Tales from the slushpile:

Even though I'm Indie, I pursued NY like a relentless pitbull coveting a steak before, I've made some friends in the biz and am fortunate to have them blog for me when I'm just too busy to do so myself. So without further ado... Mysteryinternx take it away!

Hi everyone, thanks Marie for letting me drop by! Marie asked me the other day if I could give her some insight into what I've been reading in my slush pile lately and here's a few greats and some bad.

You may have heard paranormals are glutted and aren't selling well,partially true, but there's always an audience for it. NY is just slightly more picky now with what they'll accept. At the moment ghosts are very interesting. We've pretty much seen more than we care to see about vampires and demons, although, if it's good by all means send it along. Just know we're much more snobby with those now. Another personal favorite of mine are fairy tale themed books. And by that I mean, fairy legends or traditional fairy tales (IE: Beauty and the Beast) but with a twist, and for me personally, the darker the better.

Pirates! Where are they? I would love to see more pirate themed books. Not necessarily traditional pirates... but a YA pirate themed book, if you're writing one, send it off!

Food themed contemporaries, pretty hot right now. NY is really into the whole foodie craze at the moment thanks to Food Network and high profile chefs, so if you're writing one, great time to query with it.

A disturbing trend I've been reading is Incest themed romances. Please don't. Just, don't. They're not sexy, and even if the writing is fantastic, the market is way too small for it.

Zombies. Sigh... unless it's really, really good. Tough, tough sale. Readers, we're finding, are just not that into dead love interests, go figure.

Interracial romances are still great, would love to see more unusual locales as well. We're always keeping an eye out for them.

As of this moment, contemporaries are really the king of the block- any derivation of them. Mystery, Suspense, Romance, Beach Reads.... they're doing really well.

For all you Sci-Fi writers out there, take heart, sciene fiction romances are garnering slightly more interest than before. And since before there was about zero interest, take that for it's worth. But now might be a good time to dust yours off and take a crack at the market.

But in the end what we most want is an amazing story. If you've written about an Asian zombie with the hots for her brother and won several awards and made people cry, forget everything I've said and send it off. You just never know!

Thanks mysteryinternx! Well, I hope ya'll learned something here, I know I have! :D
~Marie