Query Letter: Geronimo's Cave

Here is another sample query letter, this one for my novel Geronimo's Cave. Like my last query letter example (found here), I tried to put the agent right in the story in the first sentence, and then give a 'big picture' look of how the story fits in.

What I did not do: show what is at stake, or what Singer's obsession might be, which are supposed good strategies. I'm not so sure that 'what is at stake' is applicable in all cases, and not in this one. I could be wrong. It's happened before. But, if you see anything of use for your own query letter, feel free to steal it! Comments/feedback welcome!

I also did not include a list of my published fiction after the letter, which I had been doing with previous letters (which you'll see in the weeks to come). Lit agents don't ask for this anymore, and so I mentioned some literary magazines I've been published in, the most well known that they may have heard of, and hope if they're really interested, that they'll go to my website to see more. I do not know if they would, though visits to my website do go up when I send out query letters.

Alas, I received no nibbles on this from lit agents. I also tried querying indie publishers, and did get a nibble or two, but they were so indie as to be not even survive beyond responding back to me. Alas alas alas....

Note: Apparently, using Mr or Ms is now considered too formal, and you should just use their first and last name. Or so I've read.... 

Also also, this is the last time I ever still used actual an print letter for some agents. At this point, it was still a mix of both email and snail mail. Now, it's almost always email. But if you were doing print, you would put your address and info first, then theirs. Thankfully, it's easier now, but that means it's easier for everybody, and lit agents now get more queries. Though it's easier for them to pass. With email queries, you may now never get a reply back if they're not interested. It's not personal, but don't ever bother them by following up, and don't ever every call their office!

Begin query letter:

Mr./Ms. Their Name,

After a divorce, his sister's descent into addiction, and the death of his mother, TONY SINGER, a teacher at Mesa Community College, in Arizona, gives up his job, and his life, and goes off into the Superstition Mountains, to a cave once used by Geronimo, to die. While there, he receives visitors, both real and imagined (and remembered). This modern mash-up of two myths, the Christian Temptation of St. Anthony and the Tibetan Life of Milarepa, re-tells the lesson found in many spiritual paths: giving up everything.

Audience for Geronimo's Cave: readers of Sherman Alexie, Roberto Bolaño, Jim Harrison, and Kim Addonizio.

Geronimo's Cave

Literary fiction

Word count: 52,929

Bio:

Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe grew up in Michigan, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, deckhand/oiler, runner/busboy, bike messenger, wilderness ranger, fire lookout, as well as a teacher of writing. MA in Written Communication from Eastern Michigan University and a MFA in Poetry Writing from The New School for Social Research. His short stories have appeared at connu.co, Rattapallax, ENTROPY, Best American Erotica of 2004.

A complete list of all his publications, including essays and reviews, with links and samples, can be found at his website: www.johnyohe.com

Blog: johnyoheblog.blogspot.com

Twitter: @thejohnyohe

Thank you,

John Yohe

www.johnyohe.com

503.***.****

 The first 20 pages or so of Geronimo's Cave can be found here.

Episode 3 of the HUGE Power Podcast: Corrupt Dems and Query Letters

Episode 3 of the HUGE Power podcast has now dropped! 

"Corrupt Democrats & The Aftermath of Their Losses; Query Letters & Adding 'Value'"

Query letter: CAT

Here is an example of a query letter for my novel CAT, for either a literary agent or an indie publisher. This is the one query letter that has gotten nibbles: requests to see the full manuscript. Alas, that's as far as I've gotten. What I would add, somewhere, is a paragraph saying why I'm querying that particular literary agent or publisher. I will post more query letters in the weeks to come, so you can see how my format has changed (not that that has necessarily increased interest). I don't put my blog and Twitter anymore, but who knows, maybe that helped? Feel free to borrow and steal anything you can use for your own query letter!

Their Name,

Ash and blackened earth. An elite wildland firefighting hotshot crew reaches the edge of a wildfire with chainsaws roaring, tanker planes and helicopters overhead. Cutting and digging line, they hope to catch the fire before it spreads out of control.

CAT: OR A SEASON IN FIRE follows DANNY SINGER during his first season on an elite wildland firefighting ‘hotshot’ crew, and his relationship with a female coworker (CAT) and the rest of the crew have as they travel the American west fighting forest fires for one summer.

With wildfires in the news every summer, CAT offers a look into the lives of wildland firefighters behind the media screen. My writing style comes from writers such as Hemingway, Sherman Alexie, Robert Bolaño, Jim Harrison, and Edward Abbey. This story would also appeal to readers of non-fiction works like Young Men and Fire and Fire On The Mountain.

Word count: 54,594

Bio:

Born in Puerto Rico, John Yohe grew up in Michigan, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon. He has worked as a wildland firefighter, deckhand/oiler, runner/busboy, bike messenger, wilderness ranger, and fire lookout, as well as a teacher of writing. His writing has appeared in ENTROPY, Rattapallax, Left Curve, Fence, connu.co, Best American Erotica 2004, and many other literary journals. A complete list, with links, is available at his website: www.johnyohe.com

Twitter: @thejohnyohe

Blog: johnyoheblog.blogspot.com

Thank you,

John Yohe

503.317.0851

www.johnyohe.com

The first 12 pages of CAT can be read here.

Moth Man

Happy to have my poem "Moth Man" in the new Manzano Mountain Review, which dropped on Halloween 2018!

HUGE Power Podcast #2: Saudi Arabia in US Media, the Backbone of Democrats, and Political Fiction Writers

Excited once again to be part of the HUGE Power Podcast with my friend Reagan M. Sova. Episode 2: Saudia Arabia in US Media, the Backbone of Democrats, and Political Fiction Writers.

Available on Soundcloud, and itunes.

Huge Power Podcast: Episode 1 The Agony and Ecstasy

I'm excited to be part of the Huge Power Podcast along with my friend Reagan Sova. Episode 1: The Agony and Ecstasy of the English Department, in which we discuss our times in academia:

Eat The Apple by Matt Young

Eat The Apple: A Memoir

by Matt Young

Bloomsbury USA 2018

ISBN: 978-1-63286-950-0 (hardback)

The literature from the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions that I've read (and I don't claim a comprehensive knowledge), both fiction and non-, seems to work at its most powerful in the short form. It's almost like Michael Herr's collection of journalism pieces about the Vietnam War, Dispatches (a great book) set the standard. I can think of major novels about the American Civil War World War I, World War Two and even the Spanish Civil War, but it's almost as if the way people, men, write about combat now has to come in flashes, flashbacks. Eat The Apple by Matt Young, though labeled a memoir, was assembled from shorter published pieces and could easily have been a collection of essays, or even in some cases short stories.

Eat The Apple differs from other military literature of this century (again, that I've read) in that Young includes his time at Marine boot camp and its absurdity as a prelude to the absurdity of deployment in Iraq. It reminds my of the movie Full Metal Jacket in this way in that I almost thought the book might be just about boot camp, but then halfway through or so we jump to Iraq. It does follow a linear timeline, but there are chunks of space in it: there's only so many days of sweating one's ass off that you can describe, and that's what we-who-haven't-been can't quite know, though we get the idea, that in the military, surrounding the moments of terror and awkward R&R binges, loom just days and weeks of monotony.

It differs too in its introspection: Young is unsparing on himself, though with (dark) humor. He's looking back about ten years later and fully acknowledging that his reasons for wanting to join the Marines—to change his life for the better could be the summary—are all bullshit and that if he knew, or thought about the reasons why America is there (still!), oil and money, then he would not. He could take it easy on himself and just say he was just a lost young man, but over and over Young portrays himself as a selfish idiot.

You've chosen the United States Marine Crops infantry based on one thing: You got drunk last night and crashed your car into a fire hydrant sometime in the early morning and think—because your idea of masculinity is severely twisted and damaged by the male figures in your life and the media with which you surround yourself—that the only way to change is the self-flagellation achieved by signing up for war.

You will ship out for recruit training to San Diego, California, in April 2005. Your family—broken and distant—will remain silent as to your decision. Only an ex-girlfriend, with whom you're still in contact, will beg you not to go with words of oil and death and futility. You'll wish you listened.

In fact, it's almost hard to read this as a memoir because I can't almost believe the fuckup narrator in Eat The Apple went on to earn a MA in Creative Writing and now teaches writing. That's maybe the tug of this text: trying to see the humanity in the younger Young and how he gets out (it's a memoir, we know he gets out) changed, or scared straight.

I say 'the narrator,' but another fairly unique thing about Eat The Apple is how much Young plays with that idea, with some of the 'dispatches' coming in third and (a seeming favorite, and effective) second person. Even second person plural. There's even one section in the third person POV of one of the boot camp sergeants. Does that even still counts as memoir? Makes me wonder if some of Eat The Apple was intended as short fiction at first, that Young, or his editor, might have later decided to collect the fragments together.

It works. I'm left wanting more, perhaps Eat The Apple could have been filled out, but on the other hand, as I said before, this memoir is a man working through vivid memories here, both in Iraq and back in America. Young is up front from the beginning: joining the Marines was a mistake, though he might have ended up dead or in prison otherwise, and/or just lived a life of desperation. The Marines changed him. Young would say for the worse. Still, here's this book, and this man who turned his life around.