I’ve never been great at writing query letters.

That’s my dirty little secret, one I’ve been ashamed to hold close to my chest for years. But it’s true: I queried five times and didn’t get a full request until that fifth venture, mostly because my queries just weren’t doing their job. For the fifth time in the trenches, I was determined that my luck was finally going to change. I’m lucky to have a friend who’s an absolute whiz at queries, and she tore mine to pieces and built it back together until it was solid — enough to net me 13 full requests over the course of querying.

That process also taught me about what makes a good query, and I feel much more confident about the process now. But! In the interest of transparency, I’d love to share my query with y’all — this is the exact email I sent my now-agent!

The Query

Dear Eric Smith,

NAT & CAMI’S GUIDE TO RUNNING AN UNDERCOVER GSA is a 64,400-word dual-POV sapphic YA romance featuring queer found family and rebellion against patriarchal and homophobic institutions, set in the Italian town of Trieste. It will appeal to fans of the protest ending of Casey McQuiston’s IK KISSED SHARA WHEELER, the “queer American in Italy” vibes of HOW IT ALL BLEW UP by Arvin Ahmadi, and the swooniness of Jennifer Dugan’s SOME GIRLS DO.

Cami is a 15-year-old lesbian, one of the few out queer students at her conservative missionary boarding school for international students in Italy. She just wants to focus on getting her paintings in a student gallery and kickstarting a vaunted art career—but first, she’ll have to survive the next two-and-a-half years of bullying. Seeking refuge from her roommate’s cruelty one night, she hides out in a bathroom—only she’s not the only one there.

Nat is a closeted-even-to-herself senior whose homophobic, deeply conservative parents are pressuring her to win valedictorian. At 17, she’s the head of her class, the fastest runner on the cross country team, and the captain of the girls’ soccer team, but her depression and insomnia keep her up all night, taking refuge in the ground-floor bathroom where Cami shows up one night.

As they spend time together over the following nights and Nat sees how bad the school treats queer people, the two girls concoct a mildly hare-brained scheme: to create an undercover Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) where queer students and allies can bond.

Nat and Cami’s long nights together eventually lead to them falling for each other. Nat embraces her bisexuality and is ready to embark on a relationship with Cami, but in a place as repressive as their school, Cami’s not sure she’s brave enough to face even more hate. Except when the school administration discovers the GSA, everyone involved is threatened with expulsion—which puts Nat’s status as valedictorian and Cami’s artistic career in danger. With their hopes for the future on the line, will they still be able to revolutionize the school for the better? To achieve their goals, Nat and Cami will have to find their way back to each other.

I am a writer and blogger whose essays about mental health and YA novels have been featured in We Need Diverse Books’ blog as well as LitReactor.com and other sites. I am pursuing my MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Per your submission guidelines, the first 10 pages are pasted below.

Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,

Karis Rogerson

Takeaways

My agent streamlined that query into a working pitch for submission, which was really cool and a sign that it really was working!

The one key thing I want to call out about this query is that it’s long. It’s over 430 words long, where most common wisdom is that queries should stay under 400 words. You’ll also note that the book itself isn’t exceedingly long — 64,000 words is pretty standard if not short for YA romance.

I don’t know how I got away with this, but what I have to assume is that as long as you don’t go to a 650-word extreme, there is wiggle room in making a query somewhat longer if it’s engaging and hooky enough.

If I were to query the book again, I might cut it down, though. In fact, since deciding to self-publish this book after it died on sub, I’ve nearly halved this query into the back-of-book synopsis. It’s punchier and leaves potential readers on more of a question mark than the query does, and I hope it works to draw in readers!

I also hope that sharing this brings encouragement if you’re reading this and about to query. You’ve got this!