Success Story Interview - Samantha Lindberg

An Interview with Samantha Lindberg (samkatharine on QT) upon receiving an offer of representation from agent Julie Gourinchas of Bell Lomax Moreton Agency.

07/31/2025

QT: Can you tell us a little bit about the book for which you've found representation? What inspired you to write it?

Samantha Lindberg:
Guilewright is a meditation on the exacting horrors of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It's told through the eyes of Lavinia Clarke, a young genius inventor apprenticing under the reclusive clockmaker Gomery Oswald. But something about Gomery's shop is wrong - there are spots that bleed through, times the clocks tick a margin off-balance, seeming to yawn and stretch when she looks away, as though refusing to be observed. And it all comes to a head when she meets Sterling William Oswald - Gomery's enigmatic, charming son, and, more importantly, something that isn't... quite human.
Guilewright explores my own OCD through mechanical metaphors! I liken the book most to my favorite pocket watch - it's a wind-up watch, and must be wound every day in order to work. I compare this quite closely with my OCD. As though there is something that I have to pay attention to at all times to keep it alive and running. And that's how I came up with the idea of the shop and the horrors! A place that is more machine, people that are more mechanical, that need to be watched and counted at all times, lest the clock tick out of time and fall apart.
Lavinia Clarke is the sufferer of OCD throughout the novel, and her obsession with keeping the workshop running, in grand Gothic tradition, becomes her undoing.

QT: How long have you been writing?

Samantha Lindberg:
I only started taking writing seriously about four years ago. I wrote my first book when I was sixteen and published that about a year and a half later. Not my best work, by far, but a very proud moment! Four years later at 20, I've finally gotten agented!

QT: How long have you been working on this book?

Samantha Lindberg:
From conception of the idea to the first query was about six months!

QT: Is this your first book?

Samantha Lindberg:
My first book was an incredibly silly YA fantasy that I truly had no business publishing at such a young age. It's my pride and joy, of course, but the writing leaves something to be desired. Guilewright I feel is truly leaps and bounds ahead of where The Light is Dimmer was, and I could not be more pleased with it!

QT: Do you have any formal writing training?

Samantha Lindberg:
I had about 20 credits toward an associate's degree in creative writing when I was 17, but other than that, no.

QT: How many times did you re-write/edit your book?

Samantha Lindberg:
I like to edit and rewrite in phases. I start from the very beginning and add and cut as I see fit and fully rewrite each chapter. Most of it is grabbing from my original doc and saying "how can this be better?" Then pasting it into the new version and tweaking, potentially adding more tonal notes around it as well. Then voice and line edits come next. So all in all I go through about 4 drafts for each book, two of which being a full writeup, one being pacing and voice, then the final one being line-edits and the nitty-gritty.

QT: Did you have beta readers for your book?

Samantha Lindberg:
No one tell my agent but... no. The only person who read the book in its entirety before going out to query was me. Some friends here and there gave feedback, but never read the whole book. So if you're my agent reading this and just finding this out now - whoops!

QT: Did you outline your book, or do you write from the hip?

Samantha Lindberg:
I tend to do a hybrid approach, starting out with the first 1-5 chapters completely off the dome to get a feel for the characters and story naturally, then moving on to the next sections fully outlined chapter-by-chapter.

QT: How long have you been querying for this book? Other books?

Samantha Lindberg:
From my first query to my first offer of representation, the journey was about three months!

QT: On what criteria did you select the agents you queried?

Samantha Lindberg:
I got three offers - it was incredibly hard to choose between them. All of them matched my taste profile very well, all showed great enthusiasm for the project, and all had incredible editorial visions.
Ultimately, the decision came down to their current client list, and who I thought most aligned with my career outlook. The agent I chose specializes in weird Gothic and dark speculative, and her entire client list was after my own heart. It helped, of course, that she was so enthusiastic in her initial full request!

QT: Did you tailor each query to the specific agent, and if so, how?

Samantha Lindberg:
I had personalizations based on MSWL and Twitter posts I saw!

QT: What advice would you give other writers seeking agents?

Samantha Lindberg:
The writer that succeeds in publishing is the most persistent and the most determined. Keep going - they don't call it the query trenches for nothing. There's light on the other side.

Query Letter:

I am seeking representation for Guilewright, an upmarket Gothic horror complete at 95,000 words. Blending the eerie precision of The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson with the creeping mechanical horror of The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling, Guilewright explores the price of obsession, the seduction of the impossible, and the intersection of the beautiful and grotesque.

Young inventor Lavinia Clarke has never had any interest in love, a husband, or children. When she finally lands an apprenticeship with the reclusive clockmaker Gomery Oswald after several pleading letters, she's ready to spend her days perfecting the art of precision automata under the most gifted artisan in England. With his reputation for genius, his affinity for gears and springs, and his dark, magnetic workshop, she's sure this is the best chance she's ever had at fulfilling her dreams.

But the arrival of Gomery's enigmatic and unnervingly captivating son, Sterling William Oswald, changes everything. Pale, cold to the touch, graceful, and timelessly handsome, Sterling seems less like a man than a perfect imitation of one—and Lavinia, despite herself, becomes obsessed. And the more she studies him, the more she unravels.

Whatever lurks deep underground in the basement workshop that Lavinia is not allowed to enter may be the secret to the Oswald family's peculiarities, and the source of Lavinia's growing fascination. But in this place which operates in the smallest divisions of time, and Sterling's motivations far darker than they seem, the tiniest disruption of the minutiae will cause a cog to slip, and lead Lavinia closer and closer to obsession, mania, and eventually, madness.

Set in a quietly uncanny Victorian world of automata, anatomy, and ambition, Guilewright uses mechanical metaphor to explore obsessive-compulsive disorder and the female experience of intellectual control: how it comforts, isolates, and devours. With echoes of The Prestige and Frankenstein, it is a novel about intimacy and invention, madness and machinery, and the slow, exquisite horror of becoming someone else’s masterpiece.