Perfect Pitch: Alison Stine's Query for Road Out of Winter
As of this posting, Road Out of Winter has pulled in starred reviews from BookList and Library Journal, calling it “an excellent feminist dystopian novel of survival, desperation and, ultimately, hope.”
You can get a really cute skateboard enamel pin from the author if you preorder it, which you definitely should.
I’m really excited to share Alison Stine’s query letter here, because it is such a perfect example of using comparative titles. The books she brought up here grabbed me immediately, naming three books I adore, followed by a really quick pitch for her book.
The comps here tell me exactly what I need to know when it comes to the voices and themes she was planning to explore, even with a hook that short (one sentence!) describing her story.
So! Let’s have a look, and if you find this helpful, preorder Alison’s magnificent novel. It’s in bookstores everywhere September 1st with Harlequin / MIRA.
And yes, you’ll see it has a different title. Never be married to your titles, author friends. They can change from agent to editor to publisher, etc.
Dear Eric Smith,
I’ve come to you through Twitter, where I’ve become a huge fan of your work and the work you champion. I’m a partially deaf, bisexual single mom in Appalachia. I have a new manuscript, and I wonder if you’d be interested in taking a look?
The book is called THE GROWER. It’s adult fiction, in the ilk of Edan Lepucki’s California, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, and Emma Cline’s The Girls. Here’s a brief synopsis:
A woman marijuana farmer has to rescue a teen mom and her daughter from the leader of an anarchist skateboarding cult in a rural, West Virginia ravaged by climate change.
I’m the author of two books of fiction: The Protectors (Little A, 2016), an illustrated novella about graffiti artists in rural Appalachia, and Supervision (2015), which won the Digital First Contest from HarperVoyagerUK, as well as three books of poems, most recently Wait (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). An NEA Fellow and former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, my writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Paris Review, Tin House, Poetry, The Toast, The Kenyon Review, and many others. I live with my young son in the rural, Ohio foothills of Appalachia, and work as a social justice reporter.
I have a draft of THE GROWER complete, and would love to send it or an excerpt to you. Let me know if you’re interested.
Thank you,
Ali
Oh my goodness I love this query. Let’s talk about all the stuff that works so well.
First, the comparative title use. I talked about it up top, but again, using those to dish the voices and the themes put this immediately in my “I need to read this now” stack. And I did. And I loved it.
The other great piece of this? Her bio. So many authors forget to dig into this. Now, Alison’s won some awards and has some other books to her name. Not everyone does. This doesn’t mean you should skip out on telling the agent or editor a bit about yourself! What do you do when you aren’t writing? Who are YOU as a person? There’s still room to dish here, with or without a publishing background.
With Alison’s bio, she shows the buy in surrounding her writing. The places she writes for, the books she has out. It was fantastic.
And there you have it. A fantastic query letter, with a one sentence pitch for the book (gasp!), and BRILLIANT comparative titles. This one worked. And the book will be in stores everywhere September 1st.