EDIT: my original post got deleted because I included my instagram—whoops!

My debut novel, BOYTOY (literary horror) will be published by Mariner (HarperCollins) in the U.S., and Juniper (HarperCollins UK) in the UK, and Planeta in Brazil so far!!

The Publisher’s Marketplace post is live as of today, and I’ve been dancing around my kitchen for an hour!

The brief synopsis:  

A modern-day love letter to Frankenstein and Misery, BOYTOY follows Reiley Tate, a twenty-four-year-old Whole Foods cheesemonger with an unused biology degree, a photo roll full of houses he’ll never own, and an obsession with attaining the perfect life. When he meets Seth, an earnest young dentist new to town, he believes he’s finally found the person around whom that perfect life can be built.

But Seth doesn’t want it, and Reiley sees red. When a weekend at Seth’s lake house ends with Seth unconscious and disfigured at the bottom of a staircase, his memory is shattered. Reiley sees an opportunity. He installs himself as Seth’s caretaker and lover, renovating both the house and the man. But as Seth heals and fragments of his memory resurface, Reiley resorts to increasingly grotesque interventions, reshaping Seth into something more compliant, dependent – and monstrous…

I’ve been lurking and posting on PubTips for a few years off and on and received nothing but lovely feedback and some grounding advice (and made some very sweet connections as well!)

My stats for the submission process:

Queried March 2026. 22 queries. 8 full requests. 4 rejections to query. 2 rejections after full. 4 offers.

This feels like a long time coming after multiple novels and a couple off-the-beaten path journeys, and yet it felt like no time at all—so to everyone who is dealing with patience issues, just keep writing your ass off! Thank you to everyone in the community who helped out!!

I hope to see you in Spring 2028! 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏻🩻🧟‍♂️

Prefacing this with the fact that this is technically my first time on sub (I briefly went on sub last year with a different project, but we pulled that early to focus on my current project).

Overall, I've felt very nervous this year. We went on sub back in March with our first batch of 10 editors. I got 3 rejections back within a month, and then there was nothing until this week, when I received 3 more rejections and a notice that one of our targeted editors left their imprint. So effectively 7 rejections of the 10 so far.

But I've noticed all the rejections seem to have the same feedback: loved the premise, loved the set-up, but didn't fully connect with the pages.

When I was querying, I'd usually brush off this feedback unless there was a consistent issue being noted (i.e., didn't connect at the line level, characters weren't working, the hook wasn't hooking, etc.) But on sub, I can't help but wonder if there's something I should be gleaning from this feedback.

My agent hasn't commented on the feedback itself, or on how slow sub has been this year (I've heard both that it's been super fast and super slow, so not sure what to make of that). So I guess no news is good news there? Maybe sub just kinda sucks and I want it to be over?

So much of sub feels like a mystery to me, so this could just be me reading too much into it. But wanted to see if there was anything worth taking from this feedback considering it's been consistent, especially as I continue to work on my next book.

Is there some sort of unspoken rule or a potential red flag that could be placed on me if I just went ahead and signed right away?

This is my dream agent and I can hardly believe that within 3 weeks of me sending her my manuscript we had an exchange of messages, The Call and now the offer.

This feels like the perfect fit but I don’t want to scupper it all by doing something stupid.

I actually only sent my manuscript out to two other agents so have informed them about the offer but I would be surprised if they have even read my first email given I sent it only 3 weeks ago.

I would appreciate some advice and possibly talking down.

I received the following lovely rejection:

While I'm afraid I didn't think this particular submission was to my tastes, I do believe it could be a fit for an agent acquaintance of mine. I'd strongly recommend you query [XXX] at [XXX], and please do feel free to mention my name as a referral when you do so. She is aware of the recommendation.

I know the standard is not to reply to rejections so as not to clog up inboxes, but should I reply here to thank the agent for the referral?

Dear Agent,

Another consciousness has been stuck inside Herman’s head for decades. It has no name and no way to communicate or interact with the world. All it can do is watch and grumble about how boring Herman’s life is. But when Herman’s friends introduce him to Salmacis, a chronically ill and volatile young woman, the entity suddenly discovers that it can control Herman’s body. Believing Salmacis is its only way into embodiment, it becomes obsessed with escaping Herman to live inside her instead.

The only trouble is that Salmacis is dead.

On their last night together, Salmacis gave Herman a leatherbound journal, encouraging him to explore his thoughts and emotions. It remains untouched until the night after her burial, when the entity decides to throw Herman off the balcony and end their suffering for good. But the sight of the empty journal stops it. Unable to bear leaving Salmacis’s final gift unused, the entity begins writing her story instead.

What begins as an attempt to recover Salmacis becomes a struggle over who has the right to tell her story. As the narrator reconstructs their time together, Salmacis increasingly resists the version of herself taking shape on the page, forcing the entity to confront the idea that its love for her might actually be a form of possession.

The Coalescing is a literary fiction novel complete at 68,000 words. It will appeal to readers of Max Porter's Grief Is the Thing with Feathers for its formally inventive treatment of grief and use of an impossible narrator to explore the boundaries between love, possession, and literary creation, as well as readers of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield for its tension between loving someone and the impossibility of recovering their lived experiences.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Best wishes,

Dear Agent,

Based on your interest in x,y,z I invite you to consider my YA Fantasy novel, AURORA for representation. Complete at 75,000 words and told in dual, alternating POVs, it combines the samurai lore of Renee Ahdieh’s The Flame in the Mist with the folklore inspired magic of June CL Tan’s Darker By Four, and the supernatural, female-empowered warriors of K-Pop Demon Hunters.

In order to go after the demon who massacred her family, 17-year-old Serena Inoue must claw her way to the top of the demon hunter ranks, even if that means defeating the chosen one... who she also happens to be in love with.

As the sole survivor of the demon attack that annihilated her village twelve years ago, Serena is left riddled with survivor’s guilt and a sea of unanswered questions. Now in her final year at Amatera Conservatory, she must pass the Hunter entrance exams and earn the prestigious Phoenix Mirror Medallion, presented to the highest-ranked student each year, because graduating as an elite member of the Night Hunter’s Guild is Serena’s best chance to find and destroy the demon who took everything from her. Too bad the only person standing in her way isn’t just her best friend, but her most formidable opponent. 

