Yes, agented submissions only please!

I have changed roles. I am not longer an agent, but commissioning editor for Solaris

Even given all of the above, this is not a hard and fast list and I am constantly surprised by the books I fall in love with, so pitch me and see what happens. If you want my email address for sending manuscripts or to set up a meeting, then slide into my DMs.

Also, I am queer and I like queer books. I am fat and I like fat-positive books. I want to see myself and others represented on the page with care and full appreciation of what this means when we see it.

In general, I am a fan of snarky characters - your rogues, your thieves, your commoners. Snappy dialogue makes my soul sing. Epic partnerships work for me (bonus points if you have a sunshine/grump dynamic). I want the characters with the darker edge.

Urban fantasy! And, while we're at it, rural fantasy! Show me your Charles de Lint and Robert Holdstock-esque fantasies.

Bureaucratic fantasy! No more chosen ones or royalty (or goddamn assassins), but the logistics experts and the accountants - make it funny and I am there!

Character-focused SF - I want your heists, your found families, your explorers, your settlers. I'm not a good fit for either hard SF or pure military SF

Fantasies or SF with an historical bent - Roman empires, Greek tragedies, Plantagenet dynasties but in SFF

Try me on unusual genre mash-ups - think mysteries in space or epic fantasies in frontier settings. I've been enjoying the Solaris novels by Alice James, which are pitched as Sookie Stackhouse meets Bridget Jones!

Do consider me for manuscripts featuring older protagonists. I'm in my 40s and I would like to read fantasy and SF with characters of this age and older. We're not invisible!

I'll take a look at vampires and werewolves, but only with a fresh spin. I was particularly enamoured recently of Catherine Lundoff's take, with menopausal people experiencing a bigger change than expected.

At the other end of the scale, send me your gentle fantasy with hopeful outlook and characters doing the best they can.

Send me your big epic fantasy with world building you can touch, it's so real, and characters facing monumental world-ending stakes. Bonus points if it's an unusual setting and bigger bonus points if it's queer.

So, since I am getting my feet under the desk now, here's a little flavour of my #mswl. In general, I like all facets of SFF, including horror, and I like my books to range from serious thought-inducing works to read-in-a-flash commercial fiction.

#MSWL

Give me SKINS, DEGRASSI, DERRY GIRLS, ONE TREE HILL, MY MAD FAT DIARY #MSWL

…#MSWL

I saw a tweet this weekend that said that agents are “like kids who don’t know what they want to eat” — referring to the fact that, sometimes, even when a writer submits something that seems like it matches our #mswl, we still pass. (1/6)

"I want stories that celebrate neurodiversity, from authors who are themselves neurodivergent, both in fiction and nonfiction, middle grade, young adult, and adult."
@ericsmithrocks #MSWL

psliterary.com/submissions/