querying – Page 4 – Julie Liddell Whitehead

Query Letters

As i said last week, I am pitching Hurricane Baby to independent presses, and I got another full request last week! I thought today I would share my query letter and see if looking at what I have done in it might help other writers craft their queries as well. About half of the presses I have sent to, I went ahead and sent full manuscripts to because they called for them. But I think this query may help answer questions about how to put one together. Mine is going to read differently than yours because I write like I write, and you write like you write. But here it is, with the final paragraph with contact information removed:

Hurricane Baby: Stories (69,820 words) is the first fictional treatment of Hurricane Katrina to approach its subject–the suffering of those who endured the hurricane and its aftermath–through a trauma-focused lens. The characters in this short-story collection face extreme circumstances with only their inner resources to count on–and in many cases. that proves to not be enough to deal with the mental challenges of living through a weather event of this magnitude. Although many of the characters do not experience the typical physical losses of family members or property, they persist in living lives that have become psychological nightmares.

Wendy Magnum of Hattiesburg, Mississippi suffers guilt and remorse after betraying her husband, Ray. by having an intimate encounter with Judd McKay, a friend Ray had trusted to help protect his family during the storm. Tommy Hebert turns to alcohol to help him handle the trauma of what he saw aiding in search-and-rescue in Metairie, Louisiana. Mike Seabrook’s relationships with his God and his wife, Dinah, are sorely tested after he loses a patient in his emergency room; he responds by quitting his nursing job and working in hurricane relief while attempting to rebuild both his home in Slidell, Louisiana and his faith. James and Lori King suffer dual devastating losses –Lori goes into premature labor as a result of the storm, and James discovers on his return to their home in Kenner, Louisiana that his best friend died trying to protect the Kings’ home from looters.

I currently work as a reporter for the Mississippi Center for investigative Reporting, covering stories on mental health, mental health advocacy, and mental health education. My fiction has appeared in China Grove Press, The Esthetic Apostle, and Swamp Ape Review, among others, including the Running Wild Press Novella anthology in 2019 with the story Looking for Home. In 2021, I graduated with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Mississippi University for Women. A full-length play based on an early version of Hurricane Baby won an award from the Eudora Welty New Plays Festival in 2010 and is slated to be produced by Mississippi Repertory Theatre in 2023. I have a social media presence of WordPress, Facebook. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. and Pinterest, for a total of about 2,000 followers.

The stories’ common themes touch on the fragility of morality in a life-or-death situation, the impossibility of chasing normalcy for the psyche after severe trauma, and the reverberations of the characters’ choices on how to deal with their trauma that go far beyond mere survival of the immediate storm. I hope these themes resonate with you as they should other readers who are interested in the study of trauma, the effects of climate change on our communities, and the importance of memorializing the past in a way that honors and enlarges it, all told in the Southern Gothic tradition.

Sincerely,

Julie Whitehead

Hope this helps!

Professional Milestone

I experienced an important professional milestone this week—I got my first rejection of Hurricane Baby: Stories on Friday.

Why do I phrase it that way? Let me explain.

The rejection was from the same group that included my novella, Looking For Home, in their 2018 novella anthology. I enjoyed working with them and felt like they should get a crack at this project as well as other presses that I have not worked with before. I pitched it to them as a novel-in-stories (which may be a misnomer for this project, but I thought it was worth a try). They sent a very nice note saying it wasn’t a fit for them and wishing me the best of luck with it.

So what did I do?

I got back online and found another strong, independent press to send the manuscript to, checked over my list of further places I want to send it as they open up for submissions, and kept typing away at whatever I wanted to work on.

Back when I was pitching my first novel to New York publishers in 2006 (when there were more than the Big Five), I was just that sanguine about those rejections, too. But as the rejections kept coming, I sank into a depression. At first I was saying, “I’ve been rejected by X of the finest publishing houses in New York.” But as the time wore on, I started to seriously doubt myself and my work.

I’m not doing that this time.

I have set a date for when I will stop sending it out. I am the only one that knows that date. And I have a plan for what I will do if everyone I have already sent to and plan to send to rejects it. What I know now that I didn’t know then is that rejection letters are not grades. The world will not end every time I receive a rejection. I need to act with grace and humility for my own sanity. Grace for myself and humility about my work.

One of my MFA mentors said one time in class “Not everyone gets an agent and a New York publisher.” I have to trust that the work will find its audience when the time is right and the audience is ready.

Different writers handle rejection differently. One of my MFA mates sends her work to two more outlets every time she gets a rejection. Others delete the rejection from their email and never think about it again. Others say they wallpaper their office with their rejections. Still others shoot for 100 rejections in a year—and say that if they experience only a five percent acceptance rate, that’s five places their work appears during that year.

The journey doesn’t end with one rejection. That’s the takeaway.

Next Stage

So all of the writing contests that I’ve already entered closed on September 30. Some have already undertaken a review of my manuscript, some will probably start reviewing on Monday, and others may not get to it for a long time. So what am I going to do in the meantime?

I’ll get busy on something else.

Waiting around for publishers/agents to get back to you is rough. You check your email every day. several times a day, to see if you’ve heard from anyone. Or you check QueryTracker and Submittable multiple times a day. Or you resist the urge to write follow-up emails asking if they received the manuscript.

Keep resisting. No one wants to be pestered. What you need to do is keep writing. On something else.

This method works on several levels–1) You distract your mind from the constant drumbeat of “I haven’t heard anything yet; what is taking so long?” 2) You have a fresh store of enthusiasm for the new project that may have been simmering in your mind for a while now. 3) You actually accomplish something in the waiting period, besides driving yourself crazy over the finished project.

Am I done with Hurricane Baby? Maybe not. I have two people who agreed to read Hurricane Baby but said they couldn’t do it right then when I was looking for feedback for these contests. So one has gotten back in touch, and I sent the manuscript to him just for kicks. Another lady from my summer workshop had agreed to swap manuscripts with me but didn’t think she would have a complete draft until December. So I will get back in touch with her then and see if she is ready.

Why am I doing that? If Hurricane Baby isn’t picked up in its current form, having another batch of feedback by the first of next year will enable me to revise again to get ready to enter another string of contests that open in the first three months of the year. Remember: writing is a long game. Persistence pays off.

So I have started another project in the waiting. I will keep writing here weekly to discuss different craft ideas, to update you on Hurricane Baby’s progress, and maybe to discuss the new project. We will see. But I hope you hang around for more ideas, insights, and if-not-this-then-that about the writing life. Stay tuned.