Successful Queries: Sharon Pelletier and “We Don’t Talk About Carol,” by Kristen L. Berry
Find Kristen L. Berry’s successful query to agent Sharon Pelletier for her debut novel “We Don’t Talk About Carol.”
Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Sharon Pelletier for Kristen L. Berry's debut novel, We Don't Talk About Carol.
Kristen L. Berry is a writer and communications executive. Born and raised in Metro Detroit, Kristen graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in English language and literature. She has provided PR and communications expertise to leading consumer brands for nearly 20 years, all while writing in her spare time. When she isn’t reading or writing, Kristen can be found lifting heavy at the gym, hiking in Malibu, eating her way through Los Angeles with her partner, or shouting at the latest Formula 1 race. We Don't Talk About Carol is her debut novel.
Here's Kristen's query:
Hi Sharon,
Amy Bishop-Wycisk “enthusiastically suggested” that I reach out to you. Given your interest in suspenseful, complex novels by writers of color, I hope you will consider my novel, WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL, an upmarket family drama/mystery complete at 99,600 words. This novel will equally appeal to readers who enjoyed unraveling the decades-old family mystery in Charmaine Wilkerson’s BLACK CAKE, and those captivated by the combination of true crime and trauma theory in Paula McLain’s WHEN THE STARS GO DARK.
While clearing out the Raleigh home of her recently deceased grandmother, 38-year-old Sydney Singleton discovers she had an aunt, Carol, one of six local Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. Sydney, a former crime reporter, is uniquely positioned to investigate what happened to “The Raleigh Six.” Yet Sydney left journalism after an obsession with another missing girl triggered a psychotic break.
Sydney is already juggling a busy life in Los Angeles. She’s in the midst of another rigorous IVF cycle for the baby her husband, Malik, desperately desires, but Sydney isn’t sure she actually wants. She’s also head of PR for a popular wellness brand whose insurance is funding her expensive fertility treatments.
Despite all this, and the possibility of risking a relapse, Sydney embarks on a hunt for “The Creek Killer” with the help of her younger sister, Sasha. Along the way, the sisters confront the fact that Carol’s disappearance wasn’t the only thing their family refused to talk about. In exhuming her long-buried traumas, Sydney discovers why she is so invested in the stories of missing girls, and so apprehensive about having children of her own.
WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL is a thrilling, poignant and ultimately hopeful reminder that in order to truly embrace our future, we must first reconcile with our past.
As a Black woman and an avid consumer of all things true crime, I find it sickening that Black children are disproportionately reported missing in the U.S., and that the cases of missing people of color in this country are less likely to be solved. I hope to bring awareness to this issue through a riveting work of fiction grounded in sobering reality.
Like you, I was born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit; I was raised by a mother who hails from Raleigh, and I currently live in Los Angeles. I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English Language & Literature, and co-founded a writing group with classmates from a UCLA Extension creative writing course that has gathered monthly since 2019. WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL was selected as a top 10 finalist for the 2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellowship.
The first 25 pages of my novel can be found below; if you’re interested, I’d be happy to share my full manuscript.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Kristen Berry
111.111.1111
email@email.com
@kristenlberry
Trigger warnings: fertility challenges, verbal abuse/threatening behavior, murder, kidnapping, sexual abuse, mental illness.
Check out Kristen L. Berry's We Don't Talk About Carol here:
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What agent Sharon Pelletier liked about the query:
Kristen’s query came in with the extra pizazz: a recommendation from an industry colleague who knows my taste well at the start and a shared hometown in her bio. But even without those fortuitous personal touches, I expect her query would’ve caught my eye. Kristen comped to BLACK CAKE, a book I absolutely love that frequently shows up on my wishlist. And Kristen’s terrific story pitch promises two things that I’m always looking for in fiction. First, she clearly and compellingly shows an immediate hook to a riveting mystery (external stakes) woven with a personal challenge for our main character (internal stakes). Commercial novels may have primarily external stakes and literary novels may have primarily internal stakes; I love upmarket fiction like WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL that offers both; whatever kind of stakes a story has, it’s so important that the query highlight them well.
The other thing that Kristen’s query promises is a thought-provoking connection to a topic of substance, which is also a key element of upmarket fiction in any genre. I love a good whodunnit, but when I’m deciding whether a book belongs on my list, I’m looking for stories that have something to say about the issues that really matter as well as their entertainment value. And WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL has that on two levels with its thoughtful exploration of the main character’s uncertainty about motherhood while dealing with infertility, and her investigation into why the truth of what happened to six missing Black girls have been ignored for many decades. Both these things make for terrific storytelling that readers will be invested in as well as scope for book club discussion.
Of course that sparkly Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellowship mention sparks interest right away, too—any good query has its fair share of bragging rights! And Kristen’s sample pages delivered on the query’s promise right away. Her writing is strong and propulsive, full of voice and beauty. I was impatient waiting for her to send the full manuscript; I read it nearly in one sitting, and pretty much knew well before the end that this was a novel I wanted to sell and that Kristen L. Berry was a writer I was eager to work with. Now here we are a couple years later with WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL about to hit shelves so that readers can have the same gripping, moving experience with a novel bringing plenty of twists and turns, and just as full of heart-lifting moments as heart-stopping ones!
Thoughts from Kristen on developing a premise:
In the novelist community, a frequent icebreaker question is whether an author considers themself to be a plotter or a “pantser,” as in someone who writes by the seat of their pants. Though I firmly identified as a “panster” while writing WE DON’T TALK ABOUT CAROL, I kept a running document where I jotted down ideas for story beats, questions I was interested in exploring in the book, and bits of research that might be relevant to the novel.
About a month into my drafting process, I wrote a high-level, four-paragraph premise at the top of that document—similar to what I imagined its book jacket might say—to serve as my North Star as I wrote. I continued to tweak that language as the project went on, and the story further crystallized in my mind. When it came time to draft my query letter, that premise became the foundation for my plot summary. In fact, I was able to lift most of it word-for-word.
It’s daunting to distill a ~100,000-word novel into a ~200-word plot summary, so I was grateful that I’d had the forethought to iterate on it over the course of multiple years. While the language has continued to evolve and deepen, it’s thrilling to see how closely the spirit of the final book jacket copy aligns with the initial summary I drafted five summers ago, long before it was confirmed that it would one day be published.
*****
Sharon Pelletier joined Dystel, Goderich & Bourret in 2013 after working in editorial at small presses and as a B&N bookseller, was named senior agent in 2021, and named vice president in 2024. Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, Sharon has lived in New York since 2009, but often returns to visit the Midwest and dreams of living by the ocean one day. Sharon’s list includes upmarket fiction of all sorts, from smart, complex women’s fiction; to unexpected suspense fiction and romance; to hearty, unforgettable book club fiction. She also occasionally takes on compelling, fierce narrative nonfiction by journalists, experts, or emerging voices with a promising platform.