Aidan D’Ambrose is the chosen one, the Aurora. Gifted with the ability to wield heat and light, he is an embodiment of the sun itself. And since demons can only be defeated by fire or sunlight, Aidan is the world’s strongest weapon against the creatures of the night. But Aidan’s powers come with a heavy price: agonizing fevers that burn him from the inside, and are only getting worse. As his last year at Amatera progresses, Aidan struggles to conceal this shameful weakness, lest he disappoint everyone counting on him to fulfill his destiny as the Aurora. 

With graduation drawing near, Serena and Aidan’s friendly rivalry to win the Medallion blossoms into something more. Then the impossible happens: everyone knows that demons can only come out at night, but somehow, the nights have started getting longer. With demons becoming stronger, Serena and Aidan must navigate the Hunter Entrance exams while investigating (and surviving) larger, sinister forces at play. Because if they fail, the sun may never rise again.

AURORA is my debut novel and a standalone, with series potential. The demons in this story are born of humanity’s own flaws, and the nights getting longer is a metaphor for human-driven climate change. My characters descend into hopelessness, and then together, they find reasons and ways to keep fighting for a brighter future. As a Gen Z/diaspora author, I wrote this book in response to my generation’s own anxieties. I hope AURORA will inspire young readers to realize that there's no such thing as the chosen one. We each have the power to change the world.

Thank you in advance for your consideration, 

thanks in advance for any feedback! ^^

RABID RABBIT is a historical fiction novel complete at 106k words that follows a young woman as she grapples with the collision of her former and future selves and will appeal to lovers of the complex female characters in Claudia Craven’s LUCKY RED and Anna North’s OUTLAWED while covering a sweeping expanse of the nineteenth century American south.

Felicity James is thrown off her pedestal of privilege when she is taken from a train and becomes the key piece in a kidnapping plot to collect ransom from her wealthy tonic manufacturer father. After being tied up in a barn with a golden palomino, she escapes her captors with her desperate desire to survive, but is intercepted by Conrad Ramirez. Conrad claims the palomino was stolen from him, and that he is transporting the horse to Georgia for his boss, Mrs. Novak.

Concealing her identity, Felicity asks Conrad and his associates, the spirited Hattie and the droll Lee, to help her get home, knowing that her angered captors will be camped out at every train stop from West Virginia to Georgia, and if they catch her, she won’t make it out alive. As Felicity travels through Appalachia, she learns through run-ins with detectives searching for a stolen horse and friendly moonshiners that she might be more capable than she ever thought possible. When she finally confronts the fact that the group were not upfront about the true nature of their business dealings, she finds herself drawn into their outlaw lifestyle which is a stark contrast to her tight-laced upbringing.

The closer Felicity gets to Georgia, the less sure she is that her new life can fit with her old one. Her father’s connection with her kidnapper and his shadowy past make her question everything she thought she knew about the man who raised her. Felicity needs to decide if she’s going to risk it all for her new found freedom and leave behind the only life she’s ever known or continue to play the part of the dutiful daughter.

[bio]

FYI, I wont be querying any agents who refuse to consider books addressing the sexual abuse of children,

Dear [literary agent],

As someone who [has expressed a desire for the very thing I’ve written], you might be interested in NONOPERFUNCTIONAL, my experimental memoir about an autistic 8-year-old boy who failed to keep his brain damaged little sister safe and, sixty years later, has a month to finally redeem himself by rescuing her from a dire fate – but he might not have the skills to get it done. Complete at 91,000 words.

In NONOPERFUNCTIONAL I take a fabulist approach to depicting a life shaped by untreated autism and complex PTSD, employing gonzo techniques, direct address, inner voices, kaleidoscoping genres, and 3 POVs differentiated by who I was at different stages of life. Such an approach will appeal to appeal to readers who appreciated the formal innovations of Kelly Sundberg’s THE ANSWER IS IN THE WOUND, and the speculative multi-genrism of Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s MAGICAL/REALISM, as well as to readers hungry for a hopeful child abuse recovery story, like those in Catherine Gildiner’s GOOD MORNING, MONSTER.

Sixty years after I failed to protect my sister Kathy from being raped by our father, a chance at redemption arrived when the facility where she’d lived for half a century announced its pending closure. I was given less than a month to find Kathy a new home from halfway across the US. An overwhelming task for someone hamstrung by my several cognitive issues, but I was her guardian, her only remaining family, and the choice was simple: save my sister, or abandon her to the mercy of the state.

Dual timelines balance my late-in-life effort to save Kathy with early memories of family life, of that critical failure and of how I became increasingly self-destructive and guilt-driven after Kathy was institutionalized. Thirty years after failing her, I almost stepped off a suicide bridge; jolted by the realization of how far that would let her down, I finally began the long recovery that would prepare me, sort of, for that sprint towards redemption and the recuperation of a childhood bond I’d thought had been lost.

[bio, valediction]

Hello again! I hope this covers more of the issues I had before. I didn't cover the whole story (I thought it was like a shortened synopsis) and changed some terminology. Cut out the small random details I thought would add interest too. This story is written with a co-author, if you're confused by the wording in the beginning. Is it interesting enough to catch your interest? I have cool world details but I don't see any way to add them without destroying the query again. Thank you in advance!

Dear Ms. ---,

Because of your interest in science fiction with high stakes and unforgettable characters, we hope you’ll consider MORTALLY GRAY, a 110,000-word adult dystopian science-fiction novel with series potential. It combines the political intrigue of Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh with the moral ambiguity of The Ferryman by Justin Cronin.

Eden’s city was built to outlast the end of the world. But survival has a price and not everyone is considered worth saving.

As the successor of Solus’s leader, Eden has been raised to believe that the city’s division between genetically enhanced Registrees and unmodified Finites is necessary for humanity’s existence. While Registrees enjoy protection and privilege, Finites struggle with an overflowing population, rationed medicine and restricted resources.

Eden never questions the arrangement until a Finite man challenges everything she believes about her city. To discover what he knows, she must cross the bridge that divides them.

