#PitchWars Mentor Wishlist |

G’Day! Welcome to the #PWMWL of #TeamOz! #TeamOz consists of two Aussie YA authors, Sharon M. Johnston and Stacey Nash! Even though we’re Aussie, we accept entries from authors of any culture or nationality. We’ve both dealt with English spelling and American spelling before. We’re #TeamOz cause that’s where the magic happens.

Image via Giphy

Who are we?

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Sharon Johnston writes speculative fiction and contemporary stories across the Young Adult and New Adult categories, and has numerous short stories published in anthologies. She loves to create stories with usual premises that keep the reader guessing. Her Open Heart series is out now with City Owl Press. Growing up in the tropics in Queensland, it’s no surprise that Sharon loves writing at the beach or on her family’s boat. She also has OCD, which would explain why she makes SO MANY bookmarks.

Stacey Nash writes adventure filled stories for Young Adults in the science fiction and contemporary romance genres. She loves to read and write books that have a lot of adventure, a good dose of danger, a smattering of romance, and plenty of kissing! Her debut novel, Forget Me Not was released as a three book series (The Collective) through HarperCollins Australia during 2014 / 2015. And her Oxley College Series, entailing Shh!, Wait!, and Pretend… is available now. Hailing from the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, Australia, she loves nothing more than immersing herself in the beauty of the local area.

So what do we bring:

Sharon: My strengths are finding plot holes, inconsistencies, things that are going to get readers scratching their heads…or get readers offside…problematic type things, missing things. I find the stuff that you can’t see because you’re too close to your story.

Stacey: My strength is an eye for detail; inconsistencies, timeline issues, weird grammar choices, missing words and typos. I’ll pick up all those little things that slip past because you’ve read the story so many times you read what should be there, not what is. I’m also good with characterization.

We are open to all genres of YA with the exception of horror.

But to give you a bit more of an idea of our tastes, here are some stories we love:

Strange the Dreamer
Name of the Wind
Court of Fives
Six of Crows
The Raven Boys
Boys I’ve Loved Before
OCD Love Story
We Were Liars
Into the Deep Blue
Gone Girl
Beautiful Malice
The Spinster Club
This is Where It Ends
The Scorpio Races
Red Rising
Lunar Chronicles
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
The Illuminae Files
The Curse Workers Series
Anything by Jane Austen
The Night Circus
Throne of Glass
Code Name Verity
Jane Eyre

And here’s what we’d like to see in our inbox (in no particular order):

Anything that you could comp to the stories on our favourite list above (and you can see we have diverse taste genre wise – WE WILL TAKE ANY GENRE except horror, even if your genre isn’t listed in our fav books or below).
Diversity! W want it. Diverse settings, diverse MCs, diverse stories.
Reimaginings (gender flips a plus)
Alternative histories
Swoonworthy romances
Dark stories
Girls into science
Heists
Warrior girls
Magicians
Summer camps
Cosplay
Ruthless characters
Spaceships
Fantasy
Pretty Little Liarish stories
Kissing
Gaming (bonus for gamer girls!)
Criminal elements
Mysteries
Strong female characters
Curses
Suspense
Computer Game inspired stories, like Carmen Sandiego
Fantasy
Courts
Secondary worlds
Historicals
Fantasy + any other genre (minus horror).
Activism
Cry ugly stories
Bloggers
Cowboys and Cowgirls (They don’t have to be in the traditional Wild West)
Genre mash-ups
Frienship
Laugh-out-loud
Gothic
Pop-Culture inspired
Unreliable narrators
Speculative Fiction
Aspiring journalists
Alternate Universes
Settings we don’t see often in books
Contemporary
SciFis
Mythology
Fan girls
Geeks
Thrillers
Mental Health
Cons
Stories pulled from the news (topical)
Magical Realism
Anti-hero
A good girl gone bad.
Psychological thrillers
Uniqueness
Gasp-out-loud twists.