✨Not one, but two NYT bestselling authors!✨

Bianca, Carly, and CeCe critique two queries. Bianca then interviews Ali Hazelwood and Kiley Reid to discuss their latest works! We've also linked to a new giveaway.

Hello lovely listeners! Can you believe it’s February already?! We can’t. Hopefully you’re smashing all of those writing goals! 🌟

In this week’s episode, we have our usual Books with Hooks with Carly and CeCe. Then, Bianca interviews Ali Hazelwood and Kiley Reid; what a powerhouse of an episode 😍 We’ve also linked to a new giveaway from Readerly!

Don’t forget, we’ve launched a TSNOTYAW Membership Program so you can get even more The Shit No One Tells You About Writing goodness! Our podcast episodes and Friday newsletter issues will continue to go out free of charge (we *love* sharing all this amazing content with writers like you). But as TSNOTYAW has grown, so too have the many, many hours our team pours into it, and in order to be able to keep showing up for our lovely listeners, we decided to launch this exciting new venture.

For just USD$8 a month or USD$80 a year, you can receive our paid newsletter on Tuesdays which features weekly bonus author Q&As, exclusive content from industry experts, weekly access to Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra’s written notes on queries from the podcast’s Books With Hooks feature, monthly bonus podcast episodes, AND regular Ask Me Anythings / Q&As with Carly, CeCe, and Bianca Marais. If that doesn’t kickstart your writing journey, we don’t know what will!

Thanks for reading ❤️

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team

---

This Week’s Podcast✨🎙️✨

In this week’s 📕Books with Hooks🪝, Bianca, Carly and CeCe discuss:

• The need for specificity with regard to plot details when you have a more psychological book/concept

• Avoiding too much backstory in the opening pages

• The need for your first chapter to be as strong as your prologue (if you have one)

• Being as specific about your genre as possible, and

• How emotionality adds layers to your work

After which, we have two author interviews. Bianca first interviews NYT bestselling Ali Hazelwood, author of Bride and The Love Hypothesis. They discuss:

• How Ali started writing fanfiction

• The unconventional way Ali got her agent

• Ali's submission experience with The Love Hypothesis

• Reader fascination with vampires and werewolves

• How Ali tackled world-building in Bride

• Writing an 'alpha male' trope that still aligns with feminism

• How Ali approached making her prickly main character more sympathetic, and

• Ali's advice for writing steamy scenes.

More information about Ali can be found here, or you can connect with her on Instagram!

You can purchase Bride on our Bookshop.org affiliate page here. Buying books through this link supports a local indie bookstore, as well as The Shit No One Tells You About Writing 📚❤️

Next, Bianca interviews Kiley Reid, author of the NYT bestseller, Such a Fun Age, and her latest, Come & Get It. They discuss:

• Kiley's journey to publication

• Her choice of inciting incident for both of her novels

• How she successfully 'broke the rules' with regards to character introduction in the first chapter

• Her strategies for writing authentic dialogue

• Leaning into specificity through action beats within dialogue

• Kiley's 'signature move' involving the introduction of backstory, and

• Tips for writing a quieter novel, but with strong, 'loud' undercurrents

Kiley is on Instagram and Twitter if you’d like to connect with her!

You can purchase Bride on our Bookshop.org affiliate page here.

---

Giveaway From Readerly 😍

See what it’s like to have a Book Coach! Enter to win a First 5000 Word Review from Robin at Readerly Book Coaching.  Find out what is working in your novel and what might need a rethink.  She will analyze the opening and synopsis for plot, reader engagement, characterization, and more.  This prize includes a 45-minute coaching call to go over the review.

More information can be found here. Don’t miss out on this amazing giveaway! Thanks, Robin 🥰

---

Q&A and Comp Requests are Back ❤️🌟

Now that the holiday season is over, TSNOTYAW is once again accepting question and comp requests! Call and leave us a 60 second message (an exercise in being concise 😅) either asking a publishing/writing related question, or requesting a comp for your novel! Carly and CeCe will answer your questions, and the lovely Emilie Sommer will give you comps that’ll bring your query letter to the next level— she’s the comp master 😍 Give us as much detail as you can, so that we can do our best to assist you on your writing journey ❤️ Further details and the link to leave a message are here.

---

That’s all for this week’s news! If you enjoyed it, why not share the love? 🥰

Until next week, happy writing! Keep your heads up and your bums in your chairs! 😍

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team

---

Our work takes place on land now known as Toronto and Ottawa and we acknowledge that these are the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat Peoples as well as the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. Toronto is covered under Treaty 13 and the Williams Treaties. We respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures, languages, and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada. We invite you to learn more about the land you inhabit, the history of that land, and how to actively be part of a better future going forward together at Native Land or Whose Land.