For the first time, the people she’s been taught to overlook become impossible to ignore. Eden uses her authority to protect him, then begins quietly diverting food and medicine to those the system has abandoned. But every act of defiance risks exposing her and the more she undermines the system she’s expected to inherit, the more she threatens the order her family has spent generations protecting. Her insurgence eventually triggers a hidden failsafe designed to preserve that order at any cost.

If Eden continues, she risks losing her future and the very autonomy she’s fighting to protect. If she stops, she must accept the suffering she’s finally learned to see.

Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Me and ---

Hi there,

Still in the process of revising, so the exact word count may change a bit, but I figured I'd get an early start on query drafting. It's a dual POV adult Epic fantasy. Lyrea is the overall main character, and the POVs are probably a 60/40 split favoring her over Besnik. I'm torn between focusing solely on Lyrea, or including Besnik (like I have now).

Dear [Agent],

Malwec Abbey’s walls have kept novice Lyrea safe since she was plucked from the ruins of her burned out village as a child. She prays to never be out of their sight.

But when her best friend is chosen to claim the sandals of Saint Veyra, patron of lost roads and abandoned souls, Lyrea is ordered to accompany her on pilgrimage to the sandals’ shrine. For the first time since her rescue, she must face a world without walls.

When a flood traps a village beneath Veyra’s mountain, the church refuses to jeopardize the sacred binding ceremony to help. Even Lyrea’s friend accepts that the villagers must wait and that duty can demand leaving people behind.

Lyrea refuses. She steals the sandals, intending to hold them hostage until the pilgrimage sends help. No help comes. Alone before a locked mountain pass, Lyrea makes a vow no priest has sanctioned, and the relic binds to her. Guided by the sandals’ strange warmth, she leads seventy-eight villagers to safety.

Now the church wants its relic—and the unauthorized bearer—returned. Lyrea flees towards Malwec Abbey’s ancient records, hoping to learn why Veyra chose her, though she knows it will be the first place her pursuers will look. Along the way, she hears a darker account of the saints’ greatest victory: the monstrous Noctivage were never destroyed, only driven down paths that may not stay closed.

Sir Besnik Hekuran knows the cost of disobedience. A common-born soldier risen to become a border lord’s most trusted commander, he abandoned a village’s holy relic to raiders rather than abandon its people. He loses his office and surrenders his sacred shield. Now, finding Lyrea and returning her to custody may be his only chance to regain his lord’s trust.

As Besnik closes in, he recognizes his own choice in hers. Bringing her back could restore his place, but it could also mean abandoning someone who needs his protection.

SAINTBOUND is a dual-POV adult epic fantasy with series potential, complete at 105,000 words. It combines the politically entangled loyalties of Richard Swan's The Justice of Kings and Anthony Ryan’s The Pariah with the ancient magic and uneasy alliances of Mark A. Latham's The Last Vigilant.

Hello friends!

Hoping to get this manuscript ready to query within the next month, so would love some feedback around my opening letter and any thoughts that you might have on the concept.

—
Dear [Agent’s Name],

[Personalisation]

LET THE CITY FALL is a horror romance with dystopian elements, complete at 90,000 words. It combines the romance under authoritarian control of H. M. Wolfe’s Daggermouth, the urban cosmic horror of Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey’s The Dead Take the A Train, and the dry humour of Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time.

In a London powered by an imprisoned eldritch god, horror novelist Marisol Santos investigates a blood cult claiming to heal the incurable. With her mother slipping further into dementia, she’s desperate enough to hear its followers out. Her books win their trust and attract the attention of the Bureau of Deep Works, the government department responsible for keeping their god in chains and the lights on. Threatening her mother, the Bureau orders Marisol to continue her investigation, this time to discover how the cult is accessing the god’s power.

Thorne Gascoigne is a Hound: a man who transforms into a monstrous beast, dependent on Bureau treatment to survive. He’s outlived his one-year life expectancy by four years, secretly helping other Hounds escape disposal. Imagining his own future is another matter. Until he’s assigned to protect Marisol and pose as her boyfriend. Playing the part should be straightforward. Resisting the urge to touch her when nobody’s watching is harder. He cannot tell whether it’s desire or the beast getting hungry.

As they infiltrate the cult, Marisol discovers that Thorne carries the rare blood needed to free the god—or bind it through a sacrifice that demands his life. Falling for him means keeping that discovery from both the cult and the Bureau. After five years as the Bureau’s expendable beast, she makes him feel like a man worth loving. He wants a life with her, but he’s willing to surrender himself to keep her safe. With London unravelling around them, Marisol must choose between saving an entire city and saving the man she loves.

I’m a queer Brazilian writer based in the UK. As PEN NAME, I’ve published fifteen books with Harlequin Mills & Boon, selling over 100,000 copies with translations into various languages.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

—

300 words:

The thing about cults, which Marisol should have thought of before she came here, was that they didn’t consider themselves cults. In their minds, what they were doing was the only rational thing to do, while the rest of the world simply hadn’t caught up to the rightness of their way. When she sat down in the booth of the dilapidated pub across from Valerie, she thought they looked quite ordinary for scary blood cultists.

Valerie wore a pale blue cardigan with pearl buttons and had hooked her handbag over a little protrusion behind her. A pair of reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck. She looked like one of the many aunts who had visited her mother back in the day, when she still gave out blessings and performed ritual healings in the tiny village Marisol was from. 

It was such a distracting sight and so ordinary that she didn’t realise Valerie had been talking all this time until things around her went quiet.

“Pardon, did you say something?” Marisol asked, blinking rapidly.

Valerie’s expression softened into one of genuine concern. “Is Martin distracting you?” she asked, and Marisol followed her gaze to the adjacent table. 

Martin sat with one hand held over a jam jar, blood gathering at his fingertip before dropping into the bottom. Beside him were a small dish of grey powder, a bottle with no label and a paintbrush resting on a folded paper towel.

“No, he’s fine,” Marisol said, before considering whether this was an assessment she was qualified to make. “What is he making?”

“The paint,” Valerie replied.

Martin pressed a piece of cotton wool against his finger, then tipped the powder into the jar. He added a little liquid from the bottle and stirred with the brush handle, scraping it carefully around the glass. Nobody else was watching. Apparently this was the uninteresting part. 

