Query for Mourning Dove

MOURNING DOVE is 75,000 words. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s apocryphal quote to Harriett Beecher Stowe, it was written to be the little novel that starts the great war against global warming.

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Jen, sleeping, sensed that Mom entered her room, bent over her, and kissed her cheek. Jen loved it when her mother woke her this way.

“G’morning, Honey,” Mom said “It’s our last launch day and we need to talk. You turn sixteen tomorrow and you don’t know what guys your age even look like. You and your brothers have to be with other kids. Grams might listen to you; she doesn’t listen to me. She built this place and doesn’t want to leave, but we have to. I need you to convince her. And if Grams and Grandpa don’t come with us, we’re flying to our family and civilization in Antarctica without them. You got to be my partner in this. Are you in? Can I count on you?”

“Mom. Of course you can. I’m in. It will be my mission, from almost sixteen onward.”

Mom put her arms around Jen and hugged her close. It felt good.

“I love you, Mom.”

She hugged Mom back. Mom said, “Love you, Jen.”

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A flash snowstorm coated the ground seconds before liftoff. Jen and Grandpa in the command bunker followed the take-off on live video. When the rocket left the camera’s view, she watched another video feed showing her older brother, Fred, at the outdoor weather station. He bent over backward, staring straight up, tracking the flight. Suddenly, both legs flew out from under him. At first, she thought it was funny. But their launch center was on top of a mountain. He was on a narrow asphalt path, overlooking a steep drop, and the blacktop was slippery. Mom, suddenly in the picture, reached for Fred to keep him from going over the cliff. But as she grabbed him, she lost her footing, too, and they both slid over the edge clutching each other. Grandpa wrapped Jen in his arms. On a speaker somewhere, she heard her mother scream. Seeing the empty cliff, Jen shouted, “No!. Mommie! Come back. I need you. Mommie!” Jen sobbed, clutching her Grandpa.

In his arms, she could still feel her mother kissing her awake that morning. She would never have that again. Her mother’s mission? Her mission? She dropped out of her grandfather’s arms onto the floor. She curled up into a ball, crying.

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Ballantine Books published my novella "Oceans Away" in Stellar Short Novels. I ghosted for Senator Paula Hawkins, and our op-eds appeared throughout the United States. On Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a blog, I have 50,000 connections, following MOURNING DOVE and anxious for a copy. My day job is Beltway bandit wordslinger.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Novel Query Letters Should Lie

You wrote a great novel. You had its beginning and its query checked out on AbsoluteWrite and other forums. You studied Query Shark. But all agents reject you and your novel will never sell.

“Why?”

It is lost in the query-letter slush pile. Slush is muddy, melting, dirty snow, with some pieces of ice and some pebbles. Agents negotiate contracts of clients who have proven they can make the agents money. Agents edit works of proven writers to make them more salable. Agents hunt for markets worldwide. They help to sell their writers' published books. They socialize with writers to acquire new content, and they socialize with publishers to market and sell content. No agent has much time for, nor enjoys, rummaging through piles of query slush.

Reading slush is a smelly, disgusting task. Millions think they can write and they send their work to agents and publishers with great hopes. But in nearly all cases, it is hard to keep down one’s breakfast after reading more than a few words from the slush pile. Most slush is terrible. After years of reading slush and finding very little of value, most agents know it is a waste of time. They look for reasons to reject each query quickly, so they can discard as much slush as they can in as short a time as possible.

“But my work is great and will stand out and be noticed, won’t it?”

NO! IT WON’T! No matter how great your novel is, it will not get read, with one exception. The greatest piece of writing has to be your query letter. A diamond query letter looks just like a piece of ice amid the slush. A gold query letter is tarnished by the smelly stuff around it. The query must be stunningly brilliant and not let go. It has to be untarnishable gold with a very sharp titanium hook.

Unfortunately, query letters for great novels are rarely great. Writers of great novels are proud of their novels and try to be true to their novels. That is a big mistake. Query letters should lie! If your novel has a fascinating, convoluted plot that has the reader bawling like a baby at page 300, your query letter must get the reader bawling at sentence three. To do that, you must lie. Throw away the fascinating convolution. “A” should cause “Z.” “A” should not cause “B” and then “B” cause “C” etc. The query must be powerful immediately. The only thing that matters is getting an agent to read your novel. Truth does not matter.

For example, your novel is a legal thriller in which the protagonist is the deciding Supreme Court justice. The defendant used poisons covered by international treaty so they are not considered poisons, Her intended victim was sickened but did not die. The case was originally tried in a state court (Bond v. United States, used here as an example). That is what you write in your query, right? WRONG! Your query should say that the novel is about a sterile wife who poisons her unmarried best friend for seducing her husband and getting pregnant. Forget the Supreme Court Justice. (She would be the fourth character mentioned, and that’s too many.) The query might state that the case goes to the Supreme Court, but it should imply that the wife is the protagonist. Under the limitation of a paragraph or two in a query, she is the interesting character. The only thing that counts is that the agent reads the novel. Being truthful will make sure your novel is not read.

