Xiran and I are both former Pitch Wars mentees (2018!) so we’ve been in mentee shoes before. And neither of us found success through the showcase but rather stuck it out and wrote whole new manuscripts that earned us agents and publishing deals (COLD THE NIGHT, FAST THE WOLVES with Macmillan / Wednesday Books and IRON WIDOW with Penguin Random House / Penguin Teen Canada)

Pitched as Mad Max meets the Iditarod sled race set on Hoth, COLD THE NIGHT, FAST THE WOLVES follows 17-year-old Sena Korhosen after she crosses a notorious gangster on her frozen planet. To pay her debt, Sena is forced to help heal a feral fighting wolf. When Sena tries to escape her fate, she's left with no choice but to flee with the wolf, Iska, in tow and join a group of scientists as they compete in the infamous sled race across the icy tundra, the same sled race that killed her mothers five years ago. Sena will have to discover whether she's strong enough to survive the wild -- whether she and Iska together are strong enough to get them all out alive. It will be released by Wednesday Books in 2022 with a sequel to follow.

IRON WIDOW is a YA Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale retelling of the rise of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history. The duology will follow an 18-year-old re-imagining of Zetian as she avenges her sister’s murder by an intensely patriarchal military system that pairs boys and girls up to pilot giant magical mecha based on creatures from East Asian myth (Nine-Tailed Fox, Moon Tabbit, etc.), but in which boy pilots are treated like celebrities, while girl pilots must serve as their concubines. It will be out from Penguin Teen / Penguin Random House Canada Fall 2021, with book 2 to follow in Fall 2022.

As you might can tell from our books, here's where we can really help your story shine:

Developmental / big story edits
Strengthening main character arcs
World building
Voice and consistency
Being generally awesome