowby.

In SHORTY, my completed 19,000-word middle-grade novel, Tom discovers
that it’s not your height, but who you are, that makes you tall.
SHORTY is a story about bullying, revenge, forgiveness and choosing
who you want to be.

I have been published in BLANK magazine and am an active
member of several writers’ groups as well as the SCBWI. I have an
educational background in nursing.

Thank you for your attention to my query. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

I love the voice so congratulations to the author for crafting a believable 16 year old protagonist voice. I do wonder, is there enough story here to fill a novel's worth?

THE LETTER:

Dear Agent,

Sixteen- year-old Trinity is pretty sure life sucks and then you die. First her father leaves to be with his pregnant girlfriend. Then her mother runs off with her newly discovered soul mate. When she's busted for underage drinking, she's sent to live with her Grandma Sarah in the one-horse town of Disappointment Cove.

An expert at self-pity, Trinity is positive no one's problems are as enormous as hers until she meets Logan. He's the new boy at school who has been horribly disfigured. He's rude, arrogant and hard to figure out. Trinity has no idea what caused his scars or his attitude. And from the rumors going around, she's not sure she wants to know.

When the two of them are paired-up on an after school project, Trinity sees a compassionate side to Logan and realizes he isn't the person everyone thinks he is.  

Complete at 72,000 words, LIGHT IN YOUR EYES is a Young Adult romance set in small-town USA.

I thank you for your consideration, and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Notice the tone of this letter; enough here to surmise that this protagonist has a voice we'd follow. Since this is romantic suspense, that's a good thing!

THE LETTER:

Dear _____________,

What if you’d spent your entire life doing exactly what was expected; then suddenly one day, you wake to find yourself a multi-millionaire plunged deeply into unexpected passion, intrigue and murder!

When Alex Baker inherits Great Aunt Ria’s vast fortune, she is thrown into a world of high-finance and unexplained ‘accidents.’ Along the way, Alex makes new friends and rekindles old acquaintances, but nothing prepares her for the roller-coaster ride her heart takes upon meeting the estate lawyer, sexy Kyle Patterson. Even though he reminds Alex of a man who collects women like lint on a cheap suit, she can’t stop thinking about his perfect smile and piercing blue eyes.

To complicate matters, Alex can’t explain away the eerie whiffs of perfume, rustling papers, and the assistance of an elderly lady. Is Aunt Ria watching over her from the grave? Or is it merely due to an overactive imagination?

My novel, BLOOD MONEY, contains 76,329 words and follows Alex Baker from Charleston, S.C. to Boston, MA and Houghton, ME where she comes face to face with a murderous plot to separate her from her money and the man she loves.

I am attaching the first ten pages and would love to send the entire manuscript for consideration; but whatever you decide, thank you for your time.

Sincerely

THE LETTER:

Dear M__  __________,
 
I am seeking representation for my completed 94,000-word suspense thriller, DEAD
AIR, in which a novice radio D.J. faces peculiar stalker whose secret vendetta
ignites a nuclear crisis.
 
In 1979, wisecracking rookie disc jockey Caleb Wright just may have what it
takes to leave Central Pennsylvania for big-city radio glory. But after a
late-night stalker assaults him on-air, the pacifist rookie learns his torment
is only beginning. Cops, coworkers, and the media ridicule Caleb's “publicity
stunt,” the FCC aims to silence him, and so does the stalker, who menaces him
into ruining his career or sparing the life of the boss who despises him. When
he learns the stalker’s vendetta, Caleb must decide to shoot to kill, or endure
radiation poisoning that threatens the east coast.
 
DEAD AIR explores the narcissistic and sophomoric broadcast industry, where a
nervous novice discovers the tarnished end to the golden age of radio. This WKRP
in Cincinnati meets Play Misty for Me will appeal to fans of Carl Hiassen and
Harlan Coben and rock and roll baby-boomers weaned on radio. Arbitron ratings
show 86% of adults listen to radio daily.

