[SPEAKER_02]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm best selling author Bianca Marie, and I'm joined by CC Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi everyone, welcome to today's authors interview.
[SPEAKER_02]: Born in the Midwest, I guess today grew up in Spain, loved briefly in France, and is now happily settled in Chicago with her husband and three kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: She studied classical guitar, English, Latin French, and once upon a time was a singer songwriter in a folk band, Thornfield.
[SPEAKER_02]: She loved sushi, reading in her natural habitat, aka her bed, and women taking back their power.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's my pleasure to welcome Jenner Satteth Wait.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jenner, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited to have you here.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much that I want to pick your brain about.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for our listeners, Jenner is not just an amazing author.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's also an agent, and so there's those different sides of her that I'm definitely going to want to explore in today's interview.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the meantime, I'm just going to tell you about the book that we're discussing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's the New Year's party.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here is the flat copy yoga.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for those of you who are watching on YouTube, you will see that Jen is holding up the cover, which is stunning.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still have the advanced reader copy that's covered with my notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's Robert.
[SPEAKER_02]: No help to anyone at all, but yeah, it's a stunning cover.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so here we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what's in the flat copy.
[SPEAKER_02]: New Year's Eve hits different in your 30s, especially when the party ends in murder, done, done, done.
[SPEAKER_02]: It used to be an annual thing, the rock is new as party full of games and all derves, but for Olivia and her friends, the chaos of the 30s has really challenged the definition of annual.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been a few years since the close trains were last close, but this year is going to be different.
[SPEAKER_02]: The burnout, parenting stress, credit card debt, job drama, marriage troubles, addiction, they're going to set it all aside for the night.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, really, they sway.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, except for the secrets.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every last person has one, but secrets are only as good as the people you trust to keep them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when the wrong ones slips out, well, friends are not
[SPEAKER_02]: that just might become motive for murder.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone thinks they know their closest friends until somebody who winds up dead.
[SPEAKER_02]: So love, love, love, the flap copy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So before we dive into this dinner, you had quite an unusual journey to publication.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I like exploring that for our listeners because there are so many different parts, so can you take us through that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh gosh, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started writing, I think it was 11 or 12 years ago at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had just become a mom recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've had my first daughter and then I actually lost a pregnancy between her and what
[SPEAKER_00]: will become my next kid and it was kind of this weird grieving period and I really needed some kind of distraction to take me out of my pain during that time and my mother-in-law happens to be obsessed with cozy mysteries and had given me a turn of them as just candy reading, you know, during those, I think
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the past couple years and the format just stuck in my head and so something clicked in those days after losing the financing and I was like I'm gonna write a cozy mystery and I went to my room with my laptop one night started writing and I got addicted And I've never looked back it was the most incredible feeling of leaving the world as we know it and entering into a perfectly safe space of my own creation
[SPEAKER_00]: where I could just forget my sorrows.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was kind of the beginning of writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fast forward a few years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started querying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wrote more books.
[SPEAKER_00]: I created for four and a half years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over five different books.
[SPEAKER_00]: I accumulated something like 700 rejections.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh yeah it was a whole journey so this was my early to mid-30s and then I finally got an agent to offer on a book and then I got a second offer chose my current agent learn bigger at fine print and then a whole other journey began where we went on submission over the course of many years with six different books.
[SPEAKER_00]: five of them died on submission, and we finally thank God, sold number six.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, you know, between agent rejections and editor rejections that added up to over 800, it was kind of wild, but I just kept wanting to write more books because it was fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think my hedonism drove me forward during the rejection.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to have fun and writing was fun and it was again a scapeous.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot more crap happened to me during, you know, the all of those years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just never forgot that superpower of being able to go, I and take care of myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm very happy that something finally happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even if it hadn't, I don't consider all that writing to be a waste.
[SPEAKER_00]: just a real anchor for me, like a life anchor, and it added this not only a state, but dimensionality, catharsis, processing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You escape, but you also end up processing a lot of your stuff through writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sold my first book a few years ago in a two book deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: New Year's Party is the second book in that deal with Mira, and then I have another stream going on here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have this one as well with my student in Sienna Sharp.
