Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · May 22

Stopping by to share the 🍂 editor’s guide 🕯️ to 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐄, my 83,000-word sapphic YA dark fantasy with crossover potential.

Peep the new pitch 👀

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Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Apr 14

“𝙇𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙩?” 𝘝𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘦𝘥. 𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘥, 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥. “𝙁*𝙘𝙠 𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜. 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙙𝙚𝙖𝙙.”

Vivian Ruygh, by the amazing oliv_pit 🌊

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Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Apr 14

‘𝘒𝘢𝘵𝘫𝘢 𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘦, 𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙨𝙚𝙚.’

Katja Boden, by the amazing oliv_pit 🌿

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Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Apr 8

“𝙄𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙮.” 𝘝𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯. “𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙙𝙞𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙮𝙤𝙪?”
𝘒𝘢𝘵𝘫𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬. “𝙃𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙢𝙚 𝙖 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙘𝙝.”
“𝘼𝙧𝙚 𝙮𝙤𝙪?”
𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥. “𝙈𝙖𝙮𝙗𝙚.”

#WritingCommunity

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Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Mar 25

👀🤭

Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Mar 18

Ahhh thank you so much 🥹

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Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Mar 17

#PopUpPitE #LuckyPit

🫀 • Chronic illness rep
🧹 • Witches
⚓️ • A ghost ship
🍂 • Sleuthing lesbians
🌊 • Coastal town w/ sinister secrets

‘𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 arrived by neither steed nor raven, but as it did every solstice—aboard a coal-black galleon with charred sails.’

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Ruth Cantu is querying 🦄 @ruth-cantu-writes.bsky.social · Mar 17

DAWN OF ONYX x DISCOVERY OF WITCHES

Divine fate must be broken if it thinks Alys Sathos is supposed to help free the enemy witch realm of their compulsion wielding Queen and not even the brooding Prince who captured her is going to change her mind.

#LuckyPit #PopUpPitA #F #A

An Agent’s Guide to Eleutheria. 133k Adult high Romantic fantasy. Image of woman in a glass dome holding a moon in one hand and in other.

Pitch: Alys Sathos has no interest in liberating the enemy Night Realm of their mind-controlling queen and not even destiny will change her mind. When she’s captured and forced before the queen, her enemies’ fight becomes her own and her growing feelings for the mind-bound prince might be more deadly than the queen herself.
Tropes: captive to forbidden lovers, freewill themes, mob mentality, non western FMC thrust into western fantasy world, neurodivergence in high fantasy, dueling witch realms, swords and epic battles, power of history and books, queer normative world

Comps: THE HURRICANE WARS- enemy realms at odds. A DAWN OF ONYX- captive to lovers. A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES- creature history and lore
Chapter One Sample: Gritting my teeth until my jaw ached, I held her stare; a pathetic bit of defiance against power I couldn’t match. She rose and loomed over me on the dais, never blinking. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled one by one as her dark sapphire eyes glowed silver.
Compulsion.
Icy fingers sank into my mind, ripping through my will. Ko’s pale green face replaced any other thought. A desire to run a sword through him overtook everything; my hopes, my dreams, my very will that had formed an airwitch captain from an orphaned street rat.

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kate duarte is AGENTED 🏹🗡️ @authorkateduarte.bsky.social · Mar 17

GODKILLER x THE CURSE OF SAINTS
When Merit's lover chooses her best friend as his next sacrifice, Merit vows to murder him. But to slay a god, she must first find his weakness—and defeat his bodyguard, the wielder of death.

#PopUpPitA #LuckyPit #PopUpPit #F #A

An agent's guide to ALL GODS MUST DIE by Kate Duarte

Adult Romantic Fantasy with Horror elements
comps: heartless hunter, to cage a god, the starving saints, the knight and the moth, versailles
When Merit's lover chooses her best friend as his next sacrifice, Merit vows to murder him. But to slay a god, she must first find his weakness—and defeat his loyal bodyguard, the wielder of death.

→ Lovers to Enemies
→ Female Rage
→ Slow Burn
→ Magic Corrupts You
→ Fake Courtship
→ Friends to Lovers
→ Banter
→ Religious Corruption

She never noticed the freckles speckling his hooked nose before. The flush is gone from his face, turning him less boyish, more lethal.
“If I glue myself to the executioner’s shadow, who’ll have the guts to approach me?”
“I thought the point was that you didn’t wish to dance.”
“I don’t wish to dance with anyone who’d want to court me.” Merit taps his shoulder. “I believe I’m safe from that with you.”
“Hm.” He turns her under the arch of his arm, hands twining again as she returns to his chest. “Either way, thank you.”
“Likewise.” She smiles brightly, this time in earnest.
Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Kalla close to the refreshments’ table, entangled with Talia and another woman. Good for her.
Kalla’s gaze catches hers, an eyebrow quirked as if to say you witty bastard.
Merit answers with a grin. Watch me, sister. I’ll go to the brim of the world to save you.

