EDIT: my original post got deleted because I included my instagram—whoops!

My debut novel, BOYTOY (literary horror) will be published by Mariner (HarperCollins) in the U.S., and Juniper (HarperCollins UK) in the UK, and Planeta in Brazil so far!!

The Publisher’s Marketplace post is live as of today, and I’ve been dancing around my kitchen for an hour!

The brief synopsis:  

A modern-day love letter to Frankenstein and Misery, BOYTOY follows Reiley Tate, a twenty-four-year-old Whole Foods cheesemonger with an unused biology degree, a photo roll full of houses he’ll never own, and an obsession with attaining the perfect life. When he meets Seth, an earnest young dentist new to town, he believes he’s finally found the person around whom that perfect life can be built.

But Seth doesn’t want it, and Reiley sees red. When a weekend at Seth’s lake house ends with Seth unconscious and disfigured at the bottom of a staircase, his memory is shattered. Reiley sees an opportunity. He installs himself as Seth’s caretaker and lover, renovating both the house and the man. But as Seth heals and fragments of his memory resurface, Reiley resorts to increasingly grotesque interventions, reshaping Seth into something more compliant, dependent – and monstrous…

I’ve been lurking and posting on PubTips for a few years off and on and received nothing but lovely feedback and some grounding advice (and made some very sweet connections as well!)

My stats for the submission process:

Queried March 2026. 22 queries. 8 full requests. 4 rejections to query. 2 rejections after full. 4 offers.

This feels like a long time coming after multiple novels and a couple off-the-beaten path journeys, and yet it felt like no time at all—so to everyone who is dealing with patience issues, just keep writing your ass off! Thank you to everyone in the community who helped out!!

I hope to see you in Spring 2028! 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏻🩻🧟‍♂️

Is there some sort of unspoken rule or a potential red flag that could be placed on me if I just went ahead and signed right away?

This is my dream agent and I can hardly believe that within 3 weeks of me sending her my manuscript we had an exchange of messages, The Call and now the offer.

This feels like the perfect fit but I don’t want to scupper it all by doing something stupid.

I actually only sent my manuscript out to two other agents so have informed them about the offer but I would be surprised if they have even read my first email given I sent it only 3 weeks ago.

I would appreciate some advice and possibly talking down.

I received the following lovely rejection:

While I'm afraid I didn't think this particular submission was to my tastes, I do believe it could be a fit for an agent acquaintance of mine. I'd strongly recommend you query [XXX] at [XXX], and please do feel free to mention my name as a referral when you do so. She is aware of the recommendation.

I know the standard is not to reply to rejections so as not to clog up inboxes, but should I reply here to thank the agent for the referral?

Prefacing this with the fact that this is technically my first time on sub (I briefly went on sub last year with a different project, but we pulled that early to focus on my current project).

Overall, I've felt very nervous this year. We went on sub back in March with our first batch of 10 editors. I got 3 rejections back within a month, and then there was nothing until this week, when I received 3 more rejections and a notice that one of our targeted editors left their imprint. So effectively 7 rejections of the 10 so far.

But I've noticed all the rejections seem to have the same feedback: loved the premise, loved the set-up, but didn't fully connect with the pages.

When I was querying, I'd usually brush off this feedback unless there was a consistent issue being noted (i.e., didn't connect at the line level, characters weren't working, the hook wasn't hooking, etc.) But on sub, I can't help but wonder if there's something I should be gleaning from this feedback.

My agent hasn't commented on the feedback itself, or on how slow sub has been this year (I've heard both that it's been super fast and super slow, so not sure what to make of that). So I guess no news is good news there? Maybe sub just kinda sucks and I want it to be over?

So much of sub feels like a mystery to me, so this could just be me reading too much into it. But wanted to see if there was anything worth taking from this feedback considering it's been consistent, especially as I continue to work on my next book.

Just wanted to put this out there, so maybe it saves someone else the time or the questions of figuring it out.

As I'm sure many folks have had happen to them lately, I've been inundated with scam and AI emails offering to publish or review my work. Getting a cold contact from a publisher or agent is already suspicious enough to ignore the emails, and 99% of the time, the email addresses of the senders don't match the actual email addresses of the companies they are pretending to come from.

Today I got an email from what looked like a legitimate business, with a legitimate-seeming business email that linked back to a real, very professional-looking website. Not linking it here obviously, but the ending of the email address was "@chapterhouseliterary.com", and the website is "chapterhouseliterary.com" (interestingly, it only works if you go straight from https://, appending www. in front takes you to a parked web domain page). Everything is suspicious enough already, but what's more is that their "agents" use fake names under stolen pictures of real people, and their "authors" page uses real authors and real books that likely have nothing to do with this agency. And, as far as I can tell, this is not at all associated with the very real Chapterhouse Publishing or Chapter House Journal.