[SPEAKER_00]: This came out with
[SPEAKER_00]: It was originally about by Penguin Random House UK and there is another what coming from Ciana that I can't talk about yet, but it's I'm in revisions and it's painful, but we're marching through.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that whole journey, I love, you know, that you keep bringing it back to the love of writing, the hiddenisms, because if you do not absolutely love it, if you're not passionate about it, people would have given up after 50 rejections, I know people who've given up after way fewer, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that's a bad thing, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of have destigmatized the giving up because I thought about it a few times and then rejected it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, well, I don't want to give up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I realized like for some people, if that love of writing isn't there, or if it's not helping them in all the ways that it helped me, yeah, it does become...
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it can become destructive to stick with it for longer than it's healthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think everyone has to discover how long do you want to keep going because publishing is tough and rejections will always come on either side of being a publish author.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's very healthy to let yourself consider walking away and ask, is this serving me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does this make me happy?
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me the answer is yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that will be the case with everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my controversial take.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of people are like,
[SPEAKER_02]: and both are valid.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's up to each person to decide in terms of their mental health, it's a curse and I'm also not an advocate for just just keep going indefinitely, especially if you're not changing things, especially if you're not mixing things up or doing something different.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they say what insanity is the definition of being the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, you've definitely got to pivot and learn and adapt, but I love that you persevered.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, something else I love about you, Jenna, is, I mean, I started this podcast called,
[SPEAKER_02]: the ship no one tells you about writing because I really want to do these stigmatized so much and show people behind the curtain of publishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, a lot of the times our hands are tied as authors.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to be so careful about what we say publicly because you don't want to offend somebody in publishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: it's a very small industry, etc.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, you might have a book that goes out on submission and nobody buys it and it gets rejected or they turn down an offer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you don't speak about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I love how transparent you are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I was recently at Calgary
[SPEAKER_02]: and we were in a panel called The Shuknow and Till Shubar Publishing, and people were saying, you know, how distant they feel from agents and editors.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was saying, we're in a period right now where this is the closest that you can ever be in agents and editors, because follow them on social, subscribe to their sub-stacks.
[SPEAKER_02]: People are talking about these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So can you speak a bit about, you know, your Instagram account and how you do speak about these things,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I love transparency outside of even publishing just as a person in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of weighed that many years ago when I started a blog that no one should have agreed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was many years ago and it was mostly cooking focused and I talked about like my first pregnancy and, you know, yeah, I got it, I got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I remember grappling at that time with how public do I want to be, and what are the risks of disclosing X, Y, or Z, and playing it forward in my mind, like who could this possibly offend?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it does, are there actually consequences beyond my hurt feelings?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what is my story and what is someone else's story?
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of figured out my lane, like I shouldn't talk about someone else's private business but I can choose to talk about my own.
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe that sounds kind of silly, but I do feel like when we're, you know, the age of social media and especially when so many of us authors are expected to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: present and active and engaged.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so forth, you do have to have a reckoning moment of what do I want to do, what feels comfortable and safe enough, of course, there's always risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm happy to have already done that work like.
[SPEAKER_00]: probably 20 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just 20 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, a really long time ago with my personal blog, but I've sent to the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think when I came into this, I had a sense of the things I like to talk about and what feels like I'm allowed to share these parts.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do think I'm much more transparent than other people, and I think it's fine to be private.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always want to say, I don't think the way I do things is how everyone should do things.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, I have my Instagram, but also a sub-stack right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has a couple of thousand subscribers, and I talk about agenting and offering and share quite a bit of specificity regarding advances, for example.
[SPEAKER_00]: I share exactly how much money I made as an agent last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be sharing that again for this year, like literally these are the dollars and cents that came to me this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's how it breaks down between book deals and subrites and royalties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same with authoring, here's my advance.
[SPEAKER_00]: This one didn't earn out.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I had one finally earned out this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I share my report next year for 2025,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to kind of break down.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the royalties that came from this one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think everyone should share about money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think some people want to be private about that and that's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just don't feel any sense of risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel there's any connection between the money I make or don't make.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my value were worth, I don't know, and at this point of my life, I'm like, well, it's just talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, here's how much they paid me and it's a lot more than some people get and it's a lot less than others get.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I feel like for people entering careers as authors and agents.
