✨Does Instagram Give You Hives? Our Hosts Weigh In On the "Necessity" of Social Media For Debut Authors✨

Plus, Jacqueline Bublitz on playing with genre expectations; and Nick Cutter on using real life to bring life to your fiction!

Happy Tuesday, writing friends!

In our Friday issue we shared a quote from last week’s podcast guest, nature writer Leigh Ann Henion, who talked about the importance of capturing the sensory details of an experience and your reactions to it while your feelings still are fresh, so that you can use this material later to transport the reader into a scene. In other words, make it as compelling and immersive as fiction.

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got an essay by horror writer Nick Cutter (author of The Queen, out now) who shares the shit no one ever told him about writing, which, completely by chance, is all about leveraging your real life to make your fiction have resonance in a way that is very similar to what Leigh Ann had to say. He even uses the words “sensory detail”! We don’t know about you, but we certainly get all tingly when these kinds of connections make themselves known—clearly it means there’s something to what they’re saying, and we should pay attention, right? (Editor’s note: You may also know Nick as Craig Davidson, his real name and the one under which he wrote Saturday Night Ghost Club, a book I absolutely adore and which is another good spooky season read for those on the lookout for something a little less terrifying).👻📕😱

We’ve also got a great Q&A for you with award-winning suspense author Jacqueline Bublitz, whose latest, Leave the Girls Behind, is out today! We can be forgiven for assuming Jacqueline is made of some pretty tough stuff, given that this self-confessed arachnophobe lives in (of all places) New Zealand, and that this toughness no doubt helped her through the years of rejections and near misses she describes in her answers to our questions, but it was actually some kind (and very astute) words from her boss that she credits with keeping her going. And it was her unwillingness to “colour within the lines” that led to her success. Feeling trapped by the tropes and expectations of the genre you’re working in? How about adding a dash of musical comedy in your crime fiction? Read on for Jacqueline’s take, as well as the inspiration you might need to give yourself permission to colour outside the lines.🖍️🕷️

Is your favourite author on Instagram? The social media habits of established writers could be its own field of anthropological study—Michael Chabon posts on Insta regularly, but it’s more often about obscure b-sides and AI lunchbox art than it is about his writing, John Irving is MIA entirely, while Ann Patchett routinely pops up, but almost never to talk about her own work. The one thing they have in common? All three are bestselling authors. And, related to that, you could probably hear “Chabon,” “Irving” and “Patchett” and still know who we were talking about. But for those of us who have yet to achieve mononymity (mononymous-ness?) Bianca, Carly and CeCe are back this week with another engaging video discussion, this time tackling a topic that’s gained a lot of traction recently: whether or not you need an online platform to sell your debut! 🤓📕

Happy reading!

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team