I really appreciated the advice from the first review, https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/s/I11K8qREd1
and hoped to get some more with this one! Thank you!

Dear Agent,

I am seeking representation for THE WAR OF STORM AND SHADOW, an adult epic fantasy complete at 96,000 words. Set in a world where every town follows one of the ancient Greek gods, the novel combines the mythic scale of Greek mythology with an original story of family, betrayal, and the devastating consequences of trusting the wrong person.

For many years, Achilleon has served as Zeus’s greatest general, keeping an uneasy peace between the followers of the gods. But when Poseidon’s general receives a warning from the sea that Hades is raising an army of the dead, mythological beasts, and devoted followers, that peace begins to crumble.

Achilleon sets out to unite the distant factions before Hades can conquer the realms and enslave humanity. But war is not the only battle facing his family.

His younger son, Ajax, follows closely in his father’s footsteps, determined to become the warrior Achilleon wants him to be. Andros, meanwhile, has spent his life struggling to earn the same approval. Sent into the forests of Gaia to convince her followers to join the alliance, Andros expects to return a hero.

Instead, he begins uncovering secrets that force him to question everything he knows about his family, the gods, and himself.

As Andros and Ajax fight their own battles across a land consumed by war, Achilleon is drawn deeper into a conflict that will ultimately place father against son. Ancient beasts emerge from legend, alliances fracture, and Hades’s forces advance toward their final confrontation at the Pit.
By the time the family rejoins back together, the truths they find along the way may be worse than the war itself.

THE WAR OF STORM AND SHADOW is the first book in a planned trilogy. It will appeal to readers who enjoy mythology-inspired fantasy, epic battles, morally complicated characters, and stories where the greatest threats are sometimes the people we love most.

This came to my attention when listening to TSNOTYAW this week, where they discussed Bloomsbury's (newish / updated? Couldn't find the exact pub date) AI policy. I couldn't find past discussion in r/PubTips, but please link if I missed it. This was my first hearing of an actual, detailed policy, so I wanted to discuss.

To my knowledge, Bloomsbury's AI Policy for Authors and Illustrators is the first concrete policy direction provided by a major publisher, and may be indicative of other publisher policies in development. I've linked, and their summary is copy/pasted below.

On reading the full policy, I have questions on how authors can succeed under the current version. I think there are important considerations for Bloomsbury's future policy edits/clarifications, as well as future policies yet to be released by other publishers.

Would love to hear others' thoughts, or receive updated information if the questions I've raised have already been debated / decided.

Disclaimer: My background is public policy, NOT publishing.

--

Bloomsbury’s AI Policy for Authors and Illustrators – A summary:

Using AI as an assistive tool:

✓ You may use AI tools for research and brainstorming

✓ You may use AI tools to assist in the editing of text and in the preparation of certain associated text items, provided you use a private AI system

✓ You may use AI tools to edit or enhance images, as long as the editing is carried out using Adobe Creative Cloud, and the images being edited are your own original work

Using AI as a generative tool:

✗ You may not submit any AI-generated content (including text, translations, or images) to Bloomsbury for publication

✗ You may not use AI tools to generate or create images or other illustrative materials

Privacy and disclosure:

✗ You may not input your work, or sections of your work, to any publicly accessible AI system

✓ You must disclose any use of AI tools – beyond the research and brainstorming stage – to your point of contact at Bloomsbury

✓ Ask your point of contact at Bloomsbury if unsure about any of the above.

---

Bloomsbury defines a "publicly accessible AI system" as:

A “private AI system” means an AI tool, application, or system deployed on infrastructure fully owned or controlled by an organisation you are part of, and which your organisation has explicitly confirmed safeguards submitted user data and does not train its algorithm on user-submitted prompts and content. This includes instances such as an enterprise-hosted version of ChatGPT provided by a university or company. For the avoidance of doubt, this does not include paid-for, “private mode” or “incognito mode” use of publicly accessible tools and websites such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

---

Questions / concerns that came to mind from all of the above:

1. The policy does not differentiate between LLMs and other types of AI models, which means more tools than may be obvious technically fall within the definition. For example, Microsoft Word and Google Docs both use some form of AI for their spell checks, and do not meet Bloomsbury's definition of a private AI system. My understanding is that historically, spell checks have been exempt from "AI Assisted" publication labels, but Bloomsbury explicitly states editing of text isn't exempt.

This also likely means that simply by writing using these programs, you've given AI access to your manuscript. As a Google Docs user, ironically using this method because of automatic backups to refute AI usage, this concerns me. Sure, there are ways to turn off most AI features on Word, but I think it's fair to assume many, many authors will inadvertently give AI access to their writing.

1. If private and incognito modes don't meet the definition of a private system, this means that LLM (and other AI) use will only be accessible to people at specific universities and companies that have invested in completely closed systems. Is allowed LLM use for research, brainstorming, and editing an unfair advantage? Maybe? Does this mean that Raytheon employees will now make up a disproportionate percentage of published authors? Probably not -- but I do think equity and access to tools should be considered.

Also, incognito mode use can't be proven or disproven, so I'm not sure how an author would refute AI use claims here, or how a publisher would actually be able to enforce this standard if an author didn't self-report.

1. This makes trustworthy beta readers even more important. If a beta reader gives AI access to your work intentionally or unintentionally, this violates the policy. (As has been discussed previously on r/PubTips.)

---

Questions / Considerations for the future:

1. Bloomsbury should communicate standards for policy violations. Do any and all violations result in no / revoked contract? Are there tiers of consequence? (For example, needing to rewrite any chapters that were uploaded to AI vs automatic no contract).

2. Is there any grace for inadvertent policy violations, or violations by a third party? Do they actually care if Google Doc's AI integrations have access to your writing? Will they reject your manuscript if you tell them a Beta reader you met online clearly gave you ChatGPT feedback?

3. Bloomsbury should develop clear procedures for monitoring. What is the due diligence process for monitoring author AI use? Are there standard records / evidence authors need to keep or expect to provide as a standard part of the process? Where does the burden of proof lie?

4. How does Bloomsbury apply due diligence internally? Do they commit to not running author works through AI to detect AI? How will they audit internal AI usage?