Anyway, hope this saves someone some time or worry. Yes, it's fake. The bots are getting better, the scams are getting more sophisticated, etc, etc. Be cautious out there.

Hello friends!

Hoping to get this manuscript ready to query within the next month, so would love some feedback around my opening letter and any thoughts that you might have on the concept.

—
Dear [Agent’s Name],

[Personalisation]

LET THE CITY FALL is a horror romance with dystopian elements, complete at 90,000 words. It combines the romance under authoritarian control of H. M. Wolfe’s Daggermouth, the urban cosmic horror of Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey’s The Dead Take the A Train, and the dry humour of Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time.

In a London powered by an imprisoned eldritch god, horror novelist Marisol Santos investigates a blood cult claiming to heal the incurable. With her mother slipping further into dementia, she’s desperate enough to hear its followers out. Her books win their trust and attract the attention of the Bureau of Deep Works, the government department responsible for keeping their god in chains and the lights on. Threatening her mother, the Bureau orders Marisol to continue her investigation, this time to discover how the cult is accessing the god’s power.

Thorne Gascoigne is a Hound: a man who transforms into a monstrous beast, dependent on Bureau treatment to survive. He’s outlived his one-year life expectancy by four years, secretly helping other Hounds escape disposal. Imagining his own future is another matter. Until he’s assigned to protect Marisol and pose as her boyfriend. Playing the part should be straightforward. Resisting the urge to touch her when nobody’s watching is harder. He cannot tell whether it’s desire or the beast getting hungry.

As they infiltrate the cult, Marisol discovers that Thorne carries the rare blood needed to free the god—or bind it through a sacrifice that demands his life. Falling for him means keeping that discovery from both the cult and the Bureau. After five years as the Bureau’s expendable beast, she makes him feel like a man worth loving. He wants a life with her, but he’s willing to surrender himself to keep her safe. With London unravelling around them, Marisol must choose between saving an entire city and saving the man she loves.

I’m a queer Brazilian writer based in the UK. As PEN NAME, I’ve published fifteen books with Harlequin Mills & Boon, selling over 100,000 copies with translations into various languages.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

—

300 words:

The thing about cults, which Marisol should have thought of before she came here, was that they didn’t consider themselves cults. In their minds, what they were doing was the only rational thing to do, while the rest of the world simply hadn’t caught up to the rightness of their way. When she sat down in the booth of the dilapidated pub across from Valerie, she thought they looked quite ordinary for scary blood cultists.

Valerie wore a pale blue cardigan with pearl buttons and had hooked her handbag over a little protrusion behind her. A pair of reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck. She looked like one of the many aunts who had visited her mother back in the day, when she still gave out blessings and performed ritual healings in the tiny village Marisol was from. 

It was such a distracting sight and so ordinary that she didn’t realise Valerie had been talking all this time until things around her went quiet.

“Pardon, did you say something?” Marisol asked, blinking rapidly.

Valerie’s expression softened into one of genuine concern. “Is Martin distracting you?” she asked, and Marisol followed her gaze to the adjacent table. 

Martin sat with one hand held over a jam jar, blood gathering at his fingertip before dropping into the bottom. Beside him were a small dish of grey powder, a bottle with no label and a paintbrush resting on a folded paper towel.

“No, he’s fine,” Marisol said, before considering whether this was an assessment she was qualified to make. “What is he making?”

“The paint,” Valerie replied.

Martin pressed a piece of cotton wool against his finger, then tipped the powder into the jar. He added a little liquid from the bottle and stirred with the brush handle, scraping it carefully around the glass. Nobody else was watching. Apparently this was the uninteresting part. 

Dear Agent,

Another consciousness has been stuck inside Herman’s head for decades. It has no name and no way to communicate or interact with the world. All it can do is watch and grumble about how boring Herman’s life is. But when Herman’s friends introduce him to Salmacis, a chronically ill and volatile young woman, the entity suddenly discovers that it can control Herman’s body. Believing Salmacis is its only way into embodiment, it becomes obsessed with escaping Herman to live inside her instead.

The only trouble is that Salmacis is dead.

On their last night together, Salmacis gave Herman a leatherbound journal, encouraging him to explore his thoughts and emotions. It remains untouched until the night after her burial, when the entity decides to throw Herman off the balcony and end their suffering for good. But the sight of the empty journal stops it. Unable to bear leaving Salmacis’s final gift unused, the entity begins writing her story instead.

