The "query trenches"
What it's like to seek a literary agent so far
I now understand why querying literary agents is referred to as the “query trenches.” The industry is secretive; you’re in the murk of the ocean depths. You see tiny bioluminescent lights down in the trenches (aka profile pictures on agency websites), so it’s clear that there are agents down there. But how will they interact with your manuscript?
You might never know, because your main activity is pitching your letter into the abyss like a deep sea probe, hoping you encounter signs of life. And then more often than not – from what I’m gathering – you don’t. Your letter disappears into the trench. No reply. Or sometimes you do encounter life, but it comes two months later. So ideally you send out 100 of these probes to maximize your chances. Then you cross your fingers.
I just got started exploring these trenches last weekend. You’re invited to critique my query letter below (warning: Psychofauna spoilers). And you’re especially welcome to introduce me to anyone who can help me with this strange process! My email is tyleralterman[at]gmail[dot]com 🙂
Query letter for Psychofauna
PSYCHOFAUNA is a 117,000-word speculative fiction novel. A psychic catastrophe turns New York into a battleground for living ideas. To save his childhood tormentor from a carnivorous ideology, a young cartographer of subcultures must risk the thing he fears most: the invasion of his own mind. The novel combines the mind-virus horror of There Is No Antimemetics Division with the mythic, street-level NYC of The City We Became.
As long as Dante Baruch-Williams makes compulsive maps of human culture, he can protect himself from its pressures to conform. Unfortunately, his maps are useless for the problem of Mikey – the swaggering soccer star who is his best friend, worst enemy, and first love.
Then everyone on Earth turns telepathic. Warring ideas invade the minds of everyone Dante loves, putting words into their mouths and driving them to commit atrocities. Worse, some of these ideas are Dante’s own creation.
One of them radicalizes Mikey into a stranger who makes Molotov cocktails in Dante’s living room and wields mental magic against political rivals. To get his friend back, Dante must do the one thing he spends his life avoiding: step out from behind his notebooks and let other people in – close enough to lose himself in them.
This novel comes directly from my experiences at a now-infamous institute called Leverage, which imploded amidst its research into contagious mental phenomena (really). Since then, I’ve written about this topic for my 26,000 followers on X. I live in NYC, where I help run Fractal, a creative collective that includes a housing network, peer-led university, and incubator to create similar communities around the world.
Thanks all!
Tyler