Can you please tell us more about your book?

We, the Missing is an adult speculative horror about a girl who sets out to save her mother from the rising epidemic of disappearances and discovers her world is full of darkness. That’s the formal log line. The informal log line is that it’s a story working under the premise that the universe has forgotten us and angels are monsters.

(Is this the part I can shamelessly link my goodreads page for the full summary? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220830261-we-the-missing)

How long had you been querying/submitting it?

This is a somewhat complicated question for a convoluted querying history.

The short answer is two rounds of queries: the first round 6 agents, 3 of which I pitched in person at a conference. The second round was three small presses after I decided to pursue indie/small press publication.

The long answer is that I have been working on this project for some capacity since 2004 when a teenage self wrote a version of the story it is today. I grew up with this book–I wrote and rewrote as I learned more about writing and how to tell a good story and then rewrote it yet again when I finally figured out what this story was and how I wanted to tell it. It switched genres and age groups at least once if not twice. It was a beast and probably the most worked on project I have to date. In that process I queried other versions unsuccessfully. Attempted mentorships and editing giveaways. It was a degrading mess and was an on and off again years long experience.

Had you considered submitting your manuscript to a small/indie press before the #SmallPitch event?

#SmallPitch was a serendipitous event for me in my querying journey. I had been in intense discussion with my friends/critique partners about what I wanted for this project and how there were a lot of elements at odds with a Big Five publication, mainly the larger (though not insurmountable–around 150k) word count and slow burn pace. I knew what I could do to make it punchier and faster and more commercially viable for an agent to pick up, but I didn’t know if I wanted to. I felt like I had told the story I wanted to tell in the manner I wanted to tell it. The entire theme of WtM is powerlessness and desperation, the horror of confronting a world that is so large and powerful it topples one over. It’s a slow burn unfolding of escalating violence and despair with a begrudgingly but did it kill you ending rather than a happy one. I felt that making it viable for Big Five publication would thwart that theme.

But of course, like most writers who are pursuing professional careers, I had this idea of success. And success, for me at the time, meant an agent and a big advance with a big publishing house. But my thinking around what success actually is in the current publishing landscape changed. A lot of books I had been reading and enjoying were from small presses, which made me realize that we are in an era of multiple pathways of success in this field and I became more open to the idea of going indie for this project without an agent. (Also, I can’t fault agents for not wanting to take on a gargantuan horror book about generational trauma and drug addiction with a speculative bent. I had to really admit to myself it was a niche audience I was writing for.)

So this entire conversation was happening at the same time I learned about #SmallPitch. My close friend and critique partner told me she really felt like this book would get snapped up by a smaller press that could take more risks than an agent. I decided to pitch that day as my debut into querying small presses and within two months I had signed with Conquest.

How has your experience been with your publisher so far? (from the #SmallPitch like to today)

I’ve been really happy with Conquest–I’m somewhat in this gray area because I haven’t started edits and the support has mostly been around helping me build an audience and brand but the interactions I have had I’ve felt good about. They’re very new to the scene–I think about 18 months old– but I’ve been impressed with how transparent and hard working the EIC, Brittany is. I have a friend signed with Wild Ink, who works closely with Conquest as somewhat of a ‘sister press’, and has had a good experience which I knew going into my conversation prior to signing. This press is really the perfect place for WtM and I’m grateful that they wanted to take it on as part of their 2026 line up.

My only complaint is that they’re on slack, not discord, but you can’t have everything I guess.

What advice do you have for querying authors?

Get a good group of people who are absolutely feral about your project so when you feel like complete dog shit in the middle of querying they can hype you up. Seriously. I am so lucky to have a core group of critique partners that turned into friends who just really love WtM and really want it to succeed, so when I was experiencing the harsher aspect of the querying journey I had a groupchat to go cry about it in.

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