Carleen Geisler

I am an associate agent actively building my list of adult fiction authors across contemporary genres. I’m also open to nonfiction, and though my list mostly focuses on fiction, I would love to find some unique nonfic projects to work on too.

In Adult Fiction:

• Contemporary fiction across genres
• Suspense, especially with a dose of weird (BUNNY by Mona Awad)
• Mild speculative elements are okay—in fact, I tend to LOVE them—if they are grounded in our world, or very VERY near world.
• Contemporary romance. My preference is for it to have a really strong b-plot, or be part of a “bigger picture” story (THE ARC by Tory Henwood Hoen)
• Upmarket and literary voices, especially with a really unique premise
• Real life stakes!
• SCARY horror, especially if it’s not supernatural
• Also the kind of horror that is not really scary but instead atmospheric and full of dread
• Stories set in the wilderness across genres! I am a sucker for wilderness settings.
• Characters with unique jobs, especially if the author also has experience with it
• dark and dreadful stories
• weird and whimsical stories (again, reminder, real world!)
• thrillers/suspense novels where death is NOT the driving force

In Non-Fiction:

• topics such as spirituality, intuition, etc.
• community and culture
• food and agriculture
• natural living
• deeply emotional memoirs along the lines of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE
• an unusual topic that you know a lot about!
• weird topics with lots of passion behind them

Please don’t send me:

• Childrens/YA
• Sci-fi
• Fantasy
• Detective/police stories, as well as crime thrillers or police procedurals
• Mob/organized crime stories
• Heavily political plots/military
• Narration that breaks the fourth wall, ie. characters who speak directly to the audience: “Yeah, I know it was wrong of me. Wouldn’t you have done the same?” *this is a random made up example
• Series (could be a series is fine, if the querying novel could also stand alone)
• Adult characters doing adult things with an overall tone/voice that sounds YA. This is obviously a harder one to pinpoint, but something to be conscious of. If readers have described your tone as young it’s probably not a fit for me.
• Excessive gore, especially medical related.

Submission Guidelines

Use the QueryManager link provided. Please note that this is a shared inbox among ArtHouse agents: if you’re interested in querying me specifically, please address the query letter to me. You are also welcome to address the agency as a whole.

Guidelines & Details