Shy Alon

I’m polishing my query letter and would love a couple of extra eyes on it.
If anyone enjoys query critique and has the bandwidth, I’d be grateful (DMs are 👍).

#writingcommunity

A very short comparison shows that the #writingcommunity here is a hundred times better than on X.

💯 Writers

A giant spaceship hovers over a dusty, walled fantasy cityscape. In the foreground, two figures stand in shadow looking out over the scene. The words "An Agent's Guide to CASCADE, by Gus Ryer" is along the top. His website, gusryer.com, is below.

A slide with metadata and story elements for CASCADE: Genre: Science Fiction with Fantasy Elements Wordcount: +-130,000 It shows the book covers for the following: ASHES OF THE SUN, Django Wexler THE ARCHIVE UNDYING, Emma Mieko Candon ELDER RACE, Adrian Tchaikovsky NOTES FROM THE BURNING AGE, Claire North Ps5's Horizon Zero Dawn Below that are the following phrases: Found family Failed terraforming A vast, hidden history Nanotech magic system Epic fantasy quest in a sci-fi world Ancient mechanical gods Arachnid mammals & guard drones Sword (1) vs. Railguns (lots)

A warrior woman with a winged helmet, armor, cape, and spear is along the right side of the image, fractured into triangles. Part of the following pitch is along the left: Lendi never asked to be a God Keeper—one of the engineer-priests who command ancient nanotech. Abandoned on their temple doorstep and raised under their strict thumb, she longs to escape. She almost gets her chance when an ancient machine god crashes to the planet in a blaze of fire. But, instead, Lendi is dispatched far away—alongside her devout friend—to investigate the disappearance of a remote village’s Keeper. And she’ll be tracked. In that village, Sedna has no patience for their Keeper’s rules or mysticism, especially since the fool vanished. She’s more concerned with defending her people with her warrior-poet twin. But, when a flood of malfunctioning nanites devours her town, Sedna and her brother are left with nothing but each other—and vengeance. As the four converge...

Chapter 1 THE RUSH IS ON! This Tuesday, Planetfall, Inc. announced it would join the rash of megacorps racing to deploy terraforming infrastructure through the newly stabilized Taurine Strait. Previously dominated by New World Corporation, the franchised development of pseudoterra worlds is slated to be the hot market sector of the twenty-fifth century. -Excerpt from InvestSyder: Stellar Ed., June 15, 2398 The streets of Mahyan never fully slept. Night’s darkness, not yet broken by either the sun’s rise or the blinding, baleful Eye of Toros, wrapped Lendi more completely than her robes. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes were on her. She wanted nothing more than to run. An eager vendor barred her way with his stringy arm. “A fine morning calls for a fine meal, miss.” He smiled and fanned out a selection of skewered mutton and whalemeat wrapped in sea grass. Pungent, spiced oil dripped onto the dusty street. Lendi glared at him, her legs practically vibrating with the..

ASHES…SUN ➕ HORIZON 0 DAWN

When a machine god severs the world from ancient nanotech, two engineer priests, a blademaster & her warrior-poet twin must hunt it for a cure—and revenge.

Failure will doom the world to divine wrath. Success will be deadly.

#QuestPit #Q #A #SF #F

The image is of a fake book cover, mocked up for the novel ALICE & THE AFTERLIFE by Bee Morris. The background is a mish-mash of gothic, suburban houses, all layered over one another in chaos, in monochromatic shadows. The text, written at a slanted angle, reads: ALICE & THE AFTERLIFE, a novel.

🪦 ALICE & THE AFTERLIFE 🪦 #QuestPit #Q

Reluctant medium Alice accidentally lands a job cleaning haunted houses & exorcising spirits...

...too bad 'chasing down a serial killer' wasn't part of the job spec 🔪

👻 paranormal mystery
🧠 autistic FMC
🌊 ghosts by the coast
🏡 found family (living & dead)

Comps for WRITING HENNIE include ROMANTIC COMEDY, FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK, YOU, AGAIN, and HAPPY PLACE

FLEABAG x ROMANTIC COMEDY

WRITING HENNIE is also perfect for readers who love vivid settings (hello, London) and anyone looking for a romance featuring a plus-size woman where being fat is NOT something she needs to change.

#Questpit #A #R #Q

Mood board for the book The Final Chapter: Halloween candy, white and black cat, blonde girl in flannel with a pumpkin, crime scene tape, murder board, Harley Quinn, police car, books with a single light bulb hanging down.

QUEER NANCY DREW
17-yr-old Emmie has the coolest job at an indie bookstore with her sapphic crush, but when her archenemy dies during her mom’s book event, all eyes are turned towards her. She needs to get her life back & not get killed in the process.
#Questpit #Q #YA #MY #LGBT

many women dressed identically standing in rows behind a man giving a speech behind a podium decorated with the female reproductive organs. In the foreground, a woman with a mark on her neck also dressed identically to the others.

