HQN vs Mira

Searching eharlequin.com I came across the following:

HQN's submission guidelines:
http://www.eharlequin.com/cms/learntowrite/ltwArticle.jhtml?pageID=040510wu01001

And Mira's guidelines:
http://www.eharlequin.com/cms/learntowrite/ltwArticle.jhtml?pageID=021101wu19001

Which doesn't necessarily give a very good answer to your question. However in their FAQ section it suggests that the best way to discover which line is best to target your manuscript you should read the books in each series to get a feel for what they're looking for.

Hopefully someone else with more knowledge will come along to answer your question better. That's all I got right now!

I'm waiting on some information so I can answer this better. My off-the-top-of-my-head answer is that HQN is now handling the single title romance novels that come into HQ, and that Mira is more mainstream/women's fiction kind of thing.

If you give me a couple of days, I think I can get a better answer than that for you.

Susan G.

The way HQ's guidelines read, it sounds like MIRA takes nothing but stuff from agents where HQN is open to queries from unagented writers. But I'm not sure if the books are that different. I know a lot of MIRA books are along the romantic suspense lines (I know...I have a million of them!) and though I've read several of HQN's writers, I don't remember ever seeing an HQN logo on a book...maybe I just don't notice.

<wanders off to her book collection to look again>

I always thought Mira was the line for their 'big names' but I'm likely wrong. I just remember seeing all the HUGE sellers under that specific imprint.

Irs, I live on Lake Michigan 30 minutes north of Muskegon.

lrs said:

Does anyone know what the major difference between Harlequins Mira and HQN? I want to send a query letter to one and not sure which to send to. Thanks

Click to expand...

Oops...I went to reply to this last week, and then work happened. Anyway, I'm an editor at HQN, so perhaps can clarify things. HQN is Harlequin's imprint for single-title romance. Within that framework, we publish paranormal romance, romantic suspense, historical and contemporary romance, but it's always, at heart, a story about the development of a couple. Some of our authors are Christina Skye, Bertrice Small, Carly Phillips, and Dee Davis. Mira, on the other hand, is expanding its offerings to include more mainstream fiction, mysteries and thrillers, historical fiction, and many of its romance mainstays, like Diana Palmer, have been moved to the HQN line.

Hope this helps!