Two Birds, One Query

How I reeled in a publisher and agent with one query letter

Welcome to the Pub Crawl’s third post. Today I’ll step you through how, more than a decade ago, I was able to reel in a publisher and an agent at the same time. No small feat.

Long story short (well, at least shorter), in late 2009, I was in the throes of negotiating with Sterling Lord to represent me as my new literary agent. He was interested in Paleopeople, based on a query letter I’d sent out in an email blast. We’d been going back-and-forth on edits to the manuscript for months, and Sterling was not going to commit to me until I’d basically rewritten the book, or so it seemed.

So, while I slogged through the endless edits and waiting for responses from Sterling, I decided to write another book. It took me a month to spit that one out. I sent out another email blast, this time with the query for a book titled Campo Mata. This title was to change to Avery McShane, and would end up being my first, and to date, only published work. Here’s the original Query, as sent to my future publisher Bloomsbury Children’s Books (London):

******

-----Original Message-----
From: G. Leigh Lyons
Sent: 10 December 2009 15:39
To: Emma Matthewson

Subject: CAMPO MATA - The first in a series of young adult novels chronicling a young American boy's incredible adventures while growing up in the oil fields of South America. 

Dear Ms. Emma Matthewson,  

My name is Avery McShane. I lived most of my growing up years in Campo Mata, smack dab in the middle-of-nowhere Venezuela.  Our oil camp was surrounded by El Monte, what most folks call the jungle. Back in the sixties, at least where we lived, we didn’t have TV; so most everything we did to have fun had something to do with El Monte and mostly it started at our tree house high up in the branches of a huge mango tree. Billy, Todd and my dog, Mati made up the rest of our secret, super-exclusive club called the Machacas, and our clubhouse was in that tree.

It all started when we went to sneak a peek at the dead body they’d just put on the concrete slab around back of the clinic. He was a young Venezuelan gaucho, a cowboy, who had been shot twice right through the heart; not nearly as gross as the guy who got smushed by all the drill pipe the week before, just two half-dollar spots of blood on his denim shirt. We didn’t make much of it until I saw the dead guy’s missing silver spurs at Pablo Malo’s banana farm a few days later. From then on things got a mite out of control.

That’s when Pablo Malo caught us trespassing and shot Todd in the butt with his shotgun full of rock salt and his demon dog, Loca came after Billy and me with her nasty fangs. We all got the heck out of Dodge and back safe to our tree house in El Monte, but we figured it wasn’t over. Then I found the note from Pablo Malo in my bedroom; “Next time no salt…” Guess he didn’t want us messing around in his business. Following day, at the hideout, we found all our comic books ripped to pieces and all our most prized possessions smashed and broken. Well, that was about it. He’d dealt the cards and we were going to play the hand…this was war.

 After that things got blown up, folks got kidnapped, and there was a heckuva lot more gunplay; just like in my favorite western novels. ‘Course we had to deal with the flood, gators, anacondas and other critters too. When the dust got settled, we’d figured out what happened to the dead guy on the concrete slab and a whole lot more that came out in the wash. Looking back, it was a pretty cool adventure, so that’s why I’ve told the story.

******

I’ve omitted the usual author’s biography and the typical stuff you’re supposed to put in a query (book length, genre, etc.), but you get the idea. Without getting into too much detail why, let’s just say that this query broke most of the “how to write a good query rules”. My opinion is, go with the voice you think gets the plot, mood and cadence across best in the 300 or 400 words you have to work with. 

The lesson here? Don’t overthink your query letters. The agents who read them sure as hell don’t.

So anyway, and shockingly, I received a response from Emma that same day:

******

Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:59:31 +0000
From: Emma Matthewson
To: G. Leigh Lyons

Dear G. Leigh Lyons

That is one of the most original submissions I have received in a long
time! I enjoyed it very much. Please do send the script. Do you have
scans of the cover art and maps etc you could send me too?
Many thanks

Emma Matthewson
Editorial Director
Bloomsbury Children's Books (London)

******

I immediately googled Emma and Bloomsbury and, when I found out that she had been the editor (and Bloomsbury the publishers) of the Harry Potter books, I started looking for that island to buy.

Shortly after, once Emma had formally committed to publishing Avery McShane, I decided to dangle it in front of Sterling who was still on the fence about representing me. Oh, by the way, I had not included him in the original emailed query blast. Voila, Sterling sent me the agency contract for signature, and the rest is history.

Of course, what I didn’t know then was that it would take more than two years to get the book published (March 2012), and that I was soon much more focused on keeping my house than buying that island.

Finally, to end this post (and since we’re already following the evolution of the cover for Achilles Wept), I thought I’d leave you with the evolution of the cover for Avery McShane. This first one is a concept my late Mom and artist extraordinaire, Lyn Lyons, put together for me after she read the original manuscript.

The treehouse in the mango tree, of course, is central to the story.

This next cover is the first try by the publisher, Bloomsbury.

And this is the one we’ve all come to love.

I secretly liked Bloomsbury’s first effort more but, as I already pointed out in one of my earlier posts, I have no real say in the matter when the chips are down.

I really hope some of that Avery McShane query dust gets sprinkled on the ones I have out there now.

Keep your eyes peeled for a sample chapter from one of the Avery McShane sequels, coming to a thread near you.

See you next week.