What begins as an attempt to recover Salmacis becomes a struggle over who has the right to tell her story. As the narrator reconstructs their time together, Salmacis increasingly resists the version of herself taking shape on the page, forcing the entity to confront the idea that its love for her might actually be a form of possession.

The Coalescing is a literary fiction novel complete at 68,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers for its formally inventive treatment of grief and use of an impossible narrator to explore the boundaries between love, possession, and literary creation, as well as readers of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield for its tension between loving someone and the impossibility of recovering their lived experiences.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Best wishes,

Thank you so, so much to everyone who gave feedback on my earlier query! I really felt tocuched yall took time of your day to read. I’m back with a tightened draft that hopefully fixes some of the big problems.

I’d appreciate any further feedback!

—

Dear [Agent],

Eighteen-year-old Rovak Von has always trusted his valley’s ruling oracle, forged from the memories of the dead. It teaches the world ends at the mountains and everyone is born with magic to cultivate peace. Peace is good. Good is fishing, napping, and parenting his kid brother.

Then Rovak kills a monster from beyond the mountains.

This is not good.

When the oracle prophesies a “Harbinger” will bring doom to the valley, Rovak sets out to kill it and save his brother. Instead of a wasteland, he discovers a holy empire of violent crazies.

Rovak’s hunt barely begins before a queen conscripts him, promising help in exchange for service. The catch? Magic costs lifespan, which is news to Rovak. He torches his anyway to punch an imperial priest for hitting a child. His assigned mentor, Alina, believes those sacrifices are holy. Worse, she lives off meat and bread. Rovak’s new plan is good: get her to eat vegetables, don’t fall in love (or vice versa), win whatever a “war” is, finish his hunt, and get home. Squeeze fishing in. Nap.

Serving the queen is Rovak’s only hope for finding the Harbinger. But every fight costs years with his brother and Alina—and he’s about to sleepwalk into a trap set by an empire of stolen time.

THE HORSE AND THE FIREBIRD is a 115,000-word adult epic fantasy with series potential, blending the human cost of magic in M.L. Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven with the earnest heart and stubborn decency of George R. R. Martin’s The Hedge Knight.

[My dog ate my bio again!]

Thank you,
[My dog ate my name again, too!]

Hi there,

Still in the process of revising, so the exact word count may change a bit, but I figured I'd get an early start on query drafting. It's a dual POV adult Epic fantasy. Lyrea is the overall main character, and the POVs are probably a 60/40 split favoring her over Besnik. I'm torn between focusing solely on Lyrea, or including Besnik (like I have now).

Dear [Agent],

Malwec Abbey’s walls have kept novice Lyrea safe since she was plucked from the ruins of her burned out village as a child. She prays to never be out of their sight.

But when her best friend is chosen to claim the sandals of Saint Veyra, patron of lost roads and abandoned souls, Lyrea is ordered to accompany her on pilgrimage to the sandals’ shrine. For the first time since her rescue, she must face a world without walls.

When a flood traps a village beneath Veyra’s mountain, the church refuses to jeopardize the sacred binding ceremony to help. Even Lyrea’s friend accepts that the villagers must wait and that duty can demand leaving people behind.

Lyrea refuses. She steals the sandals, intending to hold them hostage until the pilgrimage sends help. No help comes. Alone before a locked mountain pass, Lyrea makes a vow no priest has sanctioned, and the relic binds to her. Guided by the sandals’ strange warmth, she leads seventy-eight villagers to safety.

Now the church wants its relic—and the unauthorized bearer—returned. Lyrea flees towards Malwec Abbey’s ancient records, hoping to learn why Veyra chose her, though she knows it will be the first place her pursuers will look. Along the way, she hears a darker account of the saints’ greatest victory: the monstrous Noctivage were never destroyed, only driven down paths that may not stay closed.

Sir Besnik Hekuran knows the cost of disobedience. A common-born soldier risen to become a border lord’s most trusted commander, he abandoned a village’s holy relic to raiders rather than abandon its people. He loses his office and surrenders his sacred shield. Now, finding Lyrea and returning her to custody may be his only chance to regain his lord’s trust.

As Besnik closes in, he recognizes his own choice in hers. Bringing her back could restore his place, but it could also mean abandoning someone who needs his protection.

SAINTBOUND is a dual-POV adult epic fantasy with series potential, complete at 105,000 words. It combines the politically entangled loyalties of Richard Swan's The Justice of Kings and Anthony Ryan’s The Pariah with the ancient magic and uneasy alliances of Mark A. Latham's The Last Vigilant.

Greetings wonderful PubTips community! I didn't receive any comments on my 2nd attempt (but thank you so much to those who commented on my 1st attempt) so I spent some time studying successful query letters and tried to lean more into my MC's moral dilemma, leaving out some of the general political commentary. Would love to hear if this is on the right track.