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amarie is ✨ON SUB✨ @amariewrites.bsky.social · Mar 17

FOR LOVERS OF ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE x TALIA HIBBERT x DANIELLE ALLEN

When Amara struggles to find a contractor to renovate her plus-size boutique, she enlists the help of her ex-childhood best friend (& first love), Theo, who she hasn’t spoken to in 8 years.
#LuckyPit #PopUpPitE #Agented

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thea liu @authorthealiu.bsky.social · Mar 17

OUR INFINITE FATES x STUDIO GHIBLI

Hanna is convinced nothing will ever change on her island-in-the-sky—including dying at 17 in every one of her lives.

Then a boy from below crash-lands in his plane. He could be her salvation…or her next death.

#LuckyPit #PopUpPit #PopUpPitE

moodboard with pink and purple tones featuring pink flowers, clouds, Fuji mountain, a street in Japan, a girl surrounded by flowers, and the quotes “souls don’t meet by accident” and “let’s meet again, for the first time”

Art of a dark haired boy and girl kissing beneath a tree, surrounded by poppies and hydrangeas

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Melissa Tyndall @melissatyndall.bsky.social · Mar 17

When Emma wakes up on a property haunted by nearly headless horsegirls tasked with reaping a serial killer, she & her true-crime-obsessed bestie have to solve the case…without Emma falling in love with the leader of the ghosts. #LuckyPit #PopUpPitE

Quote from book with arrows describing tropes and features of book like southern gothic, Asian LI rep, nearly headless horse girls, sapphic slow burn, set in TN at Christmas.

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a (dil)emma ✨️ is AGENTED! @emmailene.bsky.social · Mar 17

EDITORS!! ✨️👀🗡🔥

When Alya, a notorious assassin, makes a deal to kill the deadly prince's enemies in exchange for her secrets kept buried she never expects to:

A: hunt down & kill the lost Romanov heir
B: start falling for the prince she may have to kill

#PopUpPitE #LuckyPit #agented #PopUpPit

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Rowan Brighton Brown @rowanbrightonbrown.bsky.social · Mar 17

A Southern inheritance is always dark—whether it's a penchant for pills, a blood-soaked family farm, or an ancient magic. Sierra spurns them all, but when her dad disappears, she must choose which monsters to slay, and which to become.

#PopUpPitE #LuckyPit

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amarie is ✨ON SUB✨ @amariewrites.bsky.social · Mar 17

When Isadora struggles to keep her aunt’s magic shop open, she’s given the chance to grumpy demon, Gio, in order to secure his inheritance. If she can make it a year, he’ll give her the funds needed to get the shop out of debt.

#LuckyPit #PopUpPitE

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Heather Carter @hlcarterauthor.bsky.social · Mar 17

LAKESEDGE X HILL HOUSE
A shadow demon has marked Chloe as the future bride of the ruthless Underworld prince, trapping her in a haunted house. She has 3 weeks to break the bond or forever live in darkness. A handsome ghost may hold the key.
#LuckyPit #PopUpPitE #A #F #R

A dark staircase background. White text reads: A DEATH WITHOUT YOU, HEATHER CARTER, CAN TRUE LOVE TRANSCEND THE CHASM BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH? ON SUBMISSION NOW. Three images- one book cover of Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone, a movie posted for Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House, and a movie poster for The Phantom of the Opera

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Sarah Rowlands @sarahauthor27.bsky.social · Mar 17

🫐BELLADONNA x OUTLANDER☘️
🖤1912 Gothic Romantasy
🌿BodyHorror plant monsters
🌸CottageGore

When Estella discovers an enchanted glen with old Irish curse, she must hide her monstrous symptoms (and her interest in the Irish) from her husband before they become his medical experiment #PopUpPitA #LuckyPit

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Michelle 🍂 is AGENTED 🕯️ @mdkerkhoven.bsky.social · Mar 17

Thank you! 🥰

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austin (🛤️ is querying 🛤️) @austinsgrace.bsky.social · Mar 17

(re)introducing HOW TO COME HOME:

⛓️ PEAKY BLINDERS x CAT SEBASTIAN
🏳️‍🌈 upmarket queer historical romance
🛤️ an ex-con w/a head for numbers
🎼 a former musical prodigy dealing w/disability
📚 small-town troubles & big-city ghosts

