Successful Queries: Jamie Carr and Maya Ziv and “But How Are You, Really,” by Ella Dawson

Welcome back to the Successful Queries series. In this installment, find a query letter from literary agent Jamie Carr accepted by Maya Ziv for Ella Dawson’s novel But How Are You, Really, recently published by Dutton. As you’ll hear in Ella’s own words, this novel success story was originally going to be a memoir:

I expected my first book to be a memoir about creating a healthier approach to casual sex. In May 2019 I attended my five-year college reunion with the intention of interviewing friends and old flames about their experiences with campus hookup culture. Instead, the four day long weekend gave me an idea for a romance novel about two exes who haven’t seen each other since graduating from college and wind up hashing out their differences at their reunion. I wanted to explore the insecurities I felt when I returned to my alma mater: doubt about my career compared to those of my successful friends, and fear that I had lost my way in life and fallen behind my peers. My main characters Charlotte and Reece were born from those anxieties.

The first draft was all internal conflict. The two lovers pined for each other and fought and made up, but the story had little structure or tension. I shared it with Jamie Carr, an agent from The Book Group, and she suggested a huge revision that would introduce external conflict by bringing Charlotte’s awful boss to campus as the commencement speaker at graduation happening concurrently with the reunion. After I overhauled the book, I signed with The Book Group and Jamie and I prepared to take the book on submission.

We chose to position The Reunion as a coming-of-age novel with romantic themes as opposed to a genre romance. While it has a happy-ever-after and Charlotte’s connection with Reece is the spine of the book, it’s much more Charlotte’s story of personal growth and triumph than a traditional romance novel. I was nervous about finding the right editor who shared my vision for the book as literary fiction.

Maya was my first choice of editor from the beginning, and we were overjoyed when she took an interest in The Reunion right away. She understood Charlotte’s psychology like a best friend and encouraged me to do “more”: more flashbacks to her college days, more details about the college campus, more exploration of her feelings in nostalgic and painful moments. Plus more conflict, as we developed the tension between Charlotte and her best friend Jackie, whom she has taken for granted. With Maya’s help I unspooled the emotional themes of professional burnout, recovery from abuse and trauma, and sheer longing for a crush who makes you feel like you are lovable just as you are.

After the book’s many transformations, it only felt right to rename it: But How Are You, Really.

Ella Dawson

Ella Dawson is an NYC-based sex and culture critic whose work has been published by Elle, Vox, and Women’s Health, among others. She was once internet famous for having herpes, but that’s a whole other story. Ella is proudly bisexual, very anxious, and aspires to adopt a kitten. Follow her on social media and on Patreon as @brosandprose.

Jamie Carr’s Query Letter Sent on Sub

Dear X,

As discussed, I’m thrilled to enclose sex and culture critic Ella Dawson’s sexy, thought-provoking, and full-of-heart debut novel THE REUNION about a burned-out bi-sexual young woman who is forced to face her estranged chosen family, old demons, and the ex she walked away from at her five-year college reunion.

Charlotte Thorne does not want to go back to Hein University. Her career in media is a stalled hot mess and she has fallen out of touch with her queer chosen family, including her best friend Jackie. Willingly spend a full weekend with her incredibly successful classmates? Hard pass. But when her controlling boss, tech journalist Roger Ludermore, is invited to give the commencement address at this year’s graduation—which also happens to fall on the same weekend as her five year reunion—Charlotte has no choice but to return to campus.

It’s just her luck that Reece Kreuger, the hockey player she rebounded with after a traumatic breakup, is on the Reunion & Commencement planning committee. But instead of the reckless bro she knew at age twenty-one, Reece has grown up to be a gorgeous and mature cinnamon roll. Suddenly the weekend she has dreaded for months feels like a thrilling chance to go back in time…But Reece still doesn’t know the real reason why she ghosted him on graduation day all those years ago, Jackie wants answers, and her boss’ arrival on campus is imminent—threatening to blow it all up.

Set over the course of Charlotte’s college reunion weekend, the novel is equal parts second chance romance, powerful reckoning with toxic workplace culture and burnout, and an exploration of surviving emotional abuse and what it means to forge a new path forward, in both love and in life, with the help of your chosen family. In the vein of FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK by Elissa Sussman and GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN by Talia Hibbert, with a workplace dash of THE VERY NICE BOX by Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett.

Ella Dawson is a sex and culture critic. Her nonfiction work has been published by Elle Magazine, Vox, and Women’s Health, to name just a few, and her short fiction has been published in seven erotica collections. A Wesleyan graduate, her activism combatting STI stigma has been featured by BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post, and The Independent, and her TEDx talk about herpes has nearly one million views on YouTube. Most recently, her viral commentary on the Heard v Depp trial has been cited by Monica Lewinsky, Molly Jong-Fast and other feminist thought leaders. Ella is bisexual, anxious, and lives in Connecticut with two rescue dogs and hundreds of romance novels. Website here & longer bio attached.

As always we’re selling North American rights only. Many thanks for your time and consideration, and looking forward to hearing from you soonest.

Warmly,

Jamie

Check out Ella Dawson’s But How Are You, Really here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links)

What Maya Ziv liked about the query:

I had been following Ella Dawson online for years, and had told her agent that I was a fan of her writing. So I was primed and thrilled when Ella’s debut novel, then called The Reunion, landed in my inbox. I had no idea what she had been working on, but immediately fell for the pitch—a burned out 20-something returns to her alma mater for her five-year reunion, running into ghosts of the pasts and also the one who might have gotten away. Who doesn’t love a college reunion?? One Twin XL bed!! 

I am also always a fan of novels that probe friend group dynamics and character psychology, which this pitch promised to do. Despite having Covid for the first time, I dove into the novel right away.

I immediately fell for Ella’s writing. The color wheel of feelings stole my heart on the first page! I loved Charlotte Thorne, our protagonist, in all her messy glory, and was rooting for her the whole time. The romance here is so well done, but what landed the most for me, and my editor-in-chief, was the way Ella nails the sense of coming back to a place that forces you to reckon with how far your life has or hasn’t come. 

This book is ultimately about a woman getting unstuck and getting back on her feet through love and community. I found the first email I sent about this novel which includes this line, “The ending is a happy one, which everyone needs right now! I found myself fist pumping.”

Months later, I still find myself fist pumping and also pinching myself that I get to work with Ella. I am so proud of this novel, now entitled But How Are You, Really, and I can’t wait for readers to discover it! I hope it takes them back to a moment in their lives they hope to remember.

*****

Maya Ziv is VP, Editorial Director at Dutton, Penguin Random House, where she focuses on commercial and literary fiction and select narrative nonfiction. Her authors include New York Times bestselling authors Hank Green, Riley Sager, Adriana Trigiani, Karma Brown, and Erika Johansen, and some recent titles include The House in the Pines, by Ana Reyes; The Mutual Friend, by Carter Bays, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother; Kaleidoscope, by Cecily Wong; and Bad Sex, an exploration of truth, pleasure, and an unfinished revolution, by Nona Willis Aronowitz. Before joining Dutton, Maya was a Senior Editor at Harper, where her list included Welcome to Night Vale, by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor and Roxane Gay’s New York Times bestseller Bad Feminist.

Jamie Carr joined The Book Group in January 2020. A senior agent at TBG, she 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. Jamie represents novelists, journalists, and experts in culture, food, sobriety, finance, millennial and Jewish issues, and more. Most interested in adult literary and upmarket commercial women’s fiction and narrative nonfiction, she is drawn to writing that is voice-driven, highly transporting, from unique perspectives and marginalized voices, and that seeks to disrupt or reframe what appears to be known.

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