ALT An art nouveau style poster featuring a couple. Title: Between Fractures of Light

ALT PosterPit Award 2nd Place She erased memories... Until memory remembered her An Agent's Guide to THE UNMAKING By Cassie Wallin 95k words Adult Upmarket Speculative Shortlist Revpit 2026

ALT The Pitch When a state memory technician who erases what's most emotionally volatile is forced to wipe her mentor's entire mind, her grief unleashes a phantom who remembers everything she's erased. And he won't let her forget. THE UNMAKING By Cossie Wallin

ALT *tv Severance Comp Titles The Corporate Ritual Menace of Severance on Apple TV The Creeping Surveillance of The Dream Hotel DREAM tv HOTEL LAILA LALAMI HE TRUTH WILL SURFACE SILO The Complicit Institutional Unraveling of Silo on Apple TV NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH REV INE TWEE BEST-CELLIS UTHE UF-TALUY BUCY The Visceral Action of Chain-Gang All-Stars *CHAIN - GANG ALL-STARS THE UNMAKING By Cossie Wallin

ALT The Blurk She erased memories, until memory remembered her. Assigned as an elite memory technician, Nova excels at mind violence, deleting what causes emotional volatility for the corporatized government. Except she feels too much. Under the watchful dogma of the state, that feeling could get her mind wiped clean. When the state demands Nova prove her loyalty by erasing her beloved mentor's entire mind, Nova must comply. But the emotional devastation shorts her neural implant, releasing a digital phantom retaining every memory the regime removed. This glitching figure haunts her, flickering at the edge of her vision, bending reality. And he doesn't forget. Possessed by regret, Nova hides what she's meant to erase. When her treason is exposed, and she's forced to flee, a devoted state enforcer, Kade, is tasked with her retrieval. But buried memories the phantom returns to Kade's mind leave him questioning the regime, thrusting him into alliance with Nova.

ALT THE TREES HAVE TEETH An Appalachian Folkhorror

ALT PITCH Olive is eight the first time Death comes for her. She’s nineteen the second time. And Olive knows Death always comes in threes. In the heart of the Appalachian mountains, something wicked lingers in the woods. Olive grew up running barefoot through the trees without fear of what might be lurking. But when the woods begin to devour anything that encroaches with ruthless hunger, and a mysterious man who claims to know both the cause and the cure appears at Olive’s door, she may have to face Death for the third (and final) time. If she doesn’t, the town and the boy she loves will be eaten whole. Knock. Knock. Knock.

ALT COMPS Wolf Worm, Don't Let the Forest In, Hazelthorn, Morsel, Hollow Botanical Horror, Appalachian Mountain Setting, Nature & Rot, Isolated Setting, Eerie Folklore

ALT moodboard featuring mountains, eery woods, and trees

ALT An Agent's Guide to: Between Fractures of Light Adult Romantic Portal Fantasy

ALT Pitch When a shadow in the shape of a man haunts her and kidnaps her childhood best friend, Theo, Augusta’s dull life is shattered. Rescued from the shadows by a mysterious stranger with eyes of fire who reminds her of a past she can’t remember, Augusta is forced into an unfamiliar world she’s only ever dreamed about—a place where Darkness has consumed the Sun, trading ruin for power, leaving all who live there in eternal desolation. As the line between the two realities begins to fracture, Augusta must decide if she’s willing to to give up everything to save this new world—even if it means sacrificing herself.

ALT Comps The Starless Sea Piranesi The Book of Doors Starling House Howl's Moving Castle strange world queer rep interwoven stories lyrical writing portals falling stars dramatic love interests

ALT The field was on fire. It swept over the flowers and tall grasses with ferocity, leaving nothing but smoldering remains and broken hope in its wake. Smoke filled the air, low lying like a blanket. The acrid smell of smoke and burnt flowers was suffocating. The flowers, which had once been beautiful and fragrant, transformed into ugly ash and malodorous fumes. Still, Theo ran, the muscles in his legs burning and his lungs filling with smoke. He was a runner, in more ways than one, and he knew the fatigue that came from legs pushed past the limit. He should be able to run faster than this. The mechanical motion of his legs was hindered by a heaviness like lead weights tied to his ankles. He should be faster, lighter. But maybe he had been running longer than he knew. He couldn’t remember what had come before. He had been spawned into existence, an apparition. There was nothing prior, only darkness and the cool touch of wet stone.

