Ask An Author: "Could you share your query letter that caught your literary agent's attention? And any other query pointers/tips, do’s or don'ts?"

Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions.  Andrea Hannah lives in the Midwest, where there are plenty of dark nights and creepy cornfields to use as fodder for her next thriller. Her debut YA novel, Of Scars and Stardust, will be published in the fall.

Could you share your query letter that caught your literary agent’s attention? And any other query pointers/tips, do’s or don’ts? — Anonymous

I’ve written quite a bit about my query, so the whole letter and the story that goes with it on the blog I share with several other YA authors, The Secret Life of Writers. You can check that out here. 

My biggest query tip is to research, research, research. When you send out a bunch of query letters to people who may be kind of “meh” about your style of writing, there’s a greater chance that if one of those queries does stick, and an agent decides to take you on as a client, they may only like the book you’ve queried them with. I encourage you to dream bigger than that. What about your next book, or the book after that? What do you want for the span of your writing career?

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to really dig deep and do a thorough search of the agents you’re particularly interested in. What are their likes? What do they tweet about? Are they on Instagram? If so, what are they taking pictures of? It sounds a little stalker-ish, but research needs to be your BFF.

I knew my agent Victoria and I would get along wonderfully when I saw her tweet about Coraline, one of my favorite books ever. I also saw her tweet about various things she likes to read about and manuscripts she’d love to represent: stories about computer hackers, criminals, disappearances, and phobias. I also love all of these things and have written about many of them, so I trusted that she’d be into my next book, too (and she was!).

Our next Camp Counselor will be Marivi Soliven, author of literary fiction novel  The Mango Bride .

Ask her your questions here!