✨Time to Get Excited! Today We Reveal Our First Three Deep Dive Speakers!✨
Plus, New York Times bestselling nature writer Leigh Ann Henion Joins Bianca on the podcast, and a Q&A with NYT and USA Today bestselling author J.T. Ellison!
Happy Friday, Shitlets!
Are you by any chance tired of hearing that publishing is filled with gatekeepers who are impossible to gain access to? So are we! That’s why we’ve got nine agents and editors as part of the incredible speaker line-up for our 2025 Deep Dive Virtual Retreat! We have 12 speakers in total, all of whom are looking forward to sharing their wealth of knowledge and experience with you as you navigate your publishing journey, and today we’re excited to share the first three of them with you.
We’ve got a bestselling and Library Reads Hall of Fame author; an editor who’s both worked with and been a bestselling author(!); and a former Editor-in-Chief turned agent and instructor with more than 25 years of experience in getting bestsellers and award winners published. Intrigued? You should be—here’s just a handful of the books this talented trio has worked on:
Not too shabby, eh? We’re super-excited to reveal the people behind these books, but you’ll have to keep reading to find out who they are…😉🔥🤩
Over on the podcast, it’s author interview week, and for this one Bianca is joined by NYT bestselling nature writer Leigh Ann Henion to discuss her latest, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark. We’re excited to be bringing her insights to all our non-fiction writing friends, but encourage everyone to tune in, regardless of your genre—whether it's fiction or nonfiction, it's our job as writers to create meaning and answer the question “Why does this matter, this thing we're examining?” and Leigh Ann is extremely skilled at getting this particular job done (Editor’s note: This is seriously no exaggeration. Listening to Leigh Ann describe her research process has made this city girl want to venture out into the mountains and hang with the buggos. Which, if you knew me, says a LOT about how inspiring she is). 🦉🦎🦇
It’s a bestselling two-fer kind of week, with a Q&A featuring New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.T. Ellison (whose latest, A Very Bad Thing, comes out next week). J.T. has written more than 30 (!) novels over the course of two decades, working in different genres, with several publishing houses and multiple editors, so we are very inclined to pay close attention to her very pragmatic, experience-informed advice on topics including how to balance writing and social media time, and what’s really going on when you find yourself butting heads with that unwelcome visitor, writer’s block. J.T. also shares the piece of advice that’s always resonated with her, and it’s one we think a lot of you will appreciate—particularly those of you who had some strong opinions on the topic during our writing “rules” conversation over on Insta. 🚫🖊️⭕
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading! ❤️
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
P.S. Still not sure about upgrading to paid? Check out our Tuesday Teaser below to see what you’re missing!
This Week’s Podcast✨🎙️✨
Today Bianca interviews NYT bestselling nature writer, Leigh Ann Henion (have a listen here)! They discuss:
The inspiration behind Leigh Ann's latest work, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark;
The process of getting a book like this written and published;
Scene-setting in non-fiction; and
Always paying attention to what a character knows at that particular point in the story.
“When I have field work … I want to write as much as I can about that experience—the sensory details, everything I can—as soon as possible. To have the immediacy of that is really important to me. If I have that, no matter how much time passes, when I come back to it, I am able to transport myself back into those scenes—and so, therefore, I think it makes it easier to transport the reader.”
– Leigh Ann Henion
More information about Leigh Ann can be found on her website. She is also on Instagram and Facebook.
You can purchase Night Magic 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 📚❤️
A Note About Hurricanes, Dashed Dreams, and How You Can Help
We all know the path to publication doesn’t always run smooth, but it seems particularly cruel to write so reverentially about the natural world, only to have nature take one look at your book launch plans, shrug, and go “Yeah, no…I don’t think so.”
That’s exactly what happened to Leigh Ann Henion when it came time to promote Night Magic. Just before she spoke with Bianca, Hurricane Helene destroyed not just her dreams for launching her book into the world, but many of her North Carolina neighbors’ homes, too. They were without electricity and water, and roads and powerlines were gone. Amidst all this loss and chaos, Leigh Ann was extremely gracious, not merely expressing gratitude to the podcast for helping her get the word out about her book, but asking that we spread the word about ways to help those struggling in the aftermath of Helene’s destruction. If you’d like to contribute, here is a list of organizations helping in a variety of ways across the impacted states:
👀 First Look: Three of our Awesome Deep Dive Virtual Retreat Speakers Revealed! 😃
The first three speakers we’re sharing from our amazing line-up are the very definition of good gets. In fact, we’re still pinching ourselves that we managed to snag them! Are you ready for it? We sure hope so, because if we have to keep a lid on this news any longer, we’re liable to explode!
