Coco Liang | Querying MY LOONG, EMPEROR | Drafting MY LOVE, EMPRESS BSc Professional Writing and Communications | Math & CS Minor
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ALT An Agent's Guide to: MY LOONG, EMPEROR -- 90,000 word Adult Fantasy. YULI is a princess who weaponizes femininity; she performs a spoiled, love-brained girl to escape the palace, claim the divine power of a loong, and usurp the throne from her mother’s killer. The Emperor. Her father.
ALT Comps Featuring: RUTHLESSNESS of SHE WHO BECAME THE SUN FEMALE RAGE of IRON WIDOW PERFORMANCE of HEARTLESS HUNTER
ALT Opening What a shame Yuli would have to sacrifice yet another dress. Glitter danced, caged by beams of afternoon sunlight, as she twirled around the fitting room. On the count of three, she halted. “Oh my Heavens!” Yuli dug her nails into her scalp, forcing out a whine. The wedding dress, tight against her in the Fredonian fashion, looked perfect on her. A divine start to overthrowing her father. “It will not do. Oh, it simply will not do!” Yuli threw herself into a wilting pile of silks and lace. The eunuchs, eyes and ears of the emperor, stood outside the lattice windows, near enough for Yuli to hear them sigh. Yes. Be bored. I’m just a stupid princess at a stupid dress fitting.
ALT Themes and Tropes Morally Gray & Terrifyingly Ambitious MC Multiple POV Imperial Setting Mythical Creature Subversion of Chosen One Weaponized Femininity Second Son Usurpation but make it Eldest Daughter
ALT A green mountain shrouded in fog with book title and metadata.
ALT A green mountain shrouded in fog displaying a book one-line pitch.
ALT A foggy mountain and river background with four comparative titles displayed (The Mercies, Weyward, The Wolf in the Whale, and I Who Have Never Known Men).
ALT A foggy seaside cliff background with a first-page excerpt displayed.
ALT Query Pitch for book The Death I Rule By - a 81,000 word standalone adult dark gothic fantasy mentioning the pitch, comp titles, details, and trigger warnings.
ALT The text reads, Off Book, Upmarket Fiction. Themes: Loneliness, Identity, Family. There is a gradient red/orange background and a photo of a script with a pencil.
ALT A red/orange gradient background with a small clipart of a script. The text reads: Off Book, the pitch: A thirty-one-year-old failed actress takes a job as a daughter for hire for lonely senior citizens to pay for her mother’s expensive memory care facility. When a client dies and leaves her a substantial portion of his estate she must contend with his estranged children and keep secret what happened the last time she saw him to maintain her claim on the money she desperately needs. After she grows close to the client's daughter, who she has been pretending to be, she has to choose between lying to the woman she is falling for or losing the money she needs to care for her dying mom.
ALT A red/orange gradient background with a small clipart of a script. The text reads: Off Book, Excerpt #1: Her mom had never much cared for movies or scripted television shows. “They’re all just playing pretend,” she used to say. But when Survivor premiered in 2000, she was immediately hooked. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of previous seasons and contestants and could recall who had won with only a moment’s hesitation. Mara wondered if that was where her mind was now. If, when her eyes stared into the distance, unfixed on anything at all, she was herself on that island, competing to survive, fighting challengers only she could see.
ALT The background is a gradient red/orange. The text reads Off Book, comps. A picture of the cover of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin with the text "one sided relationship". A picture of the cover of The Guest by Emma Cline with the text "Transactional relationships, playing characters for others". A picture of the cover of Audition by Katie Kitamura with the text "Family as performance, literally".
ALT The text reads, Off Book, Upmarket Fiction. Themes: Loneliness, Identity, Family. There is a gradient red/orange background and a photo of a script with a pencil.
ALT A red/orange gradient background with a small clipart of a script. The text reads: Off Book, the pitch: A thirty-one-year-old failed actress takes a job as a daughter for hire for lonely senior citizens to pay for her mother’s expensive memory care facility. When a client dies and leaves her a substantial portion of his estate she must contend with his estranged children and keep secret what happened the last time she saw him to maintain her claim on the money she desperately needs. After she grows close to the client's daughter, who she has been pretending to be, she has to choose between lying to the woman she is falling for or losing the money she needs to care for her dying mom.
