Requesting Critique of Query Letter

Feliz Piez wants to die. *He doesn't want to be dead dead, just metaphorically dead so he sets out on a quest to kill himself, write his book, and go to Cuba, and not necessarily in that order.
He is contacted by Milagro, a sage, or perhaps a charlatan, who convinces him he will show him the path to killing himself. Feliz hires a ghost writer to document his “life and dying.” They work on the book for two years and then Feliz suddenly disappears along with the only copy of the manuscript. The ghost writer has no resources except for a box of scrap notes and his memories. He is greatly impressed with the truths he has gleaned from his conversations with Feliz and feels he cannot, in good conscience, leave these truths, hidden from the world in a dusty corner of his study. Combine the oppressive guilt of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, the Romantic quest of Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” and the magical thinking of Carlos Castaneda and you get “Excerpts from: The Life and Dying of Feliz Piez.”
I am a retired Licensed Clinical Therapist. I spent my career of almost thirty years counseling clients with the depression and anxiety brought on by guilt, failure, rejection and the consequences of life choices. I didn’t truly understand the depth of their pain until I reached “The Age of Grieving” and came face to face with the deep despair of my own life of overwhelming guilt and a lack of a sense of forgiveness. “Excerpts” is my reconstructed healing narrative done with humor and satire and truth.

Having read your writing sample, you're not nearly ready to query yet. Don't put the cart before the horse as the old saying goes.

In the future if you have a query letter, put it under the "Query Letter" forum. Pretty common sense, eh?

Thanks Rogue again for your input. You do understand I live under a completey different paradigm than you. Quite often queries are done with simple "what ifs... or "when" scenarios and the publication is rarely in its final form. That is why we have professional editors. I love Editors and want to give them as much work as possible. I'm sure you would agree I have alot of work to offer them. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to submit my queries anyway. Thanks for the referral to the appropriate forum. Good look you on your own writing endeavors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Feliz Piez

Thanks Rogue again for your input. You do understand I live under a completey different paradigm than you. Quite often queries are done with simple "what ifs... or "when" scenarios and the publication is rarely in its final form. That is why we have professional editors. I love Editors and want to give them as much work as possible. I'm sure you would agree I have alot of work to offer them. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to submit my queries anyway. Thanks for the referral to the appropriate forum. Good look you on your own writing endeavors.

---

I know you don't think so but you're wasting your time, the time of all the interns who will have to read it, and you're disrespecting other writers who actually have works ready to be submitted. And no, editors were not put on this Earth to clean up your messes. Strangely enough, editors don't do a lot of editing anymore. It's up to you to either polish it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Ask Oberon for a rate. Maybe you can get the Friends of Rogue Mutt discount. Haha.

Quote:

---

You do understand I live under a complety different paradigm than you. Quite often queries are done with simple "what ifs... or "when" scenarios and the publication is rarely in its final form.

---

Bull****. Fiction must be complete before querying. And that is non negotiable. Based on the writing and the query you've obviously done no meaningful research into the writing or submission process. And as my favorite Mark Twain quote says, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Because what you call a query is in reality a mini synopsis, any acquiring editor would stop reading at the end of the first sentence. And that doesn't take into account that having already self-released it you've taken yourself out of the race, if for no other reason than the sales numbers for the book. There are at least 1000 people fighting for each publishing slot. So you either supply what they see as professional writing—and better than the competition—or you lose.

If publication is your goal, the first thing you need to do is learn to write fiction for the printed page, as publishers, and customers, define that.