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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

THE UNMOTHERS x THE WOODS ALL BLACK x PREACHER'S DAUGHTER An agent’s guide to THE GODBRINGER, an 83k adult southern gothic horror featuring— 🦌 southern gothic atmosphere 👯 dual pov 🫀 forbidden love 📿religious fanaticism 🕯️cults ♀️ female rage #questpit #A #H #Q

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

OBSESSION x I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS x Micah Nemerever’s THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS An agent’s guide to THE WATCHFUL MR. SHEPHERD, an 86k adult psychological horror that'll soon be query ready featuring— 🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ Rep 👁️ Obsession 🔪 Rising Body Count ❓ Unreliable Narrator #questpit #H #A #W

The Watchful Mr. Shepherd
86K Adult Queer Psychological Horror/Thriller
Querying Q3 - Q4 2026

Cause of death…blunt force trauma. Victim was cut open post-mortem as some sort of…gift?
The envelope felt heavy in Luke’s pocket.
LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID
What did I do?

“Every day I wake up in the same bed as you and you’re still eighteen, and I’m still eighteen, and nothing ever gets better.”

Kieran talks at you, and you do try to listen, but mostly you’re rolling his name over on your tongue, tasting it.
Ki—
Kier—
Kieran—
—ran—
It’s a pretty name.

As an autopsy technician at the Augusta Medical Examiner's Office, Luke spends his nights attending crime scenes, preparing corpses, and offering condolences to grieving families.
Then an email arrives in his work inbox, a picture of a bridge he hasn't seen for ten years and an ominous message attached:
LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID.
At their high school graduation party, Luke and his future ex-husband Kieran left a boy dead and buried the truth with him. Now someone else knows what happened that night; someone who begins with anonymous messages and ends with murder.
For Kieran, the haunting is proof their past has finally come to collect. For Luke, it's something far more exciting: a reason for Kieran to finally come home.
As their watcher tightens the noose, Luke finds himself less afraid of exposure than of losing the only person who ever made him feel alive. But the closer Kieran gets, the clearer it becomes that the real danger to them both may not be outside Luke's isolated house, but inside it.

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

5/28: insect. i can’t believe i only use it once in my whole draft 🐜 #WIPSnips

Kieran's face pinched but he did as he was told and then joined Luke. Both of them swept their phone lights over the house's interior. It was a humble home, but it's previous occupants had left in a hurry without taking anything. There was still a bowl of fruit, or what had once been fruit before the insects and time rotted it to mush, on the table.

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

EILEEN x I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS x Micah Nemerever’s THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS An agent’s guide to THE WATCHFUL MR. SHEPHERD, an adult psychological horror featuring— 🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ Rep 👁️ Obsession 🔪 Rising Body Count ❓ Unreliable Narrator 🍰 Moral Rot ❄️ Snowy Backdrop #QuestPit #W #H #A

EA HARKINS'
The Watchful Mr. Shepherd
AN AGENT'S GUIDE

Quick Look
Genre: Adult Psychological Horror with Thriller Elements
Word Count: ~ 85,000
Status as of 4/29/26: 1%t Draft Complete, Developmental Edits Underway
Primary Inspiration: I wanted to explore the obsessive queer elements of Saltburn & The Talented Mr. Ripley, but with more horror & queerness--also without the social climbing themes.
Tropes
Unreliable Narrator
Obsession
Game of Cat & "Mouse"
Small Town
Character Haunts The Narrative
Past Won't Stay Buried
Comps & Vibes
Closest Comps
• Eileen
• These Violent Delights
Vibes
• Hannigram
• Saltburn
• The Talented Mr.
Ripley (title homage)
• I'm Thinking of Ending
Things
• Exquisite Corpse
One Sentence Pitch
Luke is forced to team up with his estranged ex-husband when someone unknown to them drudges up secret details of their sordid past that threatens to rip apart their lives.
Catchy Hook
Luke can dissect bodies without flinching.
Letting go of his ex-husband is another story.

Word Count: ~ 85,000
Pitch
Luke Shepherd knows bodies. What they keep hidden, what secrets they tell, and, most importantly, how to hide them.
As an autopsy technician at the Augusta Medical Examiner's Office, Luke spends his nights weighing organs, preparing corpses, and offering condolences to grieving families.
Then an email arrives in his work inbox, a picture of a bridge he hasn't seen for ten years and an ominous message attached:
LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID.
At their high school graduation party, Luke and his future ex-husband Kieran left a boy dead and buried the truth with him. Now someone else knows what happened that night; someone who begins with anonymous messages and ends with murder.
For Kieran, the haunting is proof their past has finally come to collect. For Luke, it's something far more exciting: a reason for Kieran to finally come home.
As their watcher tightens the noose, Luke finds himself less afraid of exposure than of losing the only person who ever made him feel alive. But the closer Kieran gets, the clearer it becomes that the real danger to them both may not be outside Luke's isolated house, but inside it.

