Successful Queries: Angeline Rodriguez and “When the Music Hits,” by Amber Oliver

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Angeline Rodriguez for Amber Oliver's debut novel, When the Music Hits.

Amber Oliver is a writer and book editor. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, she currently resides in Harlem. When the Music Hits is her first novel.

MAAME meets BLACK BUCK in this debut novel about a young, Black recent college graduate who, inspired by the music that saved her when money issues and her mother’s arguments with her boyfriend proved deafening, lands her dream job in the A&R department at a major music label – only to find the dream is far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Growing up, Billie Willis sought solace in music, finding herself in pulsing beats, striking lyrics, and mesmerizing voices. Billie decided she would work in the music industry and eventually become a music mogul who would find and build the careers of artists who could impact listeners around the world. 

When Billie lands a coveted A&R assistant role at Lit Music Productions, one of the largest music labels in the country, she is initially excited by all things music and A&R—the beautiful offices, access to exclusive industry parties, learning the particulars of closing deals—and she can’t wait until it’s her turn to start finding new talent and create space for meaningful diversity instead of the commodification of Black talent.

But, as she continues to work at Lit, she learns that the music industry of reality is far different than the one of her dreams. The hours are long, the workload is heavy and never-ending, the pay is abysmally low, and there aren’t many people of color around, except for Nina, who takes her under her wing and shows her the ropes but is also battling with her own issues in the department as the only Latinx A&R executive. Creative corporate is full of biases, microagressions, sexism, and flat-out racism – and Billie learns that the label that preys on and undervalues marginalized voices.  

Just as Billie learns what it takes to survive in the industry, while also trying to financially support her struggling mother and her own idealistic artist boyfriend, rumors of a merger with another music label are confirmed. Hype Records will merge with Lit in a matter of months. To secure her place at the changing company, Billie is determined to sign an artist they can’t say no to before Hype Records moves in.

As Billie trades her passion and energy for a shot at a career that doesn’t always love her back, she is forced to decide if the career of her dreams is really worth all of the trouble and heartbreak.

Weaving in timely themes like family, race, class, cultural appropriation, and art, WHEN THE MUSIC HITS is a satirical workplace coming-of-age novel that offers sharp, incisive commentary on contemporary issues in creative corporate America.

Amber Oliver is a writer and an editor of award-winning and bestselling books. She has held roles at HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, and currently works at Bloomsbury Publishing. She has been published in GUMBO magazine and studied under NAACP-nominated author, Morowa Yejide at the Hurston/Wright Weekend Writers Workshop in 2018. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, she currently resides in Harlem.

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I knew Amber from her stellar work as an editor, which for anyone else might be bona fides enough. But Amber is not one to rest on her laurels, and delivered a phenomenally dialed-in pitch that immediately set her query apart. 

Right off the bat she names two excellent novels I loved reading, which always helps grab attention but is additionally helpful here for their recency and direct relevance to the subject matter, demonstrating Amber’s keen knowledge of the marketplace and situating her work within a wider literary conversation. She then wastes no time establishing the concrete stakes of this story and how it’s relevant to both my list and the comp titles she’s cited.

As a woman of color in a creative industry, I’m naturally drawn to stories of people carving out a place for themselves where there wasn’t before. Amber writes the sort of künstlerroman we are not often afforded, and I was also impressed by her query noting the kind of true-to-life complications inherent to chasing a lifelong dream as someone not born to it—breaking into her dream job isn’t the end of Billie’s story, it’s just the beginning.

From there, she fleshes out the story in a number of ways that highlight both the specific and universal appeal of her novel; taking the time to introduce the character of Nina and referencing the Black talent Billie seeks to platform demonstrated this wouldn’t be a story of a single protagonist of color in a vacuum but that the novel was prepared to take on the nuances of multiple characters across the diaspora and how they interact.

The themes Amber outlines here—personal ambition vs. familial responsibility, the fraught intersection of art and commerce—underscore the authenticity and urgency of this novel, and promised a level of narrative depth that her pages then delivered on tenfold. That follow-through is key, but knowing what the unique strengths of your book are and emphasizing them accordingly is what will ultimately get readers—and agents—to take the plunge and discover their next favorite novel. It’s a gift to work with someone who knows stories inside and out the way Amber does, and I can’t wait for readers to fall in love with When The Music Hits the way I did!

*****

Angeline Rodriguez joined WME after an editorial career at Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group, where she published multiple bestsellers and award-winners. She represents writers across genres, with an emphasis on high-concept stories that push the boundaries between categories, and is particularly passionate about highlighting underrepresented voices in new ways. A native of Houston, TX, she now lives in Brooklyn.