✨Jacqueline Faber's Secrets to Book Launch Success; and Jessica Soffer Gets Judgey with First Drafts✨

Plus, tossing genres into a blender with Suzanne Nelson, and the Great Beta Reader Match-Up continues!

Happy Tuesday, writing friends!

How’s everyone doing? If you attended the Deep Dive Virtual Retreat on the weekend, is your brain still buzzing? 🐝🧠

We’ve heard from loads of delegates who said their minds were blown by the incredible content, and the feedback from our speakers was overwhelmingly positive, too. We couldn’t be happier, and are already looking forward to trying to top what has to have been our most successful retreat to date with next year’s edition. A big thank you to our speakers for giving us all so much to think about and add to our writing toolkits, and to everyone who attended for your enthusiastic participation! 👏🏽🎉🙌🏽

If you’re already dreaming about how you’re going to use all this new knowledge to make your writing so good publishers will get into fisticuffs over it, you’re going to love today’s essay from Jacqueline Faber (author of The Department, out now!), which gets into all the things you as a writer can do as you embark on a journey where so much is beyond your control. We love when someone comes at a topic by focussing on solid, practical advice, and Five Concrete Ways to Support Your Book Launch is exactly what the title implies—a grounded take with experience-tested tips you won’t want to miss! 👏🏽📝

We’ve also got a Q&A with Jessica Soffer (whose This Is a Love Story publishes today) in which she challenges the view that plotting undermines creativity, offers up her secret to warding off the loneliness that seems to be inherent in the writing life (Hint: 🐕🐈‍⬛🦜), and talks about the most challenging part of writing (Hint: not only is it likely not what you think, but, completely coincidentally, it ties nicely into this week’s essay—which is another one of those things we love!).

Finally, Suzanne Nelson describes the process of writing her adult fiction debut, The Librarians of Lisbon, breaking down the process she followed to find the right genres—and then balance their elements correctly—to tell the story she was envisioning. With no less a person than Fiona Davis saying “You won’t want to miss out on this terrific read” about The Librarians of Lisbon, we think Suzanne might just know what she’s talking about!

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team