agent for comic fantasy?

robertbevan

practical experience, FTW
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Messages
706
Reaction score
70
Location
incheon, south korea.
my revisions are going well. i've got a kick-ass beta reader whose suggestions are right on the money. i should have a nicely polished MS ready to send out very shortly.

still working on the query, anybody's guess as to when that will be up to the standards of the wolves in syw.

but when i get all that good and ready to go, there's the question of who to query. google searches have come up empty for agents who are particularly interested in comic fantasy. and from what i can make out, it's a pretty tiny genre, with only a handful of known authors.

so do i query agents who express an interest in regular fantasy, and hope they'll be up for something with a comedic twist on the genre? or do i narrow myself down to agents who express an interest in both comedy and fantasy, and hope that they're cool with the hybrid?

or am i just looking in the wrong places?

thanks!
 

Drachen Jager

Professor of applied misanthropy
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Messages
17,171
Reaction score
2,284
Location
Vancouver
QueryTracker, AgentQuery and Publisher's Marketplace are the stand-by resources for finding agents for me. I would say your best bet is just to query anyone taking fantasy. Why limit yourself? Unless the agent is pretty clear they don't take it, you never really know, and I would think, due to my own reading preference that anyone who likes fantasy is probably not entirely put-off by comic fantasy.
 

IceCreamEmpress

Hapless Virago
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 2, 2007
Messages
6,449
Reaction score
1,321
Seconding Drachen Jager. I mean, you could focus on the agents for the writers whose fantasy has a lot of humor in it, even when it's not "comic fantasy" per se (Jim Butcher, Harry Connolly, Melissa de la Cruz, Melanie Lynn Hauser, A. Lee Martinez, insert your favorites here), but I would just cast the widest net possible.

What have you got to lose by sending someone a query even if they want their fantasy totally straight-faced? They're already not representing you.
 

Drachen Jager

Professor of applied misanthropy
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Messages
17,171
Reaction score
2,284
Location
Vancouver
Yep, Ice Cream has it right. You don't want to seriously piss off an agent. They do blog about bad query experiences and word gets around. But querying a book which is within their broad category preference, while not being entirely in their specific genre tastes is not going to get under their skin.
 

kaitie

With great power comes
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 10, 2009
Messages
11,051
Reaction score
2,638
I also looked for agents who represented humor or said that they liked humor in books. There were actually quite a few. Mine isn't a straight-up comedy by any means, but I found quite a lot of people who said in their guidelines that they like humor in books and those guys went higher on my list.

And I agree--just because someone doesn't say it isn't a good reason not to send it to them. A lot of guidelines are very vague. If they represent fantasy, it's worth a try.
 

Jamiekswriter

USA Today Bestselling Author
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 13, 2010
Messages
1,227
Reaction score
152
Website
www.jkschmidt.com
You could also look for who reps the books that are most like yours. For example, MaryJanice Davidson does a hysterical vampire series and she's repped by Ethan Ellenberg.

At query tracker here:

http://querytracker.net/clients.php?g=h

You can look up an author and see who represents them.