Manuscript Wish List

Updated June 2023

As an Agent for The Rees Literary Agency. I am looking for character-driven books that grip me from the first page until the very end. I want fantastic world-building, a clear plot, and want to know your main character’s desire by the time I get to page ten.

Time shouldn’t exist when I read your manuscript. I want to be hooked and pulled into your world. Great writing is awesome, but your characters matter most to me. I want books that make me cry, laugh, and to feel connected to your main character. For thrillers, I want to be on the edge of my seat and have no clue on how your book is going to end. I want to vouch for your main character and cheer them on by the end of your story.

What I’m Looking for:

I am looking to represent Author/Illustrators for Picture Books, and Authors for Picture Books (Upon referral/request). And writers for Middle Grade, Young Adult and Adult genre Fiction and am actively building my list in the following categories:

I’m especially open to BIPOC and LGBTQ voices.

Picture Books (upon referral/request)
Creators who bring a distinctive, well-developed point of view to their work.

• Meaningful stories full of diversity, family, life experiences, and love.
• Stories about baking, food, music (any sort of craft), interactive, and educational (as simple as learning how to bake a cake).
• Stories about culture and depicts that world in a unique way that caters to young readers.

Middle Grade:

• Contemporary—about family relationships and friendships. Big families that are diverse and incorporates foods from their culture. I want to see stories about first crushes and how they handle their emotions as well as learning new things that might be uncomfortable for them.
• Mystery—a young detective who is intelligent and loses something valuable to them. They must race against the clock to figure out the mystery. Diverse, put-together or dysfunctional families that shape the MC into the person they are meant to be.

Young Adult:

Stories about friendship, enemies-lovers, sibling relationships, heists, a diverse cast, family (the importance of family/the brokeness of family and how they come together), mother-daughter/father-son relationships (either strained or close), and remind us how valuable life truly is.

• Contemporary Romance—enemies to lovers, childhood to lovers, etc. and dabbles with the well-known tropes in a new and clever way. Interracial relationships, diversity, characters who come from different backgrounds and shouldn’t be together (for whatever reason).
• Contemporary—funny stories that depict diverse characters, commercial hooks, and are located in a small-town. I am also looking for diverse stories about illness (sickness, mental, or anything that shows the beauty of life in a creative way as well as reuniting with faith).
• RomCom—a love story that provides comedic elements, diverse characters who meet in a unique moment/setting, maybe they hate each other, or maybe that ‘meet-cute’ starts off wrong and places them in a difficult situation.
• Mystery—stories with a small diverse ensemble who are stuck in a building on a field trip, during a storm and murders begin to start. So now they must find who is committing the murders without being caught. Murders/crimes in a small town who are at a brink of falling due to corruption.
• Paranormal—a diverse cast of vampires, werewolves, magic, witches, and weaves in an unforgettable love story, please no Zombies.
• LGBTQ—a funny contemporary romance that has all the feels, not just a story about identity (finding oneself), but finding love unexpectedly that makes them become more they’ve ever imagined. Especially open to underrepresented voices.
• Thriller—fast paced stories that have a strong commercial hook from the start of the book and leaves every chapter with cliffhangers. Stories that incorporate psychological characters who blends the lines of what’s real and not real.

Adult:

• Psychological Thriller/Suspense—stories that skewers reality and fictional, emotional scarring from a heart-wrenching past. I would love to see a sibling story similar to Karin Slaughter’s The Good Daughter.
• Mystery—complex stories that show diverse characters problem-solving, travel, clues, motive to solve the murders, investigating murders against the clock, and revealing not one hint of who might of ‘dun it’.
• Contemporary Romance—a love story about two people who will go the distance for each other, balance real life issues, recover from a past that may have caused heartbreak, and striving to create make their dream a career. I’m also interested in magical elements added to the love story (Sunday’s at Tiffanys by James Patterson).
• RomCom—a love story that provides comedic elements, meeting in a unique moment/setting, enemies to lovers trope, rivalries, diverse characters, interracial couples, and shows the power from both sides of the characters. Embedding cultures, food, romantic dinners that turn steamy, and uses their town as a character.
• Paranormal—a diverse cast of vampires, werewolves, magic, witches, and weaves in an unforgettable love story, please no Zombies. Beauty and the Beast adaption similar to Beastly.
• Crime Fiction—diverse stories about a modern day detective who uses technology to try and solve a case, but something big causes the MC to reevaluate motive, causing a shift in the MC’s personal story that stirs a past that wasn’t meant to be unleashed.

What I’m NOT looking for:

• Picture Books (upon referral/request)
• Fantasy/Sci-Fi
• Previously Published Books
• Short story collections
• Inspirational works including religious overtones
• Literary
• Romantic Suspense
• Erotica
• Non-Fiction
• Memoir
• Horror (please nothing with Zombies)
• Westerns
• Novellas
• Anything Political
• Poetry
• Screenplays

Submission Guidelines

*I am not accepting emailed submissions, if you email me your query. They will remain unopened and deleted.*

For Fiction:
Please submit a query, 1-2 synopsis, 1-sentence pitch, and a 5-page sample of your manuscript.

For author/illustrators:
• Submit full manuscripts.
• Submit art samples, book dummy, or a link to your portfolio.

Guidelines & Details