auriel » We Leave the Elves Out Now

A screenshot of our #MSWL database where you can search by age group, genre, keywords, and see bluesky as well as full profile details

Hi Friends! We've been updating our new Smart Search hourly.

Search Bluesky AND full ManuscriptWishList com #MSWL posts at manuscriptwishlist.com/smart-search

Want a free #MSWL trend report? Learn more (and view our most recent) here: manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-trend-r...

#WSPit How do I pitch a book on social media? Elevator pitch, comps, memes, moodboards, vibes, cover art, original character art Comps: X meets Y (social media pitches often use books, TV, movies, video games, etc.) Moodboards: a collage of pics that evoke a vibe Elevator pitch: MC has to do X to keep Y from happening or else Z bad thing happens Memes: A silly way to pitch your book Trope lists: what tropes are found in your book *No Genarative AI

So how do you pitch a book on social media?

If you're new to this, I'm going to share some of my fave resources for crafting a pitch that will fit (with hashtags) in a post.

I'll also share some examples of different things mentioned on this infographic.

#WSPit #WIPSnips

#WSPit is coming up on February 25th! This is a hype event run by @wipsnips.bsky.social!

This year, it is open to ANY stage of writing from WIP to Published!

So, mark your calendars and get those pitches ready!

#WriteSky #WritingCommunity #AmQuerying #AmWriting #AmAgenting #LitAgents #Writers

I send out a periodic newsletter highlighting new self-pub & small press queer romances I think look promising.

IF YOU are putting out a queer romance in 2026 for retail sale and you are (like me) NOT publishing on Amazon, please reply / DM so I can get you on my radar.

Reposts very welcome. 🌈💜🌈📚♠️

Meet Hallow Hill, a personal project I've been working on for the past few months where Outlander meets Silent Hill.🍃🩸

So far I've done concept work for all the monsters, one of which is this very nice lady.

A close up of green leaves with droplets of dew. Blood is mixed in with some of the dew as well. In gold is written the title "We Leave the Elves", with "Elves" in large stylistic cursive. The author's name — Auriel Naughtwell — is written at the bottom in faded text.

We Leave the Elves is now available on Void's Ink Press' shop!

(Test running PDFs along with regular eBook purchases at a discounted price until March 13th!)

shop.voidsink.press

ePub only available at: books2read.com/b/bpVORX

& #urbanfantasy #writersofbluesky #originalfiction #originallit ;

if i know discord for anything is that they can and will pussy out if people bully them enough for something. get fucking loud about this

Successful Pitches We know writing a good pitch is hard. You have limited space to convey a lot about your story, and sometimes it seems impossible. Our event started on Twitter, where tweets are limited to 280 chara…

New article on the #SmallPitch blog showcasing some successful pitches! Hopefully they can inspire querying writers working on their own pitches.

Editor’s Guide To: The Things We Run For YA Drama Mystery with Romance 94k Words Represented by Amanda Wooden at SBR Media

4/13/1996 Run. What a powerful instinct. Emma Bridge had wanted nothing more than to be with her two siblings in a home that felt safe, but those wishes never came true. With nothing left to lose, Emma runs away from the spotlight of the Hills to a small town across the country, but this new home is anything but the safety she’d been after. The weight of the world has fallen on her shoulders, and she can’t carry it alone. But with her old name in every police station and her new name on every tongue in town, she’s not sure who she can trust to help carry the burden.

What we know: -Runaway in Hiding -Fake Identity (turned real identity) -Mental Health Rep -Genderfluid and Pan Rep -Found Family -90s Small-Town Nostalgia At the bottom, the name Emma Bridge is crossed out and replaced with Peyton Freys

6/23/1996 “The Hills have Eyes” There’s a collage of pictures. Picture one is of two people, one sitting on the counter with the other in front of them. Picture two is go a small-town street with snowy homes to either side. Picture three shows a row of high school desks. Picture four shows a box of police evidence. Picture five shows a group of kids sitting behind an abandoned building. Picture six shows someone flipping off a police car. Picture seven shows a paper with the words “Child Custody Hearing” printed on it. The last picture shows a boy sitting at a school desk, writing something into a notebook. In the bottom right, it says Going on submission in 2026

#Editors THE THINGS WE RUN FOR ( #OnSubmission 2026!)

