Book Review: The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock

Kristen King

The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock
By Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell
Marion Street Press, Inc., 2006
208 pages, $14.95

reviewed by Liz Lewis

www.inkthinkerblog.com — Books about writing, and especially about how to write query letters, are almost a dime a dozen these days. And most seem to regurgitate already known information. But the Renegade Writer’s Query Letters that Rock by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell have managed to avoid that. Instead they have created a text that all new (and old) writers should read. Why? Because they have the answers.

Written in an easy to read, often humorous conversational style, this book has only one goal – to help writers perfect the query letter. And they clearly state in the introduction how they believe this can be done: ‘If you want to be successful, watch the successful. Then copy everything they do.’

The book is divided into two sections. Section I covers ‘Query letter Q & A’. It should be subtitled ‘Everything you wanted to know about query letters and were afraid to ask.’ I can almost guarantee that if you scan the questions listed in the contents, there will be at least one or two that you are dying to know the answer to. Within seconds, I was able to find out what to put in the subject line of a email query – a question that had been bugging me for weeks.

Section II provides real life examples of successful query letters, with comments from both the writer and the editor on what makes them successful. In other words, you are offered the opportunity to get inside the writer’s, and more importantly, the editor’s head, and learn why these query letters succeeded.

I have been a fan of Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell ever since reading their first book, The Renegade Writer. Now, with their second book, I am a true convert to the renegade way of freelance writing.

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Liz Lewis is a New Zealand-based freelance writer. Check out her My Year of Getting Published blog for all things writing and her Travel New Zealand blog for all things New Zealand. Liz can be reached at kiwiwriter@xtra.co.nz.

Although this article was published by Kristen King, the original author retains all copyright and should be contacted for reprint requests.