Seeking Literary Agent

Wanted:

One awesome Literary Agent who is passionate about voicey and genre-blendy romance stories, speculative fiction, and fantasy tales with complex socio-political themes, and bucket-loads of historical research.

Contact me

 

On the whole, while they contain elements of genre, my work tends to be more in the vein of character-driven literary fiction, where challenges come from the context of the speculative world characters inhabit. My work always includes a romantic element—some of my works are category Romance, and others are Genre with a romance subplot. My casts are usually queer, diverse, unafraid to tackle social issues. I’ve been repeatedly praised for my ability to convey emotion on the page, and spend a lot of time delving into motivation and emotional truth. My worlds are thoroughly crafted, filled with delicious details, and slow-burn worldbuilding.

My work has been compared to that of Sara Raasch, Casey McQuiston, E. K. Johnston, and Diana Gabaldon.

I’m a self-marketing go-getter, a hybrid author with experience in both trade and self-publishing, and well-versed in the worlds of digital serialization and fandom. I published Worldbuilding Through Culture based on a workshop I tour, and it is currently being taught on at least one university syllabus.

My debut novel Triptych was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards, won the San Francisco Book Festival award for SF/F, was nominated for a 2011 CBC Bookie, was named one of The Advocate’s Best Overlooked Books of 2011, and garnered both a starred review and a place among the Best Books of 2011 from Publishers Weekly.

My sophomore novel, an epic-length feminist meta-fantasy titled The Untold Tale, (book one of the Accidental Turn Series), debuted December 2015, and was followed up by The Forgotten Tale in 2016 and The Silenced Tale in December 2017. The Skylark’s Song, book one of The Skylark’s Saga, a steampunk action novel about a girl vigilante and her mysterious rocketpack, soared into book stores in 2018, and was followed up by The Skylark’s Sacrifice in September 2019. The Skylark’s Saga was signed to a shopping agreement for an animation series in 2018.

All six of these novels were reprinted under my personal backlist imprint Here There Be in late 2023 after the publishing company that had produced them collapsed during the pandemic.

My queer time-travel novel A Woman of the Sea was named a winner of the 2019 WATTY AWARD for Historical Fiction, and was published in Fall 2024 with Penguin Random House Canada / W by Wattpad Books as Time and Tide, and named one of the New York Times’ Best Romances of the year. I followed that up with my first fully self-published novel, Nine-Tenths, which was voted one of the best reads of 2025 by the reviewers of N.N. Light Book Awards, and has received nearly one hundred reviews on GoodReads in less than a year.

My work has been featured in dozens of podcasts and interviews, and has received critical acclaim from Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, Lambda Literary, Pink Play Magazine, BookRiot, the Historical Novel Society, Foreword Reviews, and the Seaboard Review of Books. I spoken at conventions, festivals, and universities all over the world (Cardiff, London, San Francisco, Edmonton and Toronto, among others.)

Publications

View my full bibliography   

Awards and Accolades

Praise

“Time and Tide” sends a modern disaster bi back in time to meet an authoress bound by the homophobic social taboos of Austen’s England. Frey’s curtsies to the bonkers, bodice-ripping yarns of Johanna Lindsey and Bertrice Small. [The story] fascinates by committing to the idea that chronological dislocation is a kind of violence, and not being afraid to get a little messy about it.
-Olivia Waite, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics, in the New York Times Best Romances of 2024 article

In Time and Tide “Frey starkly paints the Regency period’s misogyny as Sam butts up against the strictures of the time. A suitable comeuppance for one of the tale’s worst villains offers satisfying catharsis and the heroines’ sweet love story enchants. This should win many fans.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Interweaving historical, romance, and science fiction elements, the story is immersive and surprising. Sam’s modern sensibilities create tension, often clashing with the norms of her new era and resulting in laughable moments. Her contemporary expressions, including “cross my heart and hope to die” and “shake a leg,” baffle her nineteenth-century companions until she settles into easier conversations with them, her language evolving to complement the two-hundred-year age gap. Engaging a spectrum of emotions, the novel transitions between steamy scenes as Sam searches for a suitable partner in marriage and tough conversations, as when one suitor takes advantage of her through physical abuse and manipulation. It maintains suspense by leaving the impact of Sam and Daisy’s relationship on future events unresolved until the final pages; it holds attention through its entirety. Time and Tide is an exciting queer romance novel about the the effects of choices made over the course of time.”
–Foreword Reviews