In a nation where every woman must bear children, serve as a state surrogate, or worse, one young clerk begins to question the only truth she’s ever known: her body was never her own. #questpit #S #H #W

An agents guide to the unmaking an upmarket speculative novel querying now

The pitch: nova makes people forget what pains or impassions them, but her own grief unleashes a glitching witness who remembers everything she’s erased. And he won’t let her forget.

The comps: with the haunting erasure of the memory police, the escalating momentum of chain-gang all-stars and the corporate ritual menace of Severance in Apple TV+

The opening: nova once wondered in the memories she’d cut out followed her around, waiting for their moment to tear out her own.

THE UNMAKING — 95k Upmarket Speculative Fiction

The Memory Police x Chain-Gang All-Stars

🧠 A memory technician that makes people forget.
📺 A glitching stranger who remembers.
🧪 A system that calls emotion error.

Some things cannot be erased.
#QuestPit #A #Q #LF #S

WHEN SHE’S NOT LOOKING (94k) will appeal to fans of The Silent Patient and Sharp Objects: an upmarket psychological thriller exploring maternal loss, obsession, and how easily truth can be rewritten by the person you trust most.

#QuestPit #Q #A #T @questpit.bsky.social

A brief introduction to the two main characters of 🌿HEAVY IN YOUR ARMS🌿 my 84k word queer omegaverse romantasy in the editing stage - coming to agent inboxes soon!

#QuestPit #W #A #RF #LGBTQ #NA #amquerying

THE POTION DILEMMA is a standalone fantasy romance where a witch accidentally gives a love potion to a shifter assassin. It binds them and she has to learn how to reverse it.

Mate meets Discovery of Witches

#questpit #W #RF #A

Clockwise from upper left: a Jeep Wrangler, skier doing a trick, skiers, skiers relaxing, an indigo prom dress and a ski slope.

HALLMARK by Kevin Smith x NEVER EVERS: Framed as a mix tape & set in a 90s ski town, two teens from rival schools fall in love amid their friends’ shenanigans all while working to fulfill their dreams: he as a writer, she as an Olympic skier. Male fat positive. #YA #R #Q #questpit

Love, duty, and needlework clash in this daring romance on the high seas in CORSAIR THREADS, a queer YA romantic fantasy.
🏴‍☠️Found family pirate crew.
🧵Embroidery-based magic system
🎭Masquerade at sea
㊙️A theft to tip the scales of the world
#Questpit #RF #YA #questpit

A boy with a woolly hat shrouded in the shadow of two lit full moons and an aurora borealis, with purple and blue flames hovering over his outstretched hands. It's snowing, and a magical blue owl is displayed, wings spread wide with those same flames inside its eyes. Art by @bauxxi.bsky.social

An Owlbound Spark | Blurb Tyrus is a hot-headed boy who lost both his parents to the cold, and Lyra is a thieving girl with a knack for finding trouble. Their destinies collide when Tyrus bonds with Flake—a supposed-to-be extinct owl capable of lost fire magic—and helps Lyra as her settlement suffers a terrifying attack. Through new friendships and encounters with fantastical creatures, Tyrus and Lyra find out how to stop the eternal winter from claiming any more lives. Will they be able to collect the five splinters to the key that can save the world? Or will the world as they know it soon end as the last humans and elves perish to snow and ice? Tyrus, armed with Owlfire, and Lyra, wielding wit and daggers, are forced to face their fears and insecurities, navigate love and their sexualities, and figure out who they are, in a frozen world that is out to claim their final breaths.

Two Comp titles are displayed over a blurry blue background. The Dragon Prince (Netflix) X Celestial Monsters (by Aiden Thomas) The "witty banter character dynamic" and "found family" of The Dragon Prince, meets the "fantastical creatures" and "queer cast" of Celestial Monsters, making for a "magical adventure".

An Owlbound Spark 🦉🔥❄️

The world is ravaged by eternal winter and the magic that can end it is dead, until a crew of queer teens embark on a fantastical journey of self-discovery to thaw the seasons with the help of a mysterious owl.