🥁🥁🥁
[suspense-building drumroll]
First up is Jenny Jackson who is Vice President, Editorial Director of Fiction at Alfred A. Knopf, which she joined in 2002. She publishes a range of literary and commercial fiction, from Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, to Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, to Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians trilogy.
One strange summer she simultaneously edited Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris, Dave Eggers’s The Circle, and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Baby. She counts Dolly Alderton, J. Courtney Sullivan, Chris Bohjalian, Ayobami Adebayo, Peter Heller, Katherine Heiny, Jennifer Close, Caroline O’Donoghue, Erin Morgenstern, and Lauren Fox among her writers.
In 2023 Jenny wrote her own novel, Pineapple Street, which was published by Pamela Dorman Books at Viking and became a New York Times bestseller.
Jenny’s Topic: The Art and Science of Creating a Bestseller
From changing trends in the marketplace to the evolving media landscape, from retail partners to book clubs, we will look at the way publishing has evolved over the years in general, and then we will review a number of specific bestselling publications, including Crazy Rich Asians, Station Eleven, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, analyzing different paths to success before finishing with a targeted “wish-list” for an ideal publication in 2025.
Next, we have literary agent, Cherise Fisher, who began her career in publishing more than twenty-five years ago, spending many years editing and publishing several national bestselling and award winning authors at Simon & Schuster and Plume (an imprint of Penguin Random House), where she was Editor-in-Chief.
As an agent with Wendy Sherman Associates for the past eight years, she has represented story-driven fiction with full bodied characters, both contemporary and historical. She seeks out memoirs and narrative nonfiction that showcase the diversity of human experience, and well-platformed non-fiction writers who seek to provoke, inspire, and educate on diverse subjects, including self-help, finance and career, health and wellness, spirituality, and social justice
An active member of the American Association of Literary Agents, and a very popular workshop leader for several writer’s conferences including the Grub Street Writing Center, Cherise also teaches the “Introduction to Publishing” class as a part of the Publishing Certificate Program at the City College of New York.
Cherise’s Topic: The Company You Will Keep
It is vitally important for authors (both fiction and non-fiction) to have a keen sense of how their book will fit alongside other titles that are similar; why you must never ever tell a publisher "No book like mine has ever been written!;" how to distinguish between comparative and competitive titles, and how to use comp titles to position your book for success.
In this presentation, Cherise will take you behind the scenes so you can see how publishers use comparative titles to come up with advances, marketing plans and book covers.
Last, but absolutely not least in today’s lineup reveal, is Annabel Monaghan who is the USA Today bestselling and Library Reads Hall of Fame author of Summer Romance, Same Time Next Summer, and Nora Goes Off Script, as well as two young adult novels and Does This Volvo Make My Butt Look Big?, a selection of laugh-out-loud columns that appeared in the Huffington Post, the Week, and the Rye Record.
Annabel’s Topic: Finding the Emotional Arc of Your Character by Finding Their Wound
A novel is basically a character moving towards something they think they want. But, let’s face it, most of us don’t move directly toward what we want - we zig zag, and we trip ourselves up along the way because we’re people and we show up wounded. Starting by knowing your character’s wound is the easiest way to understand how they’ll move through your story and, ultimately, what they really want.
Stay Tuned for More!
Make sure you check next week’s edition for the exciting reveal of the next three incredible speakers!
And for those of you who enjoyed the breakout rooms and discussion sessions during the 10-week Deep Dive earlier this year, have no fear! We’ll be hosting two additional sessions on January 25th (11am – 2pm ET) and February 8th (11am – 2pm) designed to enable you to build community and ask questions.
