When I was growing up, my mother seemed to hold a profound faith in the goodwill and active involvement of a just universal power–be it God or the fates or what have you (she was never big on labels). After overcoming a great many significant challenges (cancer, poverty, divorce, and numerous and sundry injustices), my mother was ready for a payout. Thus it was that her retirement plan, investment portfolio, and future well being were all tied up in lottery tickets. I think my mother considered the lottery to be a morally guided institution bound to the laws of karma rather than a voluntary tax for people who were bad at math. Our life of financial struggle and hardship would find meaning on the day the lottery gods finally smiled upon us and judged us worthy to be millionaires. It was only a matter of time, a waiting game. Now…I doubt this is a perfect (or even remotely fair) description of my mother’s outlook, but it’s the outlook that translated to me in my impressionable youth.

Determined, with all my teenage gumption, to strike out from the nest. I decided I would not be a lottery thinker. I had wanted to be a writer since at least first grade, but after years of hearing how stacked the odds were against my success, I figured I would pursue a much more respectable and stable path first and then, after making my first billion, retire to a writing career in the comfort of my plush, walnut-paneled study.

Perhaps you haven’t guessed, but I do not have a plush, walnut-paneled study. Indeed the only walnut in my house is edible. I’m saving it for protein should our mountain of debt ever erupt, smothering our meager earnings in a river of hot financial lava and forcing my family and I to consider nuts and berries less as ornamental complements to neighborhood bushes and more as a second job.

The trouble was, as I grew into something resembling an adult, despite my stern disavowal of longshot lottery thinking, I continued to imagine that some mystical power afoot in the universe would grant me salvation in a single stroke when It decided I was ready. Throughout high school and college, I dreamed up countless businesses and started a few. Out of college, as the Internet boom peaked, I began installing the granite foundations of my debt mountain whilst trying to start an Internet business of my own. Over the next few years, I tried countless other schemes, some political, some entrepreneurial, all of them bound for disaster.

As I see it, there were three reasons for my persistent series of non-successes: 1) my mostly-unconscious faith that some divine moral hand guided my future led me to believe that if I got a rejection, it was simply not God’s will that I succeed in that manner. In other words, I gave up easily and often. 2) Most of my schemes involved relatively miniscule investments of time and experience, compared to the quite massive hoped for rewards. The world does not often favor such schemes. 3) Indeed, the odds against building a truly successful business are no doubt nearly as formidable as the odds against getting published, particularly if the entrepreneur in question lacks the hard-earned experience or contacts necessary to ensure success. I suppose I just thought that in America, this thriving entrepreneurial promised land, business was easier. I also thought, perhaps a wee bit foolishly, that since I didn’t really want a career in business, I would more easily achieve one–(my version of “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes, you’ll get what you need.”)

In other words, when all was said and done–the blind faith in cosmic kindness, the minimal investment for maximum return, the ridiculous odds–I was betting my future on lottery tickets. Sigh. Stupid hindsight.

Anyway, all these years, as I have been playing the longshot lottery, I have hacked away in the background, slowly and deliberately, at my writing. I tried a couple of queries at various points and allowed the rejections that came through to disillusion me, as though the gods themselves had ruled me unworthy. Finally, however, this summer, inspired about how to write a halfway-decent query, I decided to abandon the notion that divine interference had anything to do with querying and I grabbed Kristin Nelson’s list of agents who accepted online queries (a copy is in the ‘07 PPWC Handouts packet) and, each week, I would research some of the agencies in that list until I found three-to-five viable options and then I would customize three-to-five query letters and send them out.

(A note on customization: for every agency I would read through their list of authors–ideally finding one or two I’d read. If I hadn’t heard of any of the authors, I’d research them until I found some who seemed to write in a similar vein to mine. Then I’d include a line like “Given your representation of so-and-so, I hope you’ll enjoy my…” Through this process I actually found several authors I ended up Amazoning, some of which I really enjoyed. If none of the work represented by a particular agency seemed even remotely similar to mine I wouldn’t waste mine or the agency’s time on a query.)

As I’ve said in prior posts, it took quite a while to hear back from some of the agencies (in fact I just received a form rejection from an early summer query a couple of weeks ago), but when the good news came it was good enough.

