Query #45

I found an agent I was excited about because of her mission statement (books that matter) and because she's done a lot with Philip Roth's work (whose novel The Human Stain is the most like mine in terms of whistleblower fiction). It wasn't clear until I'd already invested some time in the query that she only accepts non-fiction. I guess I was tired, but I got aggressive and sent her a query anyhow. Haven't heard back. :D I've queried 45 agents now and need to keep going. It feels like I'm running out of agencies I feel confident are solid. I know I need to submit some short stories to magazines, too. That would help my credibility to agents.

Part of my query letter to Wendy Strothman:

I’m writing to you because this book, which reflects dire current affairs, matters. It will change how people think about those struggling with mental health issues by revealing yet another little-known form of discrimination they either endure or succumb to. It will educate people about the toll of being a park ranger and about dangers in nature, and it will make them curious to follow, in the next book, a memorable character out of the frying pan of surviving suicidality into the fire of our failing mental health system, which often leads to jail for people in crisis.

I’m writing to you because you’re singing my song and I’m singing yours but in different, complementary keys. Philip Roth, Upton Sinclair, George Orwell, and many others wrote significant and provocative works of non-fiction as fiction because it was more effective to make their points. Would you say no to them without peeking at their work? What use is a memoir aborted by libel laws unless you dress it in fictional skin?