Further details on pricing and the amazing prizes up for grabs will follow, but for now, if you’d like to register for a reminder email that will go out the day before our early bird pricing opens on November 29th, sign up here:
The Ultimate Planner for Writers, 2025
Have you been frustrated with the limitations of your daily planner which, while allowing for hour-to-hour scheduling of your usual appointments, doesn't allow you to include all the myriad activities associated with your rich writing life?
This planner allows you to:
Keep track of your daily word count, as well as assign and monitor time spent on brainstorming, researching, drafting, editing, etc.
Log and track your agent queries
Brainstorm and make editorial notes
Outline your WIP
Create character profiles
Outline your plot/scenes
Complete scene cards
Keep all your ideas in one place
Keep a record of your research and material sources
Make notes of inspiration
Track the books you've read
The Ultimate Planner for Writers has all the monthly, weekly and daily functionalities of a typical planner, but with added features designed specifically for writers. It’s available for purchase either as a hardcopy or as an e-planner that's been designed for use on an iPad or similar touch screen tablet, and makes the ultimate gift for the writer in your life.
Author Q&A with J.T. Ellison 😻
J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of the literary TV show A Word on Words. She also writes contemporary fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries. J.T. lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens, one of whom is a ghost, where she is hard at work on her next novel. Her latest, A Very Bad Thing comes out next week. 😍
TSNOTYAW: Do you have a go-to mantra or pep talk for the days when writing feels hard?
J.T. Ellison: I actually sign off notes to my friends with the blessing 'Write Hard'. It's everything encapsulated in two little words. Encouragement, yes, but also a reminder that what we do is hard, and we need to remember that. If everyone could write novels, they would. We have the best job in the world! It's easy to forget that when the rough days appear—and they always appear. Write hard means put away the doubts and get to it!
Were you ever close to giving up on writing and, if so, what stopped you?
A couple of times, yes. My husband and I went through years of infertility, and I actually took several months off when we did IVF because *that* is a full-time job. It didn't work, and I was bereft without my writing. I took to it again in solace. My entire voice was changed, and ultimately for the better, I think. Sometimes you need to step away and realize how much you love it.
What would you say you’ve done right to build a strong and supportive writing network?
It starts at home for me. My husband is my first reader, he is my sounding board, he is my everything. He keeps me sane and healthy and focused. And I once heard Nora Roberts say that you need to find a handful of writer friends that you trust implicitly to talk about the business, about creativity, story, numbers, editors, agents, etc. That's a special group, one that takes careful curation. And it grows outward from there, to beta readers, blog readers, newsletter readers, and total strangers who read your work, not to mention the team who gets your books into the hands of said strangers. I've been at this gig for two decades, and I've written for several houses, and multiple editors, but I'm only on my second agent, and my second long-term house. I made a change when I shifted the kind of writing I was doing. You need people you can trust who believe in you, who cheerlead for you, who want the best for you. People who answer your calls and emails. I have all that, and I am so, so grateful. I feel very supported in all facets of my creative life.
What one piece of advice (craft- or publishing industry-related) has always resonated with you?
Stuart Woods once told me: "The only rules are those you create, page by page." It's possibly the most freeing advice you'll ever receive. You make the rules. Full stop.
How do you ensure you have enough time to write amidst so many obligations competing for your time?
Wow, that's the truth, isn't it? The better we are at our job, the more we're asked to do things that aren't our core job! First and foremost, I have a "No" gnome sitting on my shelf. My first answer to opportunities is always no, and that let's me pick and choose what's a good use of my time. But I write every day. The rule is, do the work that pays the most first, and that's always been my novel writing. I give it at least 3 hours a day, five days a week, and that seems to keep the wheels on the bus.
What is the most challenging part of being a successful author? And how do you mitigate its effects?
I came back to answer this because I find myself in an interesting position. I've just turned in my 2025 novel, and I don't know what I'm writing next. I have a million ideas; ideas are not the problem. The problem is the actual PTSD of having just finished writing 110,000 words, bleeding onto the page for six months, and wrapping my head around the fact that I have to gear up and do it again. At this stage of my career, each book builds on the last. Every book reaches a few more people than the last, the audiences build, they have expectations. They want a certain kind of story, they loved the last one you did, or the one before that, and you have to try and level up with every story. It's hard to do, leveling up. To give a baseball analogy, it's damn hard to win the world series every year. You can make it to the playoffs consistently, absolutely, but winning it all? That's what leveling up is for me, trying to win it all. And I do that for every book. So this moment in particular, when one is done and the next not yet conceived, feels both romantic and terrifying. This is the hardest part. Bridging the gap between projects, not letting the momentum wane.
