By Susan Rosenbluth
It’s a fair bet South Jersey Writers Group members lucky enough to attend the June 6th presentation by literary agent Andrea Cascardi left the meeting with perhaps the most important takeaway possible for an author trying to win representation: Make the first sentence of your query count.
“Considering the number of queries most agents receive, you have only that one sentence to convince the agent to go on to sentence number two,” she said.
This most sensible piece of advice flies in the face of what many in the industry consider the first of the quintessential “rules” of sending out queries: begin with “the housekeeping” data, i.e. the book’s title, genre, word count, and comps.
Since most agree the query should be no more than one page—between 200 and 450 words (three-to-five paragraphs)—this doesn’t leave a lot of room for the hook and the bio note.
“But what could be more important than the first sentence?” said Ms. Cascardi.
There is no question she should know. Having spent her entire career in book publishing, she has worked on both sides of the desk, as an editor, publisher, and now literary agent, specializing in picture books and middle-school literature with an interest also in YA and adult fiction.
Affiliated with the New York-based Transatlantic Literary Agency, she told the SJWG about her eclectic, broad-ranging tastes that include magical realism, multi-layered historical fiction, and exciting non-fiction.
“I’m not the right agent for horror, hardboiled detective novels, fantasy, or sci-fi,” she admitted, adding that while being able to sell the material is what an agent does, “if I don’t believe in the manuscript, I can’t sell it.”
The books she has represented include Muffled by Jennifer Gannari (about a ten-year-old who has to deal with noise supersentivity), Mischief and Mayhem by Ken Lamug (a graphic novel series about an ordinary kid who, when no one’s looking, becomes a super-villain accompanied by her cat), and Pine Island Home by Polly Horvath (four parentless sisters manage to survive on their own in British Columbia).
While she is currently not accepting queries, Ms. Cascardi said she hopes that will change in the fall.
She can be found on Linked-In, and, hopefully, will come back to address SJWG again in the future.
