HOW I EDITED MY SECOND SMOOCHPIT MENTEE'S QUERY THAT LANDED THEM AN AGENT—Anahita Karthik

Hello! After two years, and a second successful SmoochPit mentorship, I'm back with another one of these posts, but this time, featuring my second mentee, Yi-Jun O, who got an offer of representation ten days after the showcase, and is now represented by the wonderful Alex Brown at Mad Woman Literary Agency!

For those of you who are new here, SmoochPit is a volunteer-run mentorship program for romance writers (with emphasis on writers of colour) that helps a pool of talented aspiring authors get agented, and eventually, published. I was a mentor during the first SmoochPit program back in 2022, and mentored Cynthia Timoti, whose debut novel Salty, Spiced, and a Little Bit Nice (the same one we worked on during the mentorship) comes out May 2025 with Bramble Macmillan. I've covered her query letter in this blog post.

After that first mentorship, I took a yearlong break to focus on my master's program, and returned as mentor for the third SmoochPit program, during which I was thrilled to have had the chance to work on Yi-Jun O's epic sapphic speculative alt-historical novel, which you'll know more about, soon!

Mentorship programs are a great way to get your foot in the door, and while there was no showcase that first year, the 2024-25 mentees' works were featured in the showcase, over the course of which Yi-Jun got more than a dozen requests from agents to see their full manuscript.

I quoted this in Cynthia's blog post, and I will quote this again: The truth about mentorships these days is that mentors aren't looking for writers they can spoon feed about the entire process. They're looking for writers who have the basics right and just need that little push to get them over the fence. And that includes having a submission package and polished manuscript ready.

During the submission period, I think I got about 50 subs, excluding the open spreadsheet of subs that all the mentors had access to (with over 200 subs), and fun fact, Yi-Jun's was the first submission to grace my spreadsheet. It's easy to be wary about requesting fulls from first subs, because I was anticipating scores of wonderful submissions (which I did eventually get!) and didn't want to request too many fulls with less than a month to read them all.

But the moment I read Yi-Jun's query letter and pages, I couldn't have emailed them fast enough. Reader, when I tell you it was as if they'd written the book for me, I mean it. Colliding, parallel Malaya worlds? Enemies-to-lovers, doomed sapphics? This is How You Lose The Time War meets These Violent Delights? It literally could not get better.

Another fun fact: they did not, in fact, send me the manuscript that day, but instead, asked for more time as they were making last-minute edits. I obliged, of course, and as the remaining days of the submissions period sped by and I dove into more brilliant subs, I couldn't help but keep thinking about Yi-Jun's book, hoping they hadn't forgotten about me!

Finally, on September 16th, the last day of the submission period, they sent me their full manuscript, and I dove in almost immediately. Mind you, I read some wonderful books during the program, but on decision day about a month or so later, I knew Yi-Jun's book was it.

Fractured Beginnings, Fracturing Ends was the book I wanted to work on.

Fast forward to now: I'm so thrilled to have had the absolute honour of mentoring them, and I couldn't be more proud that they're agented now! I am eagerly waiting for the day the world gets to read their incredible book, because it's going to happen soon, mark my words.

Quick note: I've attached screenshots for the query letter drafts and edits this time because I found it a lot easier than the red-for-deletion and green-for-addition format I adopted the last time. If you have accessibility issues, please drop a comment below, and I'll send you the text versions of the pictures.

Now, without further delay, let's get to critiquing:

QUERY LETTER (DRAFT 1)

INITIAL THOUGHTS

Gosh, you absolutely knocked the query letter out of the park! I love it so much. The metadata is crisp and concise, the pitch has great setup of both characters and stakes, and there's a wonderful balance of voice paired with evocative writing. The bio does justice to your credentials and the story as well. Great job!

I've left a bunch of comments to make this draft sing, so feel free to circle back with more edits/suggestions if needed. I'm happy to do as many rounds as required. Also, I've included the SmoochPit mentorship bit in the bio since it would be helpful for agents you cold query to know that the novel has been revised extensively during the program.

EDITS (ROUND 1)

QUERY LETTER (DRAFT 2)

EDITS (ROUND 2)

FINAL QUERY

As you can see, we went through multiple rounds of edits and back-and-forths with Yi-Jun's query letter to arrive at the final iteration. In fact, we did a lot more smaller rounds that, for convenience, I've collated into the rounds you see above. While we were editing, Yi-Jun was slightly concerned about how long the query was getting, but as long as the letter is one MS Word page long with 12 pt font, Times New Roman, and one paragraph spacing, do not worry about the word count!

Yi-Jun's original query letter was a killer, but it needed more focus on the second POV, a little more clarity on the world and the stakes, and some tweaking of the metadata and bio to make it stand-out. I was not in the least bit surprised when they got their first offer so soon post-showcase, and I'm so excited to see them tackle edits with their agent and hopefully be on submission to editors soon.

Thank you for reading, and thank you Yi-Jun, for the permission to use your query letter drafts for my blog post! If you'd like to follow them for more updates on Fractured Beginnings, Fracturing Ends, you can find them on their Website, Instagram, or Twitter.

That's it for now :)