This Is Not a Post about Writing Queries

 

Once upon a time on the dry side of Washington State there lived an Adult SFF author who  – for a variety of FANTASTIC reasons – really wanted to try their hand at YA. Being an optimistic sort our author sat down and punched out a nice mid-sized manuscript chockablock full of magic, murder, Manhattan and…tattoos. Also some fun YA protags going head-to-head with a supernatural serial killer.

At this point our author – okay, fine, it’s me – hit a road block. I’d been writing in the Adult world, and most of my CPs and betas were of the Adult variety. I didn’t want to send Earnest Ink out into the world without some YA eyes-on. I needed guidance, some up front critique, someone who knew the YA market better than I did, and would help make this baby manuscript the best it could be. Yup, you guessed it. I needed a mentor.

Obi Wan wouldn’t return my calls but PitchWars was just opening up for 2017 submissions so I took a chance and entered EI. The Force must have been with me because my submission caught YA Mentor Leigh Mar’s eye and the game was on. Leigh saw the good, the bad, and the ugly plot holes in my MS that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recognize. With her help EI turned into a story I’m super proud of, and I can’t say that about everything I’ve written.

This is the query I sent to PWs:

Dear Mentors,

Hemingway is a trans boy making an excellent living as a tattoo artist in Hell’s Kitchen. Hemingway’s tattoos are special; even the President of the United States has Hemingway’s magical ink on her wrist. But it turns out being rich and famous isn’t always enough. 

But when Hemingway’s best friend, Grace, goes missing from her father’s apartment in Chelsea, the cops figure she’s the newest victim of the East River Ripper. Hemingway’s not willing to give Grace up as lost; he’s determined to find her and bring her home one way or another. But the East River has its own secrets and neither Hemingway’s peculiar brand of magic nor his stoic cop roommate may be enough to win Grace back. 
YA/NA fiction is my first love. I work with children; I see daily the challenges they face in this changing world. I’m also a true crime aficionado who can tell a creepy story. I write epic fantasy professionally for HarperVoyager, and LGBTQ+ fiction under my own label. I’d really like to focus long term on queer YA, beginning with Hemingway’s story, which I have brought to life with humor, tenderness, and the requisite amount of darkness.

At 65,000 words, EARNEST INK is my first foray into YA urban fantasy, and I could really use a mentor’s guidance. I want to do it right, and I want to do it well.

It hits most of the query ‘buttons’.

  • Who Hemingway is. (Trans, magical, tattoo artist, Manhattanite)
  • What Hemingway wants. (To save Grace)
  • What stands in his way. (Serial killer, his own magic)

It’s a fine query. I didn’t hate it, and neither did Leigh. But it wasn’t perfect. It needed more work. Quite a bit more work.

Leigh and I went back and forth for a few weeks, trying this and that, cutting here and adding there, polishing and tweaking. Leigh has the patience of a saint. THIS is the query that I put up for the 2017 PitchWars agent round:

While seventeen-year-old FTM Hemingway is making an excellent living as a tattoo artist in a near-future version of Hell’s Kitchen, the rest of the country is splintered and struggling in the wake of a war gone on for too long. Technology has collapsed, borders rise and fall overnight, and magic has awakened without rhyme, reason, or rule, turning average unwitting citizens into wielders of strange and specific strands of magic. 

Hemingway’s particular brand of magic has made him a household name. Not only is he a talented artist, but his work comes to life. Literally.

When NYC’s most infamous serial killer—the East River Ripper—abducts Hemingway’s best friend, Grace, he has only days to save her. Hemingway teams up with his stoic cop roommate to hunt for the killer and rescue Grace before she becomes the Ripper’s latest victim. But as the duo chase clues to the serial killer’s identity Hemingway begins to fear the magic he and the Ripper share might eventually corrupt him too.

Complete at 72,000 words, EARNEST INK is a Urban Fantasy with a noir flavor that will appeal to fans of VERONICA MARS and X-MEN. 

I write epic fantasy for HarperVoyager’s Impulse line, and publish LGBTQ fiction under my own small press label. You can find out more about me at www.sarahremy.com

You’ll notice my bio has been cut dramatically (hey, we all want to talk about ourselves, right?) to make room for story details, and the query is just generally more dynamic. Hemingway’s stakes are upped by bringing a taste of dystopian Manhattan into the mix. And upped yet again when the reader learns he has only days to save Grace.

The first version was fine. The second version is awesome. Needless to say, it earned me a juicy double handful of agent requests.

And almost every one of those agents came back to me with some version of: THIS IS GREAT BUT IT READS ADULT. The pacing is Adult. The verbiage is Adult. The stakes are Adult!

Actual footage of me reading agent responses:

I did warn you. This is not a post about writing queries. This is a post about walking uphill. Because that’s how I like to describe life as an author. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the top of the bestseller list, or submitting your MS to PitchWars, or sitting down in front of a keyboard for the first time ever with the beginnings of a story idea nipping at your thumbs. If you’re writing, you’re struggling forward, and at an incline. Every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you get to stop, rest on your laurels, and enjoy the view. Most of the time you’re slipping on scree, taking three steps forward and one back. Some days that hill you’re climbing feels like a mountain.

What’s the goal, you ask? What’s the prize at the top of the hill? Can’t tell you, because it’s different for everyone. Often, for me, that seemingly unreachable dividend changes day by day. But I will say every successful writer I’ve met keeps climbing, even in the face of disappointment.

Which is what I did. I listened to the industry professionals. I stopped sulking, sat down in front of my computer, and addressed the sheer cliff wall that looked like my strengths and weaknesses. Then I rewrote Earnest Ink as Adult. I placed the manuscript with a few Adult CPs, ran it by a sensitivity reader, and sent it back out in the world.

It wasn’t the YA masterpiece I’d wanted to write. But it was the story I was uniquely qualified to tell. Oh, and I updated my query one last time, added an extra line:

This MS was selected for Pitch Wars 2017 in the YA category, but feedback suggested it would do better as an adult novel, so I’ve since rewritten with that direction in mind.


Sarah Remy/Alex Hall is a nonbinary, animal-loving, proud gamer Geek. Although Sarah reads widely across the Adult genre their passion is SFF (in all its forms, epic to urban, angst to fluff) and LGBTQ+ fiction.

Earnest Ink was picked up by NineStar Press shortly after it was rereleased into the wild as Adult Spec.

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