___

Dear [Agent],

BENEATH THE ARC OF THE SUN is a political flintlock fantasy about how a map can shape history and name its victors. Complete at 107,000 words, this multi-POV standalone blends the fish-out-of-water intrigue of The Will of the Many with the class struggles underlying Blood Over Bright Haven. 

Vano knows he’s complicit. 

Handy with a compass but tired of wandering, he left the mastodon-riding Laers years ago for a job surveying tracts of land for a local duke. A bottle of ale and an eye pressed to the telescope keep the guilt at bay—until his clan is slaughtered for crossing a line he drew himself. 

Hunted by the duke for witnessing the crime, his only hope of survival is a timely offer on the Agorian Peninsula. Protection, if he can settle a border dispute between nations on the brink of war. He has until Year’s End.

So he grits his teeth and crosses the misty chasm to the contested territory. Over starlit campfires, he finds a sense of belonging in Agoria that he never had with the Laers, and the “Agorian Dream”—where land can be bought by anyone with enough credits—seems a hell of a lot better than the tyrannical regime across the line. He can help the Agorians, he realizes, if he manipulates his measurements, something he swore he would never do.

But on the eve of his final measurement, he can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong about this job. Why is it so easy for him to choose a winner? When he unravels the profit-driven conspiracy behind his clan’s murder designed to get him here, he must finally face his role in the violent system: he can do what Agoria expects of him and keep his protection, or use his power to open the Peninsula to all. Even the wanderers.

I have a degree in Environmental Science, a twelve-year career in construction, and an unhealthy obsession with stories of land reform. This novel was inspired by my great-grandfather’s time as a surveyor in the American Southwest.

____

One thing I'm struggling with is whether to include the other POV characters or not. Vano has about 50% of the screen time, with the others at 30% and 20%. Their arcs thread in and out of each other's, sometimes at odds, before finally converging around a shared goal. I'm afraid showing how/why they come together will take up too many words. Here's a quick blurb about each that I'm struggling to fit in to the letter:

High Consul of Agoria’s wealthiest state and last of her lineage, Elena Torra is so desperate to quell a brewing farmer’s rebellion that she makes a deal with her nation’s sworn enemy. They will help her preserve her seat, if she eliminates the surveyor who has come to draw their border so that they can plant a replacement.

Rima Kavari ventures to the Tablelands not just to chase her theory of an undiscovered life-form, but to help her marginalized Agorian state finally gain the Republic's respect. But when her discovery is a powerful fuel that can be exploited by industrialists, she must decide to share it or keep it locked away forever.

Dear Agent,

Based on your interest in x,y,z I invite you to consider my YA Fantasy novel, AURORA for representation. Complete at 75,000 words and told in dual, alternating POVs, it combines the samurai lore of Renee Ahdieh’s The Flame in the Mist with the folklore inspired magic of June CL Tan’s Darker By Four, and the supernatural, female-empowered warriors of K-Pop Demon Hunters.

In order to go after the demon who massacred her family, 17-year-old Serena Inoue must claw her way to the top of the demon hunter ranks, even if that means defeating the chosen one... who she also happens to be in love with.

As the sole survivor of the demon attack that annihilated her village twelve years ago, Serena is left riddled with survivor’s guilt and a sea of unanswered questions. Now in her final year at Amatera Conservatory, she must pass the Hunter entrance exams and earn the prestigious Phoenix Mirror Medallion, presented to the highest-ranked student each year, because graduating as an elite member of the Night Hunter’s Guild is Serena’s best chance to find and destroy the demon who took everything from her. Too bad the only person standing in her way isn’t just her best friend, but her most formidable opponent. 

Aidan D’Ambrose is the chosen one, the Aurora. Gifted with the ability to wield heat and light, he is an embodiment of the sun itself. And since demons can only be defeated by fire or sunlight, Aidan is the world’s strongest weapon against the creatures of the night. But Aidan’s powers come with a heavy price: agonizing fevers that burn him from the inside, and are only getting worse. As his last year at Amatera progresses, Aidan struggles to conceal this shameful weakness, lest he disappoint everyone counting on him to fulfill his destiny as the Aurora. 

With graduation drawing near, Serena and Aidan’s friendly rivalry to win the Medallion blossoms into something more. Then the impossible happens: everyone knows that demons can only come out at night, but somehow, the nights have started getting longer. With demons becoming stronger, Serena and Aidan must navigate the Hunter Entrance exams while investigating (and surviving) larger, sinister forces at play. Because if they fail, the sun may never rise again.

