[SPEAKER_09]: and welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_09]: The shit no one tells you about writing.
[SPEAKER_09]: 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_09]: Hey everyone, today's guest is a debut author whose writing has appeared in the Washington Post the Kansas City star, chalk beats, era magazine, and more.
[SPEAKER_09]: She is a graduate of Columbia University it's my pleasure to welcome Canron Shoes.
[SPEAKER_09]: Canron welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm so excited to be here.
[SPEAKER_06]: I actually listened to this show when I was querying, so in preparing to query, so it's really exciting for me to kind of be on the other side now.
[SPEAKER_09]: Oh wow, that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_09]: We love hearing those full-circle moments.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's incredible.
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, for our listeners, we are actually going to have Canwin read us her successful query, let's us shortly.
[SPEAKER_09]: which is always exciting and we're going to put that in our sub-stack, but let me just firstly tell you about the book we're discussing.
[SPEAKER_09]: Those of you who aren't watching on YouTube, I'm a holding up the cover of the book.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's called boring Asian female, very striking cover.
[SPEAKER_09]: And we're going to link to it on a bookshop.org affiliate page where if you buy the book there, you can support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, pre-orders, all orders are so important, so please go there to support our authors.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, let me read you the flap copy and then we're going to dive in.
[SPEAKER_09]: Elizabeth's saying knows her place in the world.
[SPEAKER_09]: She knows she's in the 10th percentile for likability and the 70th percentile for attractiveness.
[SPEAKER_09]: but she's also in the 99th percentile for academics.
[SPEAKER_09]: So when Harvard Law School rejects Elizabeth for not standing out enough, which she knows means she's just another boring Asian female, who carefully constructed life falls apart.
[SPEAKER_09]: What shocked so even more is that Laura Kim, a classmate at Columbia, got in.
[SPEAKER_09]: I first she followed her because she's just curious, what Laura orders for lunch, will Laura shops, what Laura's hobbies are, all of these things must contribute to her overall package, what makes her an acceptable, interesting person to Harvard, but still Elizabeth can't see it.
[SPEAKER_09]: The only thing she sees is that Laura has taken her spot at Harvard.
[SPEAKER_09]: A spot she knows, she deserves after working so hard.
[SPEAKER_09]: A spot she'll simply have to take back.
[SPEAKER_09]: Don't, don't, don't.
[SPEAKER_09]: Guys, this was one of my favorite reads of the year.
[SPEAKER_09]: I couldn't put it down.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm a mini-posal woman who wakes up at 2 a.m. all the time, and this book was my go-to, I've just flew through it.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, highly, highly recommend, and there's a lot that we are going to discuss.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, before we dive into the actual book itself, Carmen, I would love for you to tell us the genesis of the story, or always love knowing where a story idea came from,
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so I knew when I started writing that I wanted to write a story that took place at Columbia, my alma mater, and the reason is that it was just such a unique experience with so many different characters, so many people who seemed so confident, but at the same time really insecure.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it was just at this very transitional point of everyone's lives.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're looking back, I'm like, you know, I felt I was trying to find my place in the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: And everyone else was actually trying to find their place in the world as well.
[SPEAKER_06]: But back then I thought everyone else had it figured out and I was the only person who
[SPEAKER_06]: who didn't have it figured out.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, and I knew I wanted to write about a female friendship, I'm kind of putting that in quotation marks, as I know that term is overused, but I wanted to write about, you know, the dynamic between two young women,
[SPEAKER_06]: one who maybe has her life figured out a little bit more, one who has her life figured out a little bit less, even though on paper, it might seem the opposite.
[SPEAKER_06]: That was just kind of, I think I started with kind of a vibe, and I also wanted to incorporate these elements of, you know, being on a college campus where,
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, most people don't have access to a ton of disposable income, but then you're in this big city where you also just get access to all these people who are so much older and so much more established and seeing it, their world from an aspirational lens.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's why I opened the book with, you know, with the protagonist at an art gallery.
