Query Letter: A Party to Die For: A Successful Pitch from the Queen of Cheese Mysteries

There are two things that I’m unhealthily obsessed with – books featuring a corpse, and putrid cheese that smells like a corpse. Blame it on my French ancestry, but if there’s visible mold, you can count me in. So, imagine my joy at learning about Korina Moss’s Cheese Shop Mystery series.  Her delightful debut, Cheddar Off Dead, won the Agatha for best first mystery. The story follows Willa Bauer, who opens her own French-style cheese shop in Sonoma. Things are pretty picturesque until a cranky food reviewer is killed with one of her cheese knives. 

Before starting her award-winning series, Moss pitched A Party to Die For, a cozy mystery about a mom blogger investigating a party magician’s murder.  She was kind enough to share the query letter that led to three offers of representation:

Dear

I’m delighted that you liked my Savvy Author pitch for my 85,000-word cozy mystery, A PARTY TO DIE FOR. Connie Tillman is a mom blogger who investigates a party magician’s murder, while confronting Type-A soccer moms, her husband’s past affair, and her addiction to Little Debbie’s snack cakes. The manuscript also includes five of Connie’s humorous blog posts. It is intended as a series.

Connie Tillman is trying to live up to her popular mom blog, living in the idyllic college town of Five Ponds, Connecticut with her professor husband, Rex, and their four-year-old son. But she’d rather stay home with a family-sized box of Little Debbie’s than attend her son’s birthday party after Rex’s fleeting affair with a grad student is made public. Party gossip turns out to be the least of her worries when she tumbles out of Marvin the Marvelous’s trick cabinet with a murdered magician. When she inadvertently puts suspicion onto the wife of the college dean, it further jeopardizes Rex’s shaky position at the college. Connie investigates in order to clear both of their names, but when the magician’s body vanishes, she realizes the murder was not as it first appeared. Amid marital strife, committee disputes, and soccer mom squabbles, Connie closes in on the truth, but not before she becomes the killer’s final target.

I believe I am highly qualified to write a Mom Blogger cozy mystery series. For two years I wrote a humorous bi-weekly column for Patch (an online independent U.S. local news forum) about being a mom in our small town. I also have my own blog www.korinastake.blogspot.com with over 5,100 page views, where I write periodically about various topics. Most recently, my short story, Little Miss Cupcake, was chosen for Elm Book's Death by Cupcake anthology due out next spring. Past writing credits include a holiday short story, which won the Connecticut Christmas Classic Story Contest. The following year, I turned it into a short ballet, which was performed at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford. I also have a story in Chicken Soup for the Kids’ Soul. I am a member of Sisters in Crime.

I am attaching the first 50 pages, as requested, and I will be happy to send you the full manuscript if you are interested. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Korina Moss