Mikki Brammer on trusting your gut (even when it tells you to do something weird)

Plus, TJ Alexander with a reminder that your characters can only live through you (and they really, really want to live!) and an absolute homerun of a query letter!

Hello lovely newsletter subscribers! We’re so excited you’re here (and when you see this week’s exclusively-for-paid-members content, we think you will be, too)!

First up this week, The Collected Regrets of Clover author Mikki Brammer shares an essay about the power (and pay-off!) of knowing when to trust your gut, even when your own family raises its collective eyebrows at your premise (and considering the acclaim her debut about a death doula received from no less than the New York Times Book Review and NPR, we’re paying attention to what she has to tell us)!

Next, we’ve got this week’s Author Q&A with TJ Alexander who has faced some of the same writing roadblocks a lot of us are challenged with (like those pesky fulltime jobs we need in order to keep us in Post-its and red pens). TJ shares what motivates them to keep going and is living proof that it is possible to come back to writing and be successful—even after a prolonged absence. Take heart, dear ones!

Knowing that so many of you are out in the querying trenches or soon to be, we’re super-excited to have Courtney Preiss’s successful query letter to share with you this week. It was so well written, it might actually look familiar to you if you’ve read the jacket copy for her baseball-centric debut…👀

Also in this issue: Carly’s masterclass, two great giveaways and Bianca’s beta reader match-up!

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team