Don’t Bury Your Query!
(Click here for Powerpoint Presentation)
A crash course for fiction writers in creating a letter
that will get your manuscript read, including:
-Three things you must understand before starting your query.
-How to make an editor/agent want to like your blurb.
-How it is possible for a fiction writer to get a point across in less than 400 pages.
-How not to sound like the other 200 lunatics and/or writers who sent in queries that day.
-What you need to include in your blurb to be considered.
-How to relay the tone of your story within the blurb.
-When to choose to leave information out of your query.
-How a well-crafted query can save you stress and money.
-What requests and rejections mean and do not mean.
About Rhonda Morrow:
Unlike most authors, Rhonda is not so much a fiction writer trying to write marketing materials (i.e. query letters), as a marketing writer who also writes fiction.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in advertising, Rhonda managed fundraising events for the March of Dimes, where she wrote press releases, motivational trainings, and presentations aimed at gaining corporate support, turning her eight dying WalkAmerica sites into thriving events. For six years, she was with Viacom as a Regional Trainer, where she wrote and presented Showtime/The Movie Channel motivational trainings aimed at cable company sales
representatives and created promotions and special events. When her daughter was born, she opened her own, more family friendly—she thought—business in which she wrote and planned all advertising, directed photo shoots, created client marketing
materials, and acted as the sole member of the sales department.
A year after her mother died, Rhonda suddenly began writing fiction for the first time in her life, then spent the next several years writing novels and trying to get published. She generally finds queries the most fun part of the experience and the letters she’s
written for herself and others have garnered a mother lode of requests for partial—and often full—manuscripts from well-known agents and editors.
Although Rhonda has had three stories published this year and is excited she’s actually getting paid for her fiction, many days she still wishes she could make a living writing book blurbs and query letters.
