Rebecca Nelson

I am an editorial associate at Crooked Lane Books / Alcove Press. In all genres, I’m particularly interested in BIPOC and queer voices, and would always love to see books with a new or rarely-seen perspective on a topic or in a genre.

For Crooked Lane Books, I’m interested in the following:

• Horror:
  • All subgenres except cosmic horror and tech/robot/AI horror
  • Particularly interested in horror with a social commentary angle, in which the horror elements are a reflection or distortion of a real-world issue (think Get Out or Fresh)
  • Special topics of interest:
    • Serial killers, possession, cannibals, diseases, hauntings, gothic historicals, and extreme settings like caves, deep sea, Antartica, mountains, space, etc.
    • I’d love something in the vein of Barbarian, The Descent, or Fresh
• Psychological thrillers / suspense:
  • Twisty, dark upmarket thrillers with compelling characters
  • Fast popcorn reads a la Riley Sager — unpredictable, hooky thrillers
  • Less interested in domestic thrillers focused on marriages/affairs, unless it’s doing something really new for the genre or is from a perspective that’s been underrepresented in that sub-genre
  • No spy/heist/action/political/legal thrillers — think local/character-level stakes more than global/international stakes
  • Not interested in financial / white collar crimes. I want someone to be dead or missing in the story!
• Gothic historical mysteries/thrillers:
  • Dark, atmospheric, and deadly
  • Speculative / magical element preferred — think The Death of Jane Lawrence or House of Hunger
  • Dark academia is welcome
  • Would love alternative histories / speculative history a la Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• True crime:
  • Specifically with a scientific angle (a la Stiff and Spook) or about murders/serial killers
  • Must be ethically reported — historical cases or sensitively handled recent topics
  • No heists, financial crimes, organized crimes

For Alcove Press, I am interested in:

• High-concept upmarket fiction:
  • Books with a strong, unique hook — something that makes the book stand out in a one-line pitch
  • Character-driven and thoughtful, something that makes readers think about the real world
  • Recent favorites include Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Beartown, and Yellowface
  • I love a speculative element like Station Eleven or This is How You Lose the Time War
• Light, warm fantastical stories:
  • Fantasy elements woven into our world, not high fantasy
  • Moving, character and relationship-driven stories with a clear hook — think Under the Whispering Door
• Magical realism by Latinx authors
• Select romantasy
  • Queer or BIPOC with a dark tone and grounded in our world (historical or contemporary) with magical elements, rather than second world settings
• Baseball books
  • Memoirs/women’s fiction/upmarket or literary fiction/rom-coms about the MLB, especially focused on queerness and/or masculinity in that space
• Folklore/Mythology inspired stories
• Pop science-sociology nonfiction:
  • Narrative, journalistic, research-heavy nonfiction about social issues in science and medicine, like Foreign Bodies and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I am not interested in cozy mysteries, spy/cop/action thrillers, police procedurals, parenting/motherhood topics, war settings, or hard SFF. We do not publish kids/YA at Crooked Lane or Alcove Press.

Submission Guidelines

For unagented authors, please send your submission to Crooked Lane through Query Tracker on querytracker.net/query/CLB_Submissions 

For agents, please send to my Crooked Lane email.