Quill & Flame PublishersOur Team
APRIL J. SKELLY, CEO of Quill & Flame
April J. Skelly is the founder of Quill & Flame Publishing House. As a former high school English teacher and author of multiple books, she saw an enormous gap in industry. Quill & Flame seeks to fill that gap by producing wholesome, if not always squeaky, romance across all genres for YA and NA audiences. Give her some toe-curling kisses, some monsters, or a dash of suspense, and she’ll read it. She lives in Ohio with her husband and her three children, and one ten-pound ball of fluff that thinks he’s the big dog on the block.
She loves to see submissions that follow all Q&F guidelines, and wants to see manuscripts with high stakes, a hook in the first paragraph, and character chemistry that leaps from the page that is singeing in its intensity, but not in its physicality. She’s here for all the kissing but likes the door to shut around second base. Stories with darkness and grit balanced with hope are particularly appealing. While she enjoys lots of bookish characters, the White Knight is her favorite.
BRITTANY EDEN, Assistant Acquisitions Editor for Quill & Flame
Incredibly detail-oriented, Brittany is a keen reader and is always growing her knowledge on the craft of writing and loves learning all things marketing and publishing. She’s a fan of the existential issues of time travel stories, K-dramas, and cliffhanger chapter endings. She will read any genre as long as there’s kissing. Thrilled to be part of the Quill & Flame team since the publishing house began in 2022, in the best queries Brittany loves to see strong taglines, clever comparable titles (books or on-screen equivalents), and a unique marketing angle. The bottom line? The best submissions are the kind of book you can’t put down, and the kind of story that sticks with you long after that.
AMANDA WRIGHT, Assistant Acquisitions Editor for Firebrand
Amanda prefers the term book-DRAGON to bookworm, because she literally consumes books. An avid reader, Amanda will quite easily take down three to four books a week if the world is kind and leaves her to her own devices. Since 2011, Amanda has worked with Graf Martin Communications, reading all the ARCS from Bethany, Revell, Tyndale, and Baker Publishing Houses. More recently, she has made an effort to read as many Christian Indie authors as she can find, and has a passion for spreading the word about excellent, lesser known stories. Amanda has favorites in every genre and will enjoy a good story no matter if it’s fantasy, science fiction, contemporary, historical, or something else. Be warned, she will take a hard pass on horror and the glorification of evil; she will not read porn or ‘spice’. A lover of grammar, Amanda will take personal offense to the butchering of the English language, and has a soft spot for well written prose. She is looking forward to all the submissions the Firebrand imprint is sure to bring.
Interested in being one of our authors? See guidelines on how to submit your manuscript here! Want to intern with us and learn the behind-the-scenes of book publishing? Email us at info@quillandflame.com!