Query Shark

QUESTIONS: 1) Initially I had more words dedicated to each section, but worried it’d be nothing but loglines and you’d eat me alive....

Dear Query Shark: Realtor Reed Winford suspects something is wrong with the historic house he has agreed to sell for an old client but he ...

Revision #1 Lesa has always looked like her father. But after her mother left, Lesa began to take on her father’s worse traits: his overwh...

First revision Dear Query Shark: Eleven-year-old Emma Slate doesn't know she is the last guardian of magic. Not, that is, until her n...

Dear QueryShark: In 1957 a scream awakens 21-year-old Adina Claypool, who discovers she is on a mental ward. Again. The psychiatrists have...

Question: My story has a feminist approach and my target agent would ideally be looking for such. However, in order to be concise and stra...

Dear QueryShark: Princess Allisane Kent is done struggling to earn the respect of her uncle, the King of Æled. She's spent years train...

Questions about this query: 1. Is the f-word taboo in a query? I looked through your archives but didn’t find anything on that, although I...

Dear QueryShark, Penn, a free-spirited and tenacious baby peachick, is unafraid to speak his mind - even when it’s just him, up against ...

Questions: I use Mary Shelley in the opening line despite the fact that she is Mary Godwin at this point in history. Do you feel like it ad...

Question: My novel weaves back and forth between 1991 to present, but the query letter focuses on the present timeline, with a few referen...

Your query letter should NOT include large blocks of text in italic. Your query letter should NOT have anything decorative in it, like...

Dear Query Shark, The only thing Walt Dempsy’s father left him, before getting locked up for good, was the ability to take a punch. Which...

Revision #1 Mira is a thirty-two year old writer in Brooklyn whose past relationship, soul-sucking job, and frequent writer’s block all dr...