Success Story Interview - Tiff Bartel

An Interview with Tiff Bartel (tiffbartel on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Katie Blagden of The Ampersand Agency.

07/27/2026

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

Tiff Bartel:
SNAGGLETEETH is a bit of a genre-blend: it’s a literary sci-fi/cli-fi with dual timelines, plus queer romantic and speculative mystery subplots. My one-line pitch was: “When a down-on-his-luck archivist takes a job from a shady tech company to save his robot friend, he uncovers a darker plot involving stolen memories while falling for a handsome anarchist with a grudge against his employer.”

I wrote most of it during last year’s heat wave, during my province’s worst wildfire year on record, when I was mostly housebound due to the heat and smoke while recovering from surgery. I had a lot of time to think about how the climate crisis affects vulnerable people the most.

A few other things that inspired it: the alienation of being marginalized during a pandemic and getting too attached to old robots for company, the dehumanization of women (especially mothers), the power of mutual aid and interdependence, and the resilience of communities (queer, disabled, BIPOC) in the face of crushing late-stage capitalism—and how joy is an act of resistance despite it all.

QT: How long have you been writing?

Tiff Bartel:
Not to give a stereotypical answer, but: for as long as I can remember! Other than writing novels, I’ve published comics, short fiction, non-fiction (mostly music and arts journalism, plus professional copywriting), and am a songwriter and filmmaker.

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

Tiff Bartel:
My earliest notes date back to January of 2025, but I wrote and rewrote the bulk of it from June to August 2025.

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

Tiff Bartel:
I felt like giving up pretty much every day for the whole 6 months, haha. Querying is the absolute worst thing you can do if you have Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, but I believed in the book, and whenever I did get a rare, nice little compliment, I put it in my notes app to remind myself that some people really did like my writing.

My only advice to others still in the trenches is to keep going past the point where you really want to quit—what do you have to lose? To be terribly Canadian for a moment: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

QT: Is this your first book?

Tiff Bartel:
It’s not the first book I’ve written, but it’s the first book I’ve queried. I’ve written a few “practice” books before this, but never bothered with sending them out.

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

Tiff Bartel:
Aside from being an AP English dork in high school, I’ve taken a few classes in screenwriting and comedy writing, but mostly it’s been a lot of hands-on practice and reading every craft book I can get my hands on.

QT: Do you follow a writing routine or schedule?

Tiff Bartel:
I have a full-time job and a family, so I took time to write wherever I could carve it out of the rest of my schedule, usually after work once all of my other responsibilities were complete. When completing the first and second drafts, I wrote (on average) about 2,000 words per day until the draft was complete.

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

Tiff Bartel:
I did around four drafts (depending on what you count as a draft): messy first draft, then completely re-wrote it from scratch for the second draft and did big dev edits, then a line-edit draft, then finally a draft just for polishing everything up. I also did a detailed outline before starting, which I suppose you could count as a zero draft if you wanted to.

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

Tiff Bartel:
No beta readers for the book itself (not for lack of trying; I simply couldn’t find anyone willing to read sci-fi), though I did workshop the query in an online critique group.

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

Tiff Bartel:
I’m a meticulous outliner (and reverse-outliner). I’m a nerd who loves spreadsheets.

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

Tiff Bartel:
I’d been querying this book since January 2026. I haven’t queried any other books.

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

Tiff Bartel:
150; I’m not sure if that ought to be considered embarrassing or impressive.

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

Tiff Bartel:
Not to go on and on about spreadsheets again, but: I used Query Tracker, Publishers Marketplace, and MSWL to compile a list of who was actively representing the genre and what they were looking for specifically (eg. grounded sci-fi from neurodivergent authors, etc), then prioritized the ones who were actively seeking and representing books from marginalized voices.

When I started querying, there were very few agents open to sci-fi, so I also queried agents looking for upmarket/literary speculative fiction if it seemed like a fit for their wishlist.

