#querying

Since I've made these for #QuestPit, I thought I'd also share them on here. This is what my novel's about:

i know you can't share much as it's still querying, but if there's anything at all you've been wanting to share with us about the story, the characters, or your writing process/thoughts, i'd be so delighted to hear! 🩵

Eeee thank you for this ask, I love this project so very much and I have Cannot Shut Up Disease so as you can imagine being tight-lipped is uh. Very difficult.

I told myself I would query for a year and see what happens. Publishing is extremely sensitive to the market, and turns out agents and the market are (so far) not interested in a pandemic story, a story where the world is on fire, or a story about a cast that's entirely queer, trans, or characters of color. Who knew. But I still have quite a few agents on my list to query, and quite a few months in 2026, so let's just see how it goes.

This is the first story I've ever written where I started with planning, not pantsing. And hoo boy did that make things difficult for me at the beginning. But I needed to have a consistent mechanic as a through line, otherwise the story was going to fall apart. And that mechanic was the zombie virus.

I am very tired of zombie media that pretends like zombie diseases wouldn't act like, just that, diseases. Yeah, I know, fiction is fiction, but dear GOD I just want something written that actually makes a lick of sense. None of this "everyone who gets bitten turns, the change happens in ten seconds, you lose your mind and go craaaaaaazyyyyy" nonsense. I wanted it to work like an actual disease.

So. There is a real-life virus - I'm not gonna say which one, because it's a spoiler - that causes sores/a rash, and in some cases, can cross the blood-brain barrier to cause inflammation in the brain, called encephalitis. This can cause almost any symptom you can imagine, like confusion, aggression, amnesia, fugue states, you name it. And, in severe viral infections, you can develop something called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). Basically, your blood gets thrown so out of whack that you can get both life-threatening blood clots and life-threatening bleeding at the same time.

Imagine if this virus was kicked up to eleven. Imagine if it caused sores in the mouth, which would only transmit the virus easier if an infected person bit you. But they wouldn't have to bite; it would be transmissible on surfaces, and through sneezes and coughs. Most people would die from the fever, or the DIC. But some would suffer encephalitis, which would leave them confused and aggressive, snapping at anything that moves. Even after the virus had done its damage, the post-viral syndrome and brain fog that would result would leave them a shell of their former self. A body with only instincts left: eat, drink, sleep, keep warm and cool. And, of course, attack when provoked.

Then there are of course the survivors. It's estimated that about a fifth of everyone who gets DIC suffers a stroke, and that's to say nothing about the blood clots that form due to other ways viruses mess with your blood (remember all the strokes and other clots caused by COVID?) So, even if you survive the virus, you're quite likely to be a stroke survivor - and you'd better hope the high fever doesn't damage you in other ways.

Authors: my book has the same theme and tone as X.

Agents: NOT THAT!

Authors: Oh....

Agents: I want X+Y but no romance.

Author: here is X+Y with no romance!

Agent: WHY DID YOU EVEN SEND ME THIS!?!?

I haven't been on tumblr since college >.<, I hope I still remember how to do this.

I’m a queer author writing a queer, character-driven pulp adventure — Indiana Jones meets A Lady for a Duke — about a trans woman explorer and a cis male mortician’s assistant who uncover a hidden jungle beneath the Arctic.

I love Mortal Kombat, DC Comics, Pulp Heroes from the 1900s, Shakespeare, and old movies.