“But won’t agents eventually notice?”

Even if they do, they won’t care. If your query is so good that it persuades an agent to ask to see the full novel, your book is probably good enough that it will be obvious that your talent will bring the agent money. Chances are the agent won’t remember your dishonesty, but even if so, your honesty or dishonesty does not affect the agent’s pocket. Your writing ability does. That’s what matters. The agent might ask you about the inconsistencies, but will still offer to represent you.

“Should you lie about word count?”

Damn right, you should! Your novel might be the best thing ever written, but it will not be read if you tell agents it is over 135,000 words. Remember that agents are looking for a reason to reject your query and move on to the next one. A high word count is the number one reason for a rejection. The agent you persuade to read your book will not care after reading the 150,000th word that the novel is too big if it is a great book. Again, you must use any means to make sure agents read your novel. Think “by hook or by crook.”

“So, having a well-crafted, lying query letter will get my novel sold?”

That depends on your novel. The whole supposition here is that you have a great novel. If you do not have a great novel, it will be rejected no matter how golden and titanium your query is. The point is that a great novel will not even be read unless accompanied by an even greater query letter. But query letters for great novels usually are not good because the authors try to remain true to their novels.

Your ultimate goal is to sell your great novel. If concern about dishonesty keeps you from achieving your dreams, then you are not being true to yourself. Shakespeare says “To thine own self be true.” If lying in a query letter helps you be true to yourself. Then lie, lie, and lie, and sell your great novel.

Query Rejected from the Most Brilliant Man Who Ever Lived

Suleiman the Magnificent was looking for someone to devise weapons to help him win his battles. Leonardo Da Vinci responded with a query. In it, he described submarines he would build that would defeat the best sea vessels of the day. He showed designs for tanks that would be invincible. He also presented drawings of conventional weapons that would be far better than anything else in existence. He ended his query with the words, “And I happen to paint better than any other man alive.” Suleiman never responded.

Da Vinci’s intelligence is incomparable, but no one can deny that Suleiman also was a brilliant man. He conquered much of the Middle East, most of North Africa, Belgrade, Rhodes, and a large part of Hungary. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he became a great patron of culture, overseeing the "Golden" age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary, and architectural development. He also was well educated and spoke five languages.

It is mind boggling to think what Da Vinci could have done if he had Suleiman’s wealth and power behind him. What would Suleiman have done with Da Vinci's brains guiding his own? Why would someone the world knows as “the Magnificent” reject the smartest man to ever walk the Earth?

Depressing Trends

I sold a novella thirty-seven years ago. I hope to sell a novel this year.
The large gap in my views of the fiction marketing industry has given me a
perspective into publishing trends that is worth sharing.

In the mid-seventies, genre fiction was looked at with disdain. Before
Quentin Tarantino, "pulp fiction" refered to the poorest and worst of
literature: dime novels. Romance, science fiction, and mystery all was
considered pulp. As such, agents and publishers preferred not to touch genre
fiction. It did not pay well; it was hard to sell.

At that time, literary fiction and commercial fiction was in demand. In
terms of word count, "the longer the better" was the advice to young
writers.

Another major change since then concerns publishers, agents, and query
letters. An unpublished writer was encouraged to submit a novel (or "three
chapters and an outline") to a publishing company, not to an agent. The
submission was accompanied by a cover letter. For fiction, a query letter
without at least three chapters was unheard of. The publisher would employ
"slush-pile" readers to pore through the unsolicited manuscripts. Agents
were for second novels, or for first novels a publisher wished to acquire.

Then, the big hurdle for a beginning writer of fiction was to get a
publisher interested. Today the big hurdle is acquiring an agent.
Agents now serve as slush-pile readers and initial editors.
To me, this is a very negative trend, and it has hurt the
quality of American literature. The initial reader, when I was young, was a
publisher's paid employee who was looking for good fiction. Today, the
initial reader is an agent who is trying to make a profit as quickly as
possible.

A novel that takes time to develop character, plot, and thought-provoking
thematic ideas takes more effort and time to sell on an agent's part than
short genre fiction that has an already determined market. Combined
with generations of readers raised watching TV serial dramas
that have very little theme and plots resolved in less than an hour, this has
resulted in the decay of quality literature. Thirty-four years ago there
were far more novels with characters and plots people will remember for the
rest of their lives and far fewer romances, police procedurals, and vampire
novels that are forgotten days after they are read.

I know of at least two novelists who started their careers writing formula
genre novels and are now writing larger quality literature. That seems like
the way to do it, because today it is far easier to sell a first novel that
is short and fits into a popular genre than it is to sell something truly
memorable. I find this rather sad.