Welcome to:
Morgan’s Query Corner:
Fresh eyes for your query quandaries.
When a sorcerer steals her father away, Emilia cobbles together a crew from her siblings to escape her home island and rescue her papá.
NOTE: If you submit your query to me (morgan.s.hazelwood@gmail.com), and you are selected for inclusion, I will give you a high-level review, in-line feedback, and my own draft of your query. If this is your query, feel free to use or ignore as much of the advice and suggestions as you wish.
[Disclaimer: Any query selected for the page will be posted on this website for perpetuity. I am an amateur with no actual accepted queries and a good number of form rejections. This does not guarantee an agent or even an amazing query, just a new take by someone who’s read The Query Shark archives twice and enjoys playing with queries.]
Overall Impression:
Your story definitely draws me in, and I love the world building is immediately evident. With Ownvoices being actively sought, hopefully your hard-earned perspective can help someone else know that they’re not alone.
- Try to start closer to the inciting incident, the query needs to show stakes — not background.
- The “I’m sure you have many submissions…” is a bit apologetic. Don’t be sorry for querying — it’s an expected part of the process. I suggest the more standard, but equally gracious. “Thank you for your time and consideration.”
Queryist’s Original:
Dear Mx. __
Fifteen-year-old Emilia Marcela Noble is known as the abuelita of the island. She dedicates her days to chores she hates: delivering magical plants, fixing shirts, and cooking meals for her siblings. At least she has sailing lessons with her papá and a plan to someday leave aboard the ship he wrecked against the Aolan shore seventeen years ago.
Then soldiers arrive from far-off lands, capture her papa, and set sail for the other end of the world. Emilia cobbles together a rescue crew from siblings who don’t know a binnacle from a barnacle and Milo, the biggest nuisance on the island. As she captains The Urchin across great oceans, stories exchanged on starry nights and kidnapped children from island ports paint a picture of the power-hungry sorcerer who took their papá and is after even more. Between navigating storms, negotiating with pirates, and knitting terrible sweaters, Emilia will have to decide just what she’s willing to give up to bring her papá home.
Emilia Afloat is a YA fantasy standalone with series potential. This 80,000 word story merges the fierce family ties of Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire with the magical twists of Tricia Levenseller’s The Daughter of the Pirate King Duology.
I attended [SCHOOL], where I completed a semester of research sailing on a tall ship. My own asexual identity and five years of teaching middle school students inspire me to tell stories with queer heroes.
I am sure you have many submissions to review, and I deeply appreciate you taking the time to consider Emilia Afloat.
Best regards,
Q34
The query was clearly very close – it has all the component parts and the story was clear. My main mission was to streamline it a touch — lightening the backstory without losing the context.
My Revision:
Dear Mx…..
When foreign soldiers steal away her papa, fifteen-year-old Emilia Marcela Noble’s quiet life as the island abuelita ends. She hated delivering magical plants, fixing shirts, and cooking meals for her siblings, but had always planned to leave someday on her own terms — aboard the ship her papa wrecked against the Aolan shore seventeen years ago.
With a crew cobbled together from siblings who don’t know a binnacle from a barnacle and Milo, the biggest nuisance on the island, Emilia knows it’s up to them to rescue papa. As she captains The Urchin across great oceans, stories grow about the power-hungry sorcerer who took their papá and is after even more. Between navigating storms, negotiating with pirates, and knitting terrible sweaters, Emilia will have to decide just what she’s willing to give up to bring her papá home.
Emilia Afloat is a YA fantasy standalone with series potential. This 80,000-word story merges the fierce family ties of Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire with the magical twists of Tricia Levenseller’s The Daughter of the Pirate King Duology.
I attended [SCHOOL], where I completed a semester of research sailing on a tall ship. My own asexual identity and five years of teaching middle school students inspire me to tell stories with queer heroes.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Best regards,
Q34
While this tweaked query didn’t get Q34 the mentor they were querying, it did get them a request for more pages — which is exactly what a good query should do. The pages themselves have to get you the rest of the way there.
Best of luck to Q34! That mentor might have said “no”, because the story was already there.
And for the rest of you out there?
Best of luck in the query trenches!
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