Emma Bridge ran to find a safe home, but the town she picked is anything but. When she gets wrapped up in a cold case that threatens her siblings, who can she turn to while keeping her secrets safe?

#QuestPit #YA #MY #R
#AG #OS #OWN #LGBT

"Hat" 84K cosmic horror. Join the beta. Querying soon. Pitch: Chris is cursed to see Shadow people since almost dying as a child. Now, as the new MILLENNIUM dawns they are INCREASING in FREQUENCY and GAINING power. His peers think he is psychotic, The Red Eyed God in the woods speak of a great change, and a HATEFUL shadow wearing a hat seeks to use him for his own ends. Tropes: 2000's setting Space and Nature WitchCraft Spooky New ENgland Stoner Goth kids Madness possession Vibe Comps: The Bababook, Donnie Darko, The Exorcist

THE EXORCIST X DONNIE DARKO

Chris is haunted by Shadows since almost dying.
They are increasing in power.
A Red Eyed God talks of change.
A Shadow with a hat seeks to use him for his dark purposes.

🍂 New England
💽 2000's nostalgia
🧹 Witchcraft
🌕️ Cosmic Horror

#Questpit #H #Agentsguide

Elemental trials and tests

After accidentally absorbing her best friend’s hidden magic, Emery must take her place in a competition for the throne of a realm she never knew existed.

Blood in the Water offers a fresh, elemental take on supernatural creatures.
#questpit #Q #A #F

🔥Afro Latino MMC’s (who would do anything for her) 
🌙Latin Indigenous FMC
🧛🏼‍♂️ vampires
🐆 shape shifters
🧝‍♀️ Fae/Elves
🌴🌴🌳🌴🌳 uncolonized Latin indigenous magical communities.

#questpit #contemporaryfantasy #fantasy

A black background with flames on the bottom. White text reads: YA Horror Fantasy, 85k words. A Not Yet Corpses Agent's Guide

A black background with flames on the bottom. Excerpt from Not Yet Corpses: “So what do I call you?” he asks. “Roy.” “Just Roy?” Even under the sepia light of the streetlamps, he radiates life. It’s off-putting. Downright annoying, when I think about it too long. “Unless you want to call me Riordan Payne.” He laughs. “Weird—I like it. Monster Hunter, Riordan Payne.” “Not a monster hunter.” As much as I want to punch him every time he opens his mouth, I can’t shake the pride settling in my bones, watching him do something as simple as running a hand through his hair. You’d never know he was dead an hour ago. I did that, and I'm not even sure how. Beneath that pride, a primal fear coils inside me. If my patron ever finds out what I’ve done, there’s no telling what he’ll do to the corpse. But I’ve got a pretty good idea what he might do to me. I have to dump this undead body the first chance I get.

A black background with flames on the bottom. A Tropes/Comps graphic for Not Yet Corpses. Various orange arrows point to the cover in the center, depicting a pale, white-haired teenager wielding a knife and a handful of flame. Tropes: Annoyances to Friends to ???, Devil Deals (with red devil graphic), Stabby Trans MC (with cover of Ander Joseph White's The Spirit Bares Its Teeth), Goths Gays and Theys, Found Family, Accidental Resurrections (with cover of Aiden Thomas' Cemetery Boys), Combatting Oppression (with cover of H.E. Edgmon's The Witch King)

A black background with flames on the bottom. Pitch: After Riordan Payne accidentally resurrects an amnesiac corpse, he'd do anything to get rid of it. He didn’t think ‘anything’ meant making friends with it, rescuing a kid wizard together, taking a road trip across the desert, or reawakening his humanity. Graphic Title of Not Yet Corpses in white at the bottom, with skulls for O's

