u/BaseballNo8148

Hi, this weekend I attended a writers workshop. I sent my query to one of the agents teaching. She is a really well known agent. I told her that I took her advise and revised my query based on what she had taught. She wrote back with her version of what my query should look like. It was slightly off from my actual story. So, this version is basically almost identical to hers just with correct story info put in. I feel like having an actual agent tell me what they wanted was amazing. Please give me your opinions as I am deep in the query trenches and need to make this great! Thanks so much for your help. This time I also listed my first 300 words below the query.

Dear (Agent Name),

[Personalization.]

In Aethera, children are not born. They are woven from a living Loom spinning magical threads that run through everyone and everything. Lily was woven in Aethera but grew up in New York City, unaware she had been hidden from the Choir, who have hunted her because she was woven illegally.
 
The Loom grants seventeen gifts, one to each of Aethera's seventeen magical factions, overseen by the seventeen members of the Choir. An ancient prophecy foretells that fire, shadow, and thread will change Aethera for eternity.

When Lily's sister Vespera's power starts to threaten not only Aethera but Earth, too, Lily picks up the mantle and, along with friends from both sides of the veil, returns home to save both worlds and everyone she loves.

[Bio]

Sincerely,

Derek Bellerose

300 words:

Lilly looked up at the sun and the moon as they continued to fight their eternal daily battle over who would get the morning. At six thirty, the block was lit only by streetlights. She stood on the sidewalk outside her building, one heel braced against the cold step, folding down into the stretch she did before every run. The cars along the street sat empty and dark. A glowing thread appeared in the air in front of her face. Before she thought better of it, she reached out, and her fingers closed around it. An electric charge ran up her arm and into her chest, filling her head to toe before dissipating. Her hand hung empty in the dark, her heart beating hard.

For a moment, she was shaking. She turned her palm over, telling herself she hadn’t slept enough. Her brain did strange things at this hour, or maybe she was losing her mind. She ignored the thoughts, started her watch, and began her run.

She took her usual route, west toward the water. Around the third block, she glanced uptown out of habit, at the Empire State Building, lit the same as always. As she passed an alley, hands grabbed her from behind. One clamped over her mouth. Before she could struggle, two more pinned her still. She thrashed, trying to break free. The fingers were cold and soft against her skin. She wrenched her head around, looking at her attackers. All three men were identical. They had short purple hair and black eyes with no white showing. Together they lifted their heads and opened their mouths. Shadow poured from them as black smoke. It gathered into an oval in front of her, a mirror made of shadow. A woman appeared at the center of the mirror. Even through the fear, the face stopped her. It was her own, a few years older, the resemblance close enough to be off-putting.

I’ve reached the point that is both exciting and slightly terrifying: I’m ready to hand Aethera over to people who have never lived inside my head. I need 2 or 3 readers who love fantasy and world building.

AETHERA is a completed 114,000-word adult upmarket fantasy with strong romantasy appeal. It’s a story filled with thread magic, floating cities, living forests, ancient prophecies, royal trials, friendship, romance, and a family that is built rather than born.

The story follows Lilly Monroe, a twenty-one-year-old Manhattan photographer who discovers that the strange threads of light she has begun seeing are real. So is the fairy realm on the other side of an arch hidden in her childhood meadow.

And Lilly belongs there.

She was never born on Earth. She was woven into existence in Aethera.

Her mother was once its queen. Her best friend has been keeping a secret from her for most of her life. Celestial beings consider Lilly’s existence a violation of their oldest law. And the woman hunting her through mirrors of shadow is the sister she never knew she had.

For all the magic and stakes, though, the part of this book that matters most to me is the people.

It’s about discovering the family you didn’t know you were missing. It’s about friendship, complicated mothers and daughters, sisters, first love, sacrifice, and deciding who you are when everyone around you seems to have already decided for you.

That’s why I’m looking for beta readers now.

I don’t need proofreading or someone hunting for misplaced commas. I’m trying to find out what it actually feels like to read this book when you don’t already know what happens.

Did you care about Lilly?

Who did you love? Who irritated you?

Did you believe the relationships?

Was there a moment that genuinely got to you?

Did you ever get confused about the magic or the world?

Was there a chapter where you suddenly realized your attention had wandered?

Did a reveal surprise you, or had you figured it out fifty pages earlier?

Did the romance work?

Did the ending give you the emotional payoff you wanted?

And when it was over, did you miss these people even a little?

You absolutely do not need to write an editorial report for me. Notes in the margins, reactions as you read, a page of thoughts at the end, answers to some questions, or a giant message telling me everything you loved and hated are all useful. I’m interested in your honest experience.

