It’s looking increasingly likely that I’ll be attending Aussiecon 4 later in the year – volcanic ash permitting! My intention, having schlepped all that way, is to return with the pick of genre talent in my agently pocket, thus we’ve decided to open for submissions, but only for authors who will be attending the con. (Don’t try and hoodwink me – as I’ll be checking the membership roster to see if you’re on it! If you’re not going to be at Worldcon, your submission will not be considered in this window.)

What am I looking for? Well, all areas of genre fiction basically. That means SF, Fantasy and Horror and the various combinations/permutations thereof. As always, the salient factor is that of the excellence of the writing and the commercial hook, rather than how many rockets or wizards or ghosts appear in the story, so look to our Submission Guidelines and the About Zeno page to gauge our tastes.

Come on Australia and NZ – let’s see what you’ve got!

I just recently came across this post – The Top 10 Query Mistakes – as posted on the blog of US agent Rachelle Gardner. Read and learn, people.

I’ve added Rachelle’s Web Site to our Resources page under the ‘Agents Who Blog’ heading. If anyone has a writer’s resource they feel should be on our resources page, so please le me know via the comments.

We’ve got enough reading to keep us busy for some weeks now and want to give proper consideration to those manuscripts we’ve asked to see – so we’re closed again until further notice. We’re still particularly interested in YA and tradtional crime type  stuff, so when we do get round to re-opening (not before please!), that’s what we’ll be looking for.

We’ve tentatively opened up once more for submissions – and I’ve not the faintest idea how long we’ll be able to remain thus. I fully expect the usual deluge and once my mailbox looks like it’s about to burst, I generally close knowing that I’ve enough material to keep me going for a good few weeks! If not months!!

I’m really hoping to come across some great YA material during this round of submissions  – this is a market that continues to flourish and publishers are hungry for quality material to add to their lists. I’d also like to get some thrillers and crime stuff in as these markets remain buoyant in the recession, with folks wanting to escape from the daily grind by reading of either the adventures or the woes of others! Whatever the reason, there are publishers looking for books in all these areas.

Of course we remain committed to genre fiction, but with the caveat that we will only consider material of the absolute highest quality- so if you’re sending in science fiction or fantasy, be very conscientious about not giving us any reason to reject your work – this generally means getting your enquiry right for starters. Read our Submission Guidelines.

Finally we also interested in serious non-fiction – take a look at our client list to get a clear idea of what we mean by this. We handle work by Iain Sinclair, Mark Adkin, Tobias Capwell, Andrew Hodges, Sir Roger Penrose, Rachel Lichstenstein &etc.

Interestingly, I was surprised at how few of the submissions we received fell into the area I’m looking for – **and specifically requested**. Not a single submission hit the nail exactly in the head (as outlined in my previous post) – which is worrying. There was also a disproportionately high number (I’d say about 80%!) of stories that centered on angels, or some sort of fight between angels and demons, or a conflict between heaven and hell. This a kickback from the urban fantasy trend which shows no sign of abating – but my feeling is that the market is already saturated with this stuff as it is – and publishers are currently buying up books for publication in 2011 and 2012 when it will be even more saturated. I may be wrong, but at some point the bottom will drop out of the market for this type of fiction and – from what I’ve seen this last week – they’ll be nothing to fill the gap!

Gimme something else, folks! But only when we re-open, please.

As of June 10th, we are currently ONLY looking at novels that fit comfortably into the fantasy genre. By this we mean traditional, high, heroic, dark, historical, or urban. Do some research if you don’t know what these subdivisions are.

Carefully note that we’re not looking for anything that attempts to redefine the genre or reinvent the wheel. Nor do we want derivative rehashes of your favourite Sword and Sorcery stories. Be aware that the tale of the great quest to recover the ancient, lost ring of hochty-mochty and thus bring harmony to the warring dwarf kingdoms is extremely unlikely to excite.

In short we want intelligent and commercial fantasy fiction. Need examples? Look at some of the recent market leaders, both in critical and commercial terms… THE FIRST LAW TRILOGY by Joe Abercrombie, Brent Week’s NIGHT ANGEL TRILOGY, Patrick Rothfuss’s THE NAME OF THE WIND, Brandon Sanderson’s MISTBORN sequence, Peter Brett’s THE PAINTED MAN, Steven Erikson’s THE MALAZAN BOOKS OF THE FALLEN  – all of these are excellent examples of what I want to see … and if you’ve not heard of any of these, don’t bother contacting us! Note no mention here of classics like Tolkien, Brooks, Donaldson or even GRRM. We are looking for submissions from folks familiar with the current, cutting edge of market. So, if yours is the next name on this stellar list of fantasy talent, drop us a line.

Note that while we’re closed, this status will be reflected on our Submission Guidelines Page. Please note that if you send anything in during this time, it’ll just get binned!