General preference for upmarket stories (aka stories with literary writing and thoughtful critique that also have a genre hook and don't lose sight of pacing).

• Compelling, complex, flawed characters complemented by a voice that draws me in. While I typically prefer writing that leans lyrical, I also enjoy humorous and snarky voices.

• For fantasy: magic systems that are so well-crafted they feel almost scientific; worlds that feel real and atmospheric and draw from something other than Medieval Europe (extra points if you can comp The Empress of Salt and Fortune)

• For sci-fi: stories that are less about pew-pew lasers and more about reflecting on human nature, and that include thoughtful projections of our future; would love something with a dystopian or apocalyptic bent

• For horror / thriller / mystery: while I love some goriness, I prefer for the tension to be psychological and emotional, rather than stemming from jump scares and rolling heads; I love weird girl horror, body horror, and literary thriller (extra points if you can comp A Certain Hunger).

• Interested in anything that can be described as “weird and gross” or “literary and tragic.”

• Would love an interesting genre mashup (eg: The Starving Saints) and/or something with an interesting narrative structure (multiple timelines, mixed media, etc).

• Looking for stories that represent people, cultures, and settings that have been traditionally sidelined in mainstream media.

• Probably NOT for me, though I’d love to be proven wrong: road trips, heavily romance-centric stories, main characters that are royalty, hard sci-fi (space sci-fi is fine and fun, just not sci-fi that goes very heavy on describing tech), retellings that have been done a lot (Beauty and the Beast, Alice in Wonderland, Greek mythology), dark academia that happens in an academy but does not critique the academia.