Successful Queries: Julie Gourinchas and “The Devil Knows Her Name,” by C.N. Vair

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Julie Gourinchas (Bell Lomax Moreton) for C.N. Vair's debut novel, The Devil Knows Her Name, which was originally pitched with a different name.

C.N. Vair (she/her) is a horror and dark fantasy author living in western New York. A former journalist, she’s interested in the history and haunted corners of small towns, the magic and malice of the natural world, and power in all its forms. When she’s not writing, you can find her wandering in woods and cemeteries, growing poisonous plants in her garden, or spending time with her husband and dogs.

Dear Julie,

I’m seeking representation for my adult folk horror novel, THE BEAST, complete at 95,000 words. With themes of female rage and the reclamation of witchcraft, it would appeal to readers of Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching and Brom’s Slewfoot, and based on your interest in female-led horror and “anything spiky, toothy, and dark,” I thought it might appeal to you. This would be my debut novel.

Once Tess Wynne sold her soul to the devil, she didn't think she had anything left to lose. Turns out, there's always more, and she’ll have to fight to keep it.

Thanks to the devil's bargain, Tess has enjoyed more than a century of peace and solitude in her wildlife sanctuary outside the Appalachian village of Burrsville, working little bits of magic to hold nature in balance against the ravages of human influence and climate change. She keeps to herself, but she has her animals and her few good friends, and that's enough.

But when a mysterious red fawn born under sinister circumstances finds her way into Tess’s care, the peace and anonymity she's prized are gone. With the eyes of the whole town upon her, Tess’s desire to protect the fawn is suddenly at odds with her need to protect her own secrets. The more she finds out about the fawn — her strangely human teeth, her taste for meat — the more she has to hide from Burrsville’s residents. The longer she resists them, the more vitriol she draws.

To make matters worse, the town’s new firebrand pastor is willing to use any means necessary to chase Tess off her land and make room for his “city on a hill,” whether it’s the fawn or the secrets Tess has kept buried. The pastor’s gentle teenage son is the only person willing to help her protect the sanctuary — other than the devil, of course, and his help comes at a price even Tess isn’t willing to pay.

With the pastor digging furiously into her history, her friends casting a suspicious eye over her friendship with the pastor’s son, and the fawn eating things she shouldn’t, Tess finds herself reaching for darker and darker powers just to keep the tide of animosity at bay. All the while, the devil bides his time, waiting for Tess to decide whether she wants to be predator or prey.

I am a 2021-22 Pitch Wars mentee and former journalist with two New York Press Association awards to my name. I live in Western New York with my husband, two meathead dogs and two neurotic cats. Per your agency submission guidelines, I've attached my letter, synopsis, and first three chapters below.

Thanks so much for the opportunity to query!

Sincerely,

C.N. Vair (she/her)

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I was instantly intrigued by C.N.'s query letter from her opening lines. I've always been drawn to darker, stranger themes, so when I saw "female rage" and "the reclamation of witchcraft", my ears perked up. Then C.N. mentioned Alexis Henderson's The Year of the Witching—a favorite read of mine, even before I became an agent—and I knew I had something special on my hands. C.N. pitched this novel so perfectly for my tastes, all I could do was read on.

I try not to be too prescriptive over the contents of query packages, particularly the blurb—I tend to be much more focused on the atmosphere and metadata and, of course, the writing itself. I'll often repeat the well-known advice that a query blurb should be clear about the story the novel will tell, but I'm not fussed about length (within reason), comps, structure, etc.

In this case, I think C.N. did an excellent job of using the blurb to underscore the themes she'd brought up in her metadata: the thin line between predator and prey, the witchy atmosphere, and the refusal of a female protagonist to make herself small. In hindsight, it's fascinating to see C.N. pull apart the "flaws" in her query letter when all I could think was: more please!

If this query letter reveals anything, it’s that you don’t have to be perfect to be successful. This letter is too long, one of my comps is nearly a decade old, and my publishing credentials are thin. For the people ignoring all the good advice already out there because they’re sure a traditional query letter can’t contain their brilliance, this will probably reinforce their bias in an unhelpful way.

However, for the people sweating bullets because one of their comps is six years old or they’re unsure if their Chia Pet collection is a fun enough personality tidbit for their bio, let this be a sign to breathe. So much of this process is down to luck, and you can tick every single box available without landing an agent, so remember that your goal is not to write the most perfect query letter, only one that hooks an agent’s interest enough to read your pages.

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Julie Gourinchas (she, they) is a French-American literary agent at Bell Lomax Moreton in London, UK. She champions an award-winning, selective list focused on upmarket and literary adult and new adult fiction across a wide variety of genres. Writers she represents have won or been nominated for the British Book Awards, the Hugo Awards, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Stoker Awards, the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Saltire National Book Awards, and the BSFAs, among others; she has also represented multiple Sunday Times bestselling titles.