{"id":3053,"date":"2026-10-13T11:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/?p=3053"},"modified":"2026-10-13T11:53:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:53:14","slug":"opening-to-selective-submissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/opening-to-selective-submissions\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening to Selective Submissions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-cover is-light has-custom-content-position is-position-top-left\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" data-attachment-id=\"3056\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/opening-to-selective-submissions\/img_2168-2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-scaled.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"2560,1920\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"IMG_2168\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-1024x768.jpg\" class=\"wp-block-cover__image-background wp-image-3056 size-large\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-1024x768.jpg\" data-object-fit=\"cover\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2168-1-1140x855.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><span aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-cover__background has-background-dim\" style=\"background-color:#ab8767\"><\/span><div class=\"wp-block-cover__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-cover-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Pumpkins.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are. so. many. pumpkins in October in California. Green ones, white ones, orange ones, bumpy ones, long ones, lumpy ones. And I fell for them all. I gathered as many as I could in one shopping cart and now they are scattered all over my house and yard, as &#8220;decor.&#8221; Which is what I wish I could do with all of the fantastic submissions I get, rather than regretfully let them go because I can&#8217;t have them all. I&#8217;ve been delaying opening to submissions, because I know I can&#8217;t take on very many new clients right now, particularly new kid-lit or SFF writers. Yet I still want more upmarket adult fiction. I spent a week in NYC (photo of a weather-bedraggled me in the Aevitas conference room) and realized I was hungry for more. But the idea of opening to submissions just overwhelmed me. The pumpkins are everywhere! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I read <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DdoKNuSlXmM\/?img_index=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this post<\/a> by fellow literary agent Eric Smith of Neighborhood Literary. He had articulated exactly what I was feeling about my list &#8220;<strong>it&#8217;s about making sure you&#8217;re giving everyone the right kind of attention<\/strong>.&#8221; My SFF and kid-lit clients are getting my best attention, anymore and I risk getting stretched thin. But I do have the capacity for more clients in other genres. So I was inspired to take a page out of his book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am opening to selective submissions. I am <strong>not<\/strong> opening to children&#8217;s or genre SFF. My list is quite robust in both these areas already. I am only opening to adult fiction in other genres. So if you find yourself here, because you are wondering why you couldn&#8217;t find your genre\/age option in Query Manager, hopefully you now understand. I am still actively reading and keeping up-to-date in these areas, and I will open to them again in the future. But for now, I want to make sure my energy is balanced, and that the only clutter happening is from pumpkins. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are. so. many. pumpkins in October in California. Green ones, white ones, orange ones, bumpy ones, long ones, lumpy ones. And I fell for them all. I gathered as many as I could in one shopping cart and now they are scattered all over my house and yard, as&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/opening-to-selective-submissions\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3054,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[109,19],"tags":[83,75,47],"class_list":["post-3053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agent-life","category-submissions","tag-askagent","tag-literary-agent","tag-submissions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6esjn-Nf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_2131-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3053"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3059,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions\/3059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marycmoore.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}