abracanabra | Query Letter - Suggestions Welcome

So, this is the rough draft for my query letter. Suggestions are absolutely 100% welcome! No previous knowledge of Vicesteed required.

Dear [Agent]:

Valinda only remembers life as a vicesteed, living in a theme park of depravity where her experiences are broadcast to a discerning audience. One of her scripted experiences goes wrong, leaving the other vicesteed severely injured. During the routine clinic visit afterwards, she overhears a plan to wipe out her memory--again. Using the augments she's been given to survive being a vicesteed, she breaks out and flees. She finds herself in an unfamiliar Victorian world where she must fight to find out who she was, who took away her memories, and what she really did in her role as a vicesteed.

Rosemary is a gently bred young lady with an unfeminine inclination to build clockwork automata and dangerous ties to an anti-homechulus rebel underground. Troubled by what she experienced during sensorium treatments for her unfeminine inclinations, she seems to be easy prey for a charismatic rebel leader who plans an explosion to weaken the monarchy.

Quincy is hired to investigate the sudden, mysterious illness and eventual death of the Prince Consort. The answer lies with these two very different women. To find it, he'll have to rise to investigate a conspiracy at the highest levels, and he'll have to sink deep into a dark underbelly where the poor are put in workhouses to fuel homechuli, the artificial intelligences that the society depends upon.

Vicesteed is a steampunk, locked-room murder mystery.

I have had short stories accepted at publications including Jim Baen's Universe, Art Times, Allegory, and Strange, Weird, and Wonderful Magazine. I also maintain Aswiebe's Market List, a resource for science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers.

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

Sincerely,

Abra Staffin-Wiebe
[contact info]

Threaded | Flat

My short stories have been accepted at....

I think it sounds more like "my writing rulezor" than "I am an awesome writer". Which is a fine distinction, but I like it better.

Also, I would totally read Vicesteed.

I have some advice that is very 'meta' rather than a critique of the specifics. I know they say to start right off telling about your story, but from my experience in working with my agent, the first questions she wants to know is how to categorize what she's reading. You might be better off to start out with:

I'm seeing representation for my recently urban fantasy novel (complete at X words) about .

The art of the one line pitch--before you so much as name your character--has helped me sell several books on spec. It's more important than I ever realized before, and so I offer it for your consideration.

That's my two cents, and worth about what you paid for it :P

Even after reading the horde of steampunk stories for the Clockwork Chaos anthology, just reading that query made me want to know more about the book.

I do have a hard time equating the first paragraph of your query with a locked-room murder mystery... which means it is either a negative equation for an agent or a postive hook depending on their partiuclar viewpoints. Probably just as well.

You never do mention wordcount in your query.

Your short story publications look like a standard lis tthere, I'd probably have used a colon. The and Strange, Weird, and Wonderful looks to be problemetic in listing that way.

Hmmm... I'd tone down the repetition of terms a little. You use vicesteed four times in the first paragraph (I know, I know, its the title, it probably comes up a lot.)

But, for example, you could try to replace "the other vicesteed" with another more general term, which would help reinforce what a vicesteed IS. Of course, I'm not sure what more general term is appropriate. Performer? The later references also feel like they are saying the word but missing the opportunity to tell me what the word means.

On a similar note, I feel like the repetition of "unfeminine" in the second paragraph misses a chance to explain something, or just bogs the sentence down. We know she is unfeminine already, either tell us something new or don't remind us of information we just learned last sentence.

This has come up before, but the illness and eventual death structure is just awkward. Maybe sacrifice accuracy for glibness? "hired to investigate the death of the Prince Consort after a sudden mysterious illness", for example, even though I suspect the Prince falls ill, Quincy is hired, then the Prince dies. Once they've read the manuscript, nobody will care if the pitch was perfectly accurate in plot detail.

Lastly, not only does it not contain a wordcount, you don't actually mention that its a prose novel. Perhaps that is implied by the nature of the submission, but you never know what kind of idiots these people have to weed out, so it can't hurt to tell them you aren't seeking representation for a screenplay or something.

Overall its probably fine, though.

--
gnfnrf

Have you considered sending this to Jodi Meadows (aka

jmeadows. She's very friendly and does a brilliant query letter review project.

Is discerning meant to imply rich/depraved (possibly like the prince)? I wonder if there might be a better word choice.

I agree about unfeminine inclinations repeating.

I feel like the paragraph starting with Vicesteed needs to be longer. It's breaking the flow of the letter. I'm also not sure about the comma after steampunk. I feel like there should either not be a comma after steampunk or there should also be one after locked-room.

A few thoughts:

Frist, you lost me on the frist two sentances. I admit that I'm not a Steampunk reader/follower, so I was pretty confused by the term "vicesteed". Is it a common Steampunk character type? If not, I'd include a sentence or phrase of what a vicesteed is right away.

Also, from the setup, I wouldn't have ever guessed you were building to a mystery, I would have guessed Thriller or Drama. Maybe you could say something like, "Professor Plum is dead and the golden dagger is missing. Now the race is on to catch the killer before he kills again," as an intro before you introduce the charaters?

And finally, Valinda's charater writeup as a whole doesn't grab me (once again, maybe if I knew what a vicesteed was...), could you start with Rosemary? Her story does set up/imply steampunk to me quite quickly.

Query Letter - Suggestions Welcome

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