Successful Queries: “A Resistance of Witches,” by Morgan Ryan

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Jenny Bent for Morgan Ryan's debut novel, A Resistance of Witches.

Morgan Ryan is the author of stories born from a lifelong love of magic, a fixation on historical minutiae that borders on the obsessive, and a tendency to fall down rabbit-holes. She was raised in a family of writers in upstate New York, and received her degree in theatre performance from Northeastern University. She now lives in Chicago with her husband.

Dear Ms. Bent,

I’m excited to share with you the first ten pages of Arcane Objects, a grounded, YA/adult crossover fantasy novel set during World War II, with a length of approximately 117,500 words. Arcane Objects follows Lydia Polk, apprentice to the Grand Mistress of the Royal Academy of Witches, who must venture into occupied France after the assassination of her mentor by a Nazi coven. I believe this book would best be described as The Once and Future Witches meets Indiana Jones.

Lydia Polk never expected to be chosen as apprentice to Isadora Goode, Grand Mistress of the Royal Academy of Witches. Stubborn, plain-spoken, and from an unimpressive family, Lydia was as surprised as anyone to have been selected. Now, three years into her apprenticeship, and with Hitler’s army rampaging across Europe, The Witches of Britain have joined the war effort—although not without some resistance from within. As Lydia’s power grows she too joins the cause, tracking magical relics in order to keep them out of Nazi hands. Lydia’s newest and most urgent target is the Grimorium Bellum, an ancient book with the power to wipe out entire civilizations.

When a Nazi witch infiltrates the Academy, Lydia must leave London, embarking on a desperate mission to find the Grimorium Bellum and avenge her murdered friend and mentor. Dropped into the heart of occupied France, Lydia finds allies in Rebecca Gagne, a French Resistance fighter with a secret, and Henry Boudreaux, a Haitian-American art historian with a little magic of his own. But soon Lydia discovers that finding the book is only half the battle, as the Grimorium Bellum seems to have its own dark agenda.

I am a Chicago-based writer who quit her day job as a corporate recruiter in the middle of a global pandemic to chase my dream. I appreciate you taking the time to read my work, and I would be very happy to send you the completed manuscript upon request. I look forward to hearing your reply. 

Sincerely,

Morgan Ryan
(She/Her)

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I did receive a slightly different pitch letter, as Morgan and her agent Jenny Bent worked together on what would be the most impactful submission letter before sending it my way. This echoes every step of the publishing process: a melding of vision, with vision, with vision—tweaking the pitch, reimagining it, remaining responsive to the market—all the way down to the copy that a consumer sees. For example, the title of the book now—A RESISTANCE OF WITCHES—is different not only from the title I received in Jenny’s letter, but also from what Morgan queried with!

Still, what stood out for me in the pitch I received remains the same here: Historical fiction set in WWII is a crowded market, but bring in some fantasy—some witches—and the entire category was revitalized for me. I did some searching, and to my utter shock, it hadn’t been done before—and to have a feeling of a question being answered, of finding exactly what you were looking for, even when you didn’t know that you were asking the question or hadn’t named that search: That is a brilliant editorial connection. It also, like so much of WWII fiction, felt timeless, in that battle between the good of humanity and the bad is always relevant. I’m also a huge fan of a stubborn heroine going rogue, so Lydia embarking on her own with confidence but little knowledge was a character I knew I wanted to follow.

The comps here speak to me as well: I’m a huge fan of Alix E. Harrow, and I loved the Indiana Jones tie-in. That combined with the pitch gave me a sense of powerful stakes and propulsive adventure, while offering a new spin that made it stand-out in an otherwise well-explored space in fiction. I could immediately see the readership, and how we might speak to them—and that clarity of vision, especially from a query alone, is what makes me utterly confident about a book’s fit on my list. I already knew the pitch was there before I dived into the read—and then the writing was so assured and pacey and depthful, it cinched it: I was in love.

A Resistance of Witches was originally queried under the title Arcane Objects. The title would eventually be changed before submission to editors, and then again for publication. At the time I was also pitching the book as a YA/Adult crossover—since the story deals with darker, more adult themes, but also features a 19-year-old protagonist, I wanted to stay open minded about how the book might eventually be shelved. In the end, my agent and I determined that this story made more sense as an adult fantasy, which feels like the correct placement for this particular book.

This version of my query letter was the result of many iterations over my 15 months of querying. While my request rate was fairly consistent throughout the process, I never wanted to get too comfortable, and so I experimented, shortening the letter itself, sometimes starting by jumping right into the summary, other times leading with the stats and comp titles. What’s been especially interesting about watching this book go from the querying stage all the way to publication is seeing how much of the original summary actually made it into the back cover copy. My advice to any querying author struggling to write a punchy summary—imagine how it would read on the back of a finished book…because it might just end up there!

*****

Nidhi Pugalia is an editor at Viking Penguin focused primarily on genre fiction, ranging from grounded SFF to horror, romance, thrillers, and everything in between. She has edited such books as the Book of the Month club pick A Thousand Times Before by Asha Thanki, New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan, and the Sunday Times bestselling series Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson.