(Hand of person writing in notebook next to coffee shop)
Mia Tsai and Joanne Machin are teaming up as co-mentors to offer an opportunity for a BIPOC writer to receive self-paced traditional publishing–focused mentorship opportunity. This is a low-key, impact-driven mentorship: there will be no big “showcase” at the end, but we will make sure you have a polished manuscript and complete submission package that will be assessed by someone at an agency.
Logistics!
Adult speculative fiction and romance, subgenres allowed
Complete manuscripts up to 125,000 words. This is a strict limit.
We are looking for the following in a complete submission package:
Query or pitch,
1-page synopsis,
First 10 pages,
Comps or vibes (doesn’t have to be books, you can literally comp anything).
Only fulls will be requested.
Submission period starts April 17 and goes to April 30, 2022. Submissions will close at 100 subs or at the end of the period, whichever comes first.
Decision will be made by May 21, 2022.
Here is what we promise from this mentorship:
A complete, polished manuscript
A query
A synopsis
Agent research
Submission package critique by an agent assistant
A self-editing strategy toolbox
Please come to this mentorship with questions and a readiness to “get down to business” and work. We will, of course, guide you along the way and answer any questions you have. If we don’t know the answer to something, we almost certainly know someone who does. :)
What we’re looking for in a mentee:
Strong work ethic, along with patience and perseverance
Process over product
Open to communication and discussion
Self-identifies as Black, Indigenous, or person of color
Joanne’s #MSWL
Feral girls; misunderstood monsters
Found family
Comps to Gideon the Ninth
Mechas
Studio Ghibli vibes
Joy, humor, or both
LGBTQIA+ and/or neurodiverse characters
Anti-colonial or decolonial stories
Queer BIPOC cowboys
Stories that comp Halsey’s “I am not a woman, I’m a god”
“Neon noir” sci-fi
A LOL rom-com that will make me laugh so hard I’ll pee my pants
Ace-spec characters in a romance
All heat levels are fine (even no heat!), but I LOVE a good, sizzling seduction (probs even more than the actual boning)
Mia’s #MSWL:
LGBTQIA+
Humor
Anti-colonial or decolonial stories
Botany, mycology, medicine, or other life sciences
Hidden languages (e.g. the language of flowers)
Comps to Honey Girl, Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, Sierra Simone, Alisha Rai
Comps to Hozier songs
Prose with poetic turns of phrase and strong line- and paragraph-level work
WE DO NOT WANT:
No on-page rape/sexual assault, incest, or pedophilia (this should go without saying, but here it is)
No zombies, werewolves, or vampires. Other fae are fine.
No pet death on the page
No baking romances or reality TV romances
No alphaholes
Characters who are writers, editors, or literary agents
About Mia Tsai
Mia Tsai is a Taiwanese American author of speculative fiction. Her debut novel, a xianxia-inspired contemporary fantasy titled BITTER MEDICINE, will be published by Tachyon Publications on October 18, 2022. In her other lives, she is a professional musician, photographer, and editor. As an editor, she copy edits, proofreads, sensitivity reads, and content edits manuscripts for Big 4 publishers, smaller publishers, and indie authors. Her clients run the gamut from Macmillan, Sourcebooks, and Soho to indie authors such as Sierra Simone and Courtney Milan.
You can find her on Instagram at @mia.tsai.books and Twitter at @itsamia.
About Joanne Machin
Based out of the Pacific Northwest, Joanne Machin is an author, bookseller, freelance editor, virtual assistant, and multi-passionate entrepreneur. She writes contemporary adult romance novels that are sometimes chaotic but are altogether lots of fun--words many people would also use to describe her, actually. In 2021, she co-founded #APIPit. She is currently the President of the board of Emerald City Romance Writers. In her free time, Joanne drinks boba, plays video games, and amasses large quantities of stationery and books, which, admittedly, she collects more than she reads or uses... She is married to a very nice man, with whom she co-parents a very naughty Welsh terrier named Oliver.