---

I know some of these questions and points have been raised generally on other posts, but does anyone have insight into the implementation / consequences of this policy specifically, or other policies in development?

Been querying this Fall and have received 12 no’s so far. Wondering how I can strengthen this query!? It’s a dual timeline, and I currently have a paragraph describing each timeline, but not sure if this works well. Would love to hear your thoughts on that and any other aspects that may be falling flat, including the first 300.

[Dear Agent]

Thank you for considering WALTHAM WOMEN (80,000 words), a dual-timeline historical fiction. In 1970, Aileen Walsh gets a late-night call from the police that her elderly mother broke into the defunct Waltham Watch Factory, and she embarks on a multigenerational scavenger hunt to uncover the dark family secret that her mother’s been hiding. Aileen pieces together information from a trove of letters that she finds in her mother’s attic, but a discovery about her long-dead aunt may be the key to unraveling the family mystery.

In 1864, Vivi Brooks, an eight-year-old girl growing up on the grounds of a Waltham, Massachusetts textile mill complex, recounts the story of her friendship with MC Corcoran, an Irish immigrant, and their fateful encounter in the cemetery on Hallowe’en night. As Vivi and MC move into adulthood, fortunes change and they find themselves at the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution making parts at the world-famous Waltham Watch Factory. As MC returns from a covert work mission the tide of fortune ebbs, and she and Vivi are forced to confront the fate laid before them that Hallowe’en night twenty years ago.

WALTHAM WOMEN, a saga of family lost and found in an old mill town, will appeal to fans of historical fiction with a strong sense of place like Ariel Lawhon’s THE FROZEN RIVER and to fans of historical fiction centering female characters left out of the history books like Kate Quinn’s THE ALICE NETWORK. 

[insert bio]

First 300:

1970
Sergeant Donohue hated calls like this– another break-in at the defunct Waltham Watch Factory. The great smoke stack loomed over the dash as he hit the lights. Westbound on Crescent Street, the road mirrored the snaking curves of the Charles River rushing at the back of the massive factory toward Boston. Spanning multiple city blocks, much of the Gilded Age giant sat abandoned– the first floor used primarily for warehousing with a few small businesses leasing office space. Calls to report break-ins were commonplace, kids smoking dope, vagrants camping out in empty rooms or sections of the warehouses. The large workrooms on the upper levels still housed instruments and machinery from the factory’s heyday that lurked in the long windows like defiant ghosts.

Peeling into the parking lot and cranking the e-brake, Donohue grabbed his maglite and checked the holster for his pistol before entering a metal side door that was the perennial weakness in the brick fortress. He had recommended bolting this access point, but his advice had fallen on deaf ears. The warehouse workers, underpaid contract types, liked to prop it open to take smoke breaks in the solitude of the back parking lot. Donohue hurried through the westernmost atrium of the building, a dingy and lifeless holding area for a variety of worn benches. He proceeded down a corridor toward the center of the factory and heard someone on the floor above. Entering the stairwell, maglite and pistol outstretched, he rounded the first flight of stairs. At the end of the second level hallway a figure appeared exiting one of the rooms, and he shouted, “Stop, police! Place your hands in the air where I can see them.” At the other end of the maglite beam stood a startled elderly woman in a nightgown and slippers. He holstered the pistol. “Mrs. Allen? Is that you?”

Thank you to all who provided feedback! I have tried my best to synthesize the information provided, and I feel more comfortable with the query writing process with each subsequent draft! Here, I give my MC more agency in the story, and I have refined the most important plot points. Please let me know what you think!

-------------------

Dear XX Agent,

Raised under sterile lights and synthetic skies, botanist Sienna Aster manages the agricultural lab used to feed humanity’s three remaining world-ships. Unbeknownst to the public, though, is that these crops are failing, and nothing Sienna can do will prevent new diseases from mutating.

Sienna’s only salvation lies in Project Phaethon, a colonization mission to a nearby planet rumored to hold arable land. Even though it means risking death, she seizes the opportunity to walk on a terrestrial world.

But when the mission is forced to launch early due to a firestorm, Sienna watches in horror as her world-ship succumbs to the flames. Burdened with the loss of her sister, Sienna is determined to secure a future for the rest of humanity.

After a grisly landing, however, it becomes clear that this planet is no paradise. Sienna’s survival is threatened by every encounter with native fauna, and she can’t shake her distrust for Dr. Cassius Vern, the mission’s increasingly cruel leader.

At first, Sienna turns a blind eye to Vern’s disregard for native life, desperately trying to convince herself that her priority is studying the native flora—no matter the means. In her spare moments, she finds solace in Clara Lim, a guarded, alluring cartographer haunted by her past.

But when Vern’s ruthlessness endangers the lives of the crew, exposing a sinister second phase of Project Phaethon, Sienna can no longer look away. With the world-ships’ final food reserves dwindling, Sienna and Clara must race to dismantle Vern’s conspiracy before he dooms the human race to extinction.

I am pleased to present GEOCIDE, an adult sci-fi novel complete at 96000 words with series potential. Balancing a character- and setting-driven narrative with a sweet sapphic romance, it will appeal to fans of Sue Burke’s Semiosis trilogy and Cold Eyes by Peter Cawdron.

I currently study Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at XX University, and when I’m not conducting ecological research, I am an avid birder and orchestral composer.

I have attached X and X for your review, and this would be my first published work. Thank you for your time!

Hey folks!

It has been about a month since I started querying, and so far all I got were mostly quick form rejections (including one from a referral lolsob). I still have about 27 outstanding queries, and am holding off to send more, so would really appreciate any feedback on what could be improved. Yes, I am deluding myself into thinking I have any control here.

I would also be curious whether I should pitch this manuscript as a romance. I have been pitching it as horror, since there isn't really a horror romance on QT, but it does have structure of a romance and does fulfill the romance expectations.

For reference, previous versions of the query can be found: here, here and here.

_________________

Dear [AGENT NAME],

I am seeking representation for KILL ALL YOUR FRIENDS, a campy horror romance where a grief-stricken young woman and an undead trans man join forces to get revenge, and find love in all the carnage. Complete at 76,000 words, it blends the horror/romance combo of How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates by Shailee Thompson with dark humour of Play Nice by Rachel Harrison, as well as murderous campy romance of the movie Lisa Frankenstein.

