Query Letter Review with Editor Karmen Wells

Refine your query letter, strategize your querying approach, and learn to sell yourself, and your book, to literary agents with the power to get you published.

Querying can be just as frustrating as it is exciting. You’ve dreamed of the moment that your manuscript is polished and you’re finally to finally pursue a literary agent in hopes of a book deal. There’s a chance you’ve sent out dozens of queries in exchange for silence and thoughts of where you went wrong.An effective query letter balances your personality as a writer, a strategic approach tailored to the litagent you hope to engage, and the ability to sell yourself as an author with longstanding potential.1-on-1 Query Letter Reviews are designed to give you the querying insight, critique, and targeted approach you need to write a memorable query.

Karmen Wells

Editor

Karmen Wells is a fiction editor, previously of HarperCollins Canada, now through Shelf-Made Creative Services where she specializes in substantive/developmental edits for novels and screenplays.

She left the corporate world nearly six years ago to work with new writers trying to grow their craft and, specifically, with those in the horror genre.

So far in her career, she has edited for authors like Steven Hall, Jessica Westhead, Gemma Amor, Laurel Hightower, Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, Cynthia Pelayo, Jamie Flanagan, Daniel Barnett, and more.

Up until late 2025, she also spent four years running the book-to-screen division for a literary agency where she sold and pitched adaptation rights to producers/studios/filmmakers. Karmen lives nowhere in particular and works while she travels.