ALT A red/orange gradient background with a small clipart of a script. The text reads: Off Book, Excerpt #2: Carl stopped humming and turned around. “Kris, you’re home.” His face transformed into a beam of light, radiating all the joy of a parent seeing their newborn for the first time. The energy was palpable in the room, and Mara couldn’t help but smile back. He crossed the room, a slight limp in his left leg, and took both Mara’s hands in his own. “I’ve made your favorite dinner. Just the way you like it with a pinch of sugar in the sauce.” Mara took a moment to compose herself, letting the mask of another person’s face slip over hers before responding. She closed her eyes and inhaled. “It smells great, Dad. Exactly how I like it.”
ALT The background is a gradient red/orange. The text reads Off Book, comps. A picture of the cover of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin with the text "one sided relationship". A picture of the cover of The Guest by Emma Cline with the text "Transactional relationships, playing characters for others". A picture of the cover of Audition by Katie Kitamura with the text "Family as performance, literally".
ALT Agents Guide to: Avarice's Wake Adult Dystopian Romance Queer Polyamorous Open Door 112k
ALT Pitch: Aethryn is a capitalist hellscape where love is a ledger item in constant appraisal. When Soren of LowerCity develops a mutation at fourteen that makes his freckles from overwhelming emotion, his family's choice to love him instead of kicking him out costs them their lives. Alone in the slums, Soren is desperate for change and a chance to be loved again. At twenty, he thinks he's found it after meeting the enigmatic Kieran Voss, a wealthy bodyguard from UpperCity. But Kieran's love comes attached to Amos Rhyne—a politician and Kieran's boyfriend of six years—and requires Soren to move into a home with them both. Between his love for Kieran, the hateful attraction he has for Amos, and the cutthroat social world of the elite, Soren's struggle to keep love from being a ledger item threatens to condemn all three of them to the same fate as his family.
ALT For Readers who Love: Tropes: Rivals to lovers, Polyamorous Relationships, Forced Proximity, A protaganist who bites, Fake Dating, Queer POC Representation Comps: The Mars House(Hated Underclass, Transactional Relationship, Poor x Elite, but make it cost something.) AMC's IWTV: Love Outweighing Sense, Complicated Love Interests, Sensual and Dangerous Docile: Capitalist Dystopia, Consent Centered, Love-Starved Lead
ALT Excerpt: Soren shifted on the bench, the sky dark with brightly lit towers that dotted the horizon. “If it’s been so long, and serious, why be open?” Amos raised an eyebrow. “Nobody is monogamous. At least not up here. Partners are like favors. Traded. Shared. Coveted.” “Coveted, yet you’re letting me stay and be with Kieran.” “Letting is a strong word. It doesn’t matter if I like it or not. I’m his partner, not his jailor.” Soren sighed. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear. “Kieran said a similar thing, y’know.” “That he’s not my jailor?” “That he doesn’t like to share.” It was a thin jab, caught in purple eyes framed by dark lashes as Amos smiled beautifully. “Neither of us like to share. And yet, here you are.”
ALT A frosted leaf, a dried purple rose, snuffed candles, books, hooded skeleton statue, spiraling stained glass windows
ALT Cover art for A Sorceress Comes to Call, Servant of Earth, and Elantrix
ALT The covers for The Shattering Peace, The Blighted Stars, and The Fourth Consort
ALT A title card showing LANEBREAKERS in bright, neon font along the top. A scene of a planet orbiting a black hole, a spaceship with rings burning toward it. Behind the planet, the large, ghostly portrait of a grizzled older woman in a pilot's suit and leg brace. She holds a bright pink martini and is smoking bright neon fumes from a cigarette. Along the bottom are the words: she's waited eighthly years for the heist of a lifetime.
