u/amcclard

Generic query:

Dear Ms. (Mx., Mr., or agent expressed preference) X,

Given your interest in upmarket fiction with a strong sense of place and immersive worlds [customized to agent], I hope you'll consider Fiddler's Point, an 86,000-word literary novel with elements of magical realism. Like Julia Alvarez's The Cemetery of Untold Stories and Patti Callahan Henry's The Secret Book of Flora Lea, it follows a woman who discovers the story she thought she invented is true. Think an adult Wrinkle in Time meets Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.

Margaux Andrews has spent her adult life writing her childhood as fiction because nobody would believe it otherwise. Now her boyfriend Kiyo has vanished, his plane swallowed by the sky, and an origami rose tumbles from her morning newspaper, folded in a hand she would know anywhere. In its creases, she finds an invitation to a hidden place that sends her on an impossible journey into her past, beginning at Fiddler's Point, the seaside refuge where her homeless family once found sanctuary.

There, Margaux resumes writing her novel about her family's 1968 road trip to the same beach house. The characters she invented turn out to be real, and her childhood haven a shelter with a greater purpose. As past and present converge, she realizes that Kiyo's disappearance, her family's history, and her novel are threads in the same quilt. Finishing her story means leaving herself behind to survive.

I am the author of Butterfly Dreams (Aristata Press, 2024), a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year finalist and Silver Medal recipient from the Independent Publishers of New England Book Awards. The childhood strand of Fiddler's Point draws on my family's experience of homelessness, reimagined through magical realism. I am a member of the Authors Guild, the Independent Book Publishers Association, and New Mexico Writers.

Thank you for your consideration. I would be delighted to send a full manuscript upon request. 

First 300 words:

I pour the last bit of hot water over the coffee grounds and watch the cone empty. I should have gone with him—the only man I've ever loved.

The dumbwaiter squeals as it begins its ascent to my fifth-floor loft, carrying the morning paper. Kiyo insisted on the dumbwaiter. Said it would keep me safer, as I would never need to open the door to strangers who might make dangerous deliveries. He feared for me, and rightly so.

A chime rings, and a green light above the door glows upon landing. I slide the door open to retrieve my daily copy of the New York Times, which I place on the table, slipping the rubber band off. With coffee in one hand, I unfurl it with the other. And then the world stops.

“PLANE VANISHES IN THIN AIR!”

The headline spans the entire front page. Below the headline, Kiyo’s headshot stares back at me. My coffee cup slips from my grasp, hits the floor, sending shards skittering in every direction. All I can see is that impossible word: vanishes. If I had gone with him, everything would be different.

Gold leaf floats in the morning sunlight streaming through the tall arched windows—remnants from when this building was the K. T. Anderson Company, a book binding factory that specialized in occult and mystical texts. A couple of days ago, Kiyo and I lay in bed, and he ran his fingers through my unruly dark mane. “Look,” he said, smiling, holding his hand out to show me the sparkling bits he captured from my hair. “Fairy dust.”

Now gold turns to ash. Vanished.

How could that actually happen?

The article recounts eyewitness reports of the plane’s disappearance. A tuna fishing crew off the Azores had been out on calm water early that morning when they spotted the plane flying unusually low, as though preparing to land at the military base on Terçeira.