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I would like to let everyone know that Agent Mary Kole from Andrea Brown Literary has agreed to join us at the NJSCBWI June conference being held on June 3-5th 2011. 

She will be discussing query letters with the attendees who sign up for her workshop.

We haven’t figured out the logistic yet, but she will be using query letters from the audience to help demonstrate how to write a better query letter and help build your skills in this area.

Yesterday on Publisher’s Weekly, agent Lauren Macleod from The Strothman Agency, LLC helped promote Helene Boudreau’s new YA novel, Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings , by sharing Helene’s query letter with us.

I think we can all take something away from reading it. At least this should alert you to having your query letter show up on someone’s blog someday.

Dear Ms. MacLeod,

I am seeking literary representation and hope you will consider my tween novel, REAL MERMAIDS DON’T WEAR TOE RINGS.

First zit. First crush. First … mermaid’s tail?

Jade feels like enough of a freak-of-nature when she gets her first period at almost fifteen. She doesn’t need to have it happen at the mall while trying on that XL tankini she never wanted to buy in the first place. And she really doesn’t need to run into Luke Martin in the Feminine Hygiene Products aisle while her dad Googles “menstruation” on his Blackberry. 

But “freak-of-nature” takes on a whole new meaning when raging hormones and bath salts bring on another metamorphosis—complete with scales and a tail. And when Jade learns she’s inherited her mermaid tendencies from her late mother’s side of the family, it raises the question: if Mom was once a mermaid, did she really drown that day last summer?

Jade is determined to find out. Though, how does a plus-sized, aqua-phobic mer-girl go about doing that, exactly … especially when Luke from aisle six seems to be the only person who might be able to help?

REAL MERMAIDS DON’T WEAR TOE RINGS is a light-hearted fantasy novel for tweens (10-14). It is complete at 44,500 words and available at your request. The first ten pages and a synopsis are included below my signature. I also have a completed chapter book for boys (MASON AND THE MEGANAUTS), should that be of interest to you. This manuscript has received a revision request from editor, Kathy Tucker, from Albert Whitman & Company.

My middle grade novel, ACADIAN STAR, was released last fall by Nimbus Publishing and has been nominated for the 2009/2010 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award. I have three nonfiction children’s books with Crabtree Publishing to my credit (one forthcoming) as well as an upcoming early chapter book series. My writing received an Honourable Mention in the 2008 Surrey International Writers’ Conference literary competition (Writing for Young People) and I was recently awarded a juried literary grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this project.

Kind regards,

Hélène Boudreau

www.heleneboudreau.c