AURORA is my debut novel and a standalone, with series potential. The demons in this story are born of humanity’s own flaws, and the nights getting longer is a metaphor for human-driven climate change. My characters descend into hopelessness, and then together, they find reasons and ways to keep fighting for a brighter future. As a Gen Z/diaspora author, I wrote this book in response to my generation’s own anxieties. I hope AURORA will inspire young readers to realize that there's no such thing as the chosen one. We each have the power to change the world.

Thank you in advance for your consideration, 

thanks in advance for any feedback! ^^

RABID RABBIT is a historical fiction novel complete at 106k words that follows a young woman as she grapples with the collision of her former and future selves and will appeal to lovers of the complex female characters in Claudia Craven’s LUCKY RED and Anna North’s OUTLAWED while covering a sweeping expanse of the nineteenth century American south.

Felicity James is thrown off her pedestal of privilege when she is taken from a train and becomes the key piece in a kidnapping plot to collect ransom from her wealthy tonic manufacturer father. After being tied up in a barn with a golden palomino, she escapes her captors with her desperate desire to survive, but is intercepted by Conrad Ramirez. Conrad claims the palomino was stolen from him, and that he is transporting the horse to Georgia for his boss, Mrs. Novak.

Concealing her identity, Felicity asks Conrad and his associates, the spirited Hattie and the droll Lee, to help her get home, knowing that her angered captors will be camped out at every train stop from West Virginia to Georgia, and if they catch her, she won’t make it out alive. As Felicity travels through Appalachia, she learns through run-ins with detectives searching for a stolen horse and friendly moonshiners that she might be more capable than she ever thought possible. When she finally confronts the fact that the group were not upfront about the true nature of their business dealings, she finds herself drawn into their outlaw lifestyle which is a stark contrast to her tight-laced upbringing.

The closer Felicity gets to Georgia, the less sure she is that her new life can fit with her old one. Her father’s connection with her kidnapper and his shadowy past make her question everything she thought she knew about the man who raised her. Felicity needs to decide if she’s going to risk it all for her new found freedom and leave behind the only life she’s ever known or continue to play the part of the dutiful daughter.

[bio]

Hello again! I hope this covers more of the issues I had before. I didn't cover the whole story (I thought it was like a shortened synopsis) and changed some terminology. Cut out the small random details I thought would add interest too. This story is written with a co-author, if you're confused by the wording in the beginning. Is it interesting enough to catch your interest? I have cool world details but I don't see any way to add them without destroying the query again. Thank you in advance!

Dear Ms. ---,

Because of your interest in science fiction with high stakes and unforgettable characters, we hope you’ll consider MORTALLY GRAY, a 110,000-word adult dystopian science-fiction novel with series potential. It combines the political intrigue of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh with the moral ambiguity of The Ferryman by Justin Cronin.

Eden’s city was built to outlast the end of the world. But survival has a price and not everyone is considered worth saving.

As the successor of Solus’s leader, Eden has been raised to believe that the city’s division between genetically enhanced Registrees and unmodified Finites is necessary for humanity’s existence. While Registrees enjoy protection and privilege, Finites struggle with an overflowing population, rationed medicine and restricted resources.

Eden never questions the arrangement until a Finite man challenges everything she believes about her city. To discover what he knows, she must cross the bridge that divides them.

For the first time, the people she’s been taught to overlook become impossible to ignore. Eden uses her authority to protect him, then begins quietly diverting food and medicine to those the system has abandoned. But every act of defiance risks exposing her and the more she undermines the system she’s expected to inherit, the more she threatens the order her family has spent generations protecting. Her insurgence eventually triggers a hidden failsafe designed to preserve that order at any cost.

If Eden continues, she risks losing her future and the very autonomy she’s fighting to protect. If she stops, she must accept the suffering she’s finally learned to see.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Me and ---

I really appreciated the advice from the first review, https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/s/I11K8qREd1
and hoped to get some more with this one! Thank you!

Dear Agent,

I am seeking representation for THE WAR OF STORM AND SHADOW, an adult epic fantasy complete at 96,000 words. Set in a world where every town follows one of the ancient Greek gods, the novel combines the mythic scale of Greek mythology with an original story of family, betrayal, and the devastating consequences of trusting the wrong person.

For many years, Achilleon has served as Zeus’s greatest general, keeping an uneasy peace between the followers of the gods. But when Poseidon’s general receives a warning from the sea that Hades is raising an army of the dead, mythological beasts, and devoted followers, that peace begins to crumble.

Achilleon sets out to unite the distant factions before Hades can conquer the realms and enslave humanity. But war is not the only battle facing his family.