Meet The Characters
POV: 3rd Person Limited
Protagonist: Luke Wells
Dual POV?: No
Primary Inspiration: I wanted the obsession elements of Saltburn & The Talented Mr.
Ripley, but horror and more gay. Also without the social climbing themes.
Luke Wells
Minor Characters
• Protagonist
• Medical Examiner's
Assistant
• 28| Gay? | Black Hair,
Blue Eyes
• Intelligent, Clinical, Numb,
Impulsive, Devoted
• Dr. Marriner, Medical Examiner, Luke's Boss
• Maple, Luke's cat
• Elliott Cutter, [REDACTED]
• Deacon Hollander, sex parnter?
• Jacob Routh, [REDACTED]
• [REDACTED] (REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
Kieran Shepherd
The Love Interest (?)
Forensic Scientist
28 | Pansexual I Dirty Blond Hair, Honey Eyes
Empathetic, Alcoholic, Emotional, Guilt-Ridden
Author's Favorite?
ho favorites:)

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

3/9: screw(ed) #WIPSnips Kieran spends a lot of time crying in this book but to his credit, it’s not melodrama

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

3/5: destroy -> destruction. this is one of my favorite dialogue exchanges #WIPSnips

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

❤️February is the month of love.❤️ No better time to reimagine my psychological literary horror as a contemporary romance #H #A #W #UnhingedPit

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Meet... ❤️KIERAN SHEPHERD, 28❤️ Forensic Scientist 7 miles away I've blocked my ex on here 57 times. Sorry for late matches I enjoy drinking to escape reality. JK! But our first date should be @ a bar Kieran is the "love interest" of my "romance" novel, The Watchful Mr. Shepherd #H #A #W #UnhingedPit

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Meet... ❤️LUKE WELLS (Shepherd?), 28❤️ Medical Examiner's Assistant 15 miles away Swipe left. I'm only here for one person. Even if I wasn't, we wouldn't match. Don't be selfish; be an organ donor. Luke is the protagonist of my "romance" novel, The Watchful Mr. Shepherd #H #A #W #UnhingedPit

What's In Luke's Bag
- Rice (Loose)
- Dead Bird
- Lubricant (next to a bottle of hot sauce)
- Cat Treats
- Air Freshener that smells like Kieran
- Work Badge (usually missing)

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS X EILEEN Luke can dissect a body without flinching. Letting go of his ex-husband is another story. THE WATCHFUL MR. SHEPHERD is a psychological lit. horror featuring: 🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ+ 🧊unreliable narrator 📱stalking 🩸rising body count -and a past that bites #WSPIT #W #H #L #A

[On a background depicting a snowy landscape and trees, a gradient of white to red text reads:]
E.A HARKINS'
THE WATCHFUL MR. SHEPHERD
Tag Line: Some People Should Stay Divorced

Meet The Characters
Luke Wells/Shepherd
- Protagonist
- Medical Examiner's Assistant
- 28 | gay? | Black Hair, Blue Eyes
- Intelligent, Clinical, Numb, Impulsive, Devoted

Kieran Shepherd
- the love interest?
- forensic scientist
- 28 | pansexual | dirty blond hair, honey eyes
- empathetic, alcoholic, emotional, guilt-ridden

[At the bottom of the graphic, over a series of pencil scratches in a smeared, bold red font:]
LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID

"Only guilty people over explained, and Luke Shepherd was not guilty."
"The people accompanying him were dead...and that made their company all the better."
"He struggled to keep the sensation of Kieran's skin against his own close. It'd been so long since Kieran had willingly touched him so softly."
"The game was afoot."
"Sooner or later...the truth crawled its way out of the grave."

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

2/20: corner from one of my fave scenes in this draft #WIPSnips

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

2/11: vibe ➡️ feeling #WIPSnips CW for mentions of blood/sex

Luke bled for the first time during sex that night. He bled the night after, and the night after that too. Each time the redness welled from his skin, his breath caught in his throat, this desperate choking sound. Bleeding meant you were alive. Feeling anything meant you were alive. With or without Kieran, Luke was alive.
Right?

