Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
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gray-michaels.bsky.social
Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
@gray-michaels.bsky.social
1K followers 3K following 45 posts
Author, retired USMCR combat vet, former prosecutor, cutter, certified wildlife tracker. #thriller #Writer #WritingCommunity #amquerying #veteran (X) @gray_michaels https://graymichaels.com/
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gray-michaels.bsky.social
Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller @gray-michaels.bsky.social · Jan 27
California Fish & Wildlife K-9 Warden Kat Grant is run off the road at night, stalked at her home, and threatened at gunpoint before she faces the ultimate danger—an assassin hired by businessmen who want to capitalize on California’s new oil … water. #2025Pit #A #S #T
From top left clockwise: The Magic Circle on Campo Seco Ridge; the Shasta Dam in northern California; Ishi, the last of the Yahi; locked spigot; two-track on Campo Seco Ridge; image of California Fish & Wildlife K-9 Warden Kat Grant & K-9 Cinder.
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
joncooper-us.bsky.social
The American people have risen up and they are PISSED AS HELL.
#HandsOff
April 6, 2025 at 2:44 AM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
natalielouise83.bsky.social
I’m getting VERY close to querying this novel now. If any #litagents are looking for something just like this, you know what to do. 🖤
natalielouise83.bsky.social Natalie is ✨ writing a new thing✨ @natalielouise83.bsky.social · Mar 1
THE BOOK OF WITCHING X THE SIRENS X A THOUSAND BLOWS

The islanders of Orphirsay have always lived by the adage that the sea must have her own. Now, they will die by it too…

New #agentsguide attached. Querying APRIL 2025.

#WritingCommunity, please help me spread the word!
March 5, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
gabino.bsky.social
Sometimes you sit down to write and instead you think or cut or rewrite or unwrite. That’s okay. That’s a productive day because all of those are part of the process. Keep going.
February 26, 2025 at 11:55 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
scarletvmitchell.bsky.social
An ancient knife turns up at the wrong museum and a PI turns to an old frenemy to put his hyperfixation to use on the case.

When her client is killed, a web of secrets begins to unravel.
Now, they must race to protect the archeological record and stop the body count from rising.
#QuestPit
#Q #A #MY
Moodboard for The Gerzean Blade, Adult Mystery "A mysterious artifact... a web of secrets and lies..." A pickaxe and other tools lying in the dirt, a hand tracing over a stone wall marked with glyphs, a piece of broken glass, a map of Illinois, a series of beautiful arrowheads, a silhouette of a woman running in heals, a long road, the St Louis Arch.
February 12, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
knturner-author.bsky.social
Agent's guide to THE JOURNEY TO THE END OF THINGS.

A grieving daughter has the chance to fix the mistakes of her past. But is she willing to risk her soul to do it?
✨Greek reimagining
✨Devil's bargain
✨Demigod-mortal romance
#questpit #q #a #f #agentsguide #amquerying
February 12, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
bmfwriter.bsky.social
COVET x FAIRYTALE x ACOWAR

An Agent's Guide to REIGN OF NIGHTMARES

❤️‍🔥Slow burn
🗡️High stakes
🖤Gothic/horror vibes
♀️Feminine rage
🌈Diverse ensemble cast
💞Found family
♨️Steamy
💫Genre-bending
🫀Twists & betrayals
⌨️118,000 words
📖Standalone with strong series potential
#questpit #A #Q #RF #DF #H
agents guide pitch comps and themes play list and moodboard
February 12, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
brclothwrites.bsky.social
SILENT PATIENT + THE OUTSIDER

Karis faces a choice: protect a dark legend & let a murderer walk free, or expose the truth & embrace all consequences.

🫥 Fiancé secrets
❤️ New love interest
⚠️ Blurred morality
🧛‍♂️ Reinvented trope
📖 Plot Twists
🪶 Indigenous M.C.