#LuckyPit #PopUpPit #PopUpPitA

Pitch card for HOW TO COME HOME, pitched as PEAKY BLINDERS X WE COULD BE SO GOOD.
Ten years ago, Nathan Gilliard stole $100,000 from his family’s safe and turned informant on his family’s Prohibition contraband empire, damning his brothers to life in prison in exchange for a ten-year sentence of his own. Stepping out as a free man in 1937, he’s set on spending his life alone and penitent, never forgetting what he did to his family—or why.
Taking a job in a small-town general store is the perfect stopgap, even if Nathan uses a false name to hide his identity...and even if his new boss, handsome, bespectacled single father Lawrence Freburg, is as earnest and kindhearted as Nathan’s upbringing and time in prison weren’t.
Pitch text is set against an image of a cornfield and full moon at dusk, with gold decorative borders in the top left and bottom right corners

Trope/theme map for HOW TO COME HOME, with a digital painting of Nathan and Lawrence at the center. Lawrence, sitting to the left, is a white blond man playing piano and smiling, with glasses hanging from his neck. Nathan, right, is a dark-haired white man watching him play.

Tropes/themes read:
Upmarket historical romance
107,000 words
Dual POV with flashbacks
Running from the past, returning to the past
Crime family/criminal brothers
Unconventional family structures
Queerness & homemaking
Disability =/= disabling

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Sophie Cass (is agented) @scasswriting.bsky.social · Mar 17

OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA x THE WITCHER

🌿 Dual POV mother/daughter
🌿 Reluctant allies to lovers
🌿 Coming-of-age queer romance
🌿 Instalove vs slow-burn lust
🌿 Everyone is morally grey
🌿 Eco-horror fantasy
🌿 Elemental secondary world

#PopUpPit #PopUpPitE #LuckyPit #A #F

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Rowan Brighton Brown @rowanbrightonbrown.bsky.social · Mar 17

A Southern inheritance is always dark—whether it's a penchant for pills, a blood-soaked family farm, or an ancient magic. Sierra spurns them all, but when her dad disappears, she must choose which monsters to slay, and which to become.

#PopUpPitE #LuckyPit

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Courtney Reece is on sub @courtneywrites.bsky.social · Mar 17

NONE OF THIS IS TRUE x WHAT LIES BENEATH

When Sophie is brutally dumped, she can’t help but wonder:

Is she possessed or just pissed?

🥀1950s flashbacks
🌊a coastal town with secrets
🔪female rage & revenge
🌊second-chance love
🥀a twist that will 👀

#PopUpPitE #LuckyPit

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Rhian Parry 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿📚 @dearrhian.bsky.social · Mar 17

Introducing A MORTAL DROWNING, an academic rivals to lovers romantasy that uses altered mythology as an allegory for stifling oppressed voices, and explores how the alienation of autistic people perpetuates their inherent feelings of wrongness 🥀✨

#PopUpPit #LuckyPit #PopUpPitE

A mortal man with no memory of his past and a goddess the earth has no memory of compete for their university’s magic in a world where magic, and the language that sustains it, is dying - and whichever student loses will have their own extinction to worry about.

Comp titles: Addie LaRue, Divine Rivals, Emily Wilde, Modern Divination, A Study in Drowning and Tales of a Monstrous Heart

Aesthetic graphic featuring the ocean, a castle, poetic prose, hand holding, white flowers and a woman in 1910s/20s style clothing

Olwen, a solar goddess, needs magic to escape an ex lover with murderous intent while Arthur, a mortal man, needs it to recover his memory as the sole survivor in a string of men found drowned with magic in their lungs. But with rumours of stirring deities intent on desolation haunting crumbling shores, and the magic that once saved a nation from falling to the bottom of an ocean on the brink of extinction, time is running out.

Olwen and Arthur’s academic rivalry intensifies alongside an unlikely romance, and when the two students join forces to make sense of the chaos, each new discovery leads to one damning conclusion: uncovering the truth of Arthur’s missing past might be the mistake that kills them both.

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Michelle Sanchez is AGENTED! @sanchezmm.bsky.social · Mar 17

#LuckyPit #PopUpPit
I'm an unlucky girl trapped in Grandfather's cliffhouse,
caretaker of his magic box with 3 human hearts I must feed blood.
They die? I die.
Handsome Duke Lugo offers a blood bargain, but he's hungry to expose the secrets of Casa del Demonio...and me.
#PopUpPitE #YA #Gothic #H

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