Berlin, Germany. In the wake of her sister’s brutal murder, Vic Lisenko finds an unorthodox coping strategy: fantasising about dismembering the killer in gory details. It’s the only thing that keeps her alive. Besides, it’s not like she can act on it — the police haven’t found any suspects and the case is growing colder than her sister Sofia’s body.

One summer afternoon, Vic gets an invitation to a weekend getaway from the Kellerkinder, her sister’s old friend group. Although it’s surprising they would reach out after years of ignoring her existence, Vic is convinced they might have a lead. And she will do anything to find out who killed Sofia.

Sofia was not the first of the Kellerkinder to die. Four years ago, Elliot Wilde disappeared at a winter holiday retreat and has since been presumed dead. That is, until he crawled out of his grave to get revenge on the childhood friends who had left him to die.

At the weekend getaway, their paths cross, and both Vic and Elliot realise they have better chances to get what they want if they join forces. They concoct a plan: first, they will beat the information out of the Kellerkinder. Then, they slit their throats. And will it be so bad if they end up falling in love?

When they discover a dead body neither of them had anything to do with, the tables turn. Sofia’s murderer is back for more bloodshed and Vic and Elliot must do everything to survive the night.

[BIO]

Looking forward to hearing from you!

_________________

First 300:

The blood was everywhere.

At first, it simply welled up on Vic’s finger, precisely at the intersection between her flesh and the blade, a thick ruby drop. Honestly, she hadn’t ever realised it was there. The knife dug into her skin freely and painlessly, as if it has always belonged there, inside her.

She pulled the knife out without thinking, ready to make another chop, when she saw what was happening. But it was already too late.

A quick spurt, an awkward stumble, and a projective splash of red painted the off-white tiles of the kitchen bright red, transforming it into an active crime scene.

“Fuck!”

Vic whirled around, injured finger held by the fingertips of the other hand, sending more red, like a horror movie themed sprinkler. The knife, forgotten, clattered to the floor, and she yelped, jumped to the right, and hit her knee on the half-open drawer.

“Mother f—”

That sent another squirt of blood out of her. Since when did fingers bleed this bad? The red spilled generously over the chipped white paint of the window sill. Glass didn’t get out unscathed either. Angry red trickled across the pane.

Vic kept on pacing, profanities dying on her lips before she could breathe them out. Hand slick, she pressed the cut to stop the flow, just stop it, but blood ended up spraying more furiously. Some of it got in her eye.

What a fucking mess. Carefully stepping around a knife, Vic pushed to the kitchen sink.

A generous splash of blood was not a part of a tuna salad last time she checked. Maybe, her cardiovascular system was being a little dramatic. But who was there to stop her?

“Well, fuck me."

I posted the first attempt for this query a few months ago, linked here. I rewrote the query a few times and got some more feedback, but after querying about 30 agents, I haven't had as much as a single personalized rejection, let alone a partial or full MS request.

Since then, I've done some pretty extensive revisions to the manuscript and rewrote the query another couple times based on some more research. Mostly I realized that the protagonist's want/goal wasn't specific or urgent enough, so I'm hoping I adressed that. Am I getting close?

Thank you to everyone who provided such great feedback on my last post, and thank you to those who care to read this one!

--

Dear [AGENT NAME],

Given your interest in [THEMES], I’m happy to share YOU’VE BEEN CANCELLED!, complete at 80,000 words. The satirically delusional protagonist of Meredith Hambrock’s SHE’S A LAMB! meets the twisty social commentary of Liann Zhang’s JULIE CHAN IS DEAD in this “coming of rage” psychological thriller and dark comedy.

Already drowning in mounting payments to an anonymous blackmailer, a sociopathic influencer plunges into infamy following the spread of a controversial AI deepfake—realizing she must hunt down whoever is clearly hell-bent on ruining her life, or risk spending years behind bars instead of beneath the limelight.

Alana Wilson loves profiting off of making women feel bad about themselves. As a prominent influencer, nothing pays better than showcasing her (edited) body and (not-so-) perfect marriage. The problem: someone knows about Alana’s darkest secret, and they’re using it to extort her. She’s hemorrhaging money just to keep her blackmailer quiet and avoid going to prison—or worse, losing her millions of admirers—but she’s a certified girlboss. She just needs a few more followers to secure the brand deal that would set her for life and bury her secrets for good.

But when an AI-generated video depicting Alana screaming racist slurs goes viral, the social media empire she’s killed herself to build topples overnight. Someone is out to destroy her, but who? Was it Matt, her cheating husband, who she was forced to kick out after his mistress threatened to go public? Or Charlie, her more successful competitor, who secretly despised that Alana’s career was so close to eclipsing hers? Or Zay, the millionaire boyfriend she’s manipulating for his money and whom she suspects is not being entirely truthful himself?

Alana’s been doxxed, dragged into bar fights, and forced to wield hammers against strange men, all while trying to conduct a frantic investigation that is pointing her nowhere. CNN is broadcasting her face to the entire country, and her income has been effectively slashed. If she doesn’t come up with the money for her blackmailer’s most recent demand, her life as she knows it is over. But Alana’s desperation to clear her name and return to her well-deserved spotlight bleeds into a budding obsession with Charlie, whose career begins rising every inch that hers has fallen. When all signs inexplicably point to the one person who stands to gain everything Alana has lost, she realizes that justice is nothing compared to revenge.

[I'll insert bio and thanks to the agent here]

With the bio, this comes to 431 words.

Dear AGENT NAME,

You can’t outrun what you are, even with a tab on your tongue and a bassline shaking the floor. Banba has been giving it a good go.

She’s twenty, out of the care system, and good at forgetting. She walks the long way round to work, past the university she never applied to. She pours coffee on Botanic Avenue, because it’s hard to fail at pouring coffee. And coffee doesn’t ask where you’re from. In Belfast, everyone else does, which really means: What are you? Which side are you on? Banba has never had an answer.