#Questpit #Q #A #DF #RF #PR #T #MY
February 12, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
ilanakelleyauthor.bsky.social
THE BARGAINER x SIX OF CROWS x THE LOST APOTHECARY

A Reader’s & #LitAgents Guide for NIGHT BIRD, an adult romantic fantasy ft:
🕰️dual timeline
✴️invisibility & intangibility magic
🔪FMC vigilante for wronged women
💞friend or foe?
☠️poison & female rage
🫂found family

#QuestPit #Q #RF #F #A #AgentGuide
A Guide to Night Bird An adult romantic fantasy novel The Pitch Ava can become invisible and walk through walls but can’t escape her warded cage. Destined to follow in her dead mother’s footsteps as a courtesan and spy, she’s trained to get close to—and betray—those in the highest levels of society. But alone at night in her room, she listens to the steam engine’s whistle, plays her cello to the night birds, and dreams of escaping her prison. Until one stormy evening, a boy, Zev, breaks through her window and gives her a taste of life beyond the bars. Their chance meeting spawns two years of secret friendship until her eighteenth birthday, when her seduction training will begin. Instead, she wakes up to a grisly scene—a bloody trail, dead guardians, and broken wards. Given what she knows of Zev’s powerful abilities, she assumes her freedom came at his hand. She waits for his return, which never comes. Eight years later, Ava has reinvented herself as Night Bird, a vigilante for wronged women. She’s assisted by a group of former street kids who’ve matured into a misfit gang. A botched mission finds them in the crosshairs of a shadowy man known as a high-powered fixer. That man turns out to be the boy who’d disappeared years earlier. It’s unclear if he’s friend or foe. However, when she takes on her biggest target—the last man to see her mother alive—Zev may be the only person keeping her from going up in flames. For Fans of: Rhapsodic by Laura Thalassa—dual timeline & lost love The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner—female rage & poison Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo—found family & misfit crew Chapter One Only the night birds provided company in my caged existence. They sang for me after the sun dipped, gliding beyond my window’s metal bars as their trilling tunes wove through the moon’s light. They were my link to the outside world, a fragile tether to life beyond my warded room. My self-given name—Ava—was an homage to them, the beautiful creatures that kept me sane. During the day, when I was granted time away from lessons, the noise and bustle of the street scared them beneath the eaves, into the holes and crannies of buildings. I’d sit, fists clenched, ears straining for their hopeful notes. But I was alone. The lectas didn’t count. They were caretakers, not company. When streetlamps glowed in the satiny darkness, the night birds’ warbles piercing the quiet, I’d pull out my cello. My bow swept the strings like a feathered wing, and the resonant chords danced with the birdsong. They’d swoop and dive, triumphant in their freedom—something I’d never known and never would.
February 12, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
aemorrow.bsky.social
A grief-torn healer, bent on vengeance against the god who claimed all she loved in death and decay, uses her craft to infiltrate the god’s court—entangling with a haunted heir, plagued by fated dreams of her arrival, who will stop at nothing to unearth her purpose.

#questpit #w #f #r #a
The House of Hemlock A WORK IN PROGRESS ONE DARK WINDOW meets STARLING HOUSE in this gothic dual POV adult romantic fantasy steeped in grief-torn promises, fate-bound strangers, and simmering tensions-where a house watches, gods scheme, and rot runs deep. The Opening There was truth in blood—meant to spill, drain life, stain the earth, and leave death grinning in its wake. The first gods knew it. They shaped the earth with rivers of it, winding red veins through stone and moss, tangling it into the roots of trees that cracked the sky open with their branches. Blood was the first language, the thread stitching life to decay, shadow to light. It was the beginning and the end, the thread through all things. It sang louder than prayers and bound tighter than oaths. It was promise and debt, offering and curse. The gods demanded it-again and again—until the earth grew slick, not with dew, but with what they were owed. But even gods forget. They never asked what would become of blood left too long untended. It rots. It rises. It remembers. The Vibes •Cursed magic and creeping rot (One Dark Window) •Haunted by prophetic visions (A Study in Drowning) •Nature’s eerie obedience (For the Wolf) •Gothic atmosphere and simmering tension (Down Comes the Night) •Sentient manor hiding secrets (Starling House) •Healing that defies the natural order (The Thirteenth Child) •Connection to death (Belladonna) A dark, spooky, nature-inspired gothic mood board
February 12, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
rowanbrightonbrown.bsky.social
A Southern inheritance is always dark—whether it's a penchant for pills, a blood-soaked family farm, or an ancient magic. Sierra spurns them all, but when her dad disappears, she must choose which monsters to slay, and which to become.
#QuestPit #YA #H #T
This is a moodboard of orange and green images with a spooky, woodsy vibe including a hand with a vine, and deer at night, an eye reflecting fire, a set of pill bottles, top surgery scars with a barbed wire tattoo, and a black woman covered in ivy
February 12, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
susielindau.bsky.social
Mex Gothic x Lisa Jewell
It's easy to romanticize writing a book in a remote location, but when a sentient house attacks & a psychopath threatens, a novelist must unearth the key to this madness, or his park ranger sister will arrive in time to write his eulogy.
Alt TL POV
#QuestPit #A #T #H #GH
February 12, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
cjtruwriter.bsky.social
NINTH HOUSE x A LESSON IN VENGEANCE
Aster would do anything to be the best writer the world has seen— even if it means spilling her blood to commune with the greats that came before her and losing the ones she loves the most.

