Here’s a draft of a query to an agent who asks for a paragraph about the writer. The part I revamped is the second paragraph. What do you think? My old query letter can be found here.
Dear Mr. _____,
I am a twenty-eight-year-old University of Michigan graduate. I currently live in Rhode Island with my wife, who is an officer in the Navy.
My novel Lithium is complete at 75,000 words. Lithium’s narrator is Mark Roth, a young man searching for answers to questions surrounding his mother’s death. His mother Marianne was manic-depressive and abandoned him at age three to be raised by his father, a winemaker in Washington State. A celebrated author, Marianne left behind thousands of pages of writing Mark must use to find his answers.
Mark fights through his own depression during the summer of 2001 and entangles himself in two simultaneous affairs as he uncovers the story of his mother’s life and death. Part 1 (“Depression”) tells Mark’s story, Part 2 (“Mania”) tells Marianne’s, and Part 3 (“Lithium”) provides conclusions to both.
Lithium spans the last quarter of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. It is a story about renewal, about rising from the wreckage.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Thomas Litchford
No Comments