I’m specifically looking for human beta readers rather than AI-generated manuscript critiques or summaries. At this stage, I need the things software can’t tell me: whether you stayed up for another chapter, whether you laughed somewhere I hoped you would, whether something hurt, whether a character felt real to you, and whether Aethera stayed in your head afterward.

You may be a good fit if you like immersive fantasy worlds, strong found-family stories, queer-inclusive casts, magical creatures, complicated family relationships, romance woven into a larger adventure, and high stakes without everything being relentlessly dark.

For a sense of the space it occupies, I comp it to the found-family warmth of TJ Klune’s THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA with the immersive faerie world of Heather Fawcett’s EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES.

A content note before anyone volunteers: this is adult fantasy and includes fantasy violence and peril, death and grief, emotional trauma, mature themes, strong language, and romantic/sexual content.

If Aethera sounds like somewhere you’d like to disappear into for a while, please DM me.

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post here. I have been following for a while. Just reached the stage to begin querying agents. I really appreciate any feedback at all. Thanks so much.

Dear [Agent Name],

I am seeking representation for AETHERA: SHADOW, FIRE, AND THREAD, a 116,000-word adult fantasy complete as a standalone with series potential. It combines the found-family warmth of TJ Klune's THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA with the immersive world-building of Heather Fawcett's EMILY WILDE novels.

Manhattan photographer Lilly Monroe has built her life around chasing the perfect light. The day before her twenty-first birthday, she learns why she can always find it. The world is woven. Threads of light hold everything in place, and Lilly can see them. No one else can, because Lilly was never from Earth.

Her memories were sealed when she was a child, and the life she knows is a cover story built to hide her. Her best friend is a fairy, exiled for smuggling her out of Aethera. Her mother is the realm's vanished queen. The woman speaking to Lilly through a mirror made of shadow is the sister she never knew existed.

Vespera was woven from a grief so powerful it broke Aethera's first law, and she was claimed as payment. What came back is patient enough to unmake a city without raising her voice. Vespera is cutting a path toward the Loom, the source every thread in existence is spun from, the engine that holds the pattern of everything that is. She does not want to destroy it. She wants to merge with it, and once she does, every life in Aethera becomes hers to rewrite. Earth sits inside that pattern too.

Lilly crosses into Aethera to stop her. There she finds a family built by choice. Her guide is a sarcastic royal weaver, along with his husband, a food weaver. They take her in without asking for anything in return. There is also Ash, her childhood friend who is no longer the little boy she remembers, whose feelings for her run deeper than she understood. For the first time, Lilly knows exactly what she wants. She wants to keep them all.

Lilly's magic belongs to none of Aethera's known factions. An ancient prophecy has only one name for her, Thread's Own Heart, and no living fairy knows what it means. To reach the Loom before Vespera, Lilly must survive three Trials that do not test courage. They name a price, and no one leaves holding everything they carried in.

If Lilly claims the power waiting for her, she may save both worlds. But claiming it could cost her the family she has only just found.

I am a freelance photographer, like Lilly, and an American expat living in Amsterdam. I have been a contributing editor for The Orlando Sentinel. The loving gay marriage at the heart of Lilly's found family was inspired by my own. AETHERA: SHADOW, FIRE, AND THREAD is my debut novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

First 300 words

Lilly looked up at the sun and the moon. They continued to fight their daily battle over who would get the morning. At six thirty, the block was lit only by streetlights. She stood on the sidewalk outside her building, one heel braced against the cold step, folding down into the stretch she did before every run. The cars along the street sat empty and dark. In the darkness, a glowing thread appeared in the air in front of her face. Before she thought better of it, she reached out, and her fingers closed around it. An electric charge ran up her arm and into her chest, filling her head to toe before dissipating. Her hand hung empty in the dark, her heart beating hard.

For a moment, she was shaking. She turned her palm over, telling herself she hadn’t slept enough. Her brain did strange things at this hour, or maybe she was losing her mind. She ignored the thoughts, started her watch, and began her run.

She took her usual route, west toward the water. Around the third block, she glanced uptown out of habit, at the Empire State Building, lit the same as always. As she passed an alley, hands grabbed her from behind. One clamped over her mouth. Before she could struggle, two more pinned her still. She thrashed, trying to break free. The fingers were cold and soft against her skin. She wrenched her head around, looking at her attackers. All three men were identical. They had short purple hair and black eyes with no white showing. Together they lifted their heads and opened their mouths. A woman’s voice filled the air. Shadow poured from them as black smoke. It gathered into an oval in front of her, a mirror made of shadow.