[SPEAKER_06]: since it's kind of dressed opposing her dorm room where she lives, where there's, you know, rats, and it's small and dingy with this really rarefied world that she hopes to enter.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that was kind of the genesis of the story.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think I read somewhere as well that you said, you went to the deal with failure, you know, someone who should be successful by all means and has this huge setback.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think you said that those were based on something that you personally went through as well.
[SPEAKER_09]: So it was an exploration of that as well.
[SPEAKER_09]: Can you speak about how something personal can become a book, even though the book is not about that personal thing?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, you know, I, I was attending this New Yorker panel with Sandra O and Mindron Lee and one thing that they said that really stood out to me and I think I had maybe trust started writing the novel or I.
[SPEAKER_06]: Was thinking about writing it and one thing they said was to tell the truth and I didn't really understand what that meant because I was like Well, if I tell the truth I took it in a very little sense if I tell the truth then Aren't I just writing a memoir or something like that, but when I thought about it a bit more what what I realized was that they meant telling kind of like an emotional truth
[SPEAKER_06]: So my emotional truth was that, you know, when I was in college, so I had grown up in in the Midwest and I had gone to high school in Idaho and then I had gone into this world where it's like so many of the people around me, they had gone to boarding school or they had
[SPEAKER_06]: lived internationally, and I always felt kind of, I always felt a little bit less than or like I didn't belong.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I wanted more than anything to just feel like I belonged to this world and not feel so much like an outsider.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that my path to trying to kind of result that conflict, and I think a lot of people at these types of universities feel the same way was I decided to go into Wall Street.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I
[SPEAKER_06]: worked a well-street job if I made a ton of money, then I would finally feel like I belong and I would finally feel like I wasn't an outsider and that was kind of, you know, how I tried to resolve these conflicts.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I got this very, very prestigious internship in private equity.
[SPEAKER_06]: I worked my ass off to bring the summer.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was working 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. regularly.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would go in on the weekends.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it was one of those internships where, you know, everyone knew if you got it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was like, people on campus would come up to me and they would be like, you know, how did you get this internship?
[SPEAKER_06]: Whatever.
[SPEAKER_06]: And kind of the point of the internship was at the end of the summer.
[SPEAKER_06]: You get a return offer,
[SPEAKER_06]: And generally speaking, it was like, if you get the internship, there's a very good chance you're going to get a return offer.
[SPEAKER_06]: So when I got the internship, I was like, my life is set, you know, I'm going to get the return offer.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to be super rich.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to, you know, be so successful.
[SPEAKER_06]: Everyone's going to be my friend, you know, whatever.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then at the end of the summer, I didn't get, I didn't get the return offer.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it basically sent me down this spiral where I didn't become obsessed with someone else, but I...
[SPEAKER_06]: felt like I had to completely rebuild my identity from scratch.
[SPEAKER_06]: In that process of rebuilding my identity, what I also realized was that the building blocks for that identity were fickle in the first place, because even if I hadn't gotten the return offer then, you know, you never know when something near career is going to suddenly change.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I wanted to kind of speak to that emotional truth of that failure.
[SPEAKER_06]: I never applied to law school.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I wanted to kind of take that emotional truth and put it onto a different situation that maybe would be a little bit more fun for me to write about.
[SPEAKER_06]: Since you know, law school admissions, it's like a lot of people know about them.
[SPEAKER_06]: A lot of people are talking about just college admissions generally, so I kind of put that emotional truth on that situation.
[SPEAKER_09]: That makes me think of the, I think it's a quote from cool running.
[SPEAKER_09]: So it's the Jamaican Bob Slip team.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's especially, it makes me laugh today because Jamaican just be Canada in the Bob Slip, right?
[SPEAKER_09]: No inter Olympics and you're like, wow, Canada, a good one there.
