Tachyon #MSWL

I am the first reader at Tachyon Publications, and help with acquisitions. I have the privilege of spearheading our line of debut authors, beginning with R .B. Lemberg’s Four Profound Weaves.

This #MSWL is for the benefit of agents and agented authors. If you are unagented, please do not contact me.

Looking for:

  • secondary-world fantasy, always;
  • societal effects of technological developments;
  • soft apocalypses (the aesthetic kind), in particular post-collapse;
  • re-tellings / re-imagininings of myths and legends (particularly from Southeast Asia, but I’ll take anywhere but England/white America);
  • worlds where people with disabilities have other problems beyond infrastructural obstacles;
  • protagonists I can assume are queer by default;
  • family structures that refuse the nuclear family unit system;
  • economies that aren’t intense hyper-capitalism;
  • if you must have space oppression, I expect a lot of shiny things in recompense; 
  • characters who are specialists in a less glamorous field (e.g. geology)
  • love stories: asexual romance, polyamory, platonic best friends forever, found family
  • authors of colour writing back to their own communities;
  • low-stakes, chill stories.

As a steampunk scholar, I am not much impressed by alternate history that doesn’t push the Jonbar hinge far enough or leans too heavily on the technofantastic spectacle. If the general history of recent empires have played out the same despite the presence of fantasy or accelerated technology, it will be a very hard sell to me. While I’m not a hard SF fan, I enjoy steampunk with very specific technologies, ala Jeannie Lin’s Gunpowder Chronicles.

You can find me on the MSWishlist tweet aggregator for more specific ideas.

Submitting to Tachyon

Tachyon does not take submissions from unagented authors unless otherwise solicited or invited by a current Tachyon staff member.

Authors, to send me something, get an agent, then tell your agent to send it to me. On occasion I will ask an unagented author to send in something, but if I don’t know who you are, don’t send it to me. I will not read queries or proposals.

Agents, please send submissions to our portal at submissions@tachyonpublications.com. If you don’t send it to the submissions email, I won’t log it immediately! You can cc me at jaymee.goh @ tachyonpublications or jaymee @ tachyonpublications, but I just assume you’re sending it to submissions so my eyes glaze right over. All responses (confirmations of receipt; rejections; acceptances) will come from the submissions email anyway, so make sure to whitelist it. Any permutation of my email username (jg, jaymeegoh, jgoh) will go to our general Tachyon help portal and I totally won’t see it at all until someone (usually my already-busy manager) sees it and forwards it to submissions.

Be aware that Tachyon does not buy book series, only standalones. We also favour novellas. Our full media kit, which includes submissions guidelines, can be found here.

Acquisitions and Editorial Credits: