Query Shark

Question: I have revised my query until my fingers bled. And yet nothing. So I am wondering if I'm doing something in my query to put ag...

Questions: Will beginning each part of my book with a stanza be a total turn-off for agents? Not including it in a response to a request ...

Revision Dear Queryshark, Aisha Batu is not a typical housemaid. She is educated, she wears expensive clothes, and her employers Henry a...

Question: So in my end paragraph as you'll see that I included comments about the representation that's in my story. And yes, I'...

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...