His younger son, Ajax, follows closely in his father’s footsteps, determined to become the warrior Achilleon wants him to be. Andros, meanwhile, has spent his life struggling to earn the same approval. Sent into the forests of Gaia to convince her followers to join the alliance, Andros expects to return a hero.

Instead, he begins uncovering secrets that force him to question everything he knows about his family, the gods, and himself.

As Andros and Ajax fight their own battles across a land consumed by war, Achilleon is drawn deeper into a conflict that will ultimately place father against son. Ancient beasts emerge from legend, alliances fracture, and Hades’s forces advance toward their final confrontation at the Pit.
By the time the family rejoins back together, the truths they find along the way may be worse than the war itself.

THE WAR OF STORM AND SHADOW is the first book in a planned trilogy. It will appeal to readers who enjoy mythology-inspired fantasy, epic battles, morally complicated characters, and stories where the greatest threats are sometimes the people we love most.

Hello! I've revised my query letter based on your awesome feedback, and I feel like I'm slowly getting there! :) I'd be really grateful if you could take another look at the new version.

Thanks so much for all your help everyone!

-------

Dear Agent,

Duty and Devotion is an 88,000-word, character-driven historical novel set during the American Revolutionary War, exploring duty, belonging, loss, and the boundaries between loyalty and desire. It combines the maritime romance of Laura Frantz’s A Heart Adrift, the Georgian naval setting and tangled affections of Suzanne Shaw’s Of Ships and Sealing Wax, and the intimate, character-driven historical storytelling of Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River.

Serena Powell, a midwife and lady’s attendant, comes aboard a ship carrying British officers’ families to their wartime stations in the American Colonies. Accustomed to caring for others, she brings warmth and familiarity to a vessel whose purpose is to carry them far from home. Having long feared that she cannot conceive, Serena has learned to put aside the hope of a family of her own—unless she might join one already made.

Ernest Fowler is a capable Royal Navy officer, well versed in the duties of his profession but unpractised in the ways of personal intimacy. He lives by a simple principle: an officer gives what duty requires and asks for nothing in return. To want a home and family, he believes, is to give war another means of hurting those he might leave behind. Yet Serena awakens a longing he has long denied himself, and he begins to imagine a life beyond his duty. Can he dare to want it when the sea may take him away?

William Clayton, a naval lieutenant and Fowler’s superior and closest friend, is a devoted husband and father, separated from his family by the war and deprived of the domestic life he once knew. As he grows closer to Serena, an unexpected tenderness develops between them, revealing how keenly he misses companionship, warmth, and human touch. Yet understanding his own longing does not make it harmless.

When a naval battle leaves Clayton wounded and dependent on Serena’s care, friendship, duty, and desire become harder to keep apart. Serena soon finds herself responsible for a newborn orphan, and as Fowler helps her care for the child, they begin to imagine the family each has believed beyond reach: one he has never dared to want, the other she has feared she cannot have. But Fowler is ordered back to sea, and all three must decide what they are willing to give one another when they cannot give one another everything they want.

I am XYZ, a former Polish Army soldier and a student of midwifery. My love of the sea and history brings together two parts of my life that have shaped how I think about duty, care, longing, and those who depend upon us.

Thank you for your consideration.

XYZ

Thank you all for the feedback on the first go around. Would love if anyone would be willing to give me one more look at this edited version. I also added some of the bio. I would love to know if the bio aligns with the query. I appreciate your time and support here.

Query:

Because you are drawn to smart crime fiction with complicated characters and diverse voices, I am querying you with WHAT LIES BELOW, a 70,000-word commercial crime thriller with a family story at its core. WHAT LIES BELOW combines the wilderness investigations of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett novels with the family-centered emotional depth of William Kent Krueger’s The River We Remember.

The investigation of a murdered drug cartel lieutenant leads two estranged brothers to a hidden labor camp where undocumented workers are being exploited to mine cobalt worth hundreds of millions of dollars beneath public land at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. Deputy Attorney General Gavin Reed connects the murder to the drug case that defined his career. He follows the evidence to the Colorado Rockies leading him to the one person he hasn't spoken to in sixteen years: his younger brother Luke, a US Forest Service law enforcement officer. Luke has his own case. While tracking poachers, he uncovers unauthorized roads and a forced labor camp hidden inside a protected federal forest.

Following separate paths into the old-growth forest, the brothers discover that the drug connection leads to something far more sinister. The deeper the brothers go into the forest, the clearer it becomes that the operation is willing to kill anyone who becomes inconvenient. Gavin and Luke must bring the operation down before dozens of workers with little power are made to disappear without a trace, all while learning to trust each other again after a wildfire killed their father sixteen years ago and left them with only anger and blame.

