✨Query Critiques Inside! Plus, Torturing Your Characters; Getting the Sensory Details Right; & How Theme Drives Plot ...✨
Plus, your last week to sign up for the Deep Dive Virtual Retreat and Beta Reader Match Up!
Happy Tuesday, you fiercely talented wonders!
Last week was 📕Books with Hooks 🪝week on the podcast, so scroll down to find Carly and CeCe’s written query critiques below!
In yesterday’s bonus episode, Bianca had two authors on the show! You don’t want to miss her discussion with Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, coauthors of The Naysayers, who open up about the realities of a long publishing career including success, setbacks, agent changes, and constant pivots. The marvelous Emilie Sommer also joins us to give you comp title suggestions!
Then, Nalini Singh, author of Such a Perfect Family, has some interesting thoughts on torturing your characters:
“When I was a younger writer, I remember a speaker (I wish I could recall who it was so I could credit them!) saying that if you were having trouble with the emotional intensity of your story, you should make a list of the five worst things that could happen to your protagonist...and then make all of those things happen.”
Nalini has other nuggets of wisdom that she shares in her author Q&A so keep reading to find out how she landed her agent.
Isla Jewell, author of Books & Bewitchment pens an unmissable essay titled Don’t Mess This Up: Why I Kissed a Camel, Flipped Off a Flying Trapeze, and Spent Two Days Undercover at a Bookstore.
If that title doesn’t intrigue you, you might not actually be a writer 😂
In today’s author video, Harper Ross, author of The Unwritten Rules of Magic, has some excellent insights about how theme is the core of a story, guiding the plot and character development.
Finally, there are just four more sleeps until our last ever Deep Dive Virtual Retreat! To avoid suffering from severe FOMO, this is where you can sign up!
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️
❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
This Month’s Bonus Episode!
In this month’s bonus episode, Bianca sits down with longtime collaborators and best friends Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke to talk about The Naysayers, a sharp, funny, and insightful satire about negative self-talk, toxic positivity, and the stories we tell ourselves. They open up about the realities of a long publishing career—success, setbacks, agent changes, and constant pivots—and share how a deeply personal moment sparked the idea for the novel.
We’re also joined by the fabulous Emilie Sommer from East City Bookshop who gives excellent comp title suggestions
Listen to this killer episode here or watch it on YouTube!
“We think of the agent team, our author partnership, almost like a marriage, right? So like, it can be two really good people, and maybe at the beginning of the marriage, things were great, and then you know, they’re having problems, and it’s just time to move on.”
-Lisa and Liz
More information about Lisa and Liz can be found here! They’re also on Instagram!