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

surprisingly i have no confident or its direct synonyms in my WIP but im sure “sure” is close enough #WIPSnips

Since the time Luke was a child, he was sure he'd spend his whole life searching for the antidote to his numbness. He was his parents' child, their blood was his. If such passion imbued them, why not him? For better or worse, the search to feel anything at all was, in itself, the deepest form of masochism.

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

surprisingly don’t have perish but die is pretty close 😩 #WIPSnips

Luke Shepherd had two emails. One was his work email, which he kept sound notification on for, and the other was his personal and spam account-something that he'd made in the early 2000s that'd stuck with him ever since, swallowing up the never-ending stream of shit the Internet fed it. His personal email was a place where unread things went to die. A graveyard where every promotional deal, Nigerian prince, and message from Grandma rotted together.

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

academy -> school for today’s #WIPSnips from my project, ICEBOX

Luke hid his hands in his pockets while the
scientists worked. His field was forensic-adjacent, of course, but this wasn't his bread and butter. The last time he'd been at a crime scene was a decade ago, and in a much less
professional capacity. When he saw bodies, they were half swallowed by black bags, always underneath the harsh morgue lighting. Clinical, scientific, detached. They were animals to be dissected like a high school science project; a visceral game of Clue.

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

IM THINKING OF ENDING THINGS X EILEEN Luke is forced to team up with his estranged ex-husband when someone, or something, unknown to them drudges up secrets of their sordid past that threatens to rip apart their lives. ICEBOX is a WIP. 🏳️‍🌈LGBTQ+ ❓unreliable narrator 👁️ obsession #questpit #W #H #A #T

Text reads:
Introducing ICEBOX, an adult psychological horror/thriller

COMPS + VIBES
Ian Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen meet the unsettling, obsessive intimacy of Saltburn and a creeping, psychological dread reimaging of I Know What You Did Last Summer

Featuring: Queer MC, Obsession, Unreliable Narration, Past That Has Teeth

The image shows a collection of blue-tinged images, including one that says "get out of my fucking house", a tape-recorder that says "play me", and a newspaper article that cuts off a title that reads "mystery accident...teen fatality"

Text Reads:

Club music pulsed in Luke’s bones. His face, normally gaunt and pale like a perfect porcelain doll, was splotchy and bloated from crying. He’d been here before after a fight with Kieran, when he ran away for once, something that was more of Kieran’s specialty. He hadn’t done anything; he’d only entered, felt the throbbing, dark music in his muscles until it beat away all the negative feelings.
And normally Luke loved those feelings. Precious few that they were, he clawed onto them. Sometimes he even chased them. Initiated them. Kieran pulled it out of him and made him care like no one else did. Then the divorce finalized.
Luke must’ve been possessed when he signed the papers. He was never really given a choice, only Kieran slapping them in front of him at any given opportunity while he searched for a new place to live. On the kitchen counter, narrowly avoiding Luke’s breakfast. On his car windshield, the bathroom mirror, shoved into the crack of the front door when Kieran decided to stay overnight at a coworker’s house. Nothing had been settled yet in terms of assets, but Kieran made it abundantly clear before Luke signed the papers: keep everything. Keep everything and let it haunt you, not me.
And haunt Luke it did. The house was a graveyard. Headstones of everything he’d had taunted him to the point where nothing but the kitchen and the bedroom ceased to exist. Luke gathered all his favorite memorabilia of Kieran and shoved it into a hidden cubby in the living room, because he didn’t know how else to memorialize him. Kieran wasn’t dead, but once he moved out, Luke wondered if it would’ve been easier if he was.
Kieran could’ve died loving him rather than lived just a few miles as the crow flies at his new place hating him. How did wedding vows of forever, and sickness and health and thick and thin turn into this slop?

Picture shows a playlist of songs, in this order:
Buckle by Florence + The Machine
Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call by The Bleachers
Now That We Don't Talk by Taylor Swift
The Alcott by The National, Taylor Swift
Letter To An Old Poet by boygenius
Choking Games by Nicole Dollanganger

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

CARRIE X SHARP OBJECTS In the deep Louisiana bayou, Sadie participates in increasingly gruesome Festival tasks in an attempt to achieve Godhood before she's forced into an arranged marriage. THE GODBRINGER is currently on query 🐍unlikable FMC 🗡️ cults 🐗 soft MMC #questpit #agentsguide #Q #A #H #LF

Text reads: An agent's guide to THE GODBRINGER, a literary horror novel complete at 88k words.
Image is of a drawn deer, laying horizontally on the ground.

Text reads:
PITCH
In the rotting, isolated town of Teneral, gun-toting 18-year-old Sadie Elderton yearns for freedom beyond the confines of her community’s rigid religious traditions. After an encounter with an elusive shadow and a disturbing vision in the swamp, Sadie believes herself marked by her God, chosen to become the prophesied Godbringer. With the annual Festival week approaching, it’s her last chance to prove her worth to God and the People, despite the heretical reputation that precedes her. By summer’s end, she’ll be forced into a marriage arranged by her father and a life of domestic servitude.
While the People remain intent on reminding Sadie of her sins and shortcomings, she finds solace in Oliver, her secret lover and the only person in Teneral who believes she is meant for something more. But when God’s voice seems to fall silent, Sadie’s faith begins to rot into desperation. All that remains is the scratching in her skull, demanding proof and whispering promises of divinity.
As Festival week drags to a close, Sadie is torn between doubt and devotion. When she uncovers ugly truths hidden from her by both her family and the town, she must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her destiny—and whether becoming the Godbringer is worth the human sacrifices it demands.

Text reads:
TROPES
female rage
forbidden love b-story
twisted family dynamics
cult fanaticism
religious trauma
southern gothic atmosphere

Text reads:
COMPS
Ania's Ahlborn's Brother
Stephen King's Carrie
Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects
A24's Film Midsommar
A24's Film Pearl
Ethel Cain's album The Preacher's Daughter

AUDIENCE
For fans of speculative, psychological horror with a literary bend, that enjoy exploring the dangers of religious extremism and feminist themes.

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

second person perspective is one of my favorites, happy i can post it with today’s #WIPSnips ! 💕 from my current wip, ICEBOX

"Let's all just hang out and drink tonight, yeah?" he suggests. He turns away and you and Elliott make fleeting eye contact over his shoulder before he fills the space between you both again. Then he hands you a cup with a dark brown liquid sloshing about inside. It smells like your father's breath. You thank him quietly and he goes back to talking, though it's not clear if its to himself, you, Elliott, or all three.
Meanwhile the song playing cross fades into Roy
Orbinson's Crying.
And Elliott says: "It's a sad song for a party. It almost makes me feel like something bad is going to happen."

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

first #WIPSnips but going with building instead of formation!

Kieran reached into his pocket, rain-slick fingers trembling. "Fuck. Would it kill you turn the heat on?" he mumbled, fighting to free his phone. When it finally slipped into his palm, he unlocked it and pulled up a photo. He thrust it towards Luke.
On the screen was a picture of Kieran's car, sagging hideously in the parking lot of his apartment building. All the tires but one were completely flattened.
"Very nice," Kieran spat. "Three so insurance won't cover it. Premeditated bullshit because I didn't pick up the phone?"
Luke's fingers curled against the edge of the
counter. Kieran thought he did this?

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Current work in progress whilst waiting to hear back from agents and publishers about my finished manuscript. Introducing: Project ICEBOX … because there’s some scenes in a morgue and I dunno what else to call it at this stage #writing #writersky

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Nick Harkins 🌟 Querying @dreadwrites.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

some writing excerpts from various projects i’m zero drafting & editing this novel writing month 🌟 #writing #thrillerwriting #horrorwriting #novelwritingmonth

Your father is always drunk. The stench of it rolls off him when he gets home after being gone overnight, thick on his breath, clinging to his unkempt facial hair. Usually he sports vomit down the front of his clothes. How many shirts has your mother bagged after one of his benders and left by the road alongside your garbage bins?
The heaviness of your father's footsteps shakes the house and you miss when the tennis ball bounces back to you. It rolls into the dark space underneath you bed, where you keep the dead bugs you've scooped out of the office lamp, and toys you used to play with when you were younger.

And Valeska had heard tales of what awaited those who prayed to no deity. A gray sea of nothingness, a vast wasteland of neither pain nor joy. Auster told her when she was a small girl that this plane between life and afterlife was the glue holding the two together, filled with souls with nowhere else to go. The ones disparaged by their Gods, or those who devoted themselves to nothing and thought death would never come knocking for them.
This purgatory, Auster said, was composed of mold and rot and teeth and hair.

Luke hung upside down for what felt like an eternity. His eyes were open, staring at the parking lot over top a chain link fence, and the sunlight reflecting off the metal. People were screaming. Some girl's leg was pressed against his, her ankle very close to looping over his own like she was subconsciously seeking comfort. He wiggled his foot, pulling it away from her own and crossing his ankles.

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