“To say more [about Time and Tide] would ruin the many twists of the novel’s long and satisfying plot. By the time this eventful story comes to a close, the reader will want more of the complex, big-hearted, passionate characters, as well as Frey’s command of the details of daily life in 1806 England. The outlandish plot depends on far too many coincidences, but in that it resembles the gothic novels of the period, and the amusing dialogue between the slangy, plainspoken Sam and her proper English found family keep the story fresh and appealing all the way through.”
–Historical Novel Society

[The Untold Tale is a]”superb novel grabbed me from the opening sentence, and never let go. […] The whole tale is several clever twists on the oh-so-familiar fantasies we’ve read before. I want more. Books more.”
-Ed Greenwood, Forgotten Realms

“Let me start by saying […] that I think that J.M. Frey’s The Untold Tale is the most important work of fantasy written in 2015. It may be the most important work of fantasy written this decade.”
-Dr. Mike Perschon, The Steampunk Scholar

“A stirring adventure, as well as a tender love story, from a first time author who truly embraces the limitless possibilities the future may bring. JM Frey’s Triptych satisfies any sci-fi reader looking for a different take on the first contact motif, or anyone looking to explore the possible evolution of human sexuality and love.”
–Lambda Literary, Read the full review

“I finished Triptych in one go last night, couldn’t put it down even.  It’s a very impressive first novel and if Ms. Frey continues to do with science fiction what she’s done in this book she might single-handedly be credited with reviving the entire genre.  Bravo!  Encore, encore!”
–Todd McCaffrey,  The Dragonriders of Pern series

“Time travel, aliens, and the politics of sexuality combine with tragic violence in Frey’s deeply satisfying debut. Aliens seeking refuge from their broken planet find it on peaceful Earth. Gwen Pierson and Basil Grey work for the U.N., helping the aliens to integrate. When alien Kalp joins their team, they learn that Kalp’s people mate in threes, and soon the trio become the first human-alien marriage. Violent protests and assassinations threaten to unravel the fragile trust between the refugees and their human hosts, so Gwen and Basil follow the assassins–back in time to the 1980s, where Gwen’s parents are still adjusting to raising newborn Gwennie. The near paradox is appropriately disorienting, but the story is so well-grounded in the characters that it never once loses its course. Frey tells the story from varying points of view in distinct voices, imagining a world at once completely alien and utterly human.”
-Publishers Weekly

“The thing that truly sets Frey’s work apart is the depth of emotional resonance she manages to pack into everything.”
-Kisa Whipkey, editor of The Accidental Turn series, and The Skylark’s Saga

“The Skylark’s Song “soars with action, adventure and clever world building. The details are perfect, the characters are snappy, clever and real. Strap on your seatbelts, it’s quite the ride!”
—Arthur Slade, bestselling author of the Mission Clockwork series.

“A romantic, action-packed and just plain fun adventure, The Skylark’s Song is a classic superhero origins story that also manages to subvert tropes and expectations. I give it five fabulous jet packs.”
—Adrienne Kress, The Friday Society & The Explorers series

“I would highly recommend JM Frey’s The Untold Tale. It’s easily the strongest I’ve read in the last year. Frey’s novel takes a familiar trope – the idea that every novel written creates an actual world that the reader can enter, and it’s corollary, that we might be living in such a world ourselves – and gives us an entirely new take on it. […] In The Untold Tale, however, we have the entirely fresh perspective of the story being told by one of the fictional characters.  […] The fictional world = real world trope isn’t the only one Frey twists. She also plays with the ideas of the hero and heroic adventure, feminism, gender roles,  and the role of the narrative itself, in innovative – and occasionally cheeky – ways.”
—Violette Malan, Dhulyn Parno Series

Latest Releases:

  • TIME AND TIDE (W by Wattpad Books and Penguin Random House, 2024) – Sam has fallen back in time and into the arms of the authoress of the first sapphic kiss in classic literature. But if she’s not careful, her weirdly modern ways and growing affection for the creator may end up destroying the historic creation. New York Times’ Best Romance Books of 2024. (Timeslip Sapphic Regency Romance)
  • NINE-TENTHS – (Here There Be, 2025) A bi barista. A shy dragon. A kitchen fire meet-ugly. Colin is into the homo draconis guy who accidentally torched his café, but he’s not sure if their romance is worth being hoarded away. Yet if he refuses, it may destroy human/dragon relations worldwide. (Queer Contemporary Romantasy)

Under Consideration with a Publisher:

  • NORTHANGERED – A modern adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey”, set in the world of Hollywood, insular film festivals, backstabbing celebutants, and a secretive family living in a converted church in the wilds of Massachusetts.

Written:

  • IS SPIDER-MAN INTO BONDAGE? – Graphic novel script about a small-town girl moving to the big city and using a dating blog to discover who she is not only as a person, but as a proudly out queer geek. But when her blog becomes super popular, she faces a backlash of fannish hate, and has to come to terms with a brand of fame that’s come at the expense of others. (Screenplay. Contemporary Romance, Queer Sapphic Romance)
  • TO A STRANGER – Mark Farthing is an unremarkable lawyer living an unremarkable life, when his twin brother is diagnosed with breast cancer. After Mark falls for his brother’s oncologist, life suddenly seems remarkable. But the tragic death of his brother puts the lovers on opposing sides of a legal dispute, and Mark learns that finding your way back to yourself sometimes means having to leave others behind. (Screenplay. Contemporary Romance, Queer Gay Romance)

In Drafting:

  • THE WELSHMAN’S DAUGHTERS – A stereotypical Regency-era Gothic Romance, except in this one, the wealthy daughter of the lord is secretly in love with her hired companion, a curse seems to stalk the romantic relationships of everyone who lives in the dark and twisted Tŷ ar y Bryn Manor, and the vengeful creature from the depths of the ocean is no ordinary specter. (Gothic Romance, Queer Sapphic Romance)
  • THE MADDENING SCIENCE – A Toronto Arts Council Grant winning first-person account of the life and loves of a pansexual (former) supervillian, told in a blend of memoir-style prose and fabricated ‘found’ documents. Based on my short story of the same name. (Superhero Memoir, Dark-ish Het Romance)
  • DRAGON COFFEE SHOP BOOKS #2 and #3 – books two and three of the Measure of Worth series, following the queer, contemporary romantasy NINE-TENTHS. (Queern Contemporary Romantasy, Queer Historical Romantasy)
  • LETTERS – In a world where we’ve always known about bloodsuckers, a possessive lesbian vampire seduces a professional blood donor into becoming her personal thrall, while battling a government faction determined to wring profit out of progress, no matter who they have to silence. (Dark Romance, Queer Sapphic Romance)
  • CLING FAST – Wat Ferrier is immortal, but he doesn’t know how it happened. What he does know is that it’s made him something of a clingy bastard, and he’s not ashamed to admit it. He clings to life. He clings to hope. He clings to his love of humanity. He also, unfortunately, has a habit of clinging to his name. Which means, when he is mistaken for his own many-times great grandson and reluctantly recruited to participate in a TV show about his own past life, he ends up falling hard for the bitchy, gothy television researcher who has somehow discovered who and what Wat is. (Queer Contemporary Speculative Fiction/Romance)
  • OFFICIAL SELECTION / HOW TO GET CAUGHT KISSING ON THE RED CARPET – An introverted author is both thrilled and horrified to learn that the actor that she has a massive crush on has been cast in the lead of the dramatic adaptation of her novel series. Their enemies-to-lovers romance comes with more complications than just red-carpet drama, for the actor has a secret that could mean the end of his career if it ever hit the press.  (Contemporary romance, Queer Romance)

In Outlining:

  • LATE BLOOMERS – An adult-market graphic novel about a group of 30-something friends who secretly saved the world as Magical Girls in high school. Now the Big Bad is back, and they have to repair their fractured friendship while also grudgingly donning the ridiculous sparkles and bows of their youth. (Contemporary Fantasy)

Contact me

JM FreySeeking Literary Agent