The query trenches can be really rough. I thought it might be helpful for folks to see my successful 2017 Pitch Wars pitch and the query letter that got me offers and eventually led to my signing with my amazing agent, Brent Taylor of Triada US.
If you are interested in reading my 2017 Pitch Wars Pitch and opening, you can find them here.
Here’s my query:
Dear [AGENT],
MIDSUMMER’S MAYHEM is a 60,000-word middle grade mash-up of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Master Chef Junior.
Eleven-year-old Mimi dreams of winning a local baking contest to finally prove she’s not the least talented member of her family. Plus, it’ll start her on the path to becoming a celebrity chef like her culinary idol, Puffy Fay. But when Mimi’s dad returns from a business trip, he’s mysteriously lost his highly honed food writer’s sense of taste. Without his help, Mimi will never be able to bake something impressive enough to propel her to gastronomic fame.
Drawn into the woods behind her house by a strangely familiar song, Mimi meets Vik, a boy who brings her to parts of the forest she’s never seen. Together they discover exotic ingredients and bake them into delectable and enchanting treats.
But as her dad acts stranger every day, and her siblings’ romantic entanglements cause mayhem in their town, Mimi begins to wonder whether the ingredients she and Vik found are somehow the cause of it all. She needs to use her skills, deductive and epicurean, to uncover what’s happened and return everyone to normal. In the process, she learns that in life as in baking, not everything can be sweet.
MIDSUMMER’S MAYHEM was chosen for Pitch Wars 2017. I am a member of SCBWI, The Writer’s Loft in Sherborn, MA, and the 12 x 12 picture book community. I live in eastern Massachusetts with my family – which, like Mimi’s, is half-Indian and all-American.
Sincerely,
Rajani LaRocca
As you can see, I followed “the Hook, the Book, and the Cook” structure for this query.
If you are selected as a mentee this year, your mentors will do all they can to help you craft your best pitch and query. In the meantime, connect to fellow writers, get your query critiqued, let me know if you have questions, and WRITE ON!
If you’d like to add MIDSUMMER’S MAYHEM to your “Want To Read” list on Goodreads, you can find it here.
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