Submission status
Open
Submission route
Email
Response time
Aims to reply within 6 weeks
Last checked
Today

About

Rachel is a literary agent at Mushens Entertainment, representing both literary and commercial fiction with a preference for darker stories.

She began her publishing career at HarperCollins before working as an editor at Hachette for six years, most recently as a Commissioning Editor at Orion. She joined Mushens Entertainment in 2022 and became a Literary Agent in 2023 after covering Juliet Mushens' maternity leave.

Looking for

  • emotionally-charged book-club fiction
  • literary crime
  • literary speculative fiction
  • a literary love story that will leave readers devastated
  • dark academia
  • weird-girl fiction
  • upmarket contemporary horror, with a particular soft spot for femgore or allegorical horror that explores social issues
  • dystopian in the vein of Divergent or The Hunger Games but make it adult
  • romance and rom-coms, her current obsession is 'Off Campus' on TV, so anything similar please send her way (think new adult protagonists with a healthy dose of spice)
  • epic fantasy and romantasy, she particularly loves a school setting or trials, the deadlier the better
  • thrillers
  • concept-led fiction, whether upmarket or commercial
  • a high-stakes heist novel
  • a locked room thriller in a unique location that informs the plot or does something surprising with the classic set-up
  • thrillers set in the 90s
  • a thriller with a teenage strand or protagonists in their early twenties
  • a skewering trad-wife novel
  • outsiders trying to break into the world of the privileged and morally bankrupt

Not looking for

  • urban fantasy
  • historical pre 1950s
  • women’s fiction
  • uplit
  • dark romance
  • romantic suspense
  • cosy crime
  • young adult
  • middle grade
  • children’s

Clients include

  • Emma Lowther
  • Elle Machray
  • Shouka Rohanizadeh
  • Lucy V. Kirk
  • Kate Bailey
  • Teresa Jacinta Tomás
  • Evan Lloyd
  • Vana Lei
  • Sue Hincenbergs
  • Emily Slapper
  • Kate Dylan
  • Faith Gladwin
  • Claire Frances
  • Mark Boutros
  • Ashleigh Fox

Agency submission guidelines

Mushens Entertainment accepts submissions by email only. Submissions sent by post will not be read or returned. Not accepted: picture books, middle-grade, children's fiction younger than teen, individual short stories, erotica, poetry, screenplays, or comics/graphic novels. AI policy: Submissions must be the original work of the author. The agency will not consider submissions originated, written or edited using AI, including query letters. Email address: submissions@mushens-entertainment.com Fiction: Send a clear subject line (eg 'Fiction Submission: TITLE OF YOUR WORK'), addressed to the specific agent. Include a cover letter in the body of the email, a synopsis as an attachment, and a PDF or Word document containing either the first three chapters, the first 10-15,000 words, or the first 50 pages. The manuscript must be complete at the time of submission. Non-fiction: Send a clear subject line (eg 'Non-Fiction Submission: TITLE OF YOUR WORK'), with a cover letter in the body of the email addressed to the specific agent. Attach a PDF or Word document proposal, or the first 10-15,000 words of a completed manuscript. The book does not need to be complete, but a completed proposal and sample writing are required. Short story collections: Only Maria Whelan accepts these. Send a cover letter in the body of the email addressed to Maria, with a synopsis attached and a PDF or Word document of the collection totalling 40,000 to 75,000 words. The agency accepts primarily literary fiction, collections with elements of magical realism, or speculative work, including collections of previously published and/or unpublished stories, provided the collection as a whole has not been previously published. The manuscript must be complete at the time of submission. Novellas: Only Maria Whelan accepts these. Send a cover letter in the body of the email addressed to Maria, with a synopsis attached. The agency accepts primarily literary fiction, with elements of speculative or contemporary fiction, between 17,000 and 40,000 words. The manuscript must be unpublished in book form and the author's own original work, and complete at the time of submission. Agent interests: Rachel Neely is looking for crime, thrillers (literary and commercial), fantasy, dystopian, literary speculative, dark academia, horror and high-concept book club fiction. Maria Whelan is looking for literary and upmarket fiction, speculative fiction, horror, magical realism and reimaginings of myths, fairy tales and folklore, cultural criticism, narrative nonfiction, big-idea nonfiction and select cookbooks and food writing.

Agency AI policy

They will not consider submissions originated, written or edited using artificial intelligence (AI). This includes query letters/submission letters.

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