Category Archives: Query Letters

Query Letter for The i Tetralogy (Updated)

Posted on October 25, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Dear Editor:

I am querying you as to a possible review of The i Tetralogy.

The i Tetralogy  is a fictionalized account of the devastating effects of the Holocaust. The culmination of four decades of reflection and introspection, my therapeutic work with Holocaust survivors, and my own experience as an American Jew — the tetralogy captures the internal destruction of this epochal event, providing a powerful perspective into the lives of its victims and perpetrators, as well as the legacy it has left behind.

As to the tetralogy: assaying the monumental impact of the Holocaust, the tetralogy elucidates a truth abut humanity. The Holocaust has forever defined the species as indelibly damaged, capable on a molecular level  of killing and consuming its own. Experiencing this unvarnished — perhaps axiomatic — truth, which no revisionist can deny, the reader ponders the risk of forgetting, sanitizing, “sweetening” the Holocaust.

As you well know, books like this struggle; however, reviews have been excellent, many appearing on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Bookflash.com has a press release on the book itself as well as personal information about me. Selections from each of the four novellas may be accessed at my publisher’s website, www.hatsoffbooks. com. A major and recent review has appeared on Breenibooks.com, April 2008. Interviews with me have appeared in Bookpleasures.com, Subtletea.com and Derek Alger, of Perigee.com, has just completed one in April, to be published with other interviews by that magazine within a year.

The book has been a decade in the writing. I believe it to be of significance.

A remarkable review by editor David Herrle was published in his ezine (25 pages!). The autobiographical essay which ends my book, titled Raison d’Etre, was published in its entirety with a critical introduction in New Therapist Magaine, May/June 2006, a special issue on the Holocaust in South Africa. And The Jewish Telegraph in Manchester, England, published a full-page interview with me in August 2006. I have also been reviewed in Bengal, India, Quill & Ink.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Mathias B. Freese, CSW

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Query Letter for Gruffworld

Posted on October 25, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Although the book was not accepted for publication, I believe the query got me read. The credits at the end are omitted. If I were to try to get it reviewed on a blog or ezine, I might very well use the same language, with adjustments here and there and a bit of fine tuning to compensate for time that has passed.

Dear . . .:

When Millea Kenin, editor of Owlflight, published “Covenant,” the first chapter in my fantasy novel, GRUFFWORLD, she wrote: “I like the description of an exotic being’s life-style — in a way, it combines the enjoyment of reading a science fiction story with that of reading an article in Natural History. . . .”

The novel I am offering (339 pages) takes a creature (“Gruff”) from primal and instinctual needs to a higher level of awareness; in short, the sequence is an incremental progression of the development — and haphazard — emergence of consciousness in an unlikely life form — a primal bildungsroman, if you will.

Issues of loss, abandonment, separation, isolation, relationship, identity, trust and repetition compulsion permeate the entire cycle. What I have worked on is more than consciousness, but awareness  — this creature struggles to see, much as Eastern thought teaches us. Parenthetically, it is more than insight. It is the capacity to see free of past image, prior conditioning, memory, desire or understanding.

In order to create a resonance in terms of intent or meaning, I have purposely created new words to contain and explain this new world — they are not misspellings.

Gruff lives in an apocalyptic world. Unbridled instinct is the internal tantrum within anumal life and evolution is a downward spiral. From this primordial anomie shards of purpose make themselves know to the Gruff. Randomly he has been selected from all his kind to develop in ways that ultimately separate and distance him from his primal horde.

From this hinterland of reality and fantasy, at the horizon at which they merge, I move this creature through a series of adventures — and tasks — that are reminiscent perhaps of early man’s efforts. Consequently Gruff as name-giver, labeller of his world, as self-emergence itself; Gruff brooding his way into identity and selfdom are the internal and external tides that beset him.

As to my own expertise and background, I am etc, etc.

If you would like to review this manuscript please advise.

