Last year I finished my first novel, a 1940s era love story (on the literary side of things, not the Romance genre), and have been trying to stoke some interest in it since. A few agents have had positive things to say about it, but so far none have been interested in representing it. And so I figured I would post my query for it here, in the off chance it may catch someone’s eye.

At 86,000 words, Something to Live By tells the story of Nicholas Salvatore and Elizabeth Galloway, two damaged and lonely people stumbling their way though life. Focusing on the rarest of things – genuine human connection – it is about the ease of falling in love and being in love and the difficulty of simply loving.

At the height of WWII, Nicholas, a combat medic from Chicago who doesn’t believe in violence, is scheduled to ship out for Europe in the morning. That night he meets Elizabeth, a waitress who left her family in Arizona to seek something, anything, worth living for. An outcast who has lived his entire life through books, Nicholas senses in her a part of himself and asks to write her while abroad. Agreeing reluctantly, she answers his letters but keeps her distance. Following her brother’s death in a training accident, however, she finds their letters are her only outlet and throws herself into them without reserve. Their entire courtship taking place through letters, they each fall in love with a distorted image of the other. With the end of the war comes the end of the fantasy. Elizabeth, afraid she has set herself up to be nothing more than a wife, takes off, leaving Nicholas devastated. Fear brings them together and fear pushes them apart, but as they both seek something stronger to live by the result may just see their paths cross once again.

Any agents or publishers interested in seeing more, please contact me at gtjanetka@gmail.com. Thanks!