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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦

@joyiswriting.bsky.social

1.3K followers 670 following 430 posts

🏳️‍🌈 writer of fantasy, horror, and mystery for MG & YA. Old 🩰 dancer and avid gardener 🪴 I love Earl Grey tea almost as much as I love to travel!

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · Aug 6

Proudly presenting my new guide for my revised manuscript w/ ✨Big 5+✨ editor interest!

In the life of a Victorian noble, society will rip you to shreds. But in this Iris-istibly deadly mystery, so will the flowers that lurk around Greer Manor. . . 🥀

#questpit #MG #Q #H #MY

An agents guide to: What Lurks Beneath the Glass
By Joy Culp

Pitch: 13-year-old Maggie must team up with Adelaide, the morbid and lonely heir of Greer Manor, to solve a deadly mystery and prove her father's innocence in a recent fire after Mr. Greer blames him for planting explosive bushes. But as the mystery turns paranormal, and people start disappearing, the girls realize there may be something scarier lurking than just specters, and the rare botanical specimens that inhabit the Manor's greenhouses may have a taste for more than just bugs—
Beware the plants you trod on . . .

Comps: The Swifts, Don’t Let the Forest In, Serafina and the Black Cloak, Little Shop of Horrors, Aggie Morton: Mystery Queen, The Haunting of Aveline Jones

49,000k Historical MG Garden Horror

Snippet:
She gently brushed her hand over one of the fat triangular petals, its leathery surface rough like the skin of an exotic reptile. She rose on her toes, disrupting several flies before peeking over the center. A gaping circular hole was in place of where the pollen should've been, and crawling in the center of the flower was a horde of shiny black beetles. The creepy little insects climbed over each other rapidly, thousands of legs rolling and rippling like the tides of the ocean. While their curved pincers chomped away at the gooey inner flesh of the flower.
She shivered, quickly backpedaling away from the foul sight as she fell. She landed roughly on the ground, her hands hitting something strangely squishy, almost like a delicate cake. She lifted her hand in horror, as slimy red hunks clung to her fingers. A thin line of mucous connected the lumps, the sap dripping from her fingers.

Carnivorous flowers & hungry plants, Inspired by Alnwick Poison Garden, Haunted teaparties & spooky seances, Victorian Horticultural society, cottageGORE & botanical horror, subterranean greenhouses

Moodboard from left to right: abandoned greenhouse, fancy manor, Victorian girl, poisonous flower, Venus flytrap, a conservatory, a historical woman with a skull, an abandoned estate, a person drowning.

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 8d

Yay! Thank you for participating!

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 8d

Thank you so much!!!!

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you!!! ☺️

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you! 😌💅

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

AHHH, tysm!! <3

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

lol!! I’m glad you like my silly flower puns!! 😂

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

When the line between friendly and deadly cryptids begins to blur, Elle discovers her crush is hiding some monsters of her own. One that might just take the clinic, and Elle’s heart, down with her if she doesn’t finally risk letting her own inner monsters out of the closet.

#DVpit #YA #H #R #LGBT

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

I love any book that includes jinn and also, the “you in every universe” trope is sooo good 🫶

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Yay, thank you so much!! ❤️

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Well, things get pretty interesting 👀🥀

a man is standing in front of a sign that says this is audrey

ALT: a man is standing in front of a sign that says this is audrey

media.tenor.com

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you!! It was a rather harried pitch so I’m glad you like it!! ☺️

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Found family & a war against gods??!? This sounds amazing!! 🔥🔥

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Your art is soooo lovely! 🫶

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

That tagline in the moodboard?!?! Chills! ❤️

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Love it!!

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Love how Big Pharma is the real villian!

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Between those comps and that hook, this sounds SO good!!

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Oooh, mid-2000’s music is such a vibe!!

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

AHHH, thank you so much, Katie!!

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Ooooh 👀 I can confirm that I DO have a Feu Follet in mine 😉

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Oh that’s so cool!! I adored PJO, and all the other awesome myth that have risen since the series!!

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you!!!

Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

👻 EIGHT ghosts
🕵️ FOUR suspects
🌸 ONE monstrous flower

The Greer Estate used to be revered for its rare botanicals, but now guests leave with tales of horror, missing limbs, and sometimes not at all . . . 🥀

Can two girls unravel this Iris-istibly deadly mystery??

#DVpit #MG #H #Mys #ND #LGBT

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

a man in a top hat and bow tie is talking to another man in a room .

ALT: a man in a top hat and bow tie is talking to another man in a room .

media.tenor.com

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Joy is ✨querying✨ 🥀🪦 @joyiswriting.bsky.social · 9d

Love the inclusion of Taíno mythology!!

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