It’s possible that all the doubters who’ve tried to dissuade me from this path are still right. Perhaps writing is a mostly impossible dream, a lottery for romantics and the verbally incontinent, but I’ve decided I don’t mind the longshot thinking my mother gave me. I also appreciate the faith she inspired in me. One thing I neglected to mention above: when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, the doctor gave her wretched odds of surviving and only if she underwent very aggressive chemotherapy that would leave her sick and exhausted for months. She rejected the doctor’s treatment plan and decided to cure herself by changing what she ate and how she lived. The doctor called her a fool and told her she’d almost certainly be dead in six months, but she worked hard at her healing day-in and day-out. Twenty-five years later she’s healthy as can be. And, of course, still playing the lottery.

So…here are the pages I included with my query letters. It’s impossible to say whether it was beneficial to include them. Every agent asks for different things, but since I was primarily sending e-queries, I figured there was no harm in pasting in some of my writing for them to read. If they were interested enough at the end of the query to keep reading, they could do so. If not, no harm no foul. Of course, I would recommend against ever attaching any kind of document to a query, but pasting text beneath your query seems pretty harmless.

If, by the way, you have no idea what I’m talking about, please see my previous two entries.

Prologue
The Haunting of Las Mil y Una Noches

It is difficult to say with certainty whose soul first invaded the weather-worn pages of the four-hundred-and-sixth printed copy of Las Mil y Una Noches. If you asked the book, he would tell you that the specter who gave him life was none other than Jose Cartera, the book’s author. That’s what the book told me, anyway. I have reason to believe, however, that the book was not always honest with me.

We had an argument once, and I accused the book of actually being animated by none other than the ghost of Julio Santo del Cielo, as opposed to Jose Cartera.

The book barked back at me, “How could that be, Chachi?” (I’m not sure why the book called me Chachi. He also called me Gringo and Eggface and Cream Cheese and Lilypants and Pasty Smith.) “It must be that I am Jose. Don’t you remember? I made Julio wrestle that giant snake in the jungle. To make Julio do that, I had to be alive. To be alive, someone else had to be dead. Who was dead? Jose was dead. End of story.”

We were in a cabin. I was pacing. The cabin was made almost entirely of particle board, pine veneer, and rusty staples—perhaps some glue as well. The book was sitting on an end table next to an old coil space heater that was given to sparking. I’d put the book there because I was mad at him. He had a deathly fear of that space heater, but there was little he could do about it. Las Mil y Una Noches may have been able to talk, but he couldn’t move under his own power. That would just be weird.

“Maybe Julio wrestled the anaconda out of guilt,” I said. “Maybe he convinced himself to do it. I’m sure he was wracked with despair. He had to be. You had to be. And speaking of despair, what about Isabel Jones?”

“You don’t talk about Isabel.”

“Tell me one thing that was wrong with her.”

The cabin was one of several dug in on the north side of a mountain hollow. I was staying there because I didn’t have a choice. I was a prisoner. My captors were a man who wore only black and a woman who was a deeply religious nymphomaniac. At that particular moment, they were waiting on me in the “lodge.” I was late for supper. I hoped the woman was dressed. Dinner never tasted quite as tasty on naked nights.

“There was nothing wrong with her,” the book said. “She was perfection. She was beauty and love and grace and…”

I cut him off. “That’s my point. Jose was married to Isabel for twenty years. He would know she had flaws. Julio, on the other hand, loved Isabel from afar. In his lust, in your lust, you no doubt made her into the epitome of beauty and love and…”

“She died,” the book snapped. “Death makes everything perfect.”

“I would expect you to say that, Julio.”

“You got it wrong, Wonderloaf. All wrong. All completely ass-up, head-sideways wrong like you always do. I ain’t Julio. Once upon a time, I loved that pinché fucker. I thought he was the greatest friend a guy could ever have. I loved him. But now, now he is why I kill so many people.” Thunder did not, at that precise moment, boom. The sound was like, well, like the sound thunder doesn’t make. Kind of quiet. Maybe a cricket or two chirping.

(If you’re curious, the following is a short list of some of the people Las Mil y Una Noches insisted were his victims.

#1: A Yanamamo hunter who found a dead anaconda with a book-shaped bulge in its midsection and sliced the snake apart to free its treasure. Three weeks later, the hunter drowned in the Amazon, drunk for the first time in his short life.

#2: A French explorer who traded a bottle of cachaca to the hunter in exchange for the book. Three weeks later, the explorer jumped from the roof of a cathedral in Sao Paulo and splattered on the cobblestones below.

#3: A book dealer who purchased the book at a church rummage sale and then spent three weeks acquiring every last copy of The Thousand and One Nights he could find. He then proceeded to eat them, one by one, page by page. Before he could start on Las Mil y Una Noches, however, his stomach ruptured.