I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and built a lengthy copywriting,
sales, and management career in radio and television, starting amid the Three
Mile Island nuclear accident eight miles away. Today, I write and narrate
web-based training and present in-person sales coaching to global customers of
my Fortune 500 employer. Thank you for your consideration. I've enclosed a PDF
of the first three chapters and look forward to hearing from you soon.

 
Sincerely,

THE LETTER:

Dear Ms. ----------,

Who does a Catholic schoolgirl lean on when she stops believing in God? It’s 1971 and the social turmoil of the time fuels thirteen year-old Letty’s budding sexual desires and social conscience. Her Mexican mother tightens her hold fearing the decadence of American culture, but Letty yearns to blend in with her peers and live the life of an average American teenager. She struggles with her obligation to her family’s values and to herself as a young woman.

Letty and her friends discover a secluded and abandoned mansion not far from their school. Ripe with adolescent curiosity, the girls explore the grounds. The house is covered in vines and weathered from age, but Letty’s first visit creates an emotional bond. The house becomes the safe haven in which Letty learns to fuse her Latina heritage within her American life.

It is there that the girls share intimate conversations and ponder the issues of the day. As the year progresses, Letty heart is broken by her first crush, and the girls learn that the house is scheduled for demolition. Letty’s growing doubts of her religious faith and her friends' underlying racism emerge straining their friendship. As the girls mature they must face the realities of life beyond their sheltered existence.

A Very Fine House reawakens the memories of those who grew up in the 70s. Concerts by the bands of the time still play to sell-out crowds. I believe it would do well as a cross-over novel for both baby boomers and young adults. Latina fiction is also growing in demand as that population continues to permeate American society. Being a Latina who experienced the oppression of Catholic school during this turbulent time makes me well qualified to pen this novel.

I attended the Southern California Writers’ Conference in September, 2009, where I received encouragement to pursue publication. I had a professional editor, Mike Sirota, read the first fifty pages of my work for his criticisms and recommendations. My manuscript has also been read from start to finish by my critique group and various associates. It is complete at 70,000 words and available upon request.

I have had letters to the editors published, recently in the Los Angeles Times, although I have not had my works of fiction published.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies and a Master of Arts in Education. I am a high school history in California.

The first ten pages are included below. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your consideration.

Dear (name of agent);

We met a couple of weeks ago at the Southern California Writers’ Conference in Newport Beach. It was a pleasure to talk with you. Per your request, I am sending you a copy of the prologue and first chapter of my manuscript. THE HEART OF THE LOTUS is a work of literary fiction. The manuscript is complete at approximately 97,000 words and available upon request.

Fatima knows that, when the sun rises tomorrow, her enemies will come for her. On the eve of a trial in which she would be sentenced to death, she takes her only son into her arms. She tells him her story so that he might know the truth about his mother. She wants him to know, deep in his bones, who his mother is, even when her enemies accuse her of treason and sedition.

Fatima’s story begins when she travels with her merchant father from Persia to Hellas at the dawn of the clash between East and West. Upon their arrival in Corinth, her father is robbed and murdered and she is taken in as a slave. Trapped a foreign land, Fatima must find a way towards freedom, in the face of an enemy who would love nothing more than to keep her in her place. To survive this battle, she must learn to negotiate her own sense of identity in a culture vastly different from her own.

I have a doctorate in Political Science, and my dissertation focused on socialization, or how our cultures influence our worldviews and our actions. This manuscript was born of my experience as an American child growing up in an interracial, multi-cultural household with an Asian mother and South African father.

Thank you very kindly for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

(FYI-in video segment, I labeled this one QQC # 16 except it's QQC # 18!)

THE LETTER

Dear (Name of Agent),

SHIFTED is about Jessie Malone’s realization that her “perfect” marriage to her high school sweetheart has done nothing but quietly and subtly destroy her sense of purpose in life as well as her individuality. 

Even though Jessie is now aware of this, and knows that she has been a big part of allowing this to happen, she decides to ignore her feelings, and push forward to be the perfect wife.  Confusion sets in when Jessie unexpectedly finds her husband cheating on her.  

