What I’m Looking For

I’m actively looking to build out the catalog for the Entangled Publishing Flirt and Ever After lines, with a focus on solid commercial fiction with broad market appeal and vivid, memorable characters. For these lines, Entangled seeks brilliant, original short fiction from 10k to 40k in length, plot-driven but with strong romantic elements and a “happily ever after” ending. We’re currently acquiring in the following genres:

  • Contemporary
  • Historical
  • Romantic Thrillers
  • Science Fiction, Dystopian, Steampunk
  • Paranormal and Urban Fantasy
  • Fantasy

Flirt Submission Guidelines

Ever After Submission Guidelines

Please review the guidelines thoroughly before submitting. Make sure to put “Flirt” or “Ever After” in your subject line, depending on your story, along with the story’s title; without that the submission may get shunted into the spam box. NOTE: I am not seeking erotica submissions. Romance with erotic elements is fine, but if your submission is labeled as pure erotica it will likely be passed over.

Current Open Submission Calls
On top of taking general submissions as described above, we’re also looking for themed submissions for special upcoming collections:

Just remember that we aren’t acquiring just for the calls; submissions are fully open for both lines, so if your story doesn’t meet those themes we’re still happy to consider it as long as it meets the general submission guidelines.

My Personal Wishlist
While I’m thrilled to find good stories in all genres, there are a few wishlist items that I daydream about finding in my inbox:

  • Contemporary or sci-fi girl-geek stories. I’d love to see a story of a quirky, cute, fun girl geek, whether she’s a starcraft design engineer, a programmer, a gamer, a prodigious inventor, or any other class of geek. She needs her own story beyond her geekiness; something original and fresh, moving past the typical story of girls proving themselves against the boys. Give her a world to prove herself against instead, and an adventure that makes me love her, her geekiness, and her brilliant charm.

  • Antiheroes. I adore antiheroes in any genre, adult or YA; show me the world through the point of view of someone who’s given up on it. Show me the reality of the antihero’s convoluted psyche, the difficult decisions they face, their struggles with their own emotions in the choices they make and the situations they deal with as they develop as fully-fledged characters. Let me see the broken pieces at the heart of the badass, and how he or she struggles to stitch those pieces back together while dealing with the story’s conflict and their own tangled relationship with their love interest.

  • Post-apocalyptic and dystopian. Broken societies and devastated worlds, whether near-future, far-future, or even alternate history, fascinate me – especially stories that show our familiar world torn apart, and what’s been pieced back together from the remnants. Subtle undercurrents of the far-reaching effects of current sociopolitical issues are a bonus, though I’m not interested in heavy-handed political diatribes. I’d rather see the real effects these things have on the everyday lives of the people in the story, as part of the larger framework of the world.

  • LGBT and PoC. I’m especially interested in stories that portray LGBT people and people of color as mainstream characters, where their ethnicity, sexual identity, or gender identity are just another rich nuance of their character and not the central aspect of the story. Anything from a sweet contemporary to a dark urban fantasy; the genre matters less than strong writing that truly reflects the diversity of the real world in your fictional world, without falling back on stereotypes.

Have a great story but it doesn’t match my wishlist? Doesn’t matter. Send it anyway. Give me the chance to fall in love with something new, and discover the stories you want to tell.

Querying Tip
There are few things that irritate me more than getting a query addressed to Ms. Sanders or Mrs. Luc-Sanders, or ones that “correct” my name to Adrienne or even Adrienne Luc-Sanders. The moment I see that it’s already one point against you – not because my pride is injured, but because it shows that you’re too careless to spend 30 seconds to figure out who you’re querying. I’ll overlook a lot of mistakes and gaffes in a query letter, but one that says 1. you’re careless, and 2. you don’t actually care who you’re querying? That one’s hard to overlook. It’s not an automatic rejection and I’ll still give the story fair consideration, but no one wants to work with a careless, lazy writer.

I don’t mind Adrien, Adrien-Luc, Mr. Sanders, I’ll even take “hey, you.” I don’t even care if you slip and call me Adrian. “Goddamn long-haired hippie” and “hey, emo boy in the black nail polish” are also acceptable. But no editor or agent likes to feel like you didn’t even research them or their submissions preferences prior to submitting, because it makes them wonder if you actually think your book is right for them or if you’re just throwing it at anyone in the hopes that it’ll stick.