Query Letters

Quite a few people ask me how to go about getting published. My first piece of advice is to finish your manuscript. Then, while you’re letting it sit before your next round of revisions, you can work on your query letter.

Before I wrote my query letter, I spent quite a bit of time tooling around on The Query Shark blog. It’s a FABULOUS resource! Reading it is an education.

Then I wrote at least 6 drafts of my query letter. It was hard. The first versions were terrible, just terrible! So I revised and revised and had MFA friends and family read drafts and revised some more.

Here’s the query letter I ended up with, and that landed me my agent, the amazing Dan Lazar, who has also written this (which I read before querying him) and this about what he looks for in a query.

Dear Mr. Lazar:

Throughout the summer of 1861, Jeremiah Wakefield courts farm-girl Rosetta Edwards, his childhood friend. But when he comes to church one morning with a Union Army recruiting handbill, Rosetta is mad enough to kick shins. Instead, she demands he make her his widow if he plans to go off and die. After their honeymoon, Rosetta lights on an idea to stay together and earn more money to buy their dream farm. Ignoring Jeremiah’s objections and her own fears, Rosetta does a fool-headed thing, something no woman she knows would dare: she becomes Ross Stone. Marching alongside Jeremiah in the 97th New York State Volunteers, Rosetta struggles with being wife and soldier, liar and straight-shooter, daughter and disappointment. Then the battle of Antietam forces grief-stricken Rosetta to decide whether there is more freedom in remaining secret or becoming known, whether going home would sacrifice everything she’s dreamed or be the only way to hold onto it.

Inspired by true accounts of the more than 400 women who disguised as men and fought in the Civil War, There Will I Be Buried is 138,239 words of voice-driven historical fiction that is both tender love story and hard examination of war. While Rosetta would keep company with the likes of Mattie from Charles Portis’ True Grit, Ellen from Kaye Gibbons’ Ellen Foster, and Lydia from Molly Gloss’ The Jump-off Creek, she must answer for herself whether freedom can be gained through disguise and bloodshed, and if the resulting stain can ever be washed clean.

I completed an MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California in May 2010. In March 2010, I read an excerpt of There Will I Be Buried for the monthly San Francisco reading series Quiet Lightning. My short story “Interview with a Union Soldier, Recently Dead” was published in the September 2009 online issue of Hobart. There Will I Be Buried is my first novel. I have pasted the first five pages below. Upon your request I will happily send the complete manuscript.

I am querying you because I think my novel straddles several genres you are interested in: historical, literary, commercial, and women’s fiction. Also, I too, loved the book Middlesex. Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Erin Lindsay McCabe