[SPEAKER_00]: If no one is talking about it, it's quite hard to make smart plans.
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear people debating all the time online.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, should I quit my day job?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what would it take to quit my day job?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard to make those calculations unless you can look at someone who's gone before and see how the finances break down for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, from an authoring side, but especially from an agenting side, because lots of agents become agents and
[SPEAKER_00]: can quit quite quickly, which I don't mean any shame on them, but it's a very tough job.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to be the person who you can kind of go to and be like, how does it actually break down in real life?
[SPEAKER_00]: and what of the dollars and cents of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And display that openly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's an example with money, but I, you know, the same way about when my auction book was declined.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I had a moment of like, should I talk about this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, yeah, you missed a client.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, who care?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know so many authors who's auction books were declined.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, bajillions, it happens so commonly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just refused to feel any sense of shame about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, for them, a dollar's in sense, decision based on how well my first book performed since my second book wasn't out yet at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in their perception, it failed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not really personal.
[SPEAKER_00]: To me, that means nothing about me as a writer or the quality of my book.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just means it didn't take off as most books don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think
[SPEAKER_00]: Being transparent also forces me to destigmatize it for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to come to peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I really appreciate that transparency.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know many of our listeners as well as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So please follow Jenna on social subscribe to her sub stack.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just invaluable resource and information.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so let's discuss the book now.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this was such a hugely ambitious novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have seven piervis, I think, some in those person, some in third person.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, I always say to people, please approach POV with great intentionality.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do not just be, I like third person, so I'm doing that or I like first person, so I'm doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you sat down, how did you decide which ones
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very much a vibe and a voice thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't sure how many POBs I would have when I started.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of mapped out, I want some of these characters that I didn't even know how many characters that would be total.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just kind of started writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think you pants, a puzzling word is that you, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did pants a lot of this book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and penses, I am also pancing and also pancing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say I'm not a complete pancer I used to be and that caused me much trouble with many of my early books, pre-having an agent, and even post-having an agent, now I would say I'm probably more of a plancer where I'll start, find the voice, find the vibe, find what tense I want to use, and so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then once I've kind of latched on to, oh, this is how it feels now I can actually think more about the plot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really have trouble thinking about plot in the void if I don't understand who was walking through this plot.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a bit of a stop and start starts do some discovery.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, experiment a little bit and once I understand better what I want to do, then I can figure out what is the mystery, who has secrets, not about a couple ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I abandoned, you know, there is some plotting before it gets tossed in the bin and we had off in another direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a very organic pants plot pants plot pants plot pants plot.
[SPEAKER_00]: journey until we get to the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, back to your question of how did I decide, I didn't have a plan mapped out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just kind of started writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think some of the characters I just wanted to be deeper in their head and to me first person just feels more natural to me for that to be the most intimate.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, close feeling vibe that you can get.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it can be achieved in third, but I just gravitate towards first.
[SPEAKER_00]: So some of the more challenging characters I wanted to do in first person, because I wanted to understand them better.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of the more average characters, I thought third was fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just, I don't know, it happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a masterclass in capturing voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for our listeners who are writing multi-pv novels, this is really something to study in terms of reading the consistency of the voice of the different characters as you move through the chapters.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can see there, like word choice, the way they think, the things that they focus on, the things that they prioritize, the things that they obsess over was just really, really brilliant in terms of,
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll go into the conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was it was really excellent.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for our listeners go and have a look at that to see how you can capture voice not just in first person, but in third person as well because you know voice is just as important in third person as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: so let's also discuss your flash forward prologue because we're always talking on the podcast about should we prologue should we not prologue?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh you book you book ended with an epilogue as well and this was such a good prologue was it always weird?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh did it come later?
