Michelle Hauck

Michelle devoured the classics at an early age, falling in love with heroic stories like The Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. It wasn’t until her teens that she got her hands on The Sword of Shannara and discovered a new heroic level in SFF. Now she’d like to advocate for stories that take the reader beyond the traditional hero’s journey.

She’s been helping writers long before taking the step to become an agent. Her Midwest roots taught her to pay things forward, and along with several co-hosts, she ran an impressive collection of contests for writers, including Query Kombat, Nightmare on Query Street, and Picture Book Party. She also learned much from six years as a successful Pitch Wars mentor in adult SFF.

Drawn to all sorts of stories from the heroic to the humorous, she loves big worlds, inventive magic systems, and a rich sense of history. Characters with lots of back-story and villains with shades of gray make her day. She’s not the best fit for contemporary(YA/MG) with dark themes or issue-driven unless it’s diverse, but she loves contemporary that can be described as quirky, fun, and light with big stakes. She wants to look at all things SFF(Adult,YA,MG) or historical (YA/MG), and won’t pass up a mystery(Adult, MG, YA), page-turner thriller(MG/YA), or a sweet romance(YA/MG). A dash of politics is a great added ingredient. She is not interested in nonfiction or picture books at this time.

She likes positive, upbeat characters, quirky humor (or really any humor) and is always excited to see stories with diverse underrepresented voices. Other traits she likes in a story are: Characters with lots of backstory that is revealed slowly, villains with complex motivations and layers, and stories set on secondary worlds or settings that are other than American or European.

For middle grade and young adult, she accepts all genres, though she has enough contemporary at this time. She prefers her romance to be sweet, her mysteries to be light, and her contemporary to be light, fun, or quirky. Stories of hope and optimism are her jam. Her sweet spot is SFF, where she enjoys light and dark stories. She likes villains with a shade of gray and is not interested in books that focus solely on bullying. She likes stories with complex main characters, deep secondary characters, strong character arcs, and layers of obstacles. A little humor goes a long way, but she also likes darker stories in SFF. She’d love to see twists on old classics, folktales, and myths or retellings featuring new points of view. Hit her with your adventuresome MG and your breathtaking YA. Bonus points for stories that have elements of climate change or the environment, or siblings working together.

She is very interested in seeing projects from diverse viewpoints of all kinds. Having sold all her LGBTQ+ projects, she’s eager to find more!

For adult, Michelle is open to all kinds of SFF, including magical realism, horror, space opera, romantasy, and cozy fantasy. She also accepts Adult Mysteries (though she is not the best fit for true crime or police procedurals/legal mysteries). In mystery, she also likes hopeful endings and just rewards. In horror, she is not a fan of body horror or slasher, but prefers horror to have social commentary.

For SFF in all age categories, she likes both plot driven and character driven. She loves, loves, loves a high-stakes epic fantasy or any fantasy set in a secondary world, though any subgenre of fantasy is good. Lately she’s been very interested in romantasy and cozy fantasy. A character arc that plays a part in the plot is fantastic. For science fiction, she prefers space opera over dystopian, but a dystopian with lots of action (Hunger Games, Red Rising, less The Giver) is great, too. She’d love to find more horror for any age group and would love to see Adult science fiction romance or a SFF murder mystery. A science fiction cozy would be cool as would a horror with a romantic element. She’s not looking for the urban fantasy of twenty years ago but a new take on urban.

Some things that she’s not a huge fan of:

-circus settings
-zombies (unless really unique)
-vampires (unless really unique)
-time travel stories (especially if the time travel solves the obstacle)
-pessimistic main characters who punch down (take their feelings out on people with less power/innocent observers)

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should be emailed to https://QueryManager.com/MichelleHauck

She is always seeking LGBTQ+, authors of color, the disabled and all diverse underrepresented voices.

She doesn’t represent Picture Books, Chapter Books, Early Readers, Adult Romance, or Nonfiction.

Guidelines & Details