#QuestPit #Q #YA #F

75k YA Satirical Dystopian Fantasy 99 WAYS TO GET EX-SPELLED (WITHOUT COMMITTING MURDER By Victoria Jayne 星星亚

The Pitch Anarchocommunist, OCD-ridden Posey Peabody has been drafted into the American Army Academy for Powerful Witches. By entry stats she's the Winner--First Rank of her class. All is well as can be until Amelia Appleton takes her Rank with reckless, dangerous, wrong magic. And then Appleton doesn't get expelled. Competitive streak activated, Posey and Appleton engage in reckless, rule-breaking acts of magic and mischief. While trading First Rank between each other, Posey realizes that Appleton might not be such a weirdo after all. In fact, she's annoyingly pretty. That said, Appleton's got her eye on that government position through all this, and Posey would rather die than work for the fascists in charge. Posey's intention is to truly get expelled. She wants to be the first one to do it. Meanwhile, an underground betting ring rises up, classmates betting on whether or not Posey will have to kill someone to get expelled. Posey hopes it's not true, but whether or not she finds out is entirely up to her.

FIRST LINE SNIPPET Somewhere behind the stage, Headmaster Josephus Crimble is puking his guts out. I remind myself that it's okay if I start to count and stop myself after the limit, so long as I don't make it to ten. If you make it to ten, the limit goes down by one, Posey. Don't forget. I started at five hundred. Drifting through the rest of the day in this half-there state, I sit with my feelings locked tight in a jar of my own design. Ґ1l preserve my emotions like lemons, until they're laden with salt and mellowed in their sourness. That feeling, or lack thereof, feels warm as home to me, and my deep yearning for Nukeville ebbs into a soft ache that gently rubs my heart into a smoother, steadier rhythm. There will be no need for counting when there's no feeling to (dis)regulate.

#questpit here’s my #agentsguide to 99 WAYS TO GET EXSPELLED (WITHOUT COMMITTING MURDER), a sapphic ya satirical dystopian fantasy that dares to ask the question:

What if The Bomb gave people nuclear magic?

#w #d #f #lgbt #ya #ownvoices

Two fishing boats sail on a grey ocean, with seagulls in the overcast sky. White text overlaps the grey sky. It reads: A guide to 'From the Sea Fret' a 74k adult queer horror

Grey ocean, with a white-capped wave, serves as the background. The title reads: Excerpt Text is outlined: I scanned the horizon. It was just me on the water. There wasn’t anyone out sailing, or anyone swimming. I was completely alone. But… was I? Beneath me were leagues of ocean. Unlike in the forest, where you can hear the wildlife around you, there were creatures that could pass by in the sea and I would never know. The water concealed their movement, cloaking them from my view. It was getting harder to breathe. The vastness of the ocean was too open, and my skin felt too tight around my chest. I knew, deep in my bones, that something was beneath me and it was watching. On the port side, the water rippled. Though it was only a few steps, the length of the deck felt miles long. I was compelled to look below, and my body moved on its own accord. Though I was terrified of what I would see, I peered over.

Grey ocean, with a white-capped wave, serves as the background. The title reads: Pitch and Comps Text is outlined: Callum Point moves to the dead-end town of Perne to scrape together a new life. He's hoping that the small fishing town will give him what he always wanted; peace. Unfortunately, what greets him is a place rife with secrecy, conspiracy and creatures beyond comprehension. 5 posters for books and shows have arrows and notes coming out of them. Dredge by Black Salt Games has the notes: Capitalism despite the horrors. Something's wrong with the fish. Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner has the notes: Queer and trans identity. People are monsters too. The Fisherman by John Langan has the notes: Lovecraftian. Ocean madness. The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers has the notes: Ocean madness. Obsession with answers. Blood in the Bayou by Just Roll With It has the notes: Who can you trust? Small town cosmic terror.

Grey ocean, with a white-capped wave, serves as the background. The title reads: Themes A moodboard of 9 images sits in the middle. A hand reaching out into dark water. Thick seaweed-covered chains being pulled from the ocean. A foggy wharf at night. A group of sharks in dark water. A pencil drawing of a compass on white paper. Close-up of a hazel eye with the pupil completely white. A pile of fish. A porthole looking out onto a grey ocean. The inside of a fishing shack. Text surrounds the images. It reads: Paranoia turns revenge. Struggles with identity. Trans and queer rep. Grief over what could have been. Desperation to fit in. Cosmic/psychological/body horror. Content warnings: emotional abuse, attempted sexual assault, manipulation, transphobia, internalised transphobia, misogyny, cosmic horror, psychological horror, religious trauma, drug/alcohol use, gore, death, blood, paranoia, body horror

⚓FROM THE SEA FRET⚓ - A cosmic horror from a queer perspective

Callum Point moves to Perne in search of peace. What he finds instead are religious zealots, monstrous fish, and a constant fog that whispers to him.

