Query
February 10, 2008

Gordon D. Carroll
My address (none of yer beez-wax)
Hm# Not telling
Cell# Nope
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Website: gordoncarroll.com

Please Publish Me Literary Agency

Dear Ms. Dream Maker

My completed Christian, detective novel, Sleeping Dogs, is approximately 75,000 words in length. Cross Phillip Marlow with Caesar Milan, The Dog Whisperer, and you create a new species of private eye, Gil Mason; courage of a Pit Bull, heart of a Labrador. My writing most resembles the style of Robert Crais (Elvis Cole Mysteries).

Sleeping Dogs is about Private Investigator Gil Mason and his two police trained K9’s, Max and Pilgrim. The story takes place in modern day Colorado. Gil, a former sergeant in charge of training K9’s for a sheriff’s office, is hired to find a missing teenage boy, but the case quickly heats up when the boy’s mutilated body is found and his father and baby sister are kidnapped. Gil must run the gauntlet of hired thugs, a corporate billionaire, and Max’s drive to take over control of the pack, while dealing with his own feelings of guilt and loneliness after the murder of his family. He will need a steady hand, quick wits, the keen senses of his canine partners, and his faith in God to win the day.

I have had five short stories published and have been a Deputy Sheriff in Colorado for over twenty years, the last eleven years as the senior deputy in charge of the K9 division. I am knowledgeable in biblical matters, having two years of seminary training, one year of New Testament Greek, and over a decade of serious theological study. I have given numerous K9 demonstrations, speeches, and hosted a K9 seminar at the 2007 Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference. I will also be speaking at the 2008 PPWC.

Sleeping Dogs is targeted at the Christian mystery reader with a dual audience of those who love our furry companions.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Gordon D. Carroll

Ta-Da!

Ta-da?

What?

(zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…)

Hey! Wake up out there. I’ve read dozens of articles and even three different books and this fits almost exactly with what they say a query letter should look like. So what’s the beef?

Well, Mark says it put him to sleep, like it did most of you out there in Blog-Reader Land. He put it to me like this;

Mark: “Boring.”
Me: “Is not.”
Mark: “Is so.”
Me: “Is not.”
Mark: “Zzzzzzzzz.”
Me: “Stop that.”
Mark: “Look, think of it like this. Suppose you were an intern at a major publishing house. Suppose you had to wade through a couple bazillion query’s a day. How many ‘My completed novel, bla-bla, is approximately bla-bla words in length. It’s about bla-bla-bla, oh, and bla…’ do you think you could stand to read through? And how likely would you be to pick any one of them out of the pile?”
Me: “I don’t know.”
Mark: “I said put yourself in that poor intern’s place and think about it.”
Me: “Okay. I’m an intern. I’m sifting through the slush-pile, reading-reading-read…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… Zoiks!”
Mark: “Exactly. Get it now?”
Me: “…I guess… But what the hey? All the books say not to get flashy or tell them how great your book is, or brag, or beg, or threaten… hmm…threaten?... hmm.”
Mark: “Right, I’m not saying to do any of that. But still, your query needs to stand out a little. It can’t put the poor, overworked intern to sleep.”
Me: “You mean like…threatening?”
Mark: “No, not exactly. More like exciting.”
Me: “Threatening can be exciting. I have an attack dog.”
Mark: “Stop that. Now look, what you need to do is give the query a little of the flavor of your writing. A little of the pizzazz.”
Me: “Flavor, I like that. I like flavor. I like pizzazz. How do I do that in a one page query letter that still has to get some pertinent info across as well?”
Mark: “For the flavor, put some of your actual writing into the query, let them taste what you can do. Don’t give them too much, just a taste, leave them wanting more. As for the pizzazz, maybe ask a question, but make it a hook question. Something that sinks into their mind like a hook into a fish’s lip, then snug it tight so they’re ready to be reeled in.” (That Mark, he’s such a fisherman).
Me: “Ahh… and then I get to threaten them?”

Anyway, that’s the way it went. I tried to get him to write the query for me, but he said he had to work on his own stupid novel—hee-hee, we’ll see how easy it is for him when he has to write a query for his book—hee-hee.

In the mean time… I’d best get started… hmm… can’t threaten, must show flavor… must have pizzazz… ahh, I think I have an idea, (and it doesn't even involve any threats).