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Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Winning Query Letter / White Light by Anna Simpson



The Winning Query Letter feature showcases queries from published authors. My hope is that sharing these great queries will help and inspire writers out there who are struggling with query writing.


Today’s winning query letter is from Anna Simpson!

Anna Simpson participated in #WritePit on Twitter and gained the interest of an editor at a small press who requested the complete manuscript from Anna. Below is her winning tweet and query letter that helped her to land a contract for her book, WHITE LIGHT.


Tweet: Anna Simpson @emaginette When a psychic warns two busybodies where danger lies, she doesn't let her death stop her from joining the fun #WritePit #A Myst


Query Letter:

Dear [editor],


I’d like to thank you for asking me to submit. It made an exciting day perfect.

Emma learns that keeping a secret in a small town is near impossible. As the town folk beg for psychic readings from Alice, Emma's alter personality, Mrs. Perkins, a nosy neighbour and super sleuth wannabe, drags the young woman to an anniversary party.

Their presence triggers an attack and the further random accidents threaten their benevolent host's safety. All Emma and Mrs. Perkins have to do is convince their bull-headed host that his life is in danger before he pays the ultimate price and a killer gets away with murder.

Even if it means going back to the psyche ward, Emma will protect her friend and this innocent man. What good is freedom if it's haunted with guilt?

White Light is a quirky mystery that is finished at 65k. Although I followed most of the cozy mystery guidelines, I did stray, adding some humour, paranormal and psychological elements.

My online persona is emaginette. I have three short fictions and one non-fiction published. My latest fiction is Mexmur, The Huntress published in Portals: A Fantasy Anthology (June 2014) with Roane Publishing. The non-fiction piece, A Complete Thought, was published in the Insecure Writer's Support Group Guide to Publishing and Beyond (Dec 2014). I have also earned an honourable mention from the Writer's of the Future contest in 2014 for a science fiction submission

Sincerely,

Anna Simpson 



Thank you for sharing your query letter with us, Anna!


7 comments:

mshatch said...

Nice query letter! Sounds like a fun book :)

Chrys Fey said...

I think so too. :)

Liz A. said...

Interesting about including the "online persona" in the query. I'd never heard of doing that before. Oh, and the tweet is brilliant.

Samantha Bryant said...

I'd like to read that book . . .which is apparently also what the publisher thought :-) Cool.

emaginette said...

Okay, everyone. Now I'm blushing.

Good luck with your submission adventures. :-)

Anna from elements of emaginette

Lidy said...

Great tweet and query Anna! :-D

Chrys Fey said...

@Liz, I thought including the online persona was clever too.

@Samantha, I haven't read it yet but it's easy to see why the editor and publisher wanted it.

@Lidy, her tweet was the cherry on top.