[SPEAKER_09]: But I think someone they says, if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think that's our true and so many things and I see that even with writers, you know, it's like I'll be happy when I get an agent I'll be happy when my book gets published.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'll be happy when I make the New York Times, they sell a list.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'll be happy once my book becomes a movie And so it goes and the goal post keeps shifting because so much of your value is placed on external things that are so much outside of your control Yes, for sure, and it's so funny that you bring that up since I was having the same exact conversation with
[SPEAKER_06]: My husband last night, which is that, you know, for me, I have started to hold all of these external achievements almost at an arm's length distance, so, you know, I obviously I'm so happy about the press that the book is getting I'm so happy that.
[SPEAKER_06]: about readers who are really enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_06]: At the same time, I am focusing my own fulfillment on the fact that I wrote a book, I'm very proud of, and I wrote the story that feels true to me.
[SPEAKER_06]: I worked really hard on it, and I'm really happy about that.
[SPEAKER_06]: So while it is nice to see people
[SPEAKER_06]: I have started to hold some of that external validation at an arm's length distance where I let myself feel happy about it, but I don't let that define me as an author.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, excellent advice to all authors and I think to everybody in general.
[SPEAKER_09]: So let's look at the journey to publication.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it took you about four years, 25 drafts and a genre change to write this book.
[SPEAKER_09]: Take me through that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, well, so I first, I sent a first batch of query letters to about 20 agents and this was when I had been working on the book for about six months, which was way too early, I had finished the first draft in maybe like a month and a half and I spent, you know, the rest of the time just editing.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I was like, well, I don't know a lot of editing and I feel like it's good now.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I sent it to 20 agents.
[SPEAKER_06]: I got two full manuscript requests.
[SPEAKER_06]: And both of them were rejections, but one of the rejections actually came with a lot of feedback.
[SPEAKER_06]: And this agent, who I'm so grateful to for her feedback, she also kind of gave me a solution to what she saw as a problem in the book, which was kind of the lack of momentum, especially in the first two thirds of it.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I kind of went back to the drawing board and I was like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_06]: I her feedback bothers me a lot and the reason of bothers me is because she's bright.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I was like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_06]: This wasn't this wasn't ready.
[SPEAKER_06]: This wasn't ready.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to go back and I'm going to edit it until I feel it's ready.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I took another year, just editing it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I edited it to the point where I just felt intuitively, I was like, this is ready.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is as good as it's going to get.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, obviously, I've edited it further, but I really felt intuitively like, someone's going to like this.
[SPEAKER_06]: And if they don't, that's their problem.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's not mine because I really like that.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's going to go in and go in and go in back to the internal validation part.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, and then that was when I found my agent, Rachel.
[SPEAKER_06]: She was very, very quick to set a full manuscript request.
[SPEAKER_06]: She was very quick to ask for a call.
[SPEAKER_06]: And immediately I just felt like there was so much chemistry between us.
[SPEAKER_06]: We love all of the same books.
[SPEAKER_06]: That was a huge thing for me.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was looking at her.
[SPEAKER_06]: list of favorite books.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen a single other agent who has the same, such a similar taste in books that I do.
[SPEAKER_06]: And we just really hit it off and I'm really grateful.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I will say that when I was querying the book, the book was a lot different than the version that's coming out.
[SPEAKER_06]: Now, so it was originally
[SPEAKER_06]: Very contemporary fiction women's fiction type book.
[SPEAKER_06]: My comms were Sally Rooney, Lily King.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was not a thriller at all.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was not a suspense book at all.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was just about this this this girl who has to deal with rejection and kind of spirals.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then when I went on submission, I I had a call with Angela at Berkeley.
[SPEAKER_06]: And again, it was like we had a lot of chemistry at the beginning of our call, but she then kind of put something out there.
[SPEAKER_06]: She was like, well, the issue is this is not quite a women's fiction novel because there's not really any romance in it and we don't want to make you turn it into a romance.