ALT A banner for Elia in Isola, A Transmasculine Nun of Venice. The images show nuns in a parlor set in a gold frame, a prayer book with the shadow of a cross set in a gold frame, and in the background, an oil painting of the grand canal

ALT A banner for Elia in Isola. Comparative titles, showing The Starving Saints, "otherworldly occurrences in a claustrophobic historical setting," The Spirit Bares Its Teeth: Historical Fiction: trans man must hide his identity and his gifts to survive in a hostile world, Nettle and Bone: Fairytale tropes turned on their heads, the cost of power, and in the background, an oil painting of the grand canal

ALT A banner for Elia in Isola. background, an oil painting of the grand canal, an excerpt. The nuns began to sing, their polyphonic notes weaving around one another. Their voices echoed, resounding off the stone walls, tingling down his spine. His eyes flicked back to Mary, as she knelt in her fresco on the ceiling. He was struck by her youth, the closed pressure of her eyes. The words shivered with power. He'd sung them before, but never with his head freshly tonsured, his scalp sensitive and naked beneath his habit, the visions he’d seen of plague and death still replaying at the backs of his eyes. Venice in ruins. She hadn't been believed, either. The wax ran down his taper, burning his fingers, but he did not move his hands. He let the wax sear into them.

ALT A banner for Elia in Isola. background, an oil painting of the grand canal, the pitch. Elia has always been plagued with ecstatic visions. It doesn’t help that he’s secretly transmasculine, which makes him an embarrassment to his Venetian family. On his eighteenth birthday, his parents give him over to the convent. But it is Carnival, and Elia longs to step outside the cloister walls. When he’s cast in a male role in the convent’s play, Elia sees his chance. Then, he stops to speak to the courtesan Rosalina, and steps into the center of a political intrigue he doesn’t understand. Someone has been murdering young women like his new friend. He’s been told his whole life he needs to be less, to avoid attracting attention. Now, he might have to do exactly that to draw out the murderer, to save Rosalina- and himself.

ALT What are dreams if not truth? BETWEEN FRACTURES OF LIGHT A Romantic Portal Fantasy Coming Soon to the Query Trenches interwoven stories, mental health representation, alternate world

ALT moodboard featuring eerie images of appalachia

ALT PROJECT BITTER PAGES Genre Blending Upmarket Speculative By Cassie Wallin She loved her dark book boyfriends... until they came to claim her

ALT PITCH When a chronically alone booktoker accidentally releases the men of her dark romance books during her day-job in a mansion turned private lab, she's caught between the seduction of what she thought she wanted and the violence that comes with. Her only hope? To close the portal in the mansion with the help of a cinnamon roll coworker who, if fictional, she'd definitely DNF.

ALT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER HUSBANDS HOLLY CRAMAZI® CARO CLAIRE BURKE Yesteryear COMPS influencer critique & ironic justice Critique of the partners we desire SAT AHI Agnie Bot SIERRA GREER 0•2 SPLIT FICTION duplicating love interests, but make it evil M EXIC AN GOTHIC Silvia Moreno-Garcia gothic dread & violence of obsession fiction enters reality instead

ALT Vibes: gothic mansion, lab, books, academia, roses, dark figure

ALT WIP guide to The Desert Keeps Her Dead, a weird western fantasy heist. Website: www.saraduranauthor.com.

ALT WIP: The Desert Keeps Her Dead. The pitch: The Desert Keeps Her Dead is a weird western fantasy set in a desert frontier where water wells are created using the bones of extinct beasts. When a death-obsessed paleontologist is pulled into a high-stakes theft by her estranged bounty hunter best friend, she joins a fractured crew, including a runaway teen aristocrat and a desert-drifting inventor, to steal the only intact specimen in the world. As the heist’s pressure mounts, new loyalties surface and old betrayals take hold. What begins as a routine job becomes something far more dangerous: a choice between seizing the fossil’s power or destroying it for good, and with it, the fragile system keeping the desert alive. Comp titles include The Water Outlaws, Red Rabbit, And Side by Side They Wander, and The Geomagician. Website: www.saraduranauthor.com.

ALT WIP: The Desert Keeps Her Dead. The team: Amelie, the expert: death-obsessed paleontologist, twinless twin, anxious girlie, Dehla’s ex-best friend. Dehla, the leader: bounty hunter, gunslinger, Amelie’s ex-best friend. Lu, the wildcard: runaway aristocrat, fifteen years old, baby enby, mission bargaining chip. Silas, the getaway car: desert-drifting inventor, former soldier, groveling MMC, Amelie’s love interest. Shae, the obstacle: rival bounty hunter after the same target, knife-to-throat baddie, Dehla’s ex-girlfriend. Website: www.saraduranauthor.com.

ALT WIP: The Desert Keeps Her Dead. The vibes: heist story inside a fantasy world, weird western vibes, gothic desert setting, paleontology, bone-based magic, evil oil companies, blood-drinking cultists, creepy desert creatures, dual-POV, adult friendships, M/F and F/F romance, morally gray ladies, sapphic and enby rep, anxiety rep, ecological lens, and setting as character. Website: www.saraduranauthor.com.

ALT "A knife to a throat was known to reveal any hidden knowledge. And when the knowledge was revealed, the throat had no more use. Blood dripped from knives sharpened on the bones of the dead." Between Fractures of Light