ALT COMPS & META INFORMATION Along the bottom right, a black and white image of a space station is framed in blue, the only pop of color a small hauler and its dock in neon. Genre: SF Heist Audience: Adult Wordcount: +-101,000 Themes and Tropes: Blue collar heist (Re)found family Grungy space life Sentient AIs Comps: Rules for Aging and Larceny The Quantum Magician The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Cascade Failure The Suez Canal incident Space Sweepers
ALT Octogenarian Desdemona ‘Dez' Skene was an accomplished pilot, manager of a champion racing team, and small-time con. But her glory years ended decades ago when she botched a flight and badly injured her leg. Now she’s working as a space traffic controller and can barely afford her air bill. Dez's friends don’t call, her ex is seeing someone new, and she owes the mob. Then Dez learns that a massive freighter piloted by an experimental AI will soon cross her local wormhole. If the transit succeeds, it’ll prove computers can navigate hyperlanes without humans, sending corporate stock blasting into orbit and putting Dez and thousands of pilots out of work. But Dez knows the wormhole better than anyone. If this ship’s going to make her obsolete, she intends to make it fund her retirement first. But when the mob boss Dez owes discovers the scheme, she demands a far more lucrative, if dangerous, prize: the AI pilot itself. To pull this off, Dez must win back the crew she once.....
ALT THE CREW Golden boxes house titles and descriptions of characters. The top one, Dez, is a magenta circle that looks sci-fi. Desdemona ‘Dez’ Skene Washed up and too poor for retirement, Dez has a drinking problem and a mob problem. She might have one last job left in her Hacker Finn's got a heart of gold, more backdoors than a hardware store, and would rather be playing video games The Faces Dez’s parents might be older than moon dust, but Hank and Gwen have been conning people for almost a century. They still haven’t lost their touch Sentient Adbot Marty, the uplifted, digital adbot who dreams of personhood. He also happens to live inside Finn's head Crack Pilot Vil is the fastest sled pilot on Midway Station, famous for crushing the illegal racing circuit. Also, he's Dez’ ex of thirty years The Muscle The best mechanic on the station, Caius brings some well-needed muscle. But, most annoyingly, he's Vil's new flame
ALT A title card showing LANEBREAKERS in bright, neon font along the top. A scene of a planet orbiting a black hole, a spaceship with rings burning toward it. Behind the planet, the large, ghostly portrait of a grizzled older woman in a pilot's suit and leg brace. She holds a bright pink martini and is smoking bright neon fumes from a cigarette. Along the bottom are the words: she's waited eighthly years for the heist of a lifetime.
ALT COMPS & META INFORMATION Along the bottom right, a black and white image of a space station is framed in blue, the only pop of color a small hauler and its dock in neon. Genre: SF Heist Audience: Adult Wordcount: +-101,000 Themes and Tropes: Blue collar heist (Re)found family Grungy space life Sentient AIs Comps: Rules for Aging and Larceny The Quantum Magician The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Cascade Failure The Suez Canal incident Space Sweepers
ALT Octogenarian Desdemona ‘Dez' Skene was an accomplished pilot, manager of a champion racing team, and small-time con. But her glory years ended decades ago when she botched a flight and badly injured her leg. Now she’s working as a space traffic controller and can barely afford her air bill. Dez's friends don’t call, her ex is seeing someone new, and she owes the mob. Then Dez learns that a massive freighter piloted by an experimental AI will soon cross her local wormhole. If the transit succeeds, it’ll prove computers can navigate hyperlanes without humans, sending corporate stock blasting into orbit and putting Dez and thousands of pilots out of work. But Dez knows the wormhole better than anyone. If this ship’s going to make her obsolete, she intends to make it fund her retirement first. But when the mob boss Dez owes discovers the scheme, she demands a far more lucrative, if dangerous, prize: the AI pilot itself. To pull this off, Dez must win back the crew she once.....
ALT THE CREW Golden boxes house titles and descriptions of characters. The top one, Dez, is a magenta circle that looks sci-fi. Desdemona ‘Dez’ Skene Washed up and too poor for retirement, Dez has a drinking problem and a mob problem. She might have one last job left in her Hacker Finn's got a heart of gold, more backdoors than a hardware store, and would rather be playing video games The Faces Dez’s parents might be older than moon dust, but Hank and Gwen have been conning people for almost a century. They still haven’t lost their touch Sentient Adbot Marty, the uplifted, digital adbot who dreams of personhood. He also happens to live inside Finn's head Crack Pilot Vil is the fastest sled pilot on Midway Station, famous for crushing the illegal racing circuit. Also, he's Dez’ ex of thirty years The Muscle The best mechanic on the station, Caius brings some well-needed muscle. But, most annoyingly, he's Vil's new flame