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

Submissions should be emailed to su*********@**************ks.com or su*********@*********ss.com

Unagented submissions:

Please send your query letter, along with the first two chapters of your manuscript pasted in the body of your email, to su*********@*********ss.com or su*********@**************ks.com and addressed to Rebecca Nelson. Be sure to include your contact information as well.

Due to the large volume of submissions we receive, we cannot respond to every query. We will contact you within two weeks if we are interested in reading further.