Johanna Porter Is Not Sorry

Mar 11

BY sara reed

graydon

Query Letter

Johanna Porter, once a rising star in the art world, is now an unknown soccer mom. When she gets invited to an opening by her former mentor, she doesn’t even plan to to go—let alone steal the priceless portrait La Rosa Blanca.

The portrait is of Johanna herself, painted by the great Nestor Pinedo when she was his young muse and lover—before, in a fit of jealousy, he used his influence with galleries, curators, and collectors to destroy her surging career. When Johanna sees La Rosa Blanca, she sees the fierce girl she once was and seizes a chance to take her back. To everyone else, it’s a theft. To Johanna it’s a rescue. Hiding out with the painting in a family fishing shack on the Chesapeake Bay, she begins the raw work of reviving her talent while battling novice-thief paranoia, impostor syndrome, and mom guilt. The police don’t think much of Johanna as a suspect, but Nestor’s publicist and daughter, Pilar, is onto her. So when Johanna’s neighbor Mitchell—a top surgeon disabled by a painful hand injury and nursing a narcotic habit—asks for help with his sailboat, she discovers the perfect hiding place in an unused forward hold. Mitchell isn’t deterred by her profanity and snark, and chemistry soon flares between these struggling misanthropes

Johanna realizes that she doesn’t want the painting, she wants to to paint again. But in order to harness her powerful talent, she has to defy everyone’s expectations—most of all her own—for what a woman like her should be, while evading the equally powerful Pilar. As long as she holds onto La Rosa Blanca, charges of grand larceny are only one step away, and she risks losing not only her dream, but her daughter, her new love, and her freedom.

JOHANNA THE THIRD (upmarket fiction, 75,000 words) combines the quirky voice of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine with the gritty realness of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, and is in the lineage of This is Where I Leave You.

My short work has been published in The Missouri Review, Zone 3, Beloit Fiction Journal and New Reader Magazine. I have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have reached advanced rounds of judging in several contests. I live in Charlottesville, Virginia where I have built custom Irish flutes, made my living as a fiddle-player, and now work as an oncology nurse.

Thank you for your consideration.

About

Age Range

Adult

Genre

Contemporary Fiction

Word Count

80,000

Book Link

https://www.amazon.com/Johanna-Porter-Is-Not-Sorry/

Agent

Laura Bradford

Query Stats

Number of Queries Sent

Number of Full Requests Received

Number of Offers of Representation

Number of Months Spent Querying This Novel

3 months

Years Spent Writing Before Getting an Offer

Number of Manuscripts Queried Before This One

Publication Status of The Book Queried

Published (Big 5)

Years Spent Writing Before This Book was Published

Many

Note to Querying Writers:

I am over 50.

Lauren Kay