The Sound and the Echoes

Query to a Literary Agent

 

The query I wrote for The Sound and the Echoes received many requests for partials and some for a full manuscript. I've had other author's ask me what my query was like. I'm by no way an expert. In fact, in the end I had enough and stopped looking for an agent. But if this helps, here's the query I used.

Tips:
1. Be sure to personalize the first paragraph to explain why you are targeting this agen.
2. And, of course, address the agent by name, as well as Mr. or Ms., making sure you know the correct gender (not every Charlie is a man, for example).
3. Find out the agent's query preference on their website.

Dear Agent,

Three years ago, you were so very gracious with your time in reviewing my manuscript and offering revision suggestions more than once. Accepting your advice, I took a break from the manuscript and read YA novels night and day before sitting to write again. Now the story has grown into a real world, filled with believable characters and a taut story line. I hope to share my vision for the story in the attached proof of concept.

The premise behind the story is unique:

Imagine that everyone around you has a mirror image living somewhere else. Your world is like a sound, which produced that other world of echoes. And in this land men are governed by a terrible law—no Echo is allowed to live after his Sound dies.

One Sound especially must die. The Prince’s Sound. The Fate Sealers and Fortune Tellers will make sure of that! Because after this Sound dies, the Echo Prince will have to die too.

Now, twelve-year-old Will Cleary is about to discover that he is the Sound the Echoes are hunting. And so begins his perilous adventure into a see-through, sparkling world, filled with spying crystal balls, an eerie fortress of castaway children, a hunt for clues in an ancient book of riddles, and a last-chance escape through a frozen gem-studded lake into a secret land that holds the key to placing the Prince on the throne and returning freedom to the Echoes.

I am a freelance writer on Yahoo! Finance among other sites. My short story, Vera Icon, won first place in Spider Thief Publication’s anthology competition. I have written The Sound and the Echoes under the pen name, Dew Pellucid.

Thank you in advance for your continued interest, time and consideration.

Best Regards,