A writes: our query letter

I did a post on query letters a couple of weeks ago and as promised, here is our query letter. Hopefully, it gives you a few ideas! 

Dear [ ],

Gamenian is a complete Science Fiction novel of 78,000 words aimed at young adults and science fiction space opera lovers.  Fast paced and character driven, Gamenian explores the games we play with each other, the lies we tell, and the search for forgiveness. It follows a young woman as she seeks to reconcile the idea of a higher power with the actions of a broken humanity.

Freedom is a lie. It’s been four years since Tori escaped the desert planet of Esandira and her life as a drug-mule and assassin for a dictator named Craik, but she is as enslaved as she ever was. While she is physically free, inside her mind the past blurs with the present and she’s desperate for a cure from the faces that only she can see, and the voices that only she can hear.

The fragile life she has created for herself is simultaneously destroyed by an unorthodox bounty hunter named Ash, and Lethar, an assassin sent by Craik, forcing her on a reckless journey to escape from her demons. Her past is no longer inside her head and with her control slipping, the last thing she needs is a 17-year old Way Seeker stuck by her side, but that’s what she gets in the form of Spencer. Spencer doesn’t want anything to do with her, and while she shares the sentiment, their lives are twisted together by the death of a mutual loved one.

Both Ash and Lethar are relentlessly tracking their every move and she’s getting tired of running. Spencer believes Tori's only true freedom is from the Almighty, but she isn’t so sure. There’s only one out that she can see - Craik must die. It’s a dangerous cat and mouse game, but the closer she gets to Craik the more her dark secrets begin to surface and the more she begins to question the path she has chosen. 

Bonita and Alethia are Australian sisters who share a passion for stories, whether it’s reading them or writing them. Bonita graduated in 2009 from the University of Canberra with a BA in Journalism.  Since then she has been busy publishing on a variety of platforms on the internet. She writes and edits content on three different blogs, twitter, Instagram, and is currently building an online portfolio to showcase her works. Alethia is currently studying Medical Science at the University of Canberra and frequently blogs.

Thank you for your consideration, we look forwards to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. 

Obviously, the original wasn't in italics ;) Looking back, I'm pretty happy with the letter we created - we ended up using a lot of it on the back of the book. A lot of people with opinions on query letters - some people say to put the book info first (genre, word count etc) while others say to put it in later. Personally, we decided that putting it in before would be helpful and ran with that. 

For me, writing the story plot was easy - I knew my book and straight from the start I had a pretty good idea how to present it. After doing a lot of research into formatting the plot, I found it relatively easy to write. The rest of it, like how to write credentials when you have none, what to mention, what not to mention etc just took a LOT of research. I've posted some of the links in the earlier post on queries that I did, but they were really only some of the crucial sites I found. I found a lot more of random articles, or random paragraphs within articles, that were very helpful, but there were too many to actually write a post about!

Hopefully, this gives you all some ideas on what to do with your query! As I've said before, I'm in no way an expert on query letters but I'm happy to answer any questions you guys might have.