The Infamous Query Letter

With NaNoWriMo behind me, tickling the back of my brain with it's eminent return in 323 days, I set off to work on my Query letter for HEADS WILL ROLL. Before NaNoWriMo, I was working on the query letter, but came closer to smashing my brains on the table and watching the pretty pink goo pool around my cheeks and drip to the floor, then coming up with something decent.

I return... So far, I've only had one urge to use my left eye socket as a pencil sharpener. Every website, book and contact has their own idea about how the stupid little foot-in-the-door is supposed to look. I am reminded of resume cover letters, which also gave me the urge to throw myself out the window.

(can you tell my feelings yet?)

Back to the point, I wrote. I rewrote. I scrapped and pulled at hair until I came up with something, finally. Then I sent it to friends who said I wrote a synopsis.

((commence the head smashing))

So I scrapped, tweaked and extracted, again. At least there was one good sentences to use in the query. I started thinking about the crappy unhelpful websites. Then my mind wondered to Janet Reid, who I follow on my Reeder.

She came to the Houston Writers Guild conference in October. After listening to one of the other agents, Pam van Hylckama Vlieg, talk about Janet in such high regard, I though maybe, just maybe Janet's standard is more of a guideline than the random blogs and self-help (full-of-crap) websites. If she is the great white shark swimming around in the minnow pond, as many agents have described, maybe other agents look to Janet for query standards.

Fingers crossed. I set out on a journey to searched out Janet Reid's query blog Query Shark.

As I sifted through the good, the bad and the ugly examples of query letters, I found myself laughing. Janet's tough "love" attitude reminds me so much of my family, especially my Aunt, I felt at home. And finally, I found decent references and wrote the damn query letter.

Now, it's floating in an imaginary envelope as it surfs the internet between HWG friends to make sure it looks okay.

I feel good about this one, but then I felt good about the last one...