Submission Guidelines for Laurie McLean

Laurie McLean handles romance, fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, suspense, thriller and "new" western novels. She also represents children's young adult (YA) and middle grade fiction. (YA is for high school readers and middle grade is for middle school readers.)

Each year I am closed to submissions during the months of December and January.

I DO NOT represent authors of picture books, board books, easy readers, chapter books, memoir, non-fiction, commercial, literary or women's fiction. I also do not handle novels about serial killers, cozy mysteries unless the protagonist is unique and compelling, Louis L'Amour rehashed westerns, true crime dramas, biblical or religious-themed books, role-playing fantasy, superhero fantasy, erotica, erotic romance, inspirational romance or books with animal protagonists.

I am especially eager to find excellent steampunk, new weird fantasy, cyberpunk, space opera science fiction, dark fantasy, urban fantasy, post-apocalyptic fiction, non-traditional westerns that are more like the television show The Wild Wild West than Zane Grey, and anything with zombies in it.  I am also looking for romance manuscripts in the following subgenres: Regency historicals, Scottish historicals, medieval historicals, paranormal (especially vampires and shape-shifters with a new twist), futuristic and military (especially yummy special-ops heroes).  And for the YA and middle-grade markets I am searching high and low for YA romance, anything post-apocalyptic or vampiric, dark fantasy (no sweet fairy tales), dark reality (dealing with contemporary issues) and anything interesting.  YA is super hot right now and I love the teen voice!

I only accept submissions via email, so please send the first ten double-spaced pages and a 1-2 page synopsis in the body of your email (no attachments) to: query@agentsavant.com. (The submission does not have to be double-spaced in the email. The amount of text you send should be the equivalent of 10 double-spaced pages.) I do not open attachments due to virus concerns, so please include your text in the body of your email message.  Hint: Saving your submission first in .rtf or plain text format eliminates all the weird characters and spacing. Also, please do not send .docx files (Vista) as I cannot open them.

If you MAIL me a submission, I will not read it, so please use email only. We live in a digital age. If you can't use email I am not the right agent for you.

Because I try to read everything that crosses my digital desk, and have no desire for an assistant who does not know my tastes or the market as well as I do, I have reluctantly decided to no longer provide individual replies--even rejections--to my slush pile participants and to change the way I accept submissions. When my monthly submissions topped 1,200, I knew I could no longer reply to everyone individually.

From now on, QUERY@AGENTSAVANT.COM will be the sole place where I will read and consider submissions from potential clients. You will receive an automatic confirmation that I have received your submission when I open my query emailbox, which I do once or twice a week. If I want to read more, you will hear from me again within 6 weeks. If you don't hear back within that time frame it means that I am not interested in reading more of this particular submission. If someone sends a query or submission to laurie@agentsavant.com they will be politely redirected to query@agentsavant.com. That way queries will not be interspersed with my other email and I will be able to set aside time solely for reading queries. I've even dedicated my laptop to this activity.

I look forward to reading your work!