From Draft to Deal

and the genre change in between

Some immensely exciting housekeeping first: you can now add NOW SHE’S DEAD on Goodreads! If you use Goodreads to keep track of books you’re excited about or for reviews (and are looking forward to Now She’s Dead), it would mean the world to me if you add my debut YA thriller to your ‘want to read’ list.

Now She’s Dead is dual-timeline thriller in which Mandy, an ultra-anxious college freshman, reluctantly returns to the lakeside resort where she killed her best friend and where someone now knows what she did.

NOTE: If you’re not familiar with how traditional publishing works, Goodreads interest in upcoming books helps with hype and can also let a publisher know that people are excited for the book (and lead to additional publisher support).

Now for the good stuff…

(and the not-so-good stuff)

How did Now She’s Dead go from an adult paranormal horror to a YA contemporary thriller?

I wrote a book called All of Us, Liars back in 2021. For those of you familiar with the thriller genre, you can already see problem number one (hi, hello, that title pretty much screams, “this is a thriller, not a horror”).

It was an adult paranormal horror full of family disfunction and secrets, but also ghosts and eldritch lake monsters. In it, Mandy was estranged from her family, but returned to the resort with them on the eve of her younger sister’s wedding. The mysterious death of a girl (Sara 1.0) haunts the family, and long story short, dear old dad had let the girl die years ago to cover up an accident.

Sounds like a thriller, doesn’t it? WELL, NOT TO 2021 ROSELYN! 2021 Roselyn pressed right on ahead and included ghosts snatching girls off porches in the dark, eldritch lake-monster romance, and absolutely gruesome body horror. It was delightful.

All of Us, Liars didn’t do poorly in the query trenches! It had 9 requests from agents, which was about a 20% request rate (although I started withdrawing pretty swiftly, more on that below). I queried from late October to early December. In the timeframe of querying, that is an very short amount of time. But hear me out. There was a good reason for me to stop.

Out of those 9 requests, there were several who (through a little detective work) were clearly looking for thrillers but not horror, and yet they requested. There was also a handful who responded and said they wished it was a thriller, instead. And there was one agent who, bless her, changed the trajectory of my writing career (even though she didn’t ultimately become my agent)!

Here’s the relevant part of her pass on the full request:

This was a really close call, as I so wanted to make an offer on this, but I'm not seeing a vision for it at this very moment. If you ever felt like reconfiguring the novel as a suspense novel with more subtle and creepy fantastical elements, I would certainly be interested in taking another look. I wanted to be on my toes a bit more, whether horror or suspense. I know it's a big ask, so I won't necessarily offer a revise and resubmit, but rather leave my door open if you ever did find yourself doing a significant revision of the manuscript. The premise is fantastic and I know I will be thinking about this one for awhile!

Now, she did say I could keep it as a horror if I cut back on the fantastical elements and added more suspense, but especially back in 2021, I knew I wasn’t capable of using a light touch when it came to magic. Writing a thriller, for me, would mean cutting out all magic.

So after a few more passes from agents, I applied for Author Mentor Match (AMM). AMM was a mentorship program that paired already-agented or published authors with mentees who were looking for help revising a manuscript. No deadline, just a guarantee that the mentor would provide at least one round of full manuscript edits (I think?).

I entered with the specific request for a mentor who wanted to help me turn the book into a thriller. I knew I had no desire to do it on my own; it was an overwhelming task for someone who’d never even considered writing a thriller before. And here’s where the book’s journey took another fateful turn.

Even though I submitted it as adult, an author seeking to mentor in the YA category picked it up and offered me a slot as her mentee.

That was February, 2022. I met with my new mentor, the incredible Paula Gleeson (whose debut adult thriller, Original Twin, comes out this year), and withdrew the manuscript from consideration from the agents who still had the query package.

From February to October, I tore into the manuscript and put it back together. It was a massive undertaking, but one that I’d asked for. Here are the highlights of what the actual re-write process looked like—let me know in the Substack comments if you want more details on any of it!

• Step One: Prep

  • Because I was unfamiliar with key standards of the thriller genre, Paula assigned me several YA thriller books to read, which she felt had similar elements to my story and/or writing. Of those, I particularly loved The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe, and Sadie by Courtney Summers. A shout out to Cherish Farrah by Bethany C. Morrow, too, which I added to the list for another excellent morally grey/unreliable narrator example. Paula also had me watch a season of The Sinner to better understand how to layer information, revealing something about the mystery in each scene. I also rewatched Dirty Dancing, to immerse myself in similar setting vibes.

• Step Two: The Edit Letter

  • Based on the multi-page edit letter (and a Zoom call with Paula), I scrapped the entire back half of the book, and about 80% of the first half. The small number of scenes that made it were heavily reworked and shuffled around. I added an entire past timeline, so I could show more of the relationship between Mandy (the main character) and Sara (the best friend she killed). Scenes between them jumped off the page, and Sara became an instant fave. I cut characters and added others. In May, I sent the draft back to Paula.

• Step Three: More Re-writes!

  • In the next round of developmental edits, the biggest change was once again re-writing the ending (but not the entire back half, thank goodness), and shuffling around chapters to help line up the present and past timelines in a compelling way. In August, the book went back to my mentor again.

• Step Four: Several More Rounds of Line Edits

  • Here’s where I finally got into my favorite part of edits: the line edits. Changing smaller-scale things within scenes, making the prose shine, etc. is so fun! I did this during August and early September, and then sent the book off to beta readers (fellow authors who are amazing and read the book and give feedback!) while I worked on the query letter and synopsis.

• Step Five: Agent and a Time Skip

  • Really, this is where the journey of taking my adult paranormal horror to a YA thriller “stops.” I started querying it in late October 2022. I sent it to 47 agents and got 16 requests for materials and 4 offers. I signed with my agent, did minor additional edits, and in 2023 we sent it on submission to editors at publishing houses.

• Step Six: The Deal

  • The book, newly titled Now She’s Dead, got its first offer in August, and the second offer shortly after. I accepted the second offer, which was a two book deal (Now She’s Dead plus a second YA thriller, TBD). It was official! My adult horror turned YA thriller was officially getting published!

And that’s that. There are still more edits to come for Now She’s Dead (for anyone unaware, authors typically work with the editor who buys their book to continue to improve it before publication), but the most substantial changes are behind me.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into the scale of revisions that can go into the making of a book, before it even gets to the deal stage. My revision experience was more extensive than many authors’ but by no means entirely unique! We tear our manuscripts apart and meticulously reassemble them all the time, because we love storytelling and want to put the best book possible out into the world.

For all the writers out there, what’s the most extensive revision you’ve ever done? Adding a POV character? Cutting a timeline? Full rewrites? I’d love to know, if you want to share!

If you want to see more glimpses into my writing life going forward, come be my friend on Instagram or TikTok. And if you’re excited about the book, make sure to add Now She’s Dead on Goodreads!

Stay magical, friends!

Roselyn