As I sit here twiddling my thumbs due to yet another snow day where I can’t concentrate on my writing because my boys are home from school, I’ve been mulling over the state of my query letter for Her Own Best Enemy. I have a lot riding on a one-page letter. A great letter means the difference between getting my work in front of agents who may like it enough to represent it, or sitting here collecting dozens–hundreds–of rejection letters on query alone.

Romance Divas is doing another one of their fabulous We All Win Query Contests this month and I plan to toss my query into the ring for some feedback. But, before I send my entry in, I need to revamp my query because it’s not where it needs to be.

Discussions about what *good* queries look like have been slapping me in the face lately. Between agent Kristin Nelson’s awesome Pub Rants blog where she talks about the downfalls of generic queries and overused phrases, to agent Caren Johnson’s response to my query question over at Caridad’s blog where Caren is guest blogging this week, I’ve come to a sort of enlightenment.

I need to get to the heart of Her Own Best Enemy. Yes, there’s scads of heart-pounding action, emotion, a love story, and a happy ending…but what makes it special? Why should an agent (or editor or reader, for that matter) care?

Well, I think I’ve found it.

That tiny little kernel of importance. Her Own Best Enemy is about trust. It’s about one woman who would rather fail than have to trust someone other than herself. But, here’s the thing…she’s a mother, too. And as a mother, she has this innate conviction that she’d do anything for her son. Anything. Even if it means putting her trust in another person–in the man she’s vowed to hate–because when she sets out to find her missing son, she doesn’t have the luxury of doing it herself and possibly failing. Her son’s life is on the line here.

Thus, starts a journey for her where she constantly wars with the part of her who knows she shouldn’t trust someone other than herself and the part of her who is willing to do anything for her son–even if it means doing something as painful and heart-wrenching as learning the importance of trust.

Of course, I need to boil that down into more concise language. But I think there’s meaning and heart and a universal truth in Grace’s journey. I just hope that an agent will think the same.