SHELLY ROMERO
ASSOCIATE AGENT
Shelly Romero began her publishing career in 2017 at Scholastic where she rose up the ranks from editorial assistant to associate editor, where she acquired her own titles and assisted on series publishing for The Bad Guys and Goosebumps. She later joined Cake Creative as Lead Editor and she was most recently a freelance editor. She graduated from Stephens College with a bachelor’s degree in English and attended the 2017 NYU Summer Publishing Institute. Shelly was selected as a 2020 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree and is a member of Latinx in Publishing & People of Color in Publishing. Born and raised in Miami by Honduran parents, she now resides in New York City where she might be found at a movie theatre viewing the latest release from her Letterboxd watchlist.
Fun Facts About Me
1. My mom named me after Shelly Webster, Eric Draven’s fiancée in The Crow, after watching the movie when she was pregnant with me…so I was always destined to be a goth.
2. I remember watching my first horror movie when I was around 5 years old. (It was the 1999 HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake)
3. I’ve been to Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights seven times and counting.
4. I believe going to the movie theatre is one of the best experiences on this earthly plane…when people aren’t yapping or on their phones.
books over 100K words
picture books, chapter books, or graphic novels & nonfiction books
epic/high fantasy; second-world fantasy; cozy fantasy; military fantasy; historical fantasy
historical fiction set during WWII
stories featuring: Nazis; ICE; republicans; cops/detectives; Zionists; military; deportation
“clean teen”
antebellum era and/or plantation settings
novels-in-verse
cozy “horror”
stories comped to the MCU/DCU
anything AI/android related
thinly veiled billionaire antagonists
westerns
BIPOC women who are being trafficked; murdered; honor killed; etc.
super gritty dramas
comped to John Grisham, James Patterson, Colleen Hoover, Dean Koontz
horror (almost all subgenres & especially for all age categories)
Honduran authors
stories by Latine/x authors from Central America and the Caribbean (including Afro-Latine & Indigenous Latine stories)
playing with formatting such as mixed-media & epistolary novels that give the story a “found footage” type of vibe
anything comped to Guillermo del Toro, David Cronenberg, Clive Barker, John Carpenter, or Wes Craven
catholic horror
gothic romance
grounded fantasy (comps to: NINTH HOUSE & HELL BENT by Leigh Bardugo; THE WITCHERY by S. Isabelle; A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness; & LEGENDBORN by Tracy Deonn)
midwestern gothic
southern gothic
vampires
Jewish stories especially if they are intersectional with BIPOC and/or queer characters
thrillers/mysteries (with non-cop protagonists)
commercial fiction
slice-of-life a la One Tree Hill, OG Gossip Girl, The Sandlot, Real Women Have Curves, What We Do in the Shadows
sci-fi
spec-fic
adult erotic fiction, especially featuring BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA characters in kink spaces
set during college and non-college bound post-high school
cults
comped to Disney Channel Original Movies
character-driven stories
multiple POVs
historical fiction set during: Regency, Edwardian, & Victorian eras; post-WWII; 80s - 00s…but featuring BIPOC and/or queer characters
secret societies/clubs/organizations
sororities
comped to Balder’s Gate 3 or Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Please do not send Me:
Please Send Me:
WISHLIST
I am seeking MG, YA, and adult fiction novels. My MSWL is by-no means exhaustive. If your manuscript doesn’t quite fit in with what’s listed above but is still in the vein of, please feel free to query me.
