Memoir Query Help

[Naomi]

Hello all,
This is my first attempt at a query. Just looking for some feedback on how to improve. Thank you for your help :)
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Dear Agent,

Marrying Sam was like the opposite of a fairy tale. I kissed a prince and he turned into a toad. I wanted a divorce, but what I really needed was an exorcist. I would spend eighteen years fighting to get away from a man who wouldn't take no for an answer. “We said in sickness and in health,” Sam said, “and you are sick, Naomi.”

My 87,000 word memoir, THE SAM: MY FIGHT AGAINST THE SOCIALLY ACCEPTED MONSTER, depicts the bizarre experience of being stalked and the 10 times I had to go to court to finally end it all—for now.

Stabbing car tires, staring into my windows, and hacking my email was only the beginning. Authorities didn't consider what Sam was doing to be “real” crime. He played the role of a heartbroken man so well that even the cop who brought him in on criminal harassment charges said she “sympathized” with him.

My older brother, Tommy, always hated me. After he crashed his work truck, while fleeing from aliens, we became friends—but only for a while. The group leader of the schizophrenia support group told me that I had to separate Tommy from his illness. The problem was I couldn't separate my brother from his new best friend, my ex-husband, my stalker, Sam.

This memoir is a real life account of the type of angry and controlling man profiled in Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? The narrative echoes the experience of stalking in Julie S. Lalonde's Resilience is Futile: The Life and Death and Life of Julie S. Lalonde, as well as the experience of coercive control in Helen Walmsley-Johnson's Look What You Made Me Do.

After this terrible chapter in my life, I'm re-establishing myself in Calgary, Alberta. I hope to publish this memoir as an inspirational tale of survival by a black female author.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,

Real Name
Writing As Naomi Walker

[Fiona]

I really like this query. Your writing "voice" really comes through, which is important in all writing but especially memoir.

I'm so sorry you had to go through this, but I'm glad you found the strength to get out and move on, and I think your story will be an inspiration to others in similar situations.

My main suggestions would be to rearrange some of the text:
- "I wanted a divorce, but what I really needed was an exorcist" is a great line, and it might be better to lead with this and put it out in its own paragraph.
- The paragraph starting "My 87,000 word memoir..." should probably come later in the query, between the paragraph about your brother and the paragraph with the book comps.

Best of luck.

[Naomi]

Thank you for your feedback. Much appreciated.