Asking a retired literary agent to critique my query letter?

Well, that's a more personal response than I've ever had from an agent, so stop worrying and send her what she asked for! Most writers hate writing queries, as they have to take their 60,000-word-plus manuscript and squash it into a page or less. (More than one writer has said "If I could've told this story in a page, I wouldn't have needed to write a novel, would I?") Consequently, it's hard to tell from a query whether the story is really any good.

It would perhaps be safe to assume that there's nothing in the query that was a major turn-off for the agent - no spelling or grammatical mistakes, it made some sort of sense, and didn't contain any threats or bribes or paranoid ramblings about how "they" are conspiring to keep this brilliant novel out of the bookshops. So that's good. But don't get your hopes up yet - there's plenty more that could go wrong.

She stopped thinking about what's in your letter the moment she realized you hadn't sent your ten manuscript pages. She can't make any judgements until she sees the pages, so she wouldn't bother reading and considering the query until then.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.