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Valentina Sainato
JABberwocky Literary Agency
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Currently Looking For
I’ve been with JABberwocky Literary Agency since early 2020, and I’m looking for fresh, enticing fiction in sf/f/h genres! ———————- Horror: Horror is my favorite genre to read, and I’m looking for lots of different flavors here. Whether it’s gruesome, eerie, disorienting, thrilling, existential, or horror-lite, I want to read it. Blends with sci-fi/fantasy are also welcome, but the book should still feel at home on the horror shelf! I love stories featuring ghosts, haunted spaces, monsters, witches, and demons, but I really want to see fresh takes on them with unexpected twists. Other elements I enjoy: body horror, cults or secret societies, natural phenomena (flora, fauna, fungi, insects, parasites, etc.), liminal spaces, themes of reality/unreality, and claustrophobic settings. But what I mainly look for in a horror book are well-developed characters I can root for — or, alternatively, characters whose wrongs I can get behind. While I tend to gravitate more to supernatural or suspenseful horror over serial killers, I do like self-aware homages to slasher & cult films (like Stephen Graham Jones’ brilliant My Heart is a Chainsaw). Survival horror or horror with thriller elements are also sub-genres that I like but don’t read as often. Horror media I love: ———————- Fantasy: I’m eager to see projects from all different cultures and histories, particularly non-Western and non-European stories! Character- and world-building are a big priority for me in fantasy and mythology projects. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a manuscript jumps right into the plot when I don’t have a clear sense of who I’m reading about and why I should invest in these stakes. For fantasy, I lean more towards the contemporary side of things but am open to secondary-world fantasies with a unique premise as well. Lush atmospheric settings and fresh magic systems mean more to me than swords & sorcery or Chosen One books. Cozy or soft fantasy is also very welcome in my query box (a la Legends & Lattes, Over the Garden Wall, or Studio Ghibli). And while I’m not looking for romantasy, I am generally open to romantic elements or romance as a B-plot. With mythology and folklore, I’m most excited by fiction that draws on a specific tale or lore and shapes it into its own story. Whether it’s a close retelling or loose adaptation, I want to be sucked in by how fresh and unexpected the world seems, even if it’s mythology or folklore I know very well. Fantasy/mythology media I love: ———————- Science fiction / speculative fiction: I’m more selective about science fiction and speculative fiction; I’m a big character reader and want stories with an emotional core that drives them. I was absolutely blown by Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark as well as Simon Jimenez’s The Vanished Birds; projects in those vein are what I’d love to work on. I also love narratives that play with time and/or space. Sci-fi books that deep dive into spaceship mechanics or battle sequences generally
Submission Guidelines
To query Valentina, please submit your query letter and the first ten pages of your completed manuscript through the online form at https://querymanager.com/query/ValentinaSainato . Guidelines & Details Vital Info @valentinasainato.bsky.social Website
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