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PITCHING YOUR BOOK by Kristin Nelson

Most agents and or editors will ask for a query letter and a couple of pages some may ask for more and also a synopsis. Check out nelsonagency.com – blog for more detail. Query when novel (fiction) is complete. Queries are a page in length.

Dear___,

1st and 2nd paragraph – Tell why you targeted this agent. State the title, what genre and the length of your novel.

3rd paragraph – pitch

4th paragraph – who you are as an author

Thank you for your time.

The hardest thing in a query is to boil down your novel to a paragraph. Think of a query as the back cover and first pages of your novel. You have to nail the tone: cover copy teaser is the pitch paragraph. Shape: the first thirty pages – something big happens in the first thirty to forty pages, to set the rest of the novel.

Build pitch around the niche of the thirty to forty pages. Pitch paragraph no longer then ten sentences or fewer.

Catalyst is a plot element use tone and voice.

So that’s the bare bones of writing a query. During the session second session we worked on our pitches and below you can see what I came up with.

Dear Ms. _____________

My name is Teresa Crumpton. After reading about you in the latest Writer’s Digest blog I took a look at your website to find out more information about you and your agency. From all the reading I did I think my novel might be something you are interested in looking at. I have sent off other queries to two other agencies and to Jamie Levine an editor at Grand Central Publishing. I meet with Jamie at a writing conference and she was interested in my tag line and asked to see a sample when I finished editing.

My novel Legacy is a paranormal piece. This genre fits the idea of the novel the best as it is mostly about a haunted house. The page count is 286 and the word count is 90,800.

After attending her Great Uncle’s funeral and listening to his last will and testament Alexis learns that she’s inherited a family house in Massachusetts. Little did she know that she was inheriting a haunted house? Now she has to juggle law school, the death of her uncle and the consequences of living in a haunted house.

Legacy is my first novel. I’ve been working on it for a few years now. I just finishing up my MFA in creative writing at National University which has helped me better understand my writing style and the craft itself.

Chapter 1 (First five to ten pages)

Synopsis

Legacy is a about a law student, Alexis, who inherits a good portion of her great Uncle’s fortune. Her inheritance consists of company holdings, money and a family house that no one has ever heard about since her Grandfather’s passing. The house has been kept secret since before Alexis was born. After her Uncle’s funeral she heads back to Boston where she attends Law School and works for the District Attorney’s office. The family house she inherits happens to be located on the south side of Boston in a town called Mystic Falls, which is where she interns at the District Attorney’s office. Both the District Attorney and Sheriff knew her Uncle and Grandfather before they passed do to the strange events that have happened in the family house. Alexis thinks they know her Uncle from him checking on her and making sure she gets the best money can offer.

After her Uncle’s death Alexis’s ability to control her strange gift becomes difficult. She starts feeling everyone’s emotions like she had when she was a kid. Her years of training and suppressing everyone’s emotions fail which leaves her unsteady. Only her family and close friends know that she’s an empath. When she’s able to control her empathy it gives her an edge and even helped her Uncle at times. As she moves into the family house her empathy could have negative effects. The family house as a bloody history during the time her relatives didn’t live there, which has been between the late 1880’s to the time she moved in. Every family that has lived in the house that is not blood related has had someone parish. Alexis starts to learn about the houses history after a stormy night when she hears noises and voices on the upper floors. As she searches the house she can feel the different ghosts who haunt her house. The fact that she’s living in a haunted house scares her yet she doesn’t want to move out of her family home. Alexis decides research the house and try and figure out a way to remove the ghosts. This leads her to find out the true reason why her Uncle knew the Chief of Police and District Attorney.

As Alexis is learning about her house she starts being contacted by a man named Brenton who she learns later has escaped with his friend Collin out of Leavenworth psych ward. Before their escape they ranted about Alexis, which got the attention of the FBI. The FBI starts watching Alexis a little to see how she is connected to these former Special Forces members.

The first night Brenton contacts Alexis she thinks he’s crazy, he talks about seeing dead relatives and that they government is trying to hide the true from everyone. He makes contact a few more times as his is told from the ghosts he thinks is her great great grandfather. She talks to her friends in the police department and they start investigating. During this time the FBI makes their presence known to her and she’d not quite sure how to deal with them following her around. With them watching her she’s unable to work on active cases for the District Attorney. The DA comes up with a side job for Alexis to work on all the closed cases that were never solved pertaining to her house. This project helps her learn about the house and her family history. She even learns which ghost is the one using Brenton.

While the police are trying to figure out why the FBI is watching Alexis, she and her friends on the force also work on trying to bring Brenton in. They have learned who he is and that he is wanted. Neither she nor they want her to become a victim to him or his partner. Brenton however wants her to fulfill a legacy that he believes to be good based on the deal he made with the ghost. As the police get closer to figuring out why Brenton is contacting Alexis the FBI comes in to take over. The FBI moves two agents and a special forces officer into Alexis’s house to watch and protect her in hopes of capturing Brenton and his partners. While Alexis figures out what her true legacy is and what it has to do with her family house.

 Thank you for your time and the opportunity to write to you.

Sincerely,

Teresa Crumpton

Dear Ms. _________,

My name is Teresa Crumpton, and this past September I meet you at the Hawaii Writer’s Conference. After sitting in on both of your session “Pitching your Book” and checking out your website I decided to contact you. From everything I’ve learned about your agency I think my novel might be something you are interested in taking a look at.

My novel Legacy is a Science Fiction and Fantasy piece. This genre fits the idea of the novel the best as it is mostly about a haunted house. The page count is 286 and the word count is 90,800.

After attending her Great Uncle’s funeral and listening to his last will and testament Alexis learns that she’s inherited a family house in Massachusetts. Little did she know that she was inheriting a haunted house? Now she has to juggle law school, the death of her uncle and the consequences of living in a haunted house.

Legacy is my first novel. I’ve been working on it for a few years now. I’m just finishing up my MFA in creative writing at National University which has helped me better understand my writing style and the craft itself.

Thank you again for your time and the opportunity to write to you.

Sincerely,

Teresa Crumpton

Hi Teresa –

Let’s see – I love haunted house stories, but I don’t see much of the plot flushed out here in your query. In my experience, the quality of the query letter is a pretty accurate representation of the quality of a manuscript. So, I’d like to see a bit more before asking for sample pages. Inheriting a house is a bit of a generic premise. The “hook” is really that this house is haunted. If the book is set in *this* world and *this* time, then it’s not science fiction or fantasy. You could call it urban fantasy if it’s got extensive fantasy elements (like THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin or BLOOD OATH by Christopher Farnsworth). If not, then it’s simply commercial fiction (which is fine too) So, here’s what I’ll say – rewrite the query including the correct genre. Also in the query, include why Alexis would keep the house as soon as she finds that it’s haunted? Also, what kind of haunted – doors opening and closing, ghosts, noises, etc? What’s the conflict? It would be hard to convince a reader to keep up with a book if it’s just about the heroine living in a haunted house. Does she intent to banish the ghosts? Is she insatiably curious? Does she hope to leverage the haunted aspect to make money? Does she have no where else to turn and therefore has to figure out what’s going on in this house so she can stay? Any of those things are the “conflict” and we’d need to see a bit of this in

order to decide on whether or not to ask for sample pages.

Read to get some ideas. Also, http://www.webook.com/or http://nelsonagency.com/faq.html#7

Then, resend the query to _______________ Put my name in the subject line so I make sure to look for it.

Hope that helps!

 

T

Thank you Teresa! Find Teresa at