stacieturner.com
@StacieTurner

AGENT
Quressa Robinson at Nelson Literary Agency

WRITES
MG & YA Fantasy

REVISING

BIO

Stacie Turner has a BA in English from Bard College and an MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. A former English and Latin teacher, she left the classroom to raise twins and ended up writing stories at the sides of Little League games and in ice rink cafes. She currently lives in central Connecticut with three cats, two kids, and one spouse.

PUBLISHING BACKGROUND

I wrote nine books and queried four before I signed with my agent (after collecting over 350 rejections in the query trenches.)

EXPERIENCE

I was a Pitch Wars mentee in 2018 and an AMM mentee in round 6. I’ve been a beta reader and critique partner for writer friends for the last five years.

OVERVIEW

Mentoring programs helped me level up my writing and get agent and I want to pay forward both the craft lessons and industry insight my mentors gave me. And I like editing. I love finding the threads that make a book cleaner and sharper when you tug on them, and doing it for other people makes me better at doing it for myself.

I’m looking for a magical or speculative MG I don’t want to put down. One I’m still thinking about days later, that I want to read again and tell everyone about. I’m super excited to find it and get to work helping my mentee make it shine.

  • Sci-Fi
  • Fantasy
  • Horror
  • LGBTQIA
  • Magical Realism/Fabulism
  • #ownvoices
  • Urban/Contemporary Fantasy

Anything with something speculative I want!

Books that I love the most are ones where the ‘unreal’ element – whether it’s fantasy or science fiction or horror-based – is linked to the protagonist’s emotional arc. It lets the fantastical become a metaphor for the conflict and deepens the book past ‘magic is cool.’

I WILL PROVIDE:

  • Edit Letter (Big Picture developmental feedback)
  • Line edit (dropping notes into a Word document)
  • Freestyle in chat

WORKING STYLE

I think it’s incredibly important for people to feel excited to get to work when they receive critiques, not crushed. And I know I’m going to love your book – no one chooses a book for AMM that they’re lukewarm about – so first, I’m going to go on and on about how excited I am about your book, and what are all the things I love about it. Then, onto the critique. I like to make notes in a Word doc as I read cold, then go back and make a second round of notes. (Which means you can get a note where I go on and on about how if the book is going HERE you should change a thing, but if it’s going THERE, what you’re doing is great, and then a second note where I say, “Yep, this is a seriously great breadcrumb for THERE.”) I’ll also drop an outline of your book into a three-act structure I use if I feel like I want to illustrate why a certain part of the book is sagging (or why your pacing is amazing.) I’ll ask you questions about your book and your characters to force you to articulate all sorts of details about them. I have significant phone anxiety, so I’m going to bow out of phone/Skype/Zoom consultations, but I am happy to chat endlessly in text answering questions as you work. The next draft, I’ll do line edits on, plus any additional notes that occur to me as I read. And when you feel the book is ready (or you’re at the stage of rearranging commas and need to stop fussing) we can move on to crafting query letters and the synopsis and pitches!

IDEAL MENTEE

Someone who isn’t afraid of revision and communicates about their needs and any questions they have. Someone whose book has already gone through at least one round of beta readers so the MS isn’t a true first draft. Most importantly though, I want to work with a mentee who finds joy in the act of writing. Storytelling brings such happiness to my life, and I want a mentee who shares that.

SEND ME:

  • Anything and everything with magic. High fantasy. Low fantasy. Portal fantasy. Historical fantasy. Fairies. Angels. Vampires. Ghosts. Werewolves. Mermaids. Elves. Horrifying monsters. Things that go bump in the night!
  • Folklore! All the folklore!! (As in ‘stories passed down orally and changed over time’ not as is ‘popular music album’)
  • Fairy tale, Arthurian, and mythology re-imaginings
  • Science fiction! These ARE the droids I’m looking for!
  • Lyrical, evocative prose
  • Unique or experimental story structure
  • A voice that makes me gasp because it’s SO strong
  • If you can comp a Studio Ghibli film, PLEASE send your MS to me
  • Small towns and rural life
  • Things set on the coast
  • As someone who started getting migraines at 8, I’d love to see a book that looks at what it’s like to have that kind of pain as a child

DO NOT SEND ME:

  • anything with sexual abuse (including any kind of sexual abuse that happened in the past before the story begins)
  • anything with pet suffering or death
  • anything that doesn’t have SOME kind of magic or speculative element

FAVES

Some books I have adored include:

  • The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill
  • The Forest of Stars, by Heather Kassner
  • The Scorpio Races, by Maggie Stiefvater
  • In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
  • Dragons in a Bag, by Zetta Elliott
  • The Bone Houses, by Emily Lloyd-Jones
  • See You in the Cosmos, by Jack Cheng
  • Skellig, by David Almond
  • A Properly Unhaunted Place, by William Alexander
  • Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon