A necessary evil!

My sincerest apologies to my fellow Novel Girls and to our loyal followers for not showing up on Wednesday. Last week was, I'll just say, not one to be remembered. I don't like pulling no-shows but this time I didn't have a choice. I'll sneak in this post today, Sunday, and if one of the other Novel Girls has some news I hope they'll go ahead and push me aside.

Query letters don't come easy for me, either. I thought of mine as a necessary evil. But, to echo all the other girls, I agree that voice is number one. I wrote my query letter in my protagonist's voice, just as if she, Leelee, was the one writing it. I had not read anything that told me to do that way but it made sense at the time. My agent, Holly Root, has often praised me on the merits of my query letter, so I'm assuming I did it right.

I don't really have much to add that hasn't already been expertly told, but I will jump in with this bit of technical advice. Agentquery.com was my most helpful resource. That website made the grueling process much less painful. I had spent way too many dollars on books about agents and what types of books they were looking for. Agentquery.com has all of the information you need - for free! Here's the best part. You can type in your book's genre and voila - all the agents who represent say, women's fiction, are at your fingertips! No need to search though long alphabetized lists of agents to discover what kinds of books they represent. LOVE IT!!!!

So, if any of you who may be aspiring writers would like to ask any of us questions about that query letter you might be struggling with, query away. I'm sure we'd all be happy to help!