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To help you decide if they’re the right agents for you and prepare for your appointment, agents Amelia Appel and Gabrielle Piraino answered some questions.
Amelia Appel (Triada US Literary Agency)
Amelia is looking for Literary Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Upmarket Women’s Fiction, Sci Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Sports, How-To, Pop Culture, True Crime, YA and queries. You can follow her on Twitter @AmeliaLAppel.
You mention in your interests that you appreciate a “fantastic setting to jump into.” What was the last book you read to meet this description and what was its draw?
I’ve always viewed books as an escape and gravitate towards settings vastly different from where I’m currently situated. Fantasy, in particular, holds a special place in my heart for that reason, but one of the last books I read with a delightful setting was The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks. It’s non-fiction and set primarily in the Lake District in England. There’s something indescribably special about sitting on a subway in NYC and mentally exploring the rolling, green fields of the UK. We’re all interested in escapism – I want to be taken somewhere fun, and the wide open spaces of a real area I’ve never visited felt perfect at the time.
You also mention that your YA preferences lean towards coming of age tales with a dark tone. Can you describe one that has resonated with you?
I really enjoy Black Hole by Charles Burns. It’s a bit of a horrifying, wild ride about navigating high school and sexuality in the midst of murder and a disease that literally turns its victims into monsters. It’s a graphic novel, so there are added layers of literal darkness there that play into the tone and messages. I love how it explores real issues of growing up and exacerbates them to emphasize and entertain.
What published nonfiction book do you wish you’d had the opportunity to represent?
I already mentioned The Shepherd’s Life, but another dream project would be Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist. I grew up a huge fan of the original Star Wars Trilogy and Leia was an early role model for me, but this book is so far beyond that – Carrie’s introspection, wit, humor, and unapologetic honesty about her life and herself feel real in such a relatable way that is still very unique. It’s important to me that I connect with every project I represent for one reason or another, and this book spoke to me.
Gabrielle Piraino (DeFiore & Company)
Gabrielle is looking for Adult, YA, MG Fiction: (SciFi, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller/Mystery, Upmarket/Commercial Women’s), ad Comics/Graphic Novel queries. You can follow her on Twitter @nerdplusdog.
Can you tell us one of your favorite examples of world-building (that you represented or that you wish you’d been able to represent)? What characteristics are essential to good world-building?
I use this example a lot, but I love His Dark Materials (starting with “The Golden Compass” in the US) by Philip Pullman. It’s difficult to create an engaging world that is clearly different but also echoes our own world… and then layer several more on top of it in the later books of the series. The most important characteristic of any world, be it SF or F, is that the ‘rules’ work seamlessly. If you’re going to play in a different environment, the nuts and bolts of the place have to make logical sense; you can’t have a space opera without addressing gravity. In Area X of the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, the environment itself is practically a character; what I think works best is that the further we read, the more we learn and understand (or not) Area X, just as we do from Jeff’s human characters.
How can authors convey a sense of the world they created in a short query letter?
This is HARD; even as an agent I rewrite my pitch letters before I can create a well-balanced draft. Focus on the primary characters (usually your protagonist, antagonist, and love interest if appropriate) and plot. Since you only have about 250 words to distill your entire novel, focus on what I need to know about your story. The world-building will shine through your description of the plot and your first pages.
What diverse character really stood out to you? How do you think that query letters should mention if a character is diverse?
There’s so many: Linh Cinder from The Lunar Chronicles was mixed race/cyborg; Inej Ghafa from Six of Crows is a PoC, noted as Suli in the novel; Simon and Baz from Carry On are LGBT. What all of these characters have is a very specific view. I like to know if there are diverse characters or the novel is #ownvoices, but I don’t need to know which characters are specifically diverse unless it fits naturally into the query.
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And if you missed the Q&A from agents Tess Callero, Christina Morgan, Laura Usselman, Latoya C. Smith, Stacy Testa, and Samantha Fingerhut, readPart 1,Part 2, and Part 3.
By Rina Mody
Rina’s a marketing assistant at a publishing company in NY. She’s an avid traveler and loves to go to new places – both real and fictional.