Not Yet Corpses, a YA Horror Fantasy is coming back to the query trenches, featuring:
👿angry trans sorcerer without a soul
🧟the hot amnesiac corpse who won’t leave him alone
🐈‍⬛the nonbinary kid wizard they rescue together
👹angels and devils and monsters, oh my!
#Questpit #YA #F #H #LGBT #agentguide

⚠️ SECURITY ALERT Target: Everest Callaway (ranger). Status: Grumpiest man in the zip code. Allergic to my personality. Threat Level: Critical (he just rolled up his sleeves).
> Firewall compromised. > Logic failing. > Bad_Decisions.exe is auto-installing... #questpit #Q #R #A

🌟"PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAGICAL GIRL" EPISODE 2 🌟
"I Want to be a Normal Girl"

SATURDAY, JANUARY 31ST @ 11AM PST!!!!!!!!!!!!

On a red and black background is a book cover and at the bottom it says coming march 22. The book cover is for Awaken, My Love, written by Marat Earendel, an mm gothic romance novel, is at the center. The illustrated cover shows a brown vampire with red eyes and shoulder-length wavy black hair wearing antique black and white clothing while looking toward the viewer. He is holding a man in his hands. The man is pale with long beige hair, wearing white and cream colored clothing. He is in profile, looking up and gripping the vampire's shirt. There are split open pomegranates threaded through the burgundy title of the novel. In the background is a broken gothic window, and at the bottom are chains. The cover is in shades of reds, browns, mauves, and blacks.

On a red and black background, it says: Astaire Bloom, an unfeeling man devoid of hope, takes a job in a remote castle under a mysterious employer. As sinister events unfold around him, he starts to feel things he thought himself incapable of. And the castle is hungry for it. To uncover the secrets buried within, he must endure more than he ever imagined.

Frankenstein x Interview with the Vampire

He feels nothing.
The vampire feels everything.
The castle wants the rest.

Pre-Orders Open.

#questpit #p #a #pr #dr #h

A new #agentsguide for my #WIP THE ESSENCE THEY STOLE, a dual-POV YA royal romantasy with a Cinderalla-inspired twist! 🌹It's perfect for fans of royal dystopian novels with a Black girl MC and a POC love interest.

#Agents, please 🩵 if you're interested!

#QuestPit #YA #RF #W

a moodboard detailing nine images related to my book ALL THE DEVILS aka devilswip. in order from right to left they are: london notably the landmark big ben, a band performing on stage, a sheet of music, a record store, the silhouette of a rockstar, some musical instruments scattered on a bed, two men running, a pile of evidence and finally a hand holding a cigarette

🎸 daisy jones x knives out 🗡️

the songstress, the gambler, the sweetheart, the watcher, the matriarch and the rogue. six suspects. one the killer of renowned rock star sam corvi. but who? only they can tell you

#questpit #Q #A #LF #MY

BABEL ON CALLISTO Querying February 2025 @saraduranauthor sara.duran@bsky.social COMPS The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, labeled “isolated research station” and “philosophical alien threat.” The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw, labeled “queer, visceral horror” and “love as a consuming force.” The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei, labeled “psychological unraveling” and “fracture under mission pressure.” PITCH “On a lunar prison outpost, two exiled men uncover a cosmic presence waking beneath the ice. As their uneasy alliance against it twists into something tender and terrifying, they are confronted with the one thing they never expected to find on a dead moon: a reason to live. But the ice is thinning.” TASTE “Neither spoke as Elias bypassed the security protocol on the keypad. The metal hatch shuddered as it unlocked, slinking back to hidden panels in the wall. They cleared the first few floors with carrion precision, methodical as Dermestidae stripping a carcass to bone. In Elias’s imagination, the gore thinned into something vaster—the time-lapse unraveling the ruin from above. Wordlessly, corridors were scoured to nothing as he and Jack moved like insects beneath an overhead lens. As the hours dissolved, their work became abstracted into a cold anatomy, intimacy pared away as cleanly as flesh from the frame until only the architecture of survival remained. When Jack hacked into the collapsed doorway to the next stairwell, Elias marveled at the contradiction: how those same brutal hands had, only that morning, traced him with the delicacy of a scalpel.”