[SPEAKER_06]: Would you be open to changing this to suspense?
[SPEAKER_06]: And I had never considered that before.
[SPEAKER_06]: I never considered myself a suspense writer.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was not something my radar, but the more I thought about it, the more I was like, you know, as she's right, this would actually work really well as a suspense novel.
[SPEAKER_06]: Since it is, there was suspense in it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It just didn't quite get to that level that is needed for the genre.
[SPEAKER_06]: So then after that call, you know, Berkeley ended up preempting the book in a two book, D.O.
[SPEAKER_06]: which I was so happy about.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I just spent, I think, three or four months, completely writing the book into a suspense novel, Laura, the antagonist, didn't exist up until that point.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then I essentially wrote in an entire obsession plot.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the book just completely changed.
[SPEAKER_06]: So even though I had gone through two rounds of editing, two very large rounds of editing myself, I then went through probably an even larger round of editing with my publishers.
[SPEAKER_09]: that is, I mean that is fascinating but honestly it speaks to and this is what I say time and again how is all those we need to be open to these kinds of suggestions because the problem is you spend that much time on a book and it begins to feel true to you.
[SPEAKER_09]: It feels like no I can't change this because that's not how it happened right and again you're not writing a memoir you're writing a novel and so things can change.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it's fascinating to me that this started off as woman's fiction.
[SPEAKER_09]: I can't imagine this was woman's fiction.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, this is like it is so intensely psychological that and I'm going to discuss some of those things shortly.
[SPEAKER_09]: So the fact that you turn that around and that's such a big genre changed is fascinating.
[SPEAKER_09]: Before we move on to that, will you read us that query later?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, yes, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: So again, the queer letter is going to sound very different from the current synopsis of the book.
[SPEAKER_06]: So you guys can see just how much it has changed.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'll start start now.
[SPEAKER_06]: After Yale Law School's Admissions Committee rejects Elizabeth Zang for being just another boring Asian female.
[SPEAKER_06]: She starts having panic attacks and pushes away her friends, including her half-white best friend, Anjin, who she has always envied as a slightly wider, slightly prettier, slightly better version of herself.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yale was Elizabeth's one chance to prove to everyone in her life.
[SPEAKER_06]: Her blonde haired, blue-eyed high school bullies from South Dakota, and her wealthy college classmates from the Upper East Side.
[SPEAKER_06]: that they were wrong for overlooking her.
[SPEAKER_06]: With that gone, all Elizabeth has left is her new situation.
[SPEAKER_06]: David is a white finance bro who gives her access to his credit card, buys her an $8,000 Chanel bag, and whimsically flies her to London.
[SPEAKER_06]: Elizabeth also has a secret that no one knows about.
[SPEAKER_06]: For years, she's been creating fake profiles of attractive people and dating apps, a harmless social experiment to keep her entertained.
[SPEAKER_06]: but after her long-time crush asks for her advice on asking out, on Jen, a jealous Elizabeth creates a profile using on Jen's pictures.
[SPEAKER_06]: When her pregnancy test comes back positive, she considers succumbing to David's wish to keep the baby.
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe she doesn't need a prestigious law degree to prove to everyone that she's made it in life.
[SPEAKER_06]: After all, how many other law school applicants can say they're going to law school with a baby?
[SPEAKER_06]: But after under-discovering her cat fishing, their friendship may never recover.
[SPEAKER_06]: And Elizabeth has lost the only person in her life who can warn her that David's motivations are more nefarious than they seem.
[SPEAKER_09]: Don't, don't, don't.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I can understand why the agents wanted it because it's compelling, but when I just compare it to how the book is now, it really fascinates me.
[SPEAKER_09]: So something I want to chat about is how Elizabeth Zang is probably one of the most fascinating protagonists I have read in a long time, because I was sitting going, okay, most narrators are unreliable.
