I’m halfway through writing my first draft in 50 days. here’s how it’s going, along with some of my lessons learned ➡️
#writer #writingchallenge #writingabook #tradpub #writerslife #firstdraft #writingcommunity #aspiringauthor #substack #substackwriter
open.substack.com/pub/trangngu...
Ao3 tags for FEED ME YOUR HEART, a YA fantasy novel with horror and romance
IF MY YA FANTASY NOVEL (with horror and romance) HAD AO3 TAGS!
Haunted by her ruined reputation, Ró joins a heart-eating cult (😅) to hunt down the one (very hot) creature whose heart can buy her life back
🫀🗡️ FEED ME YOUR HEART - 95k
🧌🌲 Agent's guide pinned to profile
#YA #F #H #R #ChaosPit
A messy image with lots of 90s word art depicting Barbie on a pegasus and an anatomical heart
Ok, hear me out. My novel is "Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus" BUT:
- Barbie has a trash reputation
- She joins a cult
- She eats hearts to wield magic
- She lowkey falls in love with a water spirit (KEN?)
YA fantasy w. horror and romance
🫀Agent's guide pinned to profile
#YA #F #H #R #ChaosPit
IM CRYING
She's just a girl, standing in a cursed town, asking her sentient house to please stop locking her in rooms with the hot carpenter and hoping to not die before she escapes #chaospit
my last first draft took me years. this time, I’m trying to do it in 50 days 👀
open.substack.com/pub/trangngu...
#writing #substack #author #aspiringauthor #writingabook #novelist #fantasyauthor #writingchallenge #writingadvice
can I interest anyone in a writing challenge? 🤭
#writingchallenge #writingabook #firstdraft #writingcommunity #substackwriter
open.substack.com/pub/trangngu...
author newsletter is live & my first post is up (how I got my agent)! if you subscribe I promise I don’t have the stamina to write many newsletters so you won’t get spammed with notifs 😌
#queryletter #queryingauthors #tradpub #agentedauthor #substack #aspiringauthor
substack.com/@trangnguyen...
how I got my agent (the long version), featuring an Etsy witch, Margaritaville in Times Square, and a birthday offer of representation 🀄️
#querying #querytrenches #author #amwriting #tradpub #queryletter #traditionalpublishing #substackwriter
open.substack.com/pub/trangngu...
Photo of a weeping willow with a scrap of paper laid on top that says "Underneath the Willow Tree" in handwriting font and below in smaller serif font "An Upmarket Historical Sapphic Romance"
A photo of a brownstone with a scrap of paper on top, framed by a gold locket. The text reads "The Pitch" at the top in handwriting font and in a serif font below says " When Violet meets her new landlord, Nita, she realizes their journeys are eerily similar, even if they were 60 years apart. Both women grew up in conservative families in rural Florida and left everything behind to find more freedom in their queer identities in NYC. As the two form an unlikely friendship, Nita’s life story comes spilling out, revealing how she heart-wrenchingly left her first love behind to move. But Nita’s story may still be unfinished, her lost love may yet be found, and she and Violet may be more connected than either of them anticipated."
A photo of a weeping willow dripping water droplets with a gold frame laid on top. The text at the top says "Tropes & Themes" in a handwriting font. Below, in a serif font, the text reads: "🔒 Forbidden Romance ❤️🩹 Second Chance Love 🤝 Age Gap Friendships💡 Found Family 💔 Generational Trauma 🍃 Nature Symbolism"
There is a black and white photo of a train that is motion-blurred with a scrap of paper on top. The paper says "Set in" in a handwriting font and "🕰️ 1950-1960s Rural Florida & 1970s NY📍Present Day Rural Florida & NYC" in a serif font. There is also a red flower wax stamp on the bottom right.
These best friends have a 60-year age difference 🤝
Nita fled from Florida to NYC in 1970, while Violet made the same journey over 50 years later. Both left conservative families to live freely as queer women.
Can Violet break the cycle and help find Nita's long-lost love?
#QuestPit #HR #U #WF #A
I LOVE THEM
THE NUTCRACKER GAMBLE, an adult contemporary romcom with a sapphic romance
Meet Mina and Cam, the dancers working together to save Mariner Beach Ballet. Will a last-ditch performance at a casino raise the money they need, and bring them together along the way?
#questpit #R #A #W #LGBT
Two childhood friends embarking on a roadtrip through the Wild West while Scottie chases her dreams navigating guilt and grief and Finn figures out how to chase his and still get the girl.