This event creates insanity for her and  pushes her to come out of her quiet little world.  At first she lashes out in extreme ways, but ultimately they allow her to question who she is with an open mind and a new freedom to experiment in life.  Sometimes loss opens a person up to a bigger and better life, and that is just what Jessie learns when she leaves her husband.  

SHIFTED is 64,000 words of Realistic Women’s Fiction.  Women that are currently reading authors such as Elin Hilderbrand and Emily Giffin will enjoy this novel.

Thank you in advance for considering SHIFTED.

Sincerely,

Quick Query Post-Critique thoughts.

The Body Business, a suspense novel query letter I like a lot. When that happens, I tend to continue thinking about the query long after its quick critique is videoed.

This letter provides a good example of what a query letter must do-foreshadow the story- in this case, a suspenseful novel. Notice how this author ratchets up tension in just a few sentences. This is what a good suspense must do and by delivering this in her query, she demonstrates her writing chops!

However, here’s what lingered for me: did this author miss an opportunity to ratchet up tension even more by weaving the boyfriend into her cast of characters early? We find out he’s in this ‘who dunnit’ only after he’s found dead, too.  

A missed opportunity, perhaps?

THE LETTER:

Samantha’s conniving she-devil of a rival at work, E.B. Odom, tries to sabotage her at every turn. Samantha’s boss, company founder Vincent De Theret, seems to be siding with E.B.

In frustration, Samantha contacts the FBI. The man the bureau sends is not what she expected. Good-looking, slightly nerdy, Carter Chapman is a cyber-espionage expert with a Rolls Royce and a ranch in the beautiful rolling hills of Central Texas. He’s also a man with a secret that motivates him to help Samantha find her friend. But they are too late. Her friend is already dead.

After Samantha’s boyfriend is killed in an explosion that was meant for her, she loses faith in the FBI. Now that she knows that the disappearances at work and the two deaths are related, she hatches her own plan to catch the culprits and risks everything, with terrifying results. 

Non fiction authors: If you expect an agent/traditional publisher to have interest, you must prove two things:

1. you are the expert to write this book
2. there’s enough content to fill one.

I suggest to this author that she consider a collection: stories from folks, also caretakers, who have walked this path. Such a book could be a primer, a guide book, a group help book….

As is, I don’t see a book, I see an article and /or a blog.

Remember, any world you create, you must also navigate your readers through it.  If your query letter isn’t able to accomplish this, what makes you think an agent/editor will trust that your manuscript will read differently?

The Letter

Dear Sir or Madam:

Please consider Pentacle, my young adult urban fantasy novel, set primarily in modern-day San Francisco. The completed manuscript is just under 88,000 words.

Nicola VanDrace despises everything, first and foremost herself, and second, everyone else. She is 13 and seriously considering suicide when she receives an invitation in the mail to attend a prestigious high school, Whitwelle Academy for the Education of Young Ladies of Stature, in San Rafael, California.

After laughing her head off at the school’s name, she decides on a whim to attend. Once there, she meets Jacqueline, a girl virtually her opposite, but somehow the only person she doesn’t feel the immediate need to punch.

The two girls begin an unlikely and very close friendship—perhaps too close. Soon, inexplicable things begin to happen to them. They are chased through the streets of San Francisco by a boy with a knife. Nicola has a book that won’t open, which one day begins transforming into a half-star. The Headmistress' wiener dog is stalking them.

What they don’t know is that they’re not from this world. They are elves, exchanged at birth for human children in order to protect them from the Great Demon, who was once a man, but is now possessed by thousands of malignant spirits. The Great Demon wants the Pentacle, an inter-worldly travel device of immense power– and Nicola and Jacqueline each have half. Nicola is also the spawn of the Great Demon, endowed with the genetic trait that will match her in power to her father, so that she must either kill what he has become, or be possessed herself, spelling doom for everything with a soul. The Great Demon is aware that one of the girls is its daughter, but does not know which changeling’s life it must end. Jacqueline and Nicola enter the struggle not knowing who they are or from where they come, or even for what they fight, but find that ‘kill or be killed’ is the final verdict. They have been fortunate not yet to have learned that the only thing worse than death is to be possessed.