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

Tiff Bartel:
This might be an unpopular approach now, but I personalized nearly every query. I added a line at the top of the letter that said “I’m writing based on your MSWL seeking…” and wrote the specific wishlist items I mentioned in the previous question. It is a bit more time-consuming, but it did help me to be more mindful of why I was querying specific agents, and was a good thing to refer to later if I forgot why I had selected that particular agent in the first place.

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

Tiff Bartel:
Find community and lift each other up: where would I be without the support of other writers? Find community on Discord, or Bluesky, or real-life, or wherever, and help each other out. It’s good to see what other authors at the same stage as you are doing, as well as folks who are at other stages you are yet to arrive at. These people are your peers, not your competition, and you can learn so much from one another.

Other than that, I would say it’s important to not only read widely in your genre but also in other genres, and to study craft, even if it’s just checking out books from your local library (which is far more accessible to many folks than getting a degree). Readers can tell if someone actually loves the genre they’re writing and isn’t just doing it as an “easy” cash grab. I fully believe in being sincere and only writing what you yourself would love to read.

Also, this goes without saying: don’t be lazy and outsource any of your thinking to AI. As difficult as it is, part of the joy and satisfaction of writing is doing the work, and at the end of the day, having something that is uniquely, thrillingly(!) your own. Be human, be vulnerable, be earnest; write the book that only you could write, then find someone who believes in its potential as much as you do.

Query Letter:

“Dear [AGENT],

I'm writing based on your MSWL seeking [PERSONALIZATION]. This manuscript was recently selected as a finalist (runner-up) for the 2026 RevPit Annual Contest, and currently has several fulls out with other agents.

I'm seeking representation for SNAGGLETEETH, a 96,000 word adult science fiction novel featuring a near-future diaspora setting and fabulist elements inspired by Southeast Asian folklore. It combines the complex human/robot relationships and sibling grief of Silvia Park's Luminous with the queer joy and found family of Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, and the thoughtful robot perspective of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun.

Bertram, a lonely audiovisual archivist in his late-thirties, leads a quiet life, wanting nothing more than to keep his head down and his mind sharp after escaping a childhood in the slums. Nim—an assistive robot in the form of a nine-tailed fox—is his right hand, as indispensable as his cane and his niche knowledge of dead media. When Nim malfunctions, Bertram's hard-won peace falls apart, forcing him to seek outside help or risk losing his friend forever.

Bertram's quest to find someone to repair obsolete tech proves difficult, especially without the support of his faithful sidekick. Bertram refuses to condemn Nim to the scrap heap, and doggedly tracks down the mysterious author of an anarchist right-to-repair manifesto: inscrutable Cedar, who's doing illegal repairs out of the back of his book shop. Cedar agrees to help Bertram pro-bono, but Bertram hesitates to trust him completely, accepting the offer while also hedging his bets.

Bertram's back-up plan is straightforward: taking a contract job from his former academic rival/toxic fling, whose family's robotics corporation looms large in their isolated company town. While Bertram hopes that gaining access to the company's archives might allow him to find Nim's schematics, the job proves to be more unusual than he'd anticipated: he's digitizing memories—disembodied snippets of strangers' lives—and many of them seem unsettlingly familiar.

Soon, Bertram uncovers exploitation and lost pieces of his own past; at the same time, he and Cedar grow closer, discovering that the key to Nim's resurrection may lie beyond the confines of their walled city. Out in the dangerous post-climate collapse wasteland, someone—or something—has been calling Nim. Bertram must choose between a lonely but safe existence tethered to the past, or putting his trust in Cedar—and himself, risking it all for one last chance at a more hopeful future.

I'm a queer, neurodivergent Viet-Canadian multidisciplinary artist whose writing has appeared in Ivy Lit, FLARE, and others. I'm a PAL member of SCBWI, having illustrated three children's books, the most recent of which won awards and was featured on CBC. I currently teach at a media arts college in Winnipeg.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration! As requested in your submission guidelines, I have attached [PERSONALIZATION] below.

Tiff Bartel (she/they)”