Successful Queries: Elias Altman and "In Our Likeness," by Bryan VanDyke

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find the query letter pitched to Elias Altman for Bryan VanDyke's novel In Our Likeness, recently published by Little A.

Bryan VanDyke is a former staff writer at The Millions. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Northwestern. His debut novel, In Our Likeness, was published by Little A on September 3, 2024. His book-length essay, Only the Trying, is a meditation on the nature of illness and recovery. His fiction has appeared in The Rumpus, Carve, and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Here's his original query:

Dear Elias,

I'm writing to you about my literary novel, LIKENESS. I'm a graduate of Columbia's MFA program and a staff writer at The Millions.

LIKENESS is the story of Graham Gooding, who is struggling with the terminal illness of his mother, Geraldine. She was once a painter, but is now losing all memory, all sense of identity. To distract himself from his grief, Graham spends more time at work, where he oversees the production of artificial intelligence chatbots.

At work, Graham has a secret crush on Nessie, a computer programmer. Nessie has created a new kind of chatbot using a powerful algorithm and asks Graham to help to test it. What Graham discovers is that the algorithm has the strange ability to edit reality itself. He tells Nessie, who lets him in on another secret: they're both being secretly manipulated by their boss Warwick, who has used the algorithm to become rich and powerful. Most of what Graham thinks is real turns out to be a revision of reality.

The question of what is real — or what can and should be real — drives this engrossing and thoughtful tale. I believe that LIKENESS is the kind of book that would fit your list at Massie & McQuilkin. I am including the first chapter for your review.

Mirroring the core of the novel itself, this query letter was written (almost) entirely by an artificial intelligence — further testament of the timeliness and prevalence of AI as a subject. I hope you'll consider my book for representation.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Bryan

P.S., I am, as I said in the subject, also a staff writer at The Millions, where I write on topics of literature and the writing life. I graduated from Columbia's MFA program for fiction, and I am the curator of their reading series at KGB Bar in the East Village. I don't always use artificial intelligence to write query letters, but wow, isn't it amazing what the technology can do? I hope to hear from you soon.

Check out Bryan VanDyke's In Our Likeness here:

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Elias Altman’s thoughts on Bryan’s Query:

The point of a query is to get us agents to quarry: for us to move the shovel-like cursor to the attachment, digging into the manuscript. As best as I can reckon, a good query states clearly and enticingly the Premise of the book (plot and pacing); articulates its Promise to readers (intended effects and comparative titles); and Provenance (essential information about the author and the book, as well as why the agent is being targeted). These are called the Three Ps. (No one calls them that.)

In the case of Bryan VanDyke's pitch for his wonderfully plotted, exquisitely paced debut novel IN OUR LIKENESS, he did not do all these things. There are no comparative titles and I don't get a sense of why he sent the manuscript to me personally (agents want to feel special!). There's a lack of specificity. In addition, the prose isn't very remarkable; in fact, it's rather workmanlike.

So, why is this a good query?

Because Bryan fulfilled the number one point of a query, even without nailing the Three Ps. The novelty of having AI write his query letter was captivating. ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022--and it launched a thousand think pieces. This query landed with me eight days later. Prescience should be the Fourth P! (Again, no one refers to the Three Ps.) And then the postscript helped reaffirm the reality of the AI endeavor and gave the whole query a vulnerable, human warmth--and it gave me a better sense of who Bryan was.

In addition, the query was a perfect embodiment of the novel: this wasn't an AI-assisted query for a sweeping historical love story set during the London Blitz, this was an AI-assisted query for a hyper-contemporary novel set at a startup about how AI will transform our reality into its likeness. The medium was the message, and I was "there for it."

I dusted off my trowel and dug in, reading the first paragraph: "You missed the big meeting," she said. "There were donuts." Well, if that doesn't crushingly capture the life of the modern office, I don't know what does. So, I read the first chapter, which was only six pages. But from that first chapter, I knew this was someone I wanted to work with. I didn't know where exactly the novel was headed, but it was clear that Bryan did--and that what was contained in the first chapter set up so much up, without being anxious and obvious about needing to set it all up.

And that's another similarity between the book and the query. Neither was trying too hard; they both just delivered. Ultimately, readers and agents alike respond to an author's capacity to build trust with us, to instill confidence. We want to know we're in capable hands--and we'd like to have fun. It was clear to me from the jump that I was going to put my shovel aside, start mixing up my metaphors, and buckle up for Bryan's IN OUR LIKENESS. I suggest you do the same; it's a wild ride.

*****

Elias Altman is a literary agent at Massie & McQuilkin.

___________

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