Pentacle is my first novel and the first installment in this trilogy.  Writing for the second in the series is well underway. I attended the 2008 (X) Writer’s Conference, to which I had sent in an early draft of the novel’s prologue and first chapter, earning a full scholarship. I am prepared to send in the completed manuscript, should you desire to read it. Please note that I am querying multiple agents. Thank you for your time in reviewing this query, and I look forward to your response. 

Best regards,

[name omitted]

This author has no problem writing. The need to define this book is her challenge. I can’t ’see’ it on the page. I can only ‘read’ what she wants it to be about and that’s a problem.

The Letter

Boom and bust; boom and bust. Economists call it the business cycle and say that’s just the way things work. But what if they’re wrong? What if, as seems to be happening now, the booms in our capitalistic system are destined to get shorter and help fewer people each time around, while the busts grow progressively deeper, longer and bring more human misery with every cycle? What if the root problems of capitalism run so deep that no amount of monetary stimulus, jobs creation programs or changes in who runs the country can solve the problem? What do we do when all the ideas we know how to apply to bring balance back to our system no longer succeed?

As with every other approach that’s ever served us – be it feudalism, the horse and buggy or hunting woolly mammoths – when all the fixes have failed, it’s time for a change. None of those systems were inherently evil and they all worked well for a time. When the world changes though, we need to change with it…or die. As conscious, thinking beings we can either do so thoughtfully and voluntarily, or we can wait until life gets so awful we’re left with no choice.  Either way, though, change is coming. The only remaining question to answer is this: will we embrace our current challenges and thoughtfully redesign our future with planning and foresight, or will we allow millions – perhaps even billions – of honest, hardworking people to suffer (or even die) before we pick up the broken pieces of our shattered civilization and start again?

This book opens a dialogue around that very question. After sixteen years as a successful stockbroker with a major Wall Street firm, I quit the financial services business in late 2007 and dedicated myself to writing “Sacred Economics: Designing a World That Works for Everyone” because I realized our entire global economic system was destined to fail, and fail for good. While working as a broker I’d witnessed the stock market crashes of 1987 and 2000, and I’d been warning my clients about the pending collapse of the mortgage and housing market since 2005. Yet still our national economists, those ivory tower thinkers we tend to turn to for explanations, were assuring us things were clipping along just fine. What therefore became painfully clear to me was that it was going to take someone from deep inside the industry, someone who had experienced its strengths and weaknesses from the inside out, to find the courage to stand up and tell some hard truths about what capitalism really is and why it can’t take us any futher, as well as point out the price our planet is paying to try and sustain it.

This isn’t a book that will tell you how to survive the apocolypse, or how to do better than your friends and neighbors in the next economic crash. It’s bigger than that. Nor is its intention to instill fear, or to shame and blame those who’ve promoted capitalism in the past. This book’s intention is to warn everyone of the rising economic tsunami – the rumbles of which we are already sensing as the wave begins to build – that can only be avoided if we stand together and help those standing beside us. I promise you, it will challenge some of your deepest – perhaps even most cherished – beliefs about life and humankind. It has to, because before we can change our world we must first change our minds…one mind at a time.

Notice how he 'cranks the tension' using few words. This query is a draft or 2 away from pitching.

The Letter

Dear Agent,

I invite you to read my 128,000 word archaeology-mystery and fictional novel entitled The Ancient Prophecy.

Kirkus Review calls it “a head spinning adventure,” also adding that “The plot pulls the reader smoothly through the action and the scenes from Ancient Egypt have the feel of an authentic fable,” and raves that it is “an Egypt tale well worth reading.”

Four thousand years ago, the Ancient Egyptian god of the underworld is slaughtered… by his own brother. Attempting to take over the world, he is stopped by the rest of gods who entomb him in the layers of time and with him, his very sinister purpose, but not for long.

