[No Longer] Calling for Queries (Elana, not me)

I can't wait, so I'm announcing this a few days earlier than I said I would.

Drum roll please....

Elana Johnson, author of POSSESSION and FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL, will be doing a conference call for Farland's Authors' Advisory on June 23, 2011. Her topic will be Query Letters, a topic she has not only written the book on, but has also presented on at writer's conferences. Are you excited yet?

Starting today, I am collecting queries for Elana to critique live on the call. She wants them early so that she'll have enough time to review them beforehand. If you've ever wondered (like I have) whether your query is all it can be, this is a chance you won't want to pass up. Elana is brilliant and she tells it like it is (I've heard rumors that she made someone cry once...)--and don't we all want to hear the truth before we send it to agents? Of course we do.

So here's the rules:

1. We'll be accepting queries through June 1, or until we have 50 queries, whichever comes first.
2. One query per person.
3. For the purposes of this exercise, you can either pretend that Elana is an agent who represents your genre, or you can write it as if you are querying your dream agent (feel free to change the names). Don't skip that paragraph just because this is an exercise.
4. You can query for any book you're working on, whether it's ready for querying or not. For this to be as instructive as possible, however, you may wish to only send in a query for a project that at least has a first draft done. This is entirely up to you, however. We will not be requesting fulls. Or partials. Or offering representation.
5. Email your query to me at robinweekswriter at gee mail dot com or by pushing the Email Me link in the right sidebar.
6. Attach your query as a Word document to your email--do NOT put it in the body of your email, like you will when you actually query an agent. Do, however, put everything in the same format as you would for an emailed query--so don't worry about letterhead. If you have a question about page numbers, your query is too long.
7. In the subject line of your email, put "Query for Elana: [Title of your book]"
8. Please indicate if you'd rather we not use your real name on the call, but if you send in your query, understand that we will assume we have your permission to read some or all of it during the call. If you don't want it read on the call, don't send it in.

Feel free to download and review Elana's free e-book FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL before sending in your query. Her advice will be so much more valuable once you've done all you can do on your own.

Please help spread the word on your blog, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc. No extra points, but we'd sure appreciate it. I'm going to keep Elana's picture in my right sidebar for as long as we are still accepting queries.

If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. No one is required to follow anyone in order to participate.