Ask away: Friday Office Hours on all things querying

Plus the mortifying query letter I sent out for my debut

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Hello friends and thank goodness it is Friday.

This is week three of our querying intensive. Here’s a recap if you just joined or you’ve been offline:

• Week two: We went over query letter do’s and don’ts

• Week one: We discussed how to write a query letter for any genre in 2025

• Additional resources: Query Writing masterclass (3 hour course online) ; Why the right book title will help you on the query circuit ; tips to boost lackluster author bios ; making Comp Titles do the heavy lifting in your queries.

• And today, we’re holding office hours for your query questions.

Here’s how Office Hours work:

1. Office Hours open the moment you receive this newsletter.

2. The Office Hours for querying-related questions will stay open until Tuesday January 28th at noon EST. Unless they are offensive or outrageous (like you paste your entire novel in the comments for my opinion, that’s an example of outrageous), I commit to answering all questions that come in while Office Hours are open to the best of my ability. I won’t answer questions that come in once Office Hours close.

3. You can not ask a question and receive a personal response unless you are a paid subscriber. You can upgrade to join us in this Q&A.

1. One question per person, please. I receive a LOT of questions so try to be as succinct as possible with what you’re asking me.

2. Only pose questions that have to do with querying, please and thank you.

3. Bonus points if you ask your question in a way that will help others in a similar situation.

4. Your questions should go directly into the comments underneath this post. Not in a direct message to me, not through social media, not via email. I want everyone to benefit from our exchanges on a given query topic, thank you.

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And that’s it. Before we open the comments for your query questions, I thought I would treat you to the most mortifying query letter I’ve ever sent in my life.

Travel with me back to 2005. I’m living in Paris. I have a lot of highlights. I’ve just finished a novel that I think is pretty good. Whether or not it’s pretty good I have no idea because I didn’t major in English or take writing workshops in college, I don’t have an MFA, and I have no writing friends, so I lack perspective as I will soon prove.

At the time, I was in my early twenties working as a party promoter for the beer, Corona Extra, working on my novel during the day and trying to sell Corona to discerning French people at night. Like you do in your twenties when you want to be a writer—I was pretty sure that I had written an extremely genius book and that I deserved an agent, asap. Accordingly, I went straight to the top and queried Binky Urban, legendary icon and agent to (among others) Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Mary Karr, Coleson Whitehead, and (until 2017) Donna Tartt.

Let’s start with the subject line I sent from my Hotmail. (I am tempted to take a shot of tequila, this is so embarrassing):

Omg. Smashing? The comma isn’t even in the right place!

Now let’s look at the first paragraph of my query letter. I have to steel myself. Okay. I am steeled:

Ugh. I’m groaning. The “Ms.” because I didn’t feel comfortable calling her “Binky” or “Amanda.” The date! As if I didn’t understand how email worked and thought I was writing a real letter! The bloated word count, UGH! The sheer bravado of this paragraph which is all, “I have summoned you. I’M READY.” And why did I refer to myself as a “girl”? Oh, I remember, because I thought it was ballsy for a “girl” to write from the POV of a “masochistic man.” My gosh. I want to die reading this. Do not do any of these things.

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I’m not sharing the rest of my letter simply because I redeemed myself— the summary of the book is pretty good. By the way, this query was for the novel I debuted with, I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You. (Note that this query was from 2005. The book came out in 2014. So when I talk about having patience on the query circuit, I’m not blowing smoke up your a**. I mean it.)

Here is the response I got from Binky Urban the next day. I’m cropping it weird so as not to share her email address, but it’s a shame about the crop because you have to imagine how empty the space around her response is, especially because I thought there would be paragraphs and paragraphs of gushing praise and intrigue along with an offer of representation—no need for her to read the manuscript, my “smashing” query sufficed. Instead of that, I got:

Binky responded twenty-four hours after I queried her, which I thought of as a “win” then and still do, even though she typed so quickly she didn’t reach for caps lock or a period. I still can’t get over my use of the word “smashing” in the subject line. I might never recover from digging this query out of my ancient hotmail.

Okay! I’m opening the comment section to query-related questions. And then I’m going to hide under the comforter for a little while. Enjoy your weekends.

Courtney