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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.

WISHLIST

I am seeking MG, YA, and adult novels, especially those by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors. Her MSWL below is by-no means exhaustive. If your manuscript does not quite fit in with what’s listed below but is still in the vein of, please submit it.


FICTION

  • horror (almost all the subgenres & especially for all age categories!)

  • Honduran authors

  • thrillers/mysteries

  • commercial fiction

  • slice-of-life à la One Tree Hill, the OG Gossip Girl, The Sandlot, Real Women Have Curves

  • sci-fi

  • spec fic

  • erotic novels, especially featuring BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA characters in kink spaces

  • set during college and non-college post-high school stories

  • coming-of-age

  • cults

  • gothic romance

  • midwestern gothic

  • vampires

  • stories by Latine/x authors from Central America and the Caribbean

  • fantasy (picky with second-world fantasies)

  • high concept

  • comped to classic Disney Channel Original Movies

  • comped to some of my favorite movies or in their same vein

  • southern gothic

  • 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, or Clive Barker

  • character-driven stories

  • multiple povs

  • historical fiction set during the Edwardian and Victorian eras but featuring BIPOC and queer characters; post-Civil War; in the 80s through the 00s

  • secret societies/clubs/organizations

  • sororities

  • comped to Balder’s Gate 3 or Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Please don’t send me:

  • picture books, chapter books, or graphic novels

  • historical fiction set during WWII

  • books over 100K words

  • commercial romance

  • stories featuring Nazis, Zionists, ICE, republican government employees, cops, military etc.

  • “clean” teen novels

  • stories centered on religions

  • novels-in-verse

  • deportation fiction & nonfiction

  • nonfiction including business, politics, memoirs, biographers, etc.

  • stories comp’d to the MCU/DCU

  • anything AI/android related

  • Westerns

  • missing women who are BIPOC due to trafficking, murder, honor killings, etc.

  • super gritty dramas

A few of my favorite reads:

  • Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine

  • NINTH HOUSE series by Leigh Bardugo

  • DON’T DATE ROSA SANTOS by Nina Moreno

  • MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  • CATRACHOS by Roy G. Guzmán

  • FAKE BLOOD by Whitney Gardner

  • A DISOVERY OF WITCHES by Deborah Harkness

  • THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones

  • LIBERTAD by Bessie Florez Zaldíver

  • DAISY JONES & THE SIX by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A “few” of my favorite movies:

  • Scream (1996)

  • Event Horizon (1997)

  • The Crow (1994)

  • Constantine (2005)

  • Crimson Peak (2015)

  • Nosferatu (2024)

  • Hellraiser (1987)

  • Knives Out (2019)

  • Pride & Prejudice (2005)

  • Hell House LLC. (2015)

  • Legally Blonde (2001)

  • The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

  • Silent Hill (2006)

  • Crash (1996)

  • The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

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