[SPEAKER_02]: How did that come about?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was pretty much just me knowing that the murder wouldn't happen until quite deep in the book and so for readers of murder mysteries and thrillers
[SPEAKER_00]: often there is a prologue.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, does Lucy fully use them?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like she does, maybe she doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've read and now I won't be able to think of them, but many thrillers that use this convention of, we're going to give a hint of the murder up front to your nacken to see who's dead or who did it, but just as the promise to the reader, like here's my engagement ring where we are going to go through with the commitment of a murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it seeds that curiosity of who's dead and who did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it gives you like a little fuzzy snapshot that you get to then work towards as you move through the plot.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it really was the murder didn't happen until quite late in the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we need to give a little teaser up front, show some blood, and then proceed from there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and to write a whole book that takes place over the course of like how many hours 24 hours, yeah, 24 hours, you know, but you play around with timeline as well, you know, we get backstory and context, etc, but to write a whole novel that takes place over 24 hours as well was really fascinating, so just keeps that simmering tension going the whole time, which I loved as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk a bit about writing so-called and savory characters so that we're so grounded in their points of views that we find ourselves at times agreeing with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some of these characters are not great and they were two and I was like nodding along and I was like, yeah, I can kind of understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'm like, oh, wait, I shouldn't be agreeing with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, I think it's it's so important to know your characters before you worry about
[SPEAKER_02]: plot because if you know the characters so well, that kind of informs plot, what do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: I completely agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was recently talking with an editor and during that conversation, we had some disagreements about the book that I'm working on currently.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we kind of worked through, like she's coming from here and I'm coming from here, I really realize something about myself that I don't know if I had articulated before.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is kind of actually what I just said to you a little bit earlier, I cannot envision executing a plot, if I don't understand who's doing it and why.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can come up with random plot points, I can, but they don't make sense to me and I don't feel compelled to write them unless I can understand to motivations in the backstory and I think that is my strength and my
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my kryptonite in the sense that frequently my first drafts are two backstory heavy, two somatic, and there's just more there than the reader needs to know that can drag the plot down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've done that countless times, and then I have to cut it all out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the benefit of that is that, well, I hope what I hope to achieve, but I think all my books is by the time you get to these climactic points of the plot, it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reader is tracking, but yes, of course this person would do this unbelievable thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: People do unbelievable things all the time in real life, but for me to be satisfied as a reader and as a writer when I go through a thriller, I want to believe it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to believe that this could actually happen in the context of the world that the book is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, I think voice, backstory, personality, and really understanding this character once this and is scarred by this and is triggered by this, knowing all those things helps it feel dimensional and tight and gives that profound sense of satisfaction when it all comes together of, you know, you believe that.
[SPEAKER_02]: yeah yeah and you gave each character like a wound you know you gave them this wound that drives an insecurity or a secret that they obsess over and I love as well how we saw the characters through other characters point of view because that's so important because when you write from first person point of view for example you've got to decide whether that
[SPEAKER_02]: is a reliable narrator.
[SPEAKER_02]: How self-aware are they?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you can write a narcissistic character from the first person who has zero self-awareness and all we've got to go on is their own narration of themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when you have this kind of ensemble cast, each character views somebody differently based on their past, etc.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I could see you at a lot of fun with that as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is one of the most delightful parts of this writing experience was
[SPEAKER_00]: During the switching POVs, you're looking at everyone again, but from a different place in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the person who's perspective you were just in where you're hearing their story, suddenly you're doubting their story because now you're seeing this other character and their experience and how they remember what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was really fun to kind of build their back story.
[SPEAKER_00]: in this coral way with all the different voices participating.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, who do you believe and where are you going to put your trust?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was an exciting challenge and it really was fun to write.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah and something that I found really interesting and I didn't notice it in the beginning and I noticed it later is that these kinds of books all this tend to focus more on wealthy characters like really well-to-do characters with a circular kind of lifestyle and I don't know if it's because we're obsessed with wealthy people or we're obsessed with that kind of lifestyle but here we've got really like middle-class kind of characters you know I'm assuming that was a
[SPEAKER_00]: I do love me a good rich people thriller, and I love, you know, Lucy Folies, the hunting party, the expensive vacation they all go on and they're trapped in the cabin, and that's very fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this was inspired by a real-life party.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was kind of the start.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my husband is from Northern Indiana, where the book takes place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very post-industrial.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of struggling area, lots of drugs, lots of poverty, lots of issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that world at all until I met him when we were 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 42 now, so between 18 and 42, I've gone back to that region.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over and over again, in that his high school friends and his family is from there, obviously, like my in-laws and his daughter, and I've really kind of absorbed to a certain extent the flavor of where he grew up through being married to him for 20 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: and dating him for four years for her to have that the record show.