#4: Che Guevara.

#5: Jim Jones.

#6: Me, if the book could help it. At this point, the book and I had been on speaking terms for about two weeks and two days. To be honest, I was getting a bit nervous.)

“The main reason I don’t think you’re Jose is this,” I stated. “Jose was forgiving. Julio was an asshole. And you, my out-of-print friend, are an asshole.”
I caught a whiff of sour nutmeg curry wafting through the loose seams of my cabin. As I mentioned, I was late for supper with my captors. I picked up the book, carefully wrapped him in a pillowcase despite his squeals of protest, and gently slid him between my mattress and the rusty springs of my bed. I even turned off the space heater. Despite the book’s lies and the fact he had caused more disaster in my life than a gaggle of spited furies, I wanted to keep him safe. He was a gift after all, a gift from the greatest friend a guy could have had, a friend I loved even when he turned out to be a pinché fucker, a friend whose blood was still wet on my hands.

Fun fact: Those pages aren’t actually in the book any more. As an obsessive reviser, I thought it best to eliminate them, thus restoring, after 4 years and 4000 revisions, the original beginning to the book. Ahh…good times.

The following is a query I sent before getting help from Kristin Nelson. It’s rather painful for me to post this, because it sucks like a hole in a spaceship, but sometimes we learn from mistakes and it’s more fun to learn from other people’s mistakes than from our own, unless of course, we’re learning what a mistake it is to eat deep-fried brownie sundaes off the naked bodies of hordes of gorgeous plus-sized models, which is a mistake I wouldn’t actually mind making:

Dear Ms. Aragi,

As a big fan of Jonathan Safran Foer and Colson Whitehead, I am hopeful my completed literary novel, The Merchant’s Son, will be a good fit with your agency. I am including the first five pages below.

When Caleb Cross’s best friend returns from adventuring in South America, he brings Caleb an old book as a souvenir. Caleb fails to notice the book is cursed. A few months later, Caleb’s friend walks into a Mega-Mart in a suit of armor, slices apart an Olsen Twins Make-Up Kit display and gets shot in the helm for his troubles. Caleb blames himself. He drives into a line of parked cars. As Caleb is being busted out of the hospital by a silver-haired stalker who claims to be Caleb’s real father and who has been anonymously mailing Caleb tarot cards, the cursed book starts chatting.

This is, of course, all part of an elaborate plan by Caleb’s interfering mother to help him learn to see the world as it truly is.

The Merchant’s Son is a tragic story about the stories we tell ourselves and the identities that imprison us. It’s about sacrifice and atonement, the troubles of the world, prophecy, and open rebellion.

Sincerely,

The worst part about this was that it was to humor as bleeding sores are to sexy. As you can imagine, this and several of its close cousins were flatly rejected.

Then Kristin helped, pointing out, among other things, that if you’re trying to sell a somewhat funny book, you should try to be at least a little funny in the query.

This next letter is the one that eventually got me my agent (and a close cousin of this letter got a request for the full manuscript after I’d already signed with my agent–yes, it sometimes takes 6 months to hear back when you query):

Dear Stalwart Query Reader at Levine Greenberg,

Given your agency’s representation of Lawrence Douglas and Gayle Brandeis, I am hopeful you will enjoy my novel, The Merchant’s Son. The novel, which is just over 100,000 words, should appeal to fans of Christopher Moore, Dave Eggers, and Jonathan Safran Foer.

In an effort to cure his normally cheerful best friend of a troublesome spot of depression, Caleb Cross gets said friend shot in the head. Caleb must now cure his best friend of a coma. If only his interfering mother, ex-CIA-agent-turned-Shaman-of-the-Sacred-Owl-Tribe father, biblical nymphomaniac mentor, and Amazon-witch-queen-wannabe girlfriend would stay out of his way, he might succeed. Of course, that’s all assuming he survives the murderous plots of a talking book with a homicidal streak and a love of irony. The Merchant’s Son is about friendship and the search for God, virtual romance and Shakespearean porn, the need for revolution against corporatocracy and the consequences of tearing up a Mega-Mart with a broadsword. Well, it’s like that anyway, but funny.

I’m including the first five pages below.

As I’ll describe in an entry later this week, a few months and several rejections happened before I actually got my first yes, so I revamped the letter once more. This last query (like the others) isn’t brilliant, but it did get me a couple of requests for partials (both of which led to requests for the full thing, and both of which I had to withdraw when I signed with my agent).