Here’s my agent’s guide to SADDLE UP my cowgirl/cowboy romance 🤠
#questpit #W #A #R
Book cover with title "The Heart Devourer's Song" over illustration of a smiling bard and stern hunter standing underneath pink blossoms.
THE HUNGER GAMES x DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS where a fox demon bard seeking to become human joins the deadly race up a wish-granting mountain—but falling for a demon hunter may cost her everything.
🏳️🌈Asexual MC
🌦️Devious sunshine x softhearted grump
#questpit #A #F #OWN #Asian #LGBT
THE HOUSE OF HANDS, a YA fantasy
Meet Katerina and Azrin, the brutal assassin and the silver-tongued con-artist
☀️Sunshine/black cat
🔥Slow Burn
⚔️Reluctant Allies
🫣 He falls first
#QuestPit #Q #F #YA
TGUWG x Poppy War
In a kingdom where necromancy is illegal, budding necromancer Sera fights her way to the top of the kingdom court. Discovery means death, but Sera has always wanted to make an impact and she won't let something like morals get in her way.
#questpit #W #A #DF
Sample page for Feed Me Your Heart - a YA fantasy book with elements of horror and romance
💀What if personality tests were deadly?💀
To save her ruined reputation, Ró joins a heart-eating cult to play deadly games that’ll uncover the deepest parts of her personality. Win and prove her worth. Lose and sacrifice her soul to the seductive forest spirits.
#YA #F #DF #Q #QuestPit
The Nutcracker Gamble, agents guide. A contemporary sapphic romcom. Two dancers in tutus sit on a stage, leaning towards each other
The pitch, with a dancer from The Nutcracker’s snow scene in the background and a light purple text box
Two dancers backstage with a purple text box
A dancer laying on the stage doing snow angels, with comp titles in a purple text box
HEATED RIVALRY- level yearning, in the dance studio
Here is my #agentsguide to THE NUTCRACKER GAMBLE, a sapphic contemporary romcom!
#questpit #R #A #LGBT
this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen
Ró always found eating hearts to be vile, even if it grants humans magical powers. But her town’s leader craves the heart of a seductive water spirit, and Ró yearns to impress.
Succeed and earn a much-needed favor from the town leader, fail, and it’ll be her heart on a plate🫀
#YA #F #DF #Q #QuestPit
Feed Me Your Heart - Intro Page
Themes for Feed Me Your Heart
Comps for Feed Me Your Heart
Pitch for Feed Me Your Heart
Haunted by her ruined reputation, Ró joins a heart-eating cult to hunt down the one creature whose heart can buy her life back.
🫀 Cultish magic
💀 Deadly personality tests
🧌 Scandinavian folklore
🖤 Romance á la OUABH
WHERE THE DARK STANDS STILL x YOUR BLOOD, MY BONES
#YA #F #DF #Q #QuestPit
If the king of Adarlan had raised Aelin Galathynius
Katerina's shadow magic has thrust her into the heart of a war, where she must decide between absolute power at a nation's expense or destroying the king who made her.
#QuestPit #Q #F #YA
Gothic text treatment with a red skeletal graphic overlay with a spooky, dark forest photograph background. Text reads "An Agent's Guide to the Banshee of Clan Murtagh, a gothic love story, 82,000 words, adult horror, by Anna Hirsch."
Tropes & comps: Irish folklore, she's the monster, generational trauma, only one grave. The yearning in the time of plague found in Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, Catholicism vs the Supernatural in The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas, the medieval horror of Between Two fires by Christopher Buehlman, the death-crossed lovers of Nosferatu directed by Robert Eggers.
The pitch: When Ciarán Murtagh hears the cry of his family’s banshee for the first time in a decade, he knows one of his own is fated to die. Yet, his family doesn’t believe his warnings, and why would they? The last time Ciarán heard the banshee, he didn’t tell a soul until after his younger cousin tragically died under his watch. He’s been the family pariah ever since. Desperate for redemption, Ciarán hunts down the banshee in search of answers. She’s equal parts frightening and alluring, and in his struggle to confront her, he inadvertently triggers the banshee’s memories. Memories of when she was a servant of his household, decades ago—a woman named Deirdre. In hopes of learning whose death she foretold, Ciarán tenuously agrees to help Deirdre remember who she was. They begin meeting by moonlight, and with every clandestine encounter, his macabre desire for Deirdre grows. When the devastating bubonic plague befalls the Murtagh household, and Deirdre’s memories reveal a dark scandal in the family’s history, Ciarán must decide whether to stay by his family’s side in their final hours or embrace the seduction of the death-bringer. But fate demands more than death, and Deirdre is no longer the only ghost cursed to haunt Clan Murtagh forever.
