MSWL
General MSWL
🖤I’m currently OPEN to queries in the following Age Ranges & Genres🖤
Across all genres, I wants stories that are dark, gritty, visceral, and perhaps a bit unhinged (okay, a lot unhinged) with a strong preference for BIPOC & LGBT+ voices, but the writing always comes first!
🖤🖤Adult & New Adult Fiction – Commercial & Upmarket🖤🖤
Romance
- Strong preference for Romance blended with one or more of the other genres below
- Most eager for Horromance & Dystopian Romance
- I love Romantasy, but it needs to be doing something new or a strong twist on the familiar!
- A Fresh Sports Romance
- Contemporary with a magical or speculative bent
- Dark RomCom
- Historical
- needs a magical or speculative bent
- or an alt history angle
Horror
- Open to most sub-genres in this space
- I don’t mind gore! But it needs to serve a purpose other than shock value and chunks on the page.
- Gothic | Supernatural | Maritime | Body | Bubblegum | Botanical |Social Scary | Horror Comedy | Eldritch | Cosmic & more!
- Strong preference for North American Indigenous horror by Indigenous creators
- Anything that feels like Folklore or Mythology from anywhere in the world
- As Stephen Graham Jones said in his foreword to NEVER WHISTLE AT NIGHT, the kind that hands the story off to you and says, “here, this is yours now, it lives in your head, and it’ll keep going, and growing, sending tentacles out into your life.”
Dystopian
- Prefer near-future
- I particularly like the kind of dystopian that explores the darkest parts of human nature
- Extreme Juxtaposition
- Irreverent and Quirky
Sci-Fi
- Hard Sci-fi to grounded (watch the word count though!! This is a publishing rule, not MY rule!)
- More than “trapped on a spaceship” narratives, please
- Character-driven
Fantasy
- Epic to grounded (watch the word count though!! This is a publishing rule, not MY rule!)
- I need to feel the humanity, even if your characters aren’t all human
- Fae is a hard sell for me
- All the creatures (but I prefer flying horses over dragons)
Select Women’s Fiction
- Book Club ready
- Upmarket prose with dark or taboo themes
- Dry & Gallows humor a major plus
- Definitely looking for feminine rage here
🖤🖤Picture Books – Commerical🖤🖤
Authors & Author Illustrators Welcome!
- Subversive and irreverent
- Whimsical and wry
- Humor is a must
- Art that is critical to the storytelling (even in text only submissions! Use the art notes to tell the full story!)
- I lean more toward alliteration than rhyming
🖤🖤Graphic Novels for Early Readers through Young MG – Commercial🖤🖤
Author/Illustrators Only, Please!
- Humor (not potty humor, please)
- Offbeat and/or Quirky cast of highly memorable characters
- Fresh twist on familiar storylines
- Interplay between the art and text to deliver the punchlines
- Art that does important work
- Unique styles and structures
Specific MSWL
🖤Hyper-specific Things I’d Love to See in my Inbox🖤
🔥Female Rage, Coming-of-Rage, Political Rage – Let me help light the torches with your wrath
🔥KILLER HORSES (or anything horse-ish)
🔥More diverse ability rep: mental, physical, anyone labeled with a disability, I want to hear from you!
🔥More BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ voices
🔥Black Joy!
🔥Cannibals
🔥Creepy forests, preferably sentient
🔥Morally grey – not just a sad backstory!
🔥Tension!!!
🔥Villains like Moriarty (BBC Sherlock) – I want to fall for your villain, and for them to STAY the villain
✖️Not For Me✖️
Note: this is not to yuck anyone’s yum! You do you, friend, and do it proud!
I know I won’t gravitate towards these things, and your work deserves the best champion possible. This list exists so I don’t waste YOUR time!
✖️ Animal protagonists
✖️ Superhero novels
✖️ Angels (demons okay, though. Yes, I realize that says something about me)
✖️ Time travel (I have loved some, but I don’t find I’m attracted to the concept)
✖️ Memory loss (usually too convenient)
✖️ Infidelity as the whole plot. It can be a plot point, but accountability needs to follow quickly.
✖️Erotica (I like all spice, but I don’t want sexual stim to be the central story)
✖️(Between love interests) Non-con and most Dub-con
✖️Religious/inspirational romance