Dear Ms. Strachan,

I hope you’ll be interested in my humorous literary novel, “The Merchant’s Son.” Complete at 100,000 words, my novel should appeal to fans of Christopher Moore, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Jorge Luis Borges.

A cursed, talking book might very well be trying to kill Caleb Cross. At the same time, the love of Caleb’s life has decided she finally wants to commit to him. Unfortunately, she’s only ready to settle down in a virtual world, and only with someone she thinks is a wealthy and athletic globetrotting stockbroker from New York City. Caleb is not wealthy. He does not globetrot. Rather, he lives in a ramshackle one-bedroom in Denver and struggles constantly to overcome his costly addiction to starting non-profit organizations. When Caleb’s normally effervescent best friend, Bigger Falkirk, returns from a South American adventure with a spot of the blues, Caleb decides the one thing he can do right in his life is to help his friend get his groove back. Soon enough, Caleb gets Bigger shot in the head. Caleb must now cure his buddy of a coma, assuming the talking book and Caleb’s virtual lies don’t catch up to him first.

I live in Colorado with my wife and daughter. I first published poetry in small literary magazines when I was 12 and then decided to take a short cut to literary superstardom and write a novel. Eighteen years and eighteen thousand attempts later, I’m beginning to suspect this wasn’t the shortest of short-cuts. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy.

Best,
Aaron Brown

P.S. If you’d like a brief sample of the writing, please read on:

Anyway…I hope that all this shows you don’t have to write a perfect, shining query to get an agent. You merely have to write something that piques their interest. And keep sending until you find one kind enough to request your stuff. Later this week, I’ll describe exactly how my query process went.

Also, if you’re curious, I’ll post the first 5 pages of my book tomorrow, since those were also part of the query.  If you’re not curious, I’ll post the first 5 pages of my book tomorrow, since those were also part of the query.

Let me begin by saying I do not have an altar in the corner of my room with a picture of literary agent Kristin Nelson. If I did, it definitely would not have red candles, a dadaist tribute to her web diary Pub Rants, or clippings of her hair. Because that would be weird. Who would put candles next to human hair? If there was a fire, think of the smell.

I will say this, however: Kristin Nelson (who generously contributes her time and talent to leading incredible seminars at PPWC and other conferences) taught me everything I could ever hope to know about writing query letters. I have no desire to plagiarize any of her content here. Check out Pub Rants and you’ll be delighted to learn all kinds of insider agent information, read successful queries, and just generally be delighted by insightful, fun writing about the world of publishing.

I do, though, want to share a tip or two that clicked in my head thanks to her help. For years I struggled to write a query that would adequately convey what my novel was about. This always seemed vaguely insulting to me. If I could convey my story in a paragraph, why would I have bothered to write 100,000 words in the first place?

Anyway, the two things I learned about query letters that changed my life are these:

1) Everyone knows that a query is a short letter about your book designed to convince agents or editors to acquire your work, but did you know: the query is not a short letter about your book designed to convince agents or editors to acquire your work? Firstly, and perhaps more obviously: your goal is not to get them to acquire your work. You just want them to ask for more, the first 20 pages or, if you’re lucky, the whole thing. But more importantly, the query is not a letter about your book. Even if you’re not afflicted, as I am, with verbal incontinence, it would be really hard to turn 100,000 words into 100. No…the query is not about your book. It’s about your hook. If you try to make your query paragraph a highlights reel of all the best parts of your story, you’ll end up with a choppy, confusing, befuddled mess. You’ll oversimplify your gloriously complex effort and probably bore your reader to boot. Don’t synopsize, spear. them. through their figurative little fish cheeks. with your hook.

2) Voice is vital. Back when I taught test prep, I would often give my students an exercise to help them with their grad school admissions essays. I would tell them to make a list of all the adjectives they could think of to describe themselves (smart, driven, passionate, etc.). I would then tell them to narrow the list to three or four key adjectives. As soon as they had their lists, I’d tell them to promise to NEVER use a single one of those words in their essays or application materials. Instead, I told them to demonstrate those adjectives with stories from their lives. As far as the query goes, I’d suggest a similar challenge. As much as you might like to write that your book is a “funny, compelling, suspenseful tale about a brephophagist who likes to take kriobolies,” force yourself to show those adjectives. Make your writing in the query letter funny, compelling, and suspenseful when you describe your ram’s-blood-bathing- baby-eater.

Anyway…Kristin is much better at this than I am. Check out Pub Rants if you haven’t already. You’ll be happy you did.

Later this week, I’ll show my warts-and-all queries and describe how I managed to land an agent.

Stay tuned!