#Q #A #DF #PR #QuestPit
A Victorian house, a dark forest, a woman with a mirror for a face, a fawn, moths with flowers, a university gate, words on a page, and a university library
February 12, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
bearattorney.bsky.social
DARK ACADEMIA + NIGHT CIRCUS

Master art forger Sage Davis jumps at the chance to win a patron for life. But when she discovers the true price of the competition—their magic—she must work with a rival artist to end it before either of them are the next to lose

#QuestPit #A #NA #SPEC #F #Q (soon)
Moodboard with a series of photos, including a golden rose, an outstretched hand with golden paint, a man in shadows, golden and purple smoke, a broken cicada sculpture, a woman looking away, and the text, "I'd do anything to protect her, even become the villain"
February 12, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
jendiarenzo.bsky.social
AN ACT OF FLESH & FINS

A scorned marine biologist turned mermaid queen must return to Bermuda as a human siren and seek revenge on men, guarding her heart from a mystifying man on the beach, while doing whatever it takes not to become a monster in the process.

#QuestPit #Q #A #F #PR #amquerying
Mood board that includes mermaids, sunsets, rain on water, fire on beach, and a couple kissing underwater.
February 12, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
jenniferluce.bsky.social
For fun, a moodboard in my antagonist's POV!

Shapeshifter Liraz served under the God of Chaos' command up until his master's demise. After tricking the last surviving gods and stealing their powers, he went into hiding. Now centuries later, he's back and has set his sights on Keira
#Questpit #RF #F
Grid of pictures: a silhouette behind a mask; a silhouette of a winged man; a hand with puppet strings; bloodied hands holding a crown; a knight holding a woman; a man staring at a crown; a knight laying defeated in a bed of white flowers
February 12, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
catherinewford.bsky.social
UPROOTED X FIDDLER ON ROOF
🌳Mesopotamian, edge-of-desert world
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Multi-gen family
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Multi-POV
🪄Symbiotic family & god & farmland
🌳Farm magic vs land reform
❤️Slow burn subplot
👨‍🦱Seduction & betrayal
👨‍👦Meaning of sacrifice
🏜️Slow unraveling

#questpit #F #A #W
Dagger, person holding soil & seedling, bare feet walking on fallen tree, cloaked figure with bow & arrow looking around side of house, peasant with sword, married couple holding sword, peasant woman looking behind her in fog, mysterious underground burrow, tree turning into a hand, burrow under tree.
February 12, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
jenniferluce.bsky.social
A magicless orphan will go to great lengths to save her best friend, the Princess, from marrying the enemy prince—even if it means becoming an assassin, outwitting a charming enemy spy, and stealing the last dragon egg in existence to tip the scales of power.

✨️ #Questpit #NA #RF #W #R #F #A🐉
3 by 3 grid of pictures: a castle; a woman with a dagger; a woman with a bow; a princess sitting in a field; a bloodied hand holding a crown; a couple holding each other; a couple wearing masks about to kiss; a woman hiding a sword behind her back; a woman riding a horse Crystal Dragons new adult romantic fantasy Cinderella meets Fourth Wing Pitch:A magicless orphan will go to great lengths to save her best friend, the Princess, from marrying the enemy prince—even if it means becoming an assassin, outwitting a charming enemy spy, and stealing the last dragon egg in existence to tip the scales of power. Tropes and themes: orphan taken in by the Queen; bonded dragons and other magical creatures; fish out of water, enemies to lovers; Forbidden and slow-burn romance; dangerous attraction; dark secrets and hidden identities; magic comes at a price.
February 12, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
elisemeder.bsky.social
Hades&Persephone x THE CITY IN GLASS

🌆 an underground city on the brink of collapse
💊 a drug that stops a cannibalistic epidemic
💉 vaccine scarcity
🔥 a woman who may be the cure
⛪️ is she a Saint or a witch?
🍎 & the man determined to use her

#questpit #AG #A #F #H
February 12, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
cfranciswrites.bsky.social
If you could control someone’s mind with a single touch, how could you ever trust they loved you?

