My Query Letter
This is the letter I sent to my current literary agent to get representation!
Dear Naomi,
I am querying you after perusing your #MSWL and seeing you are on the lookout for morally complex characters. I hope my YA siren fantasy with a powerful female protagonist struggling to curb her murderous impulses and provide for her adopted family piques your interest.
With a smile she can bring any man to his knees, with a song she can guide him to his grave. To slake her siren bloodlust, seventeen-year-old Saoirse lives a double life; soldier by day, assassin for an unknown employer by night. When she’s assigned to Prince Hayes’s personal guard, she’s determined to hate him— after all, his father slaughtered the rest of her kind and left her the only siren in her kingdom.
When Saoirse kills a friend of Hayes for her employer, he launches an investigation into the mystery woman assassin and recruits Saoirse’s help. Forced to finally ask questions about her former victims, she realizes each target is part of her employer’s larger plot to kill the Royal family. Worse, he’s starting with Hayes, who seems less like his father with each passing day.
A pawn in someone else’s game, Saoirse has to decide what matters more: keeping her secrets from the Royal family she’s always despised, or protecting Hayes— the first man who doesn’t need a Siren Song to fall for her. SING ME TO SLEEP is a 95-thousand-word YA Fantasy with the dark seduction of The Shadows Between Us, and the siren protagonist struggling to hide her identity of A Song Below Water. With its central female protagonist teetering between her image as a hauntingly beautiful Siren and a disguised member of the army, this novel is reminiscent of the split-face movie poster of Disney’s Mulan.
As an African American author, this novel is #ownvoices. All of the characters are shades of Black and Brown.
I’m a native St. Louisan with the midwestern accent to prove it. I spend most of my time finding beautiful places to hike and enjoying the endless snow in Maine. I have no prior publishing experience, but I write constantly — both novels and jotting down orders at the restaurant where I wait tables.
This is just ONE example of a successful query letter. For more examples, check out Laura Samotin’s querying site here or Carissa Taylor’s querying blog here. They have curated tons of query letters across age categories and genres of agented/published authors.