Coming soon to agent inboxes!

• • •

ANNIHILATION x BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

💫two exiled men (and their secrets)
💫one lunar prison (and its horrors)
💫a cosmic entity that wants them dead
💫the love they’ll lose if they don’t survive

#SF #H #R #LGBT #amquerying #QuestPit

The image, made with free non-AI stock pictures, shows a horror-comedy novel cover titled "DAD BODIES." The top of the cover reads "THE GAME JUST TOOK A DAD TURN" with "DAD" in a different color. The background features a haunted house with multiple towers and illuminated windows against a dark backdrop. At the center is a 20-sided die (D20) used in tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, with visible numbers including 1, 7, 13, and 19. The die is surrounded by red blood splatter effects. At the bottom of the cover are six men with expressions of terror and shock. One man is wearing a white shirt over his head. These men are the dads referenced in the title.

CABIN IN THE WOODS × JOHN DIES AT THE END

When their detective friend is murdered at their annual gaming retreat, 5 dads must rely on years of #TTRPG experience—and puns—to solve the crime before they're all killed off like NPCs in a badly written supernatural campaign.

#QuestPit #A #H #MY #Q

The left of the image has a nighttime view of a brightly lit castle in the background with a dark tree in the foreground. To the right is the following text: "Ysidro heard many rumours about the Northern Territories: it was a land of ghosts, it was lost to the darkness, it was the wailing grounds of Dead Men. But right now? He found it to be beautiful. He strode to the edge of the balcony to stare at the horizon-touching Kingdom below him. From the gates to the border, a wave of lights broke out over the numerous homes and buildings. It was as if the sky had reversed and spilled its starts onto the earth. Without turning, he knew that someone else was with him. He could feel the imposing presence of the Duke behind him. And instead of announcing themself, they said... nothing. Did nothing. And neither did Ysidro. Silence blanketed them like the darkness hugging this town and the homes beyond it. And strangely... it was comforting. It was all so comforting."

For fans of Dark Souls and "Duke of the North" trope Webtoons:

—★ The Duke & His (K)Night ★—

In this adult historical fiction, this darkness doesn't just breathe, it devours. It conquers. And everyone must survive.

#questpit #W #A #S #HF #DF #HR

winter wonderland #questpit winter 2026 jan 31st

Welcome to the first #questpit event of 2026! Have fun and remember to support one another!! We’re so excited to see your pitches!

Skeleton of a blue whale suspended in a dead beach tree. Seagulls ominously loom and buoys hand from tired ropes.

𝖂𝖍𝖆𝖑𝖊 𝕱𝖆𝖑𝖑
-
COEYandSHY.com
A personal piece part of a larger ongoing project 🩶 detail shots attached-

Details of whale fall piece.

Super important! #QuestPit is now moved to January 31st to support the US General Strike movement on January 30th!

#AmWriting #AmQuerying #WriteSky #Writers #AmAgenting #LitAgents

Stories of imagin­ation tend to upset those without one. - Terry Pratchett

🤠 howdy and welcome to the contributor announcements for DEVIL'S CLAIM! up first we have the talents of @morlevart.bsky.social @kettlebird.bsky.social druid-for-hire, and @erebusodora.bsky.social !! we can't wait to see what horrors they lasso up this spring. keep an eye out 🌵🏜️
#zine #westernhorror

strike poster

‼️IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT‼️
In solidarity with the general strike happening this Friday, we’re postponing this week’s event by ONE day. The event will now take place January 31st on Saturday. This strike is important to the both of us and we would appreciate you joining us.

#SmallPitch is in 10 days! Are you ready? 👀