Then a tab goes wrong, and she’s standing in a bog, reaching for a woman buried to the waist and screaming without a sound. By morning, her three-quid spider plant is dead. Within days, Belfast is rotting.

And Banba discovers the rot has a name: Carman, a sorceress the old gods chained in a Wexford field and held there with memory. People forgot. Banba could have told them how easy that is. Now Carman is coming for everyone Banba loves, starting with Charlotte, the closest thing she had to a mother, found dead in the back of her own café with black around her mouth.

A book tells her about a goddess called Banba, left with no kin, no home and no roots. It reads like her file. So maybe that’s her answer. She’s the land. The bit they’re all fighting over.

Banba tries summoning a god for help and instead gets a dagger that won’t let anyone lie. She also finds a completely unhelpful sister trapped in a lake. And then there’s Ciarán, the guitarist who turns her damp flat into a Christmas grotto and makes her think that this time, someone might stay. To stop Carman, she’ll have to find a way to bind her again.

BANBA is an adult dark fantasy novel with a romantic subplot, complete at 80,000 words, set in late 1995, the last winter of the IRA ceasefire. It’s for readers of Alix E. Harrow’s STARLING HOUSE and C.J. Cooke’s THE GHOST WOODS, with Derry Girls humour.

I’m an Irish writer and traditional musician who grew up on council estates in Northern Ireland in the 90s, and much like Banba, I’ve also eaten a Pot Noodle with a toothbrush. This is my debut novel. Thanks for your time.

Best wishes,

NAME

Hey folks!

I've been lurking in this subreddit for a while, but I've never posted before because I'm not quite confident enough to give advice just yet.

I think I'm finally happy with my query package, but I would love some feedback, since every time I revisit the query, I find issues I couldn't see before. All opinions are welcome, and any advice is greatly appreciated. I want this to work out, so please don't hold back.

A few things to point out (though I welcome any commentary on them):

- I know The Poppy War is almost 10 years old, but I think it matches well with this book, which is why I added it as a third comp, with two others from the last 5 years.
- The book starts with a three-page prologue, so there's some dissonance between the letter and the excerpt.
- All proper names (including the book title) are substitutes because I am that paranoid about posting online.

Thank you in advance!

---
Cover Letter
---

Dear [Agent Name],

At 112,000 words, ACERBAE MEMORIAE is the first instalment in my adult dark fantasy duology, telling the story of how a life of abuse and a narcissistic mentor turn a stubborn girl with the rare gift of reliving the imprints of traumatic events into a wildfire that will burn all who seek to wield her power.

After only living vicariously through her books and daydreams, with covetous parents for jailers and disturbing premonitions stalking her, Aurelle sees her chance to taste the world when she’s appointed lady-in-waiting to the seventh granddaughter of the Duchess of Entbury.

Though her new palace home brims with wonder, Aurelle could never abide complacency, and soon sneaks where she shouldn’t, in search of answers to her visions. Instead, she finds the last memory of a man, clinging to the book he clutched as he ran from a dreadful masked figure. The man’s flight ends at a hidden door, and when Aurelle finds it and cracks its lock, the heiress of Entbury follows her inside. In a panic, Aurelle kills her pursuer. She hides her, but is caught with blood on her hands. Then, the mindbreaker sent to torture her notices her gift and snatches her from her captors for selfish gain alone.

Now the mindbreaker plans to exploit Aurelle’s talents to decipher the secrets of the concealed room she found, the Entburys want her head and his, and their clash draws the attention of forces darker still. But Aurelle is nothing if not wilful, and she won’t let anything or anyone be the end of her; not the Entburys, not her imposed mentor, and not the warlocks of Renbrook.

ACERBAE MEMORIAE delves into the ugly side of social struggles, like BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN by M.L. Wang, exploring how trauma can lead you astray, as in THE POPPY WAR by R.F. Kuang, through a complex character with harrowing development, in the style of THE WISDOM OF CROWDS by Joe Abercrombie.

[Bio].

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

[Me]

---
First 300 words
---

PROLOGUE
Atonement

Camellia appraised the kneeling wizard through the mesh of her mask. A thin shaft of light crossed his face, exposing the thick sweat caught in his wrinkles. “Come hither,” she said, and he crawled toward her throne without lifting his gaze from the black marble. She stepped on his bald pate as his fingers touched the last step, placing her sharp heel between his eyes. But still, he would not look up. “Tell me, Grandmaster, why ever should I grant you another chance?”

Grawleen swallowed, teeth gritting in a mouth prone to impertinence. “My… apologies, Mistress. I… almost have them. It’s a matter of time, Mistress, I swear. On my honour.”

She curled her lip at his honour and, foregoing stealth in favour of authority, Camellia delved into the wizard’s mind. He could only shudder as she dissected his story, probed his claims and dismembered his promise limb from limb. He had been honest about the progress, if not about his role in the operation. His head archivist had done the work, and the fool believed he could hide it from her, lest she prescind of him. Ironic, when preventing that head archivist from becoming grandmaster was what forced her to endure this oaf.

She made his windpipe contract, sending him into a geriatric cough.

“Please, Mistress,” he wheezed through the chokehold. “I didn’t mean to—”

“And yet you did.”

“I’ll atone. Whatever you need, ask and—”

“I already asked.”

“And I failed, yes. But not again. Please, Mistress. I’ll… I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” Is that the pride of the Renbrook elite these days?

“Anything,” he confirmed, though only due to a severe lack of imagination.

Camellia released the throttle but kept hold of his reins. “Scarlet, dear, fetch me a knife.”

Hello,

I came across a submission requirement for an agency that was as follows:

"For fiction submissions, send an informative description, a brief synopsis and the first ten pages. Please include the sample pages in the body of the email below your query."

Can I take this to assume the "informative description" is the query, and the brief synopsis is the 500-1000 word single-space synopsis? And more largely, do agencies use different language to speak to the same request?

For those who queried, did you run into this often? I saw this particular agency do it, so I was curious if I can expect these minor syntax differences throughout or if it's quite standard.

I looked over the wiki and resources, and couldn't seem to find the answer to this. If this is answered elsewhere, happy to take this down.

Thank you

Third attempt below. I know word count is very low for a debut, but I'm going to try and publish this as a novella with a niche horror press instead of trying to double it with filler.