[SPEAKER_00]: So his high school friends literally did start an years party.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, obviously these are made up characters and no one murdered anyone at the real parties.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so forth, but in terms of the vibe, I really wanted to I guess explore the troubles of that area that I've seen in real life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always interested in discovering things as I write.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like starting to write when there are questions that I don't have answers to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder, like, what is with the self-sabotage that I have seen?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm 42.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, you see things by the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have certain age.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see people's stories from when they're young to when they're older.
[SPEAKER_00]: sometimes heads south in very sad ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: And unless you're BFFs with them and getting the inside view, I think it's natural for all of us to kind of see people, stories, and wonder why.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened to this person?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did they do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for me, this was a very fun way to explore, well, what can I come up with?
[SPEAKER_00]: What reasons might people have?
[SPEAKER_00]: What wounds might be driving these decisions that
[SPEAKER_00]: send their life off in a different direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I think I really did want to explore, I would say working class, culture, that I have been a part of through my husband and his circles, and I think the intense loyalty that you can find there, and hopefully hopefully some of the beauty of that did come through, even though there's also the characters have a lot of damage and trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a sense of togetherness and community that's quite powerful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in the real life New Year's party, that did go on for over a decade.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we flew in, I mean, people flew in from across the country because, you know, people dispersed after high school and college moved different places and every year.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would all come back sometimes at great cost to have a party that one night.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was incredibly special.
[SPEAKER_00]: It did not fall apart dramatically like this one, you know, it was more natural like we all had kids and they got really harsh So to keep seeing each other But I think when I was thinking after writing my debut made for you when I was thinking what do I want to write next?
[SPEAKER_00]: To the New Year's Party it always been in my head as like wouldn't that be a fun setup for murder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Little locked room one night only, you know
[SPEAKER_00]: all the friends getting together, all the wounds being activated.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one day I sat down and started, and the book just came out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I like seeing a different sort of class, you know, in terms of reading this kind of book, because you do eventually get sick of the wealthy people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not that wealthy people don't self-sabotage.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not that they don't have their own problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: But these are kind of different problems and a different perspective, which I really really
[SPEAKER_02]: We almost had a time genus.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to ask in terms of your agenting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you open to submissions?
[SPEAKER_02]: I know people are going to fall in love with you after this interview.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what they're going to want to know if you open to submissions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not of a distributions.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been wanting to open for so long, but here we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a quick summary of my agenting life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been agenting since January of last year.
[SPEAKER_00]: So almost two years now, I recently got promoted from associate's literary agent, literary agent, which is a fun whole moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: My agency is Storm Literary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I represent, I don't see the majority of my list, is adult.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also adore young adult and middle grade.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't do picture books, so I do everything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also do adult nonfiction, and I would love to find some more experts in their fields who have something to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope to open to submissions before the years over.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just been very busy with lots of fun things happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have some prolific clients to are doing very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: prevented me from opening to queries as it should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: My clients get my first focus, but it is the job I I can say post-midlife crisis when I turn 40 has given just new breath and energy to my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a delight to work with creative people.
[SPEAKER_00]: it is a delight to edit books, to dive into story and help, you know, bring home the structure of what they're trying to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the line editing, like working on prose.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just love books and authors, the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love the sale size, so it's a dream come true for me, and I feel lucky every day, but I get to do it, even though it's halla tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Halla, halla, halla, you can look at
[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, once I open again, I would love to see absolutely everything from Romanticity to forward to upmarket to literary to thrillers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might taste as completely omnivorous.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a gracious reader across genres and there's literally nothing I won't look at.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, except for picture books at this point because I don't have expertise there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for our listeners, if you want to know when Jen is opening, you need to follow her on socials and subscribe to her sub-sac and then you'll be in the know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jen, thank you so much for this discussion.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so wonderful chatting with you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wish you all the best with the new news party for our listeners.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you buy the book, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much, Jen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Bianca.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show, in the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, it just takes one yes.