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Query Letter for Down to a Sunless Sea

Posted on October 1, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Dear Editor:

I am querying you as to a possible review of Down to a Sunless Sea.

This short story collection presents a variety of styles, providing a different reading experience — poetic, journalistic, nostalgic, wrlyly humorous and even macabre. “Herbie” was listed in Martha Foley’s The Best American Short Stories of 1974. I was in good company that year — Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and I.B. Singer, among others. Nine of these stories have been published in the “little” magazines over the years, the most recent in 2007 in France, La Fenetre.

The range is wide, yet the common thread is to compel the reader to feel for these characters. Readers are plunged into uncomfortable situations and into the minds of troubled, complex human beings.

In Down to a Sunless Sea to be understood — to be felt — is given ardent, strong and imaginative voice. Tracy-Jane Newton, a British editor, Alternative-Read. com, writes: “Mathias B. Freese has the ability, without mawkishness or sentimentality, to delve into the struggles of life.” David Herrle, editor and founder of Subtle Tea, best sums up my efforts: “Dare to observe shadow dwellers limelit by sometimes austere, always wired and deep Freese, tune your taste ‘for a dose of Freudian sauce,’ and don’t be too daunted by the tinge of suspicious ash in the sunless air.”

An award-winning essayist and author of The i Tetralogy, a historical fiction about the Holocaust which has garnered remarkable praise around the world, the weight of my twenty-five years as a psychotherapist comes into play as I hopefully demonstrate a vivid understanding — and compassion — toward the deviant and damaged.

Down to a Sunless Sea has just won the 2008 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award. This is my second Allbooks Award, the first for The i Tetralogy, a powerful and uncompromising study of the death camps during the Holocaust. I am listed on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Sincerely,

Mathias B. Freese

 

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Query Letter for Sojourner: “To Be What We Are, And To Become What We Are Capable Of Becoming Is The Only End Of Life.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Posted on June 20, 2008 by | Leave a comment

I’ve decided to blog this query written on 19 August 1990. Of course, I will change the credits and tinker here and there; however, other than squeezing it tighter, I like it. Having just completed a major revision of the book, cutting about 12 pages and revising sentence by sentence, I will now let it “rest,”  as they say about steaks on Top Chef. And then with fountain pen, I am a retro kind of man, I ‘ll edit it once more. Jane will compose an introduction to it and I’ll self-publish the book — three books since 2005, not bad. And then I will go on to my science fiction fantasy which is juiced with Freud and Krishnamurti — see “Covenant” under Pages to read the opening chapter which was published in a major science fiction magazine.

SOJOURNER is a completed manuscript of historical fiction. Set in California during the emigration of “coolies” from China ro work on the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century, it reflects a part of America’s ethnic history which is not commonly known; however, such a sojourn for the main character, Ah Ling, becomes more than a litany of atmosphere, event or ethnicity.

Perplexing issues of meaning, risk, change, seeing, “being” as opposed to “becoming” are the essential motifs of this novel — how does one set about to consciously change? how does one see, free of societal conditioning? does choice bring conflict and, if so, is it best to be conflict-free or choice-free? et al.

Beginning in China and ending in the mountain ranges of California, SOJOURNER explores the inner development of a young peasant farmer confronted with issues of self and significant other. As he slowly awakens to the fact that he has been asleep in life, we share his rising expectations as he examines how to be in time, how to live in the here and now, to rejoice in living, free of all internal and external authorities. Consequently the novel attempts to develop how one goes about acquiring meaning.

Interpersonal and philosophical relationships are explored within the novel. No time is spent in disquisition upon life’s problems, but they evolve from the very actions Ah Ling sets into motion. Ah’s inner shifts and slides into newer levels of awareness are depicted as well. All this is within the context of a narrative which involves two cultures, an emigration and existence as a coolie working on a railroad. SOJOURNER is based on documented events and secondary sources. The manuscript is 194 pages.

As to my own expertise and background, I . . .

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