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Hey Everyone! I just joined and thought I should just jump right in with the latest query letter :-)
Here goes...
Dear ,
18 year old Rapunzel Stregher does not believe in magic, but her mother Isobel is a practicing witch who gets paid to cast spells. Rapunzel wishes her mother was more practical and Isobel wants her daughter to relax.
As a waitress, Rapunzel meets a customer who leaves an unusual tip in the form of a lottery scratch off game. Instead of winning cash, Rapunzel is confronted by an irascible green monkey called Djinn-djinn who steals her purse, and leads her on a chase below North City. She lands in a confusing world called Underside. Rapunzel discovers that she is the descendant of the Red Witches, the guardians and regulators of Underside magic.
Isobel's elderly neighbor and friend Vespa Spinks takes her parrot Lady Mae out for a walk in Feral St. Park where she meets a nice gentleman. Michael shows Vespa and Lady Mae an ancient outhouse. By accident, Michael, Vespa and Lady Mae find out that the erstwhile outhouse is a doorway to Underside. The three land in the court of King Jay, ruler of Underside, who falls in love with Lady Mae and transforms her into a human.
Rapunzel must help her lost North City neighbors Michael, Vespa and Lady Mae escape captivity and free Underside from the rule of King Jay before she can return to North City. Djinn-djinn and an Underside alchemist named Doc Bobble urge Rapunzel to claim her heritage and apply magic to the problem. Caught by King Jay's pages trying to help Vespa and Lady Mae escape, Rapunzel is thrown into the prison tower. Trapped there with magic as the only available solution, she wonders if she should have listened more closely to her mother.
The Tower is complete at 77,000 words. My fiction has appeared in print in Don’t Tread On Me: Tales of Revenge and Retribution, Panverse One and Best New Writing 2008. Online contributions include Liquid Imagination and Quantum Muse. I co-authored a book of poetry with Kathleen Morrow titled the Lutz-Morrow Affair and have contributed to the Centre Daily Times, Weekender in State College, PA. I have also been an active member of the CLAW critique group for eight years. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Reggie Lutz
Great detail, but I agree with Sarah, keep several of the details for a synopsis if you need one later. Dangle a few in front of us, but then leave us wondering...
I love the feel of the names of your characters, especially Vespa Spinks. How unique!
Sarah gives very good advice above!
Best of luck to ya!
I really like the story, sounds like it could go either way - dark or humerous.
I have to agree with Sarah Pinneo, it is too long and give way to much detail. Her summary of the next 2 paragraphs is good, you should try something like that, quick and simple.
Good luck.
Hi Reggie! Congratulations on finishing your book.
I love, love, love the detail about the lottery ticket and the irascible green monkey! Specificity in query letters is extremely important. That shows an agent right off just what sort of book this is-- quirky, twisty, moody. Very well done.
That said, it is followed by too much of a good thing. The length of your plot summary feels more like a synopsis than a query. (You'll need a synopsis for some agents-- so don't throw it right in the can. Set it aside for later.)
Remember-- every time you introduce a new character name, you force your reader to pause mightily to absorb that detail. It's like a speed bump. And you have quite a few of them here.
Instead, I'd go with a beginning like: "18 year old Rapunzel Stregher does not believe in magic, and the fact that her mother has hung out a shingle as a practicing witch does nothing to convince her. But then, a customer at the diner where she waits tables leaves an unusual tip...lottery ticket...monkey... world called Underside." Then the next sentence should be another quirk fest about how she finds out (who tells her?) she's a descendant... guardian. [If that makes sense, of course. I haven't read the book!]
Then... stop. Stop by summing up the rest in some way that briefly lists her further trials. "It will take an elderly neighbor, a talking parrot and a prison tower to make her realize that she should have paid more attention to her mother."
Of course, I don't know exactly what these sentences should be. But my point is that you shouldn't tell your entire plot. Summary has a dulling effect. Most every YA fantasy novel is about getting trapped in a world, and trying to get home. And that's a perfectly excellent plot device for a novel, but if you reveal it in your query, without the dozens of inventive details which make it your own, the risk is sounding like everyone else.
And you don't have to. Because you've proven your story's unique traits in only a few sentences. Tease more, tell less!
S.