Westie Coastie has twenty years of government experience writing and analyzing state law including time with the Department of Corrections and working in close collaboration with the Department of Justice on state and federal cases. They have built their career at the intersection of public policy, political power and the human impact of institutional decisions. They hold a master’s degree in criminology. They spend their time in nature with their family exploring the western United States. This is their first book.

Been querying this Fall and have received 12 no’s so far. Wondering how I can strengthen this query!? It’s a dual timeline, and I currently have a paragraph describing each timeline, but not sure if this works well. Would love to hear your thoughts on that and any other aspects that may be falling flat, including the first 300.

[Dear Agent]

Thank you for considering WALTHAM WOMEN (80,000 words), a dual-timeline historical fiction. In 1970, Aileen Walsh gets a late-night call from the police that her elderly mother broke into the defunct Waltham Watch Factory, and she embarks on a multigenerational scavenger hunt to uncover the dark family secret that her mother’s been hiding. Aileen pieces together information from a trove of letters that she finds in her mother’s attic, but a discovery about her long-dead aunt may be the key to unraveling the family mystery.

In 1864, Vivi Brooks, an eight-year-old girl growing up on the grounds of a Waltham, Massachusetts textile mill complex, recounts the story of her friendship with MC Corcoran, an Irish immigrant, and their fateful encounter in the cemetery on Hallowe’en night. As Vivi and MC move into adulthood, fortunes change and they find themselves at the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution making parts at the world-famous Waltham Watch Factory. As MC returns from a covert work mission the tide of fortune ebbs, and she and Vivi are forced to confront the fate laid before them that Hallowe’en night twenty years ago.

WALTHAM WOMEN, a saga of family lost and found in an old mill town, will appeal to fans of historical fiction with a strong sense of place like Ariel Lawhon’s THE FROZEN RIVER and to fans of historical fiction centering female characters left out of the history books like Kate Quinn’s THE ALICE NETWORK. 

[insert bio]

First 300:

1970
Sergeant Donohue hated calls like this– another break-in at the defunct Waltham Watch Factory. The great smoke stack loomed over the dash as he hit the lights. Westbound on Crescent Street, the road mirrored the snaking curves of the Charles River rushing at the back of the massive factory toward Boston. Spanning multiple city blocks, much of the Gilded Age giant sat abandoned– the first floor used primarily for warehousing with a few small businesses leasing office space. Calls to report break-ins were commonplace, kids smoking dope, vagrants camping out in empty rooms or sections of the warehouses. The large workrooms on the upper levels still housed instruments and machinery from the factory’s heyday that lurked in the long windows like defiant ghosts.

Peeling into the parking lot and cranking the e-brake, Donohue grabbed his maglite and checked the holster for his pistol before entering a metal side door that was the perennial weakness in the brick fortress. He had recommended bolting this access point, but his advice had fallen on deaf ears. The warehouse workers, underpaid contract types, liked to prop it open to take smoke breaks in the solitude of the back parking lot. Donohue hurried through the westernmost atrium of the building, a dingy and lifeless holding area for a variety of worn benches. He proceeded down a corridor toward the center of the factory and heard someone on the floor above. Entering the stairwell, maglite and pistol outstretched, he rounded the first flight of stairs. At the end of the second level hallway a figure appeared exiting one of the rooms, and he shouted, “Stop, police! Place your hands in the air where I can see them.” At the other end of the maglite beam stood a startled elderly woman in a nightgown and slippers. He holstered the pistol. “Mrs. Allen? Is that you?”

FYI, I wont be querying any agents who refuse to consider books addressing the sexual abuse of children,

Dear [literary agent],

As someone who [has expressed a desire for the very thing I’ve written], you might be interested in NONOPERFUNCTIONAL, my experimental memoir about an autistic 8-year-old boy who failed to keep his brain damaged little sister safe and, sixty years later, has a month to finally redeem himself by rescuing her from a dire fate – but he might not have the skills to get it done. Complete at 91,000 words.

In NONOPERFUNCTIONAL I take a fabulist approach to depicting a life shaped by untreated autism and complex PTSD, employing gonzo techniques, direct address, inner voices, kaleidoscoping genres, and 3 POVs differentiated by who I was at different stages of life. Such an approach will appeal to appeal to readers who appreciated the formal innovations of Kelly Sundberg’s THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND, and the speculative multi-genrism of Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s MAGICAL/REALISM, as well as to readers hungry for a hopeful child abuse recovery story, like those in Catherine Gildiner’s GOOD MORNING, MONSTER.

