Query with Creative Hook

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In this example, I used a more creative lead, dropping the reader into the story's locale. The word-length and genre are worked into the second paragraph. Only the portions of the letter from differ from the first example are shown.

Dear Mr. Bookman:

Welcome to New Mexico, Land of Enchantment, a place of fabulous sunsets, green and red chile and the unfortunate home of Regan O'Connell. The improbable offspring of a vampire and a human, Regan is a Wolfe, a secret operative for a vampire syndicate. She is also the definition of "incompetent." Her magic spells fizzle and her diplomatic skills rival those of Attila the Hun. Weary of more than a century of blunders, her superiors assign her to Albuquerque, New Mexico, a place of very little interest to most paranormal beings.

At the onset of The Music of Chaos, Book One of The Improbable Child, Regan has been living in Albuquerque for nearly a year without any embarrassing incidents, nothing that could alert ordinary humans to the existence of things that go bump in the night. But one innocuous event, a blind date, signals the end of her trouble free existence. Two weeks and 100,000 words later, Regan will have commanded the wild power of chaotic magic and learned that "Sometimes the thing you hate most about yourself is your greatest strength."

. . .

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