Writer’s block: myth or unfortunate reality? If you experience it, how do you overcome it?
Writer's block that isn't truly organic (illness, injury, death, and sorrows) is one of two things: Fear, or your story going in the wrong direction. Fear is a harder thing to overcome. It might take therapy, self-encouragement, reading, or a break--whatever it takes, do it, but always remember that the book you're afraid of is probably the one that will break out big. The story going in the wrong direction is easier. Just all stop, grab a notebook, go back to the beginning, and start reading. You'll see where you went wrong. If you don't, let a trusted agent or friend take a look. They'll see it if you can't.
How important do you think it is for writers to be on social media?
I have a long-documented love-hate relationship with social media. I love the social; I hate the media. No one likes to promote their own work. It's always easier to sell someone else's book than your own. And no matter how great you might be at it, nothing—NOTHING—works better than writing a book they can't ignore. I spend 90% of my time on the writing, and 10% on social media. That seems to be a good balance for me. I would say that you shouldn't bother being everywhere. Find the medium that works best for you and own it. But always, always, go there after you've done your work for the day.
Do you have any regrets about your journey so far? Do you wish you had done anything differently?
It's impossible to look back on a twenty-year career without a few regrets. But every choice made me the writer I am today, so I remind myself of that when I start the inevitable "if you'd only done X."
A Very Bad Thing is out November 1st! Pre-order it through J.T.’s website so you can be one of the first to bask in her writing genius 😍
Tuesday Teaser 😉
In next week’s newsletter exclusively for our paid members, Bianca, Carly and CeCe tackle questions from our subscribers in their monthly Q&A video; suspense author Jacqueline Bublitz shares her thoughts on genre-mash-ups, the perils of being metaphor-happy, and something called “the twisties” (Editor’s note: this one was a real 💡moment for this writer); and horror writer Nick Cutter (aka Craig Davidson) is spookiness personified in an essay which seems to suggest (to this reader, at least) that he may be more than just a little bit psychic. But whether or not his insights are actually proof of some kind of psychic ability or are simply the product of great minds thinking alike, we’ll leave to our Tuesday subscribers to decide…😜
Not yet a member? For just $8USD a month or $80USD a year you get:
an exclusive newsletter on Tuesdays featuring bonus author Q&As and other exclusive content from industry experts
weekly access to Carly and CeCe’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.
If that doesn’t kickstart your writing journey, we don’t know what will!
Hacking Writing on a Line Level with Agent Extraordinaire CeCe Lyra 📝
No matter what genre you write in, knowing how to elevate your writing on a line level is an essential skill. But what does strong writing on a line level look like exactly? Are there rules and/or techniques that can help storytellers elevate their writing? And how can writers know if they’re improving this element of the craft? Join CeCe not just to unpack strong writing on a line level, but to learn how to *hack* it! This class will be jam packed with real-world examples of writing on a line level that work—and that don’t. All examples, all the time. For the first time ever, we're meeting for 3 days! November 7th at 8pm ET: First Craft Session November 11th at 8pm ET: Second Craft Session November 26th at 8pm ET: Live, cozy Q&A session (attendees will have the option of turning on their cameras and interacting with CeCe)
Come prepared to take lots of notes!
If you’ve taken this class before, then the First Craft Session on November 7th will feel familiar to you, but the Second Craft Session will include new techniques and workshops! Don’t worry if you have to leave early or if you can’t attend one (or more) sessions live: all sessions will be recorded and each recording will be emailed to everyone who is registered 24h later. Recordings will be available to the viewer for a limited time.
That’s all for this week’s news! If you enjoyed it, why not share the love? 🥰
Tune in again next week for more invaluable wisdom from our wonderful hosts! Until then, happy writing! 😍
❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team
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Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra are literary agents at P.S. Literary Agency, but their work in this newsletter is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly and CeCe in this newsletter are solely that of themselves and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
Thank you for the fabulous questions! Keep up the great work!
Very interesting point of view.