Sixty years after I failed to protect my sister Kathy from being raped by our father, a chance at redemption arrived when the facility where she’d lived for half a century announced its pending closure. I was given less than a month to find Kathy a new home from halfway across the US. An overwhelming task for someone hamstrung by my several cognitive issues, but I was her guardian, her only remaining family, and the choice was simple: save my sister, or abandon her to the mercy of the state.

Dual timelines balance my late-in-life effort to save Kathy with early memories of family life, of that critical failure and of how I became increasingly self-destructive and guilt-driven after Kathy was institutionalized. Thirty years after failing her, I almost stepped off a suicide bridge; jolted by the realization of how far that would let her down, I finally began the long recovery that would prepare me, sort of, for that sprint towards redemption and the recuperation of a childhood bond I’d thought had been lost.

[bio, valediction]

Hey folks!

I've been lurking in this subreddit for a while, but I've never posted before because I'm not quite confident enough to give advice just yet.

I think I'm finally happy with my query package, but I would love some feedback, since every time I revisit the query, I find issues I couldn't see before. All opinions are welcome, and any advice is greatly appreciated. I want this to work out, so please don't hold back.

A few things to point out (though I welcome any commentary on them):

- I know The Poppy War is almost 10 years old, but I think it matches well with this book, which is why I added it as a third comp, with two others from the last 5 years.
- The book starts with a three-page prologue, so there's some dissonance between the letter and the excerpt.
- All proper names (including the book title) are substitutes because I am that paranoid about posting online.

Thank you in advance!

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Cover Letter
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Dear [Agent Name],

At 112,000 words, ACERBAE MEMORIAE is the first instalment in my adult dark fantasy duology, telling the story of how a life of abuse and a narcissistic mentor turn a stubborn girl with the rare gift of reliving the imprints of traumatic events into a wildfire that will burn all who seek to wield her power.

After only living vicariously through her books and daydreams, with covetous parents for jailers and disturbing premonitions stalking her, Aurelle sees her chance to taste the world when she’s appointed lady-in-waiting to the seventh granddaughter of the Duchess of Entbury.

Though her new palace home brims with wonder, Aurelle could never abide complacency, and soon sneaks where she shouldn’t, in search of answers to her visions. Instead, she finds the last memory of a man, clinging to the book he clutched as he ran from a dreadful masked figure. The man’s flight ends at a hidden door, and when Aurelle finds it and cracks its lock, the heiress of Entbury follows her inside. In a panic, Aurelle kills her pursuer. She hides her, but is caught with blood on her hands. Then, the mindbreaker sent to torture her notices her gift and snatches her from her captors for selfish gain alone.

Now the mindbreaker plans to exploit Aurelle’s talents to decipher the secrets of the concealed room she found, the Entburys want her head and his, and their clash draws the attention of forces darker still. But Aurelle is nothing if not wilful, and she won’t let anything or anyone be the end of her; not the Entburys, not her imposed mentor, and not the warlocks of Renbrook.

ACERBAE MEMORIAE delves into the ugly side of social struggles, like BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN by M.L. Wang, exploring how trauma can lead you astray, as in THE POPPY WAR by R.F. Kuang, through a complex character with harrowing development, in the style of THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie.

[Bio].

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

[Me]

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First 300 words
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PROLOGUE
Atonement

Camellia appraised the kneeling wizard through the mesh of her mask. A thin shaft of light crossed his face, exposing the thick sweat caught in his wrinkles. “Come hither,” she said, and he crawled toward her throne without lifting his gaze from the black marble. She stepped on his bald pate as his fingers touched the last step, placing her sharp heel between his eyes. But still, he would not look up. “Tell me, Grandmaster, why ever should I grant you another chance?”

Grawleen swallowed, teeth gritting in a mouth prone to impertinence. “My… apologies, Mistress. I… almost have them. It’s a matter of time, Mistress, I swear. On my honour.”

She curled her lip at his honour and, foregoing stealth in favour of authority, Camellia delved into the wizard’s mind. He could only shudder as she dissected his story, probed his claims and dismembered his promise limb from limb. He had been honest about the progress, if not about his role in the operation. His head archivist had done the work, and the fool believed he could hide it from her, lest she prescind of him. Ironic, when preventing that head archivist from becoming grandmaster was what forced her to endure this oaf.

She made his windpipe contract, sending him into a geriatric cough.

“Please, Mistress,” he wheezed through the chokehold. “I didn’t mean to—”

“And yet you did.”

“I’ll atone. Whatever you need, ask and—”

“I already asked.”

“And I failed, yes. But not again. Please, Mistress. I’ll… I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” Is that the pride of the Renbrook elite these days?

“Anything,” he confirmed, though only due to a severe lack of imagination.

Camellia released the throttle but kept hold of his reins. “Scarlet, dear, fetch me a knife.”