~

Dear [EDITOR]

PERSONAL CONNECT SENTENCE THAT EXPLAINS WHY I WANT TO QUERY THEM

For someone who studies death for a living, Amy Hirai has been surprisingly rattled by her fiancée’s overdose. In a desperate attempt to keep her life moving, she takes a temp teaching job and crashes at her semi-estranged brother's guest house in Tokyo. It's not the exact same house her emotionally abusive grandfather used to live in, but it's tough to enjoy that when the new one is on the same lot, and there's an altar dedicated to him in the living room. When she discovers his war diary from World War II, she assumes it could be the centerpiece of her coursework in genocide studies. What she doesn't assume is what reading it will do to her already fragile sanity. She starts seeing a ghostly version of her adolescent self in the faces of strangers, blacks out for hours on end, and is kept awake at night by the sounds of terrified children screaming from the living room downstairs.

As she continues translating the entries, hoping to develop a career-defining course on it for the following semester, the hauntings intensify with each new macabre detail she learns about her grandfather's past. Unsure if she’s being tortured by her mind or something supernatural, she’s faced with an unthinkable dilemma: ignore the truth and lose the biggest opportunity of her career, or expose her grandfather's war crimes and risk losing her freedom, her family, and her entire grip on reality.

BOX OF STONES is a literary horror novella complete at 46,000 words. It combines the dark yurei-style haunted house elements of Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw with the multi-generational folk-horror themes of Kylie Lee Baker's Japanese Gothic.

I felt a need to write this book due to the distinct relationship my life has had with the material. I'm the direct descendant of an Indonesian child survivor of Japanese war crimes during WWII, and yet I've also lived in the exact neighborhood of Tokyo where this story was set while studying at the exact university where the protagonist teaches. Given the alarming forces pushing atrocity denial into the mainstream, this project is designed to hold that historical revisionism accountable in a format that horror readers will understand and identify with.

Please find my submission below in accordance with the guidelines posted on your website/queryme/etc. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

-NAME

It's been a hot second since I posted the last version of my query. I made some edits and would love any feedback. Thank you in advance!

Dear [Agent]

I am seeking representation for MERROW, a standalone adult fantasy complete at 108,000 words. I think you might be interested in this project as it [personalization]. It will appeal to fans of TJ Klune’s UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR and Julie Leong’s THE TELLER OF SMALL FORTUNES.

Nerissa isn’t aging. Others insist it’s a gift, but there isn’t much to live for after her fiancé died in a work accident decades ago. Only routine keeps her from drowning in grief and years. So when a party invitation arrives from Blanche Child, the prominent Witch whom Nerissa believes covered up the true cause of her fiancé’s death, it’s an easy no. 

Then she sees Blanche on the news, smiling and surrounded by family. Unable to accept Blanche happily moving on while she’s left behind to mourn, Nerissa RSVPs yes. Three days are nothing compared to the centuries ahead of her. This party is her chance to prove her suspicions of foul play and tarnish Blanche’s public perception. 

Uncovering information at the party isn’t simple. The Child family guard their secrets well behind a mask of philanthropy, and Nerissa’s social skills are rusty, but she strikes a tentative alliance with Blanche’s son. In exchange for borrowing her fiancé’s engagement band, he reveals that it’s engraved with a communication sigil, that her fiancé was trying to help him escape, and how he really died. 

Truth isn’t proof. Nerissa must follow in her fiancé’s footsteps, risking Blanche’s wrath by helping her son escape in order to obtain evidence of her crimes. With every choice leading Nerissa to a new experience in the world and life she denied herself for so long, time has never moved so quickly, and the monotonous future she thought she wanted might not be as tempting as the one she could still have.

[Bio]

All the best,
[Name]

Link to my first attempt:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1vof7re/qcrit_merrow_adult_fantasy_108k_1st_attempt/

Link to my second attempt:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1vupw7e/qcrit_merrow_adult_fantasy_108k_2nd_attempt/

Hello! This is my 3rd attempt at a query letter. I received some great feedback on my last 2 attempts, and I've made significant changes to this version. I've now decreased my proper noun count to 3 and focused on a single POV rather than splitting between 2.

1st attempt: https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1wt2c2b/qcrit_beyond_the_light_of_god_epic_fantasy_adult/

2nd attempt:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/comments/1x03hz1/qcrit_beyond_the_light_of_god_epic_fantasy_adult/

Dear [Agent],

BEYOND THE LIGHT OF GOD is a 115,000‑word epic fantasy novel. It will appeal to readers of Richard Swan’s The Justice of Kings and John Gwynne’s The Shadow of the Gods, blending morally complex characters, mythic forces, and the brutal realities of war.

Linias has devoted his life to becoming one of the empire’s elite warriors, bound body and soul to the Stargod. Eager to prove himself, he joins a campaign to crush the Furos tribes, bestial, wolf-like creatures, resisting imperial rule in a vast, haunted forest. Subjugating them would restore his disgraced family’s honour and prove his worth to the divine power he serves.

But when a reconnaissance mission ends in a brutal ambush, Linias is left wounded and alone, deep within enemy territory. While forced to rely on the very people he'd vowed to destroy, he encounters the reluctant heir to the last free human nation. She was sent to the Furos to forge an alliance with them before both of their peoples are conquered by the empire. As her friendship with Linias deepens, she claims that the Stargod is no benevolent deity but rather a predatory god whose arrival doomed the world centuries ago. Initially determined to dismiss her warnings as falsehoods, Linias begins to suspect that everything he's devoted his life to was built on lies.

Wracked with doubt, Linias must choose between the faith that shaped him and a rebellion that sees him as the enemy. If he can't bring himself to defy the Stargod and help unite the last nations still defying the empire, he may well deliver the world into the arms of the god he once worshipped.

I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, which I put to great use while working in the IT department for an insurance company. I currently reside in the windswept [LOCATION] prairies with my wife, twin girls, and two cats.

My fiction has recently appeared in [PUBLICATION NAME], [PUBLICATION NAME], and [PUBLICATION NAME]. My short story, [STORY NAME], received an honourable mention for the [AWARD NAME].

Thank you for your time and consideration.