🎭 A thief with forbidden magic forced into a high-stakes con
💍 Fake betrothals
⚔️ Slow burn enemies-to-lovers
💔 Forbidden romance
👑 Court intrigue & psychological warfare

#questpit #A #RF
A mood board, made up with stock photos, featuring a gold and grey colour scheme (the opulence of court VS the shadows of deception and betrayal). A translucent, golden radial overlays the photos, surrounding the central shot (a pair of reaching hands—which symbolise the central premise of the book: Touch). The images are as follows: Top left: A close-up on a woman's gloved arm, veil, and some of her Victorian gown. All dark grey in colour. Top centre: A close-up on golden lace. Top right: A man's hand gripping a woman's and pushing it into white sheets, their fingers interlocked. Middle left: Close up on a golden masquerade mask. Middle centre: An artistic photo of a woman's bare arms and hands reaching up from shadow into light. Middle right: Close up on a golden statue of a soldier riding a horse. Looks to be wearing Roman-style armour. Bottom left: A B&W close up on a woman and man's faces, near-kissing, but they're not quite touching. It's an intimate pose. Their eyes are closed. Bottom centre: An elaborate palace ball room with gold detailing and massive chandeliers. Bottom right: A B&W photo of a man in 1700s military uniform firing a musket, shrouded in smoke.
February 12, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
victoriajayneoh.bsky.social
LEGENDS AND LATTES x THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES

Alarra, a disabled witch, hires Robin, a butch grocer, to help her failing apothecary. As Alarra trips and stumbles into love, she angers the ghost haunting her shop!

#QuestPit #RF #Q #ownvoices #dis #A
Small witch looking at butch grocer, lovingly
February 12, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
scasswriting.bsky.social
🌿 The creepy whimsy of PAN'S LABYRINTH
🫧 The tragic romance and sea creatures of OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA
⚔️ Henry Cavill as Geralt in THE WITCHER
✨ HOTD's Alicent Hightower on the rare occasion that she smiles (but also when she's sad)
💔 ROMEO & JULIET

#questpit #ag #w #f #a
February 12, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
tajosephwrites.bsky.social
A hapless idealist follows her dreams to be a Lily Maid, beautiful ambassadors of enchanted perfumes known to make the most insipid hypnotically irresistible, down a path that could lead to her death when she’s chosen as the newest Lily.

#questpit #YA #F #RF #W
Six photos of a a ball, a swan, perfume, a young man lying in bed, a beautiful young lady, and a doorway covered with flowers.
February 12, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
kellyesparza.bsky.social
GLASS ONION but w/ ❄️ + 👻
My #A #MY #PR has:
✨a sister feud + messy MC
✨MC's ex invited to the party
✨new romance
✨murder
✨cozy/snowy cabin setting
✨ghosts
✨a murderer on the loose who's intent on killing a whole bachelorette party🔪
#W #questpit
Mood board for my adult murder mystery paranormal book I'm writing--what's pictured: snowy road, trees, ghost, snowy cabin, blood, moon/eerie sky, woods, snowy footprints
February 12, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Gray Michaels is querying an upmarket thriller
kaylahillbooks.bsky.social
He’s a threat to the crown they both serve. 👑 ⁣
She’s a threat to more than just his heart. 💔
As the web tightens, the Spinners always come first.⁣ 🎻

THE SPINNERS' GUILD, an adult romantic fantasy

#QuestPit #A #F #RF #Q
A violin hidden behind a web. Text says: An agent's guide to THE SPINNERS' GUILD DEAHNNA’s music gifts her the power to Spin listeners under her spell, compelling them to reveal secrets she can use to protect her city. After two years spent abroad as a diplomat, she uncovers news of a brewing revolution that sends her rushing home, where she’s tasked to root out the rebels—only to discover that the one behind it is none other than her once great love: Zephyr, the monarch’s own son. ZEPHYR’s city is flooding and he will do anything to save his people, even if it means overthrowing his own tyrannical mother. When the monarch closes the borders, shutting off the city’s final hope for aid, he must decide if he can trust Deahnna with his secret, or if she’s a threat to more than just his heart. Together, they’ll have to work through old heartbreak and incite a rebellion if they want to shatter the sovereign’s grip on the city before it sinks beneath the waves. The tropes: music-based magic system, second-chance romance, glittering political intrigue, ballroom mayhem Moodboard with 4 images: two people dancing; a dark hallway; a window in a shattered greenhouse; a violin in water
February 12, 2025 at 4:42 PM