The story then shifts to modern days where a family of three Egyptologists, father, mother and daughter, are stranded in an ancient Egyptian tomb. The parents meet their demise by means of a curse, while the girl, Maya Montgomery, encounters a near-death experience when she falls into a dark pit during her escape.

At eight years of age, she is left to die inside the tomb until she is rescued by a family friend.  After being transported to the hospital, she is found carrying a single object in her hand that is believed to be an Ancient Egyptian artifact. Maya realizes that she has no recollection whatsoever of the recent mishaps that included the death of her parents or of the origin of the object she carries. She is diagnosed with amnesia and the secrets she once possessed are shrouded within her brain, forever.

Twelve years after the tragedy, she returns to Egypt along with an expedition in hopes to unearth her lost past, but she returns carrying the single object that the god of chaos and evil pursues. How will she stop him from acquiring her only inheritance when it is his key to world dominance?

I believe The Ancient Prophecy will appeal to fans of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling. Initially, because the subject of Ancient Egypt is one that stands unambiguous to mystery and adventure and almost everyone in the world is interested in this civilization.

I am currently a college student and an active member of the honor society Phi Theta Kappa. I have joined The Writer’s Garret Workshop over the past years while working, at the same time, on my second novel of a series of six. I’m also a fluent speaker of English and Arabic thus I can easily reach a greater audience. Over the past ten years of my life, the Ancient Egyptians have fascinated me to the extent that I learnt how to read and write ancient hieroglyphs. I believe that my novel is a facilitated way to gain knowledge of this great civilization and a great source of entertainment for both young adults and adults.

A complete manuscript is currently available for submission upon your request.

I’m truly looking forward to hearing from you.

[signature]

THE QUERY LETTER

Dear Ms. Miller,

Love-Laws of the Jungle is a compilation of authentic letters I spontaneously wrote to my clients in the middle of the night from our session that day, synthesizing my afterthoughts and insights. One of my clients was so inspired by my letter; she carried it in her purse for a year. The letters target a variety of relationship challenges prescribing revolutionary tactics and innovative tools, resulting in a collection of Love-Laws that I later created. The letters were edited for clarity and confidentiality.

Desperate times require desperate measures. Despite bestselling relationship books, the divorce rate is holding at 50%. Women still nag men and men go into their cave. Having been in private practice for over twenty years, I've detected the missing piece of the puzzle. The root of relationship problems today is the severance from our animal nature. In our earnest efforts to become gentile, we've over trained ourselves. In the name of love or peace, reason or restraint, we're stuck second-guessing ourselves. So we pretend. We lie to ourselves and we lie to our mate. Instead of dynamic, a relationship turns static. The result? I see "dead spouses walking."

Human nature is not our enemy. At the base of our design is the animal instinct to band together to survive. How? Both males and females bring their skills to the relationship table, balancing compassion and cooperation with assertiveness and sensibility. Cutting to the chase, I teach women and men how to get out of their heads and back into the genius of their natural instincts. Defying politically correct conventionality, in Love-Laws of the Jungle, I utilize human nature without apology, tackling an array of male-female issues via provocative proclamations and clever teasers. And it won't always be pretty. And it will cause a fuss. And it does work⎯quite easily and quite readily.

Love-Law of the Jungle #23: If your man's penis is in charge of him, sit down eye to eye with his penis and state your terms for a mutually rewarding deal.

"Tara, undress Rick. Sit down in front of him. Look his penis straight in the eye and bow in honor of King Kock. If you start laughing, compose yourself. A vital marriage requires pleasurable sex for two. Remember, the penis is its own entity. State your claim. Keep your eyes on his penis and start talking." ~Letter 7~

Love-Law of the Jungle #27: When women curtail shopping the way men have had to curtail sex, we'll be free of a double standard.

Love-Law of the Jungle #9: Love is like a meal. Feed a man too often, he'll sit back, put up his feet, then burp. Too much coddling will turn any man into a lethargic crabby fat cat.

