Pitch Wars Mentor Wishlist |

G’Day! I’m an Aussie writer with a thing for cats. MEOW! I predominately write YA, but I have a NA series out with City Owl Press.

Some things about me: I have a thing for pink, cats, unicorns and amazeball stories.I may have a shoe fetish and a funky sock festish. Every night I use Sleep Easy Headphones as a way to help manage my OCD. Going to Romantic Times was my first ever trip out of Australia. And when I was at Romantic Times I got a hardcover copy of the first ever book I recommended for publication as an intern! I have a geeky heart. My family loves video games, comic books, tv shows based on comics… I help organise a local pop culture convention, and went as Princess Peach when I MCed it.

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Some of my favourite stories:

The Curse Workers Series – Deep, dark, gritty full of twists and turns.
Throne of Glass Series – I adored the voice in this and the amazing plot. Masterfully written.
The Night Circus – The time jumps and inter-weaving go the plots left me with this longing.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series – Gosh, I wish I could write like that. It’s what I now aspire to.
The Time Traveller’s Wife – Raw, intense, the perfect soft SciFi
Illuminae – Unique storytelling and a great twisty plot.
The Raven Cycle – Lyrical writing that breaks my heart.
All the books by Courtney Summers – perfect anti-heroine characters that are masterfully portrayed in heart-wrenching plots
Redeeming Love – An amazing love story.
Outlander Series – Love the complicated twisting of history and fiction with a hot love interest: I’ll have a Scotch on the Rocks!
Most of Jane Austen’s books – I just adore them.
Lux Series – Hot sexy aliens jammed into action-packed stories.
Graffiti Moon – The perfect Australian contemporary story.
Sweet Damage & Beautiful Malice – Artfully crafted thrillers.
Code Name Verity – Heart-breaking unreliable narrator.
See Me – Sweet betas at their best
If I Stay – Unique storytelling
Across the Universe Series – It’s like the 1984 of YA.
Game of Thrones – The masterful plot gets me.
The Starbound Trilogy – Teenage angst in space!
Jane Eyre – Dark feminist story that broke the mould.
And it should go without saying, but Harry Potter. – ALWAYS!

Things I would love to see in my inbox:

Anything that you could comp to the stories on my favourite list above (and you can see I have diverse taste genre wise)
Diversity! I want it. Diverse settings, diverse MCs, diverse stories.
Dark stories
Reimaginings
Alternative histories
Heists
Magicians
Kissing
Under-used fantasy characters, like Centaurs.
Gaming (bonus for gamer girls!)
Criminal elements
Strong female characters
Curses
Courts
Historicals
Genre mash-ups
Mental Health
Anti-hero
A good girl gone bad.
Gasp-out-loud twists.
Any POV & Tense – 1st, 3rd (or second if you’re really brave) and past or present tense. I take them all.

I am not going to define the genres. I’m open to anything as long as it fits with some of the points above (but not all of them, cause that would be a seriously weird book).

What you can expect from me:

Fixing issues you didn’t know exist. Yes, I find things, issues, inconsistencies, problems that will cause a book blogger to go ‘Say what?!’ but seem to get missed by other readers. Although I’m a big picture person, I get the details of things that don’t work.
An amazing pitch. My nickname is the query-whisperer. It’s a speciality of mine to take pitches and polish them until they sparkle.
Tough love – with the emphasis on love. Every year I’ve fallen in love with my mentees MS. Not like, love. But I’m not afraid to point things out.
Solutions, not just problems. My mind is an ideas factory. I won’t simply tell you problems, I will show you solutions so make your story shine.
An ongoing advocate. I will be there for you after Pitch Wars is over if you need me.

What I want from you:

Someone accepts a book is created by a village. You need to be open to feedback, open to making some major changes if you book needs it. I won’t ask for change for the sake of change. I will ask for change if you story will be the better for it.
Information about how much revision your story has been through to date, how long you’ve been querying it/how much you’ve queried it, if it’s been in any competitions.
A glorious story that needs some shining.

What I don’t want:

A synopsis – I prefer just to read the story.
Someone who is only interested in getting in front of agents. This is a journey of growing as a writer.
First drafts.

And one last piece of trivia about me. My husband’s name begins with…

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