Michelle Johnson
Inklings Literary Agency
My Manuscript Wish List®
Michelle is actively seeking books with diversity, and authors with diverse backgrounds. She’s a strong advocate for equality and social awareness.
In adult, NA, and YA, she looks for Contemporary, Suspense, Thriller, Mystery, Romance, Horror, Fantasy, and light Sci-Fi. She also will look at the occasional MG if it has a phenomenal hook and voice.
She loves books that are like watching a train wreck you can’t look away from, characters that leave you feeling like you’ve just lost a friend because the book is over, and plots that she can’t predict at every turn. She especially loves books that make her think about something in a new way, but without preaching. Michelle also loves to laugh and loves dark, smart humor.
Not looking for: Textbooks, Cookbooks, Short Stories, Picture Books, Poetry, Coffee Table Books, Overt Christian Fiction, Screenplays, Steampunk.
Fun facts about me:
I have three dogs named Sammy, Dean, and Cassie. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I could sell Kool Aid on the corner and my first real business idea was to sell horse sh** for fertilizer for $5 per garbage bag full. My mom was my only customer.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should be emailed to query@inklingsliterary.com
We accept electronic submissions only. Please do not call the agency to query, or to inquire about querying. Do not use the postal service or any other snail mail service to mail your submissions.
- A query letter that includes:
- The title, genre, and word count of your project.
- A brief blurb about the story.
- A brief bio including any publishing credits.
- The first 10 pages of your manuscript
- A brief synopsis (1-2 pages)
Your subject line should look like this (If you were querying Whitley and the name of your book is “One Thousand Ways to Drink Coffee”):
Query Whitley: ONE THOUSAND WAYS TO DRINK COFFEE.
We will not open unsolicited attachments, so make sure you send all of the above pasted into the body of the email.
Our response time varies for queries, but the general response time is within 3 months for queries, and 4 months for manuscripts.
If you have not received an answer for your query after 3 months, it will be considered a rejection (either a request for manuscript or rejection). We’d like to take the time to respond to each and every query, but doing so creates longer and longer wait times.
For full manuscript requests, if you have not heard from the requesting agent by the end of four months, please follow up.
Vital Info
I’d like the next…
I’d like the next Shonda show in novel form, or the next Outsiders, or the next Lost.
My favorites include…
Some of my favorite…
Books (in no particular order, and by no means a full list): James Patterson’s Kiss the Girls, Leon Uris’s Trinity, Sandra Brown’s Fat Tuesday, Watership Down, To Kill a Mockingbird, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Stephen King’s The Stand, Anne Rice’s Witches, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s series, The Hunger Games books, Harry Potter, every book by every one of my clients.
Movies (again in no particular order, and by no means a full list): Free State of Jones, Dead Poets Society, Star Wars (all but I, II, and III), The Green Mile, Selma, Armageddon, Forrest Gump, Philadelphia, The Dallas Buyer’s Club, The Breakfast Club, The Outsiders, Pay it Forward, Frequency, Equilibrium, Fight Club.
TV Shows (see above for disclaimer): How to Get Away With Murder, Quantico, Blindspot, Lost, 24, Madame Secretary, The Blacklist, Criminal Minds, Bones, Rizzoli and Isles, Rosewood, Wayward Pines, Supernatural, X-Files, The Voice, Cupcake Wars.
Comics: Batman, Spiderman, Captain America, Archie (don’t judge), The Far Side (comics, cartoons, same category sort of?)