Love-Law of the Jungle #1: Grace is being disappointed without punishing or resenting one another.

I have a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and I'm a Certified Relationship Coach. I was the Associate Clinical Director for Dr. David Viscott for five years. My work has been covered by ABC, CBS, BBC, E! News, Chicago Tribune, London Daily Mail, Der Speigal, Vogue, and more.

Given the self-help books you represent, I'd appreciate if I could send my proposal or manuscript for your perusal. Thank you for your time.

[Signature & contact info]

And another thing...

The phrase 'dead spouses walking' should be used in the marketing campaign/book proposal as well as here. It's imagery so fits the content. I'd suggest she consider it as a title but Love-Law of the Jungle suits this self- help book.

This letter needs work but has potential. In my humble, it’s biggest speed bump is disorganization followed by confusion re: author’s intention. Not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek or actually a book about achieving sexual harmony by pleasing your man. Would love reader comments on this one!

Sometimes, too much is just too much.

THE LETTER

Dear Sir or Madam,

The Rubin girls, a mother and her two daughters, each suffer the loss of a son. Each male child dies within a two-year period from different causes. This is their story of survival, healing and hope after such trauma, tragedy and loss.

One daughter tells the story of how a family turns victimization into victory of the spirit, each one in their own unique way. The mother dances her way to forgetting and slowly loses her memory, living to age 94. The eldest sister, an artist, has a mental breakdown, eliciting 14 electroconvulsive treatments (ECT) to change the chemistry of her brain and ward off suicide. She is finally prescribed with the proper medication to be able to live a full and adventurous artistic life. The younger sister, the author and a practicing psychotherapist, survives 15 years tending to her mother and then is diagnosed with cancer. She emerges with a new awareness of love and the heart’s desire to share her awareness, strength and hope with others.

The story depicts the relationships between the three women, their family’s dynamic and the interconnection between the mothers and their sons. It is a story of physical, emotional and spiritual breakdown, which is transformed through the process of insight, mindfulness and recovery. It’s a story of going to the depths of depression and illness then rising above it to the healing heights of acceptance by allowing “life on life’s terms” with grace.

I propose a book length true life story titled, “Swallowing Life’s Lessons: How to Digest the Indigestible.” I am available for travel and interviews.

I am submitting this manuscript for your consideration because of the many women writers you have represented and the nature of your interest and expertise in books on turning victimhood into triumph.

I am a holistic health practitioner working in (city) as a licensed Marriage Family Therapist/Nutritionist. I have advance training in grief and loss through the “Grief Recovery Institute” and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s “Externalization” process. I have studied trauma work with Peter Levine’s, “Somatic Experiencing,” a three year course in trauma resolution, methods and theory. I am a supervisor and trainer of pre-licensed interns on their  road to licensure. I have been licensed in (state)since 1989 and active in the recovery field since 1986. I have practiced mindfulness (Insight) meditation since 1975.

Sincerely,

[name omitted]

QUERY LETTER:

Dear Agent,

Attracting bad boys sounds romantic but when they’re demons, it’s just a good way to get killed. Sure, seventeen-year-old Aurora Lahey can psychically track a hellion’s location on earth but who would want to? It’s officially the crappiest superpower on the planet and she and the demons have been happy to ignore it…until now. Someone’s put a bounty on her head and now she’s running from a hellacious hit squad with fangs dripping to carve her carcass into confetti.

To survive she’s forced to turn to the mysterious Hex boys, six teenage hotties with supernatural fighting skills that prove they’re no mere mortals. Just one problem. They might be trying to assassinate her too. It could have something to do with the ancient demon hunting society they belong to that has its own ideas about Aurora’s future—or lack of one. And just when she thought the weird and wacky meter couldn’t crank any higher, Aurora discovers new abilities she can’t explain or control. 

Barreling down the rabbit hole of escalating danger and intrigue, Aurora unravels the twisted secret of her destiny—to save everyone she loves (not to mention the world) she’ll have to give up everything worth living for. But no biggie, because she needs the Hex Boys to pull this off, and chances are teaming up with these guys will kill her anyway.

