Successful Queries: Jamie Carr and “Definitely Better Now,” by Ava Robinson
The best way to learn how to write a successful query is to read one. In this installment, find a query letter to agent Jamie Carr for Ava Robinson’s book, Definitely Better Now (MIRA).
Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter to literary agent Jamie Carr (The Book Group) for Ava Robinson's book, Definitely Better Now (MIRA).
Ava Robinson is the assistant director of Sarah Lawrence College’s Writing Institute and an alum of the New School’s MFA program. Previously, she wrote and hosted the podcast Trace Material, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, for Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design. She has had her short fiction published in Soundings East, Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, and elsewhere. Definitely Better Now is her first novel.
Here's Ava's query:
Happy new year!
I'm writing to query my novel, Definitely Better Now. I'm writing to you because I saw that you represent a wide range of authors in the upmarket and women's fiction space, and I'd love to be included among them.
Set in the New York AA scene, Definitely Better Now is a 100,000-word romantic comedy that follows Emma, a recovering alcoholic celebrating a milestone she never thought she’d reach: one year sober. After not dating for the first year of her sobriety, Emma falls for her coworker Ben. But just being sober doesn’t mean Emma’s fixed, and as this novel flirts with the tropes of romantic comedy, it also ventures into deeper waters.
Ben asks Emma out the very night of her AA celebration for being one year sober, and instead of being honest about why she can’t go out for a drink with him, she makes up an excuse. Throughout the novel, Emma continues to struggle with honesty and letting people see the parts of herself she wishes weren’t there. This is a journey mirrored in her relationship with her father, whose cancer diagnosis brings him back into her life. Just as her relationship grows with Ben, her father’s life comes to an end. After a year of hiding in her apartment to make sure she stays sober, the best and worst parts of life—love and death—knock at her door and force her to figure out how to really live again.
Definitely Better Now blends the intimate voice of Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, the romantic pull of Emily Henry’s Beach Read and the lush, singular descriptions of New York life that you’d find in an Emma Straub novel.
I was interested in exploring a sober character whose story arc doesn’t center around whether or not they’ll relapse. Often, sobriety narratives are either about getting sober and characters are represented as a phoenix rising from the ashes, or if the character starts sober, the story’s tension comes from whether or not they’re going to drink again. As someone who’s spent most of the past decade sober––and with plenty of other problems––I wanted to see a character that represented that on the page.
There is a narrative in AA that being sober means you’re fixed, or that the steps will heal all of your personality defects. I haven’t personally found that to be true, and in the novel, Emma is struggling against that expectation. She thought she’d no longer feel afraid or jealous or angry, and she still does. She has to accept that she’s just a normal person who’s made some mistakes and is trying to make less of them.
I graduated from The New School’s MFA program last spring, and I’ve just started a position as the Assistant Director of the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Previously, I wrote and hosted the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded podcast Trace Material for Parsons Healthy Materials Lab, where we investigated the lives of the materials (think anything from plastic to mycelium) that surround us. I’ve had my short fiction published in Soundings East, Santa Fe Writers Project, Little Patuxent Review and elsewhere.
Thank you so much for your consideration,
Ava
Check out Ava Robinson's Definitely Better Now here:
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Agent Jamie Carr's commentary:
Ava’s query letter was a standout. Besides having excellent humor and voice, she nailed articulating the inciting incident in a way that was simple and clear—our main hero Emma has just hit her one year anniversary of being sober and thus can date again, when she meets co-worker cutie Ben—and also the bigger themes that the book reckons with: What happens when you think you’ve finally “made it” to realize there’s still growing to be done.
Her comp titles were recent and accurately reflected the genre and tone of the book, and I loved how she posed that the novel flirts with romantic comedy while also venturing into deeper waters. Exactly my kind of read!
Ava's thoughts on the submission process:
I was lucky enough to be in an MFA program just before I started the querying process. We had a class where we workshopped our letters, so I got a lot of feedback on my query before an agent ever saw it. Earlier versions contained a lot more detail on the plot.
When writing a novel, it's very hard to sum it up in one paragraph when every detail feels so essential! If you're querying and have a trusted reader, ask them how they would summarize the plot in a few short sentences. Often, readers can see the bird's eye view agents are looking for better than the writer can.
*****
A senior agent at The Book Group, Jamie Carr champions award-winning debuts, commercial book club fiction, and expert-driven nonfiction at the forefront of culture. Her titles have been chosen as Indie Next, Target Book Club, and Book of the Month picks. She’s also had books featured on NPR’s Best Books of the Year list, GMA (Buzzworthy segment), USA TODAY’s Bestseller List, and nominated for the Lambda Literary Awards, to name just a few. Previous to TBG, she was at William Morris Endeavor for almost six years. Born and raised in Lower Manhattan, she has an MFA in fiction writing and began her publishing journey in the books department of Tin House.
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