Success Story Interview - Andrea J. Medaris

An Interview with Andrea J. Medaris (ajmedaris on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Scott Andrew Mendel of Mendel Media Group, LLC.

07/24/2026

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?

Andrea J. Medaris:
It’s called What You Wish For, it’s a nonfiction relationship book that grew out of my dissertation and my work as a couple therapist. I felt like I had something to add to the conversation, I guess, and I didn’t really feel any urge to write it until that was true.

QT: How long have you been writing?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Kind of my whole life off and on.

QT: How long have you been working on this book?

Andrea J. Medaris:
3 years.

QT: Was there ever a time you felt like giving up, and what helped you to stay on course?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Not really, I have certainly felt incredibly discouraged and full of self-doubt, but I’m no quitter. :) Persistence has always paid off for me in the end, and I think having a lot of that history behind me helped me keep going.

QT: Is this your first book?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Yes

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Not aside from basic college comp classes.

QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Definitely not - it’s usually very all-in for a full week or forgetting about it for a year.

QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

Andrea J. Medaris:
I didn’t re-write it, but there was a lot of structural shifting around as I tried to figure out how it worked to write something at that length.

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Just my husband, and I got a little feedback on parts from people on Substack.

QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Very loose outline, in that I had the chapter structure pretty much, but mostly it was writing and then being like “oh crap” and moving it around.

QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

Andrea J. Medaris:
I started querying 5/19/26 and signed with an agent 7/23/26. Note that almost all of the activity was toward the end of that period, there was quite a lot of silence until early July.

QT: About how many query letters did you send out for this book?

Andrea J. Medaris:
About 80.

QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

Andrea J. Medaris:
I probably wasn’t as selective as I should have been, I basically queried everyone listed for my genre.

QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Sometimes, if they had agented a comp for my book or there was some specific thing that spoke to me in what they said.

QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

Andrea J. Medaris:
Expect many rejections, try to hold on to your sense of yourself. Definitely do the notification of your other queried agents after you get an offer, that was surprisingly effective for me. If you’re doing nonfiction, do all the obsessive research you can stand about your market, your target audience, your comps, and media strategies. I’m especially grateful to some of the agents who passed, as they gave incredibly helpful feedback that made my proposal a lot stronger.

QT: Would you be willing to share your query with us?

Andrea J. Medaris:
I had a few versions but this one was the winner:

Query Letter:

Couples arrive in my office wanting a workbook, some communication skills, and a referee to settle the argument they keep having. I disappoint them almost immediately. Most of what they fight about, I tell them, is perpetual; they will be disagreeing about it for the rest of their lives, and the best I can offer is to help them disagree differently. Then I disappoint them further: I can teach communication skills all day, and it won't do them a bit of good, because the emotion driving a fight beats a manual every day of the week.

I wrote WHAT YOU WISH FOR because I think some of our most basic assumptions about how love works are wrong, and wrong in two directions at once. We believe we chose freely when we fell in love, when in fact we were drawn to a very specific person: the one whose particular shape fits our oldest wound, and who lets us become who we most want to be. And then we believe the opposite error about desire, that its fading is simply what time does, that the best we can hope for is a reliable friend to run errands with. Neither is true. Desire doesn't evaporate. It gets obstructed, either by a conflict that keeps us from ever feeling safe and seen, or by the caution we mistake for love, in which we protect the bond by never risking anything that might disturb it. And risk is the essential ingredient of intimacy, desire, and growth alike, so when we stop taking it, we lose all three.

WHAT YOU WISH FOR is a book of ideas, one continuous argument that follows the throughline from our earliest attachments into adult love. Three composite couples, drawn from my years practicing Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, carry it across four parts, from the first spark through the conflict that follows to a closeness early love could never reach. It is narrative-supported nonfiction, complete at approximately 55,000 words, in conversation with Esther Perel's MATING IN CAPTIVITY and Sue Johnson's HOLD ME TIGHT, and alongside Jessica Fern's POLYSECURE and Emily Nagoski's COME TOGETHER.

[bio about my credentials and professional network] WHAT YOU WISH FOR is my first book.

[some specific line about what’s attached/their requirements]