I’m a student in the UCLA Writing Program and an active member of SCBWI. Because of my love and extensive reading of YA literature I also have a YA book review blog with over 700 followers at (includes URL).

Ribboned with romance and bursting with action, Demonic Attractions is a fast-paced 75,000 word YA urban fantasy. I’d be happy to send a partial or full manuscript upon request.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

[name omitted]

THE LETTER

24 April 2010 

Dear [agent / editor]: 

What constitutes love?  Is it possible to re-calibrate after a lifetime of accumulating baggage?   

My novel Amy’s Own (approx. 80,000 words) follows the provocative dynamics between 42-years-old Amy Harrington and her mother.   

Charlene, chronic partners with her gin on the rocks, bi-monthly dye job and mani-pedi, and deliciously uncensored commentary, has always been “Mother” not “Mom.”   

Amy’s childhood of bobbing and weaving like an alert boxer evolves into their pattern of verbal head-butting, chiseled and finely-tuned with age. Now, Amy must find a new path with her mother after her father unexpectedly dies, his affair is exposed and Amy’s discarded first love returns.   

But how can Amy deal with her own upended reality when Charlene’s setting her dead husband’s E-Z Boy and favorite beer cooler on fire in the driveway?  How is she going to make any headway when Charlene padlocks her house–from the inside?  

This is a story about how we can still feel bonds even with those who have neglected us.  It’s about finding one’s way, to meet in the middle or even take the extra step–and finally connect with those essential to one’s life. 

A complete manuscript of Amy’s Own is available upon request. 

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to hearing from you. 

Sincerely,

[name omitted]

Dear Agent,

I enjoyed your interview with (insert name) for the (whatever magazine or blog), and believe, from your comments, you will be interested in my 70,000+ word novel about prejudice, friendship, and courage―and how two unsettling chapters in American history, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, affect the fate of one family, two friends, and their community.

Fate Carries Its Own Clock takes place in Hadlee, Mississippi, a town no bigger than a flea turd on the map. It’s the 1980s, and racism lingers, but Jason Lee Rainey’s friendship with a black boy named Samson never wavers, despite the bullying they endure from others.

Jason Lee never knew his daddy, but he does know he marched for civil rights, and he’s been told the man died a hero while fighting in Vietnam. The boy worries he won’t ever measure up to that kind of person.

He lives with Mama, a woman of unwavering strength, and his Uncle Mooks, a man of simple wisdom due to a head injury. Mama holds the family together until her suppressed grief develops into a melancholy she can’t shake, and has to seek help at a clinic. Her absence coincides with Jason Lee’s discovery of his daddy’s hand written journal from the ‘65 Selma-to-Montgomery march. It enlightens him and Samson about the true power of the civil rights movement, and incites them to want more than a life in Hadlee―to become men who make a difference. It’s also when he finds out the real truth about his fathers death.

In Fate Carries Its Own Clock, Jason Lee learns the lessons of inequality; flourishes with the bond of friendship; finds the courage to stand up to his uncle for what he believes is right; endures the senseless death of his best friend; and is always true to himself. It’s 1984, the year he turns fifteen, and truly becomes his father’s son.

I wrote this novel as a work of literary fiction, in the vein of Sue Monk Kidd’s, THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES. It has been suggested it could also crossover into the YA category due to the age of my protagonist. I’ll leave that decision to the experts. 

I’ve been honing my writing skills for ten years now, mostly on short stories, until Fate insisted on becoming a novel. I just received word it is a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards, unpublished novel category. The winner will be announced in early June. I have been a two time finalist for Glimmer Train short story contests, took home Best Unpublished Short Story and a finalist honor at the San Diego Book Awards in past years, and won four Excellence In Writing awards from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. My first published story appeared in "Art Times."

I have included the first few pages below. If you would like to see more of Fate Carries Its Own Clock, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely.

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