The first line: I was a boy of ten when I first saw death, but I'd heard her for years.
HAMNET x NOSFERATU
🖤 The black sheep of a powerful 14th-century Irish family falls in love with the banshee who’s haunted his household for generations—but as the bubonic plague closes in, he must choose between the living and the dead.
💌 SmoochPit 2025 Mentee
#QuestPit #Q #A #H #HFic
In the Shadow of a Witch agents guide, cover page. YA fantasy. 83k words.
In the Shadow of a Witch elevator pitch
In the shadow of a witch comps
In the shadow of a witch excerpts
LEGENDBORN x NINTH HOUSE
To save NYC’s witches from being hunted down and possessed by malicious spirits, 16-yr-old Haley Thorne must wield her death magic to travel to a monster-infested realm to stop the dead witch behind it all.
#QuestPit #Q #F #YA
An agent's guide to THE HEART DEVOURER'S SONG, an adult asian-inspired romantic fantasy. Selected for the 2025 SmoochPit mentorship program.
Devious sunshine fox demon bard x Soft-hearted grump demon hunter. 🌈Asexual spec MC 🌦️reluctant alliance 🌱Found Family ❤️Slow burn romance 🪕Inspired by Chinese music and mythology 🌖Morally gray yet kind MC 🏔️Chinese demons, immortals, and magic
Pitch: THE HUNGER GAMES meets DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS where a fox demon bard seeking to become human so she no longer has to devour hearts joins the deadly race up a wish-granting mountain but falls for a soft-hearted grump demon hunter—and with only one wish at the mountain’s peak, love is a weakness she can’t afford.
COMPS: Immortal, The Scorpion and the Night Blossom, The Serpent and the Wings of Night
Selected for 2025 SmoochPit Mentorship
THE HUNGER GAMES meets DAUGHTER OF THE MOON GODDESS where a heart-devouring fox demon bard seeking to become human joins the deadly race up a wish-granting mountain—but falling for a demon hunter may cost her everything.
#questpit #A #F #Q #amquerying
"An agent's guide to THE BOG PRINCE by Julianne M, a 99k word YA fantasy romance."
The pitch... Eighteen-year-old Everin Lockett’s dreams of returning home from ruthless Wyverith College are shattered when she manifests a forbidden necromancy magic that reanimates the bog body of her kingdom’s lost prince. If the college discovers the truth about her abilities, she will be conscripted into their brutal army, doomed never to see her family again. Desperate to guard her secret, Everin strikes a deal with the long-lost Prince Byrnan: if he helps keep her power hidden, she will help him solve his centuries-old murder. But when Byrnan’s quest for justice could be the very thing that endangers her last hope of going home, Everin will need to confront the true cost of falling for a lost prince with nothing left to lose—and a kingdom to reclaim.
Pictures of book and album covers in ornate antique frames. The text reads: For fans of... Yearning and bog bodies (Hozier's debut album) Dark academia and lyrical prose (A Study in Drowning and Curious Tides) Haunting gothic atmosphere (One Dark Window and Florence + the Machine's Lungs album) Slow-burn romance (Divine Rivals)
Snippet... A fork of lightning split the rain-soaked sky in two, and the ground trembled with a deafening clap of thunder. But even after the rumbling faded, the bog still shuddered beneath me, swelling and quaking like a pair of lungs drawing their dying breath. I lurched away, my heart jolting against my throat as I scrambled back through the mud. Another crack of lightning. And in its wake, silhouetted against the flash of violet light— A single grasping hand, clawing its way out of the earth towards me.
In honour of #QuestPit and the upcoming #SmoochPit showcase, here's an updated #agentsguide for THE BOG PRINCE, my upper #YA #RF about a necromancer who reanimates the bog body of her kingdom's long-lost prince. 💀👑
Maybe some secrets are better left buried... 🖤 #agentguide #Q
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.
I’d love to be done with my edits by end of February, so as long as I can tackle about 1 a day from here on out I should make it!
EDITING DIARIES 1.18.26 //
starting on draft 5 edits today, and here’s where I started vs. where I ended. I went from 31 edits (all outstanding) to 33 edits (8 completed, 25 outstanding).
#amwriting #amediting #writingcommunity #fantasyauthor #aspiringauthor
