Weird, surprising, genre-bending YA fiction that plays with tropes, especially if it's darkly funny (does anyone have @searchpartymax for teens?)

I know I'm super late to this party but I can't stop thinking about this tweet and how I'd love to see a MG novel that tackles the idea. #MSWL

that's all I can think of for now! I hope this helps the
#amquerying crowd and that I'll see some great queries Feb 1!

in fiction and nonfiction, I particularly want to see more BIPOC, disabled, LGBT+ authors (though please don't feel pressured to disclose anything you're not comfortable with)
more indigenous/non-Western culture, mythology, and tropes

more loves: affairs (not about romance), extremely harsh settings, apocalypses, characters labeled as "crazy" who turn out to be right, sabotage, order quickly devolving into chaos, thelma & louise themes

I do love: fables, gallows humor, absurdism, unsettling atmospheres, unreliable narrators, sympathetic villains, anti-heroes, adventures, revenge-plots, twists that make the reader say "it all makes sense now!"

I'm not the right agent for these kinds of novels: reproductive horror or dystopia, high fantasy, multi-generational family sagas, drama surrounding music or singing

adult books only!
I'm NOT looking for PB, MG, YA, NA or kid lit in any form. I'm also NOT looking for romance or poetry or historical fiction.
(no, your book will not be the one that convinces me to rep [category I don't rep], and I won't/can't respond to those queries, sorry.)

I've updated this thread with some of my favorite books, for comps, etc
twitter.com/kim_lindman/st…

novels with contemporary settings need to contain at least one of the following elements: mystery, suspense, thriller, horror, or any kind of speculative something

I really, really want to see more nonfiction!
twitter.com/kim_lindman/st…

Okay, I'm still working on responding to submissions from 2021, but I'm on track to reopen to queries on February 1! A reminder of and some updates to my #MSWL ⬇️

Getting my first of what I'm hoping will be many neurodivergent projects out on submission this week.

Reminder! Joyful, celebratory neurodivergent stories, both fiction + non-fiction, are priorities on my #MSWL.

And please, if you have questions, don't be afraid to DM me.

"Crime fiction like Louise Penny, Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich." @CurtisPSLA #MSWL psliterary.com/submissions/

For more MSWL details and submission guidelines, you can find me at:
📚manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/em-l…
🖊️emlysaght.com

I love characters who are:
🗨️Earnestly enthusiastic about their one weird thing
💪Locked in a cant-trust-you-cant-trust-anyone-else relationship
👨‍👩‍👦‍👦Found family
🗝️Motivated not by youthful exuberance but by an old and hard-won sense of fury and spite
🐍Evil & sexy about it

In MG in particular, I’m looking for:

🔭Adventure and puzzle stories set outside America

🧜‍♀️Diana Wynne Jones-esque grammatical magic

📏Novellas! Some of my favorites are The Monster of Elendhaven, A Dead Djinn in Cairo, Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

✨Hope as a prerequisite

🐉Monsters, ghosts, cryptids. To kiss? To kill? To make friends with? To become? All of the above.

🧛Funny fantasy, à la What We Do In the Shadows

🕴️The bizarre treated banally, like Control or Magnus Archives

In YA/Adult/Graphic Novel, I love:

🕵️A locked room mystery or a closed set thriller, like Detention (2021)

🏺Dark academia that really grapples with what it means to be a person of color in academia and the complicity it begs of you in its racist and classist structures