#QuestPit #Q #A #H #LGBT

OUABH x Studio Ghibli

A young pianist travels through purgatory-in-the-clouds alongside the God of Time’s Apprentice to save her dying sister

🧡 YA romantic fantasy
🕰️ identity & self-acceptance
🌠 sister-story
🌥️ gods based on human psyche
💌 whimsy island in the sky

#questpit #YA #RF #F #AG #OS soon

A bluescape, misty moodboard that includes images of teens running in the night, a dragon over the city, mysterious forests, a lonely figure sitting on a dock, a starry night sky, and two teens overlooking a vast cityscape. It is mysterious, hopeful, and adventurous

#questpit #ya #f #q

“In the dazzling world of crystal balls and tarot cards, there are rules, kid. Predicting endings is strictly forbidden.”

After a young oracle with a dark secret is expelled from school, he must join an underground gambling ring during a cutthroat, magical tournament ✨️

BABEL x FARENHEIT 451 x BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN

There’s a miscommunication crisis in The Great Republic. Foreign languages are the culprit. In order to sever connections to their mother tongue, children of multilinguals must undergo tongue removal surgery at the age of 4.

#questpit #NA #SFF #W

Poster for the adult upmarket fiction novel, THE FRAGILITY OF SEASHELLS Themes & Tropes: Remote Island, Found Family, Amateur Sleuths, Academic Couple, Twainian Wisdom, Generational Secrets, Obsessions Summary: Deposited in a mail slot and raised by a moose—that’s how Esidora describes her unorthodox childhood growing up on Maine’s rugged coastline. Now a perpetual astrophysics doctoral student living in Chicago with her fiancé Tremblay (a Twain scholar), returning to Maine is the last thing on her mind… until she’s notified of her Aunt Beverly’s unexpected death back on Baribeau Island and the stunning news she’s a co-heir to her aunt’s estate. But as she returns to the remote island to probe for answers and confront her own secrets of the past, peculiar things begin to happen that put her own safety in jeopardy. When Tremblay unexpectedly arrives, the couple borrows from Tom Sawyer’s unique perspective as a fictional detective to unravel the startling family secret behind Beverly’s death.

I'm loving the creative posters for today's #QuestPit!

Sharing my #agentsguide for THE FRAGILITY OF SEASHELLS, an adult upmarket novel w/ elements of suspense.

🌲Maine Setting
👨‍👧Found Family
🏫Academic Couple
🔏Generational Secrets
😦Family Obsessions

#amquerying #writingcommunity #amwriting #writesky

An #agentsguide to Where Shadows Bleed

#questpit #Q #A #F #R #literaryagents #amquerying #fantasyromance

#QuestPit Assassin Phoenix Monroe knew she was different. After Lucas Kincaid enters her life, a change begins, and dark secrets are revealed. On the run, they struggle to survive as her transformation begins. The alien hybrids race to save our dying world. Will they also save us? #W #SFF #Clifi

fruitist moodboard by tyler stasi now querying!

#QuestPit #S #H #Q #F

PIRANESI x Severance x THE GARDEN

When memory-erasing fruits begin to disappear, a woman in an endless Greenhouse will go to harrowing lengths to keep her past from resurfacing.

⚜️epistolary
⚜️territorial women
⚜️slow burn horror

✨with editor interest✨

An overworked baker and a grumpy, fiercely protective Alpha are trapped together by a never-ending snowstorm, and sparks fly as they wrestle with both their fated attraction and the lurking threat of rogue wolf packs.

#Q #P #A #PR #questpit

RADIO SILENCE is a queer coming-of-age drama about a British rock band’s rise to fame.

Forbidden romance between band members, rival rock bands, terrible people coming back from their pasts - so much drama for one tour bus! radiosilencecomic.com

#WIP #YA #R #LGBT #Dis #questpit #webcomics

Thirteen-year-old bookworm Klaus Archer must destroy — or recruit — his powerful winged doppelgänger to stop the mythical wraith terrorizing his village.

Enemies-to-bromance, Avatar meets Whisperwicks. Complete at 60k.

Upper #MG
#F
#QuestPit
#Q

The World of No: A little bit of Dark Matter and a soupcon of The Midnight Library, complete at 97k words.
It features:
🟢 coming of age (even for adults)
⚫️ second chance love
🟢 twisted realities
⚫️ Life is messy; jump the hell in already. #QuestPit #A #SPEC #Querying

medical illustrations of a skull and a spine in the top left corner; a bronze statue of Lady Justice in the top right corner; a picture of a red brick house and a tree mid-autumn with red and orange leaves hanging on its branches in the bottom left corner; and a close-up of michaelangelo’s david in the bottom right corner.

WE HARVEST THE CARNAGE
a fantasy horror about a college freshman who joins a club of pre-meds to harvest the organs of the elite with body magic
🫀dark academia x body horror x STEM
🫀south asian rep x bi4bi
🫀vengeance, moral ambiguity, & guts galore
#questpit #W #A #F #H