[SPEAKER_09]: Even if they think they're reliable, we as human beings are unreliable because we don't see ourselves clearly etc.
[SPEAKER_09]: etc.
[SPEAKER_09]: But Elizabeth has got so much self-awareness.
[SPEAKER_09]: Even when she's being awful, she's self aware of it, but then she's so delusional in other aspects.
[SPEAKER_09]: Just like a fascinating character.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, she's obsessed with numbers and facts.
[SPEAKER_09]: And there's a part in the book where it says, numbers and facts.
[SPEAKER_09]: So abstract and sanitized from the individual experiences of real life, making her feel more alone.
[SPEAKER_09]: So can we speak a bit about the process of creating her?
[SPEAKER_09]: Because you had to create the first time round when this was woman's fiction.
[SPEAKER_09]: And then you had to like create all over again when this became sort of a thriller.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean it's like dark academia and a thriller at the same time.
[SPEAKER_09]: So can we speak a bit about that process of like really getting into her head?
[SPEAKER_09]: because you did it so well that there were times I felt claustrophobic.
[SPEAKER_09]: I was like Elizabeth is freaking me the hell out.
[SPEAKER_09]: I need to, like, put this book down and I need to take a walk.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, so even though the genre changed so much,
[SPEAKER_06]: It's almost like the same character just in parallel realities.
[SPEAKER_06]: So when it was still a women's fiction novel, she was still someone who was very obsessed with percentages.
[SPEAKER_06]: She was still just very obsessed with external validation.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's almost just, I just transported her into a darker reality.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're for some reason the neurons fired a little bit differently in this reality and she became obsessed with.
[SPEAKER_06]: This person named Laura Kim and then this this goes back to what I said about emotional truth because one thing I was really important to me when writing this character was I think it can be easy to just Feot your way into saying this characters a sociopath
[SPEAKER_06]: all her motivations can be explained by the fact that she's a sociopath, she's just isn't.
[SPEAKER_06]: Think like normal people, she's just weird.
[SPEAKER_06]: And you can kind of let yourself, you can basically have your reader just a gosh, what's that term where it's like a, oh, suspension of disbelief.
[SPEAKER_06]: Basically, you just make that suspension of disbelief for your reader.
[SPEAKER_06]: This person's just psychologically different from everyone else.
[SPEAKER_06]: but I wanted it to be that all of her actions are kind of explainable, just in a very twisted way.
[SPEAKER_06]: So even though she probably is a sociopath, that isn't the thing that explains all of her behavior.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that was something really important to me when writing this character.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think the reason that I cared so much about that was I still wanted her to be a relatable college student.
[SPEAKER_06]: Even though she clearly has a lot of issues, I think that she really just has a heightened version of what many people at this point of their life feel.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, they feel like they're constantly comparing themselves to others, they feel
[SPEAKER_06]: all of this pressure to find their place in the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: So all of those kind of were my drivers for creating this character.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then this also goes back to, again, emotional truths.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I essentially took out the worst, most toxic parts of my self.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I was like, what if I blew up?
[SPEAKER_06]: like the tiny seed of, you know, let's say, you know, I feel jealous sometimes.
[SPEAKER_06]: I just really blew that up.
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's still that truth, but just a magnified version of it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think it would have been easy to write to a stereo typical kind of psychopath, social path, but you, who?
[SPEAKER_09]: you give her guilt.
[SPEAKER_09]: There are times that she feels intense guilt.
[SPEAKER_09]: She really does feel guilty, but then she rationalizes the guilt.
[SPEAKER_09]: So what's so interesting is, you know, in the podcast CC especially is always talking about interiority and emotionality.
[SPEAKER_09]: You need to put us in the characters interiority.
[SPEAKER_09]: we need to feel those emotions and she has these feelings but then she completely rationalizes the feelings so that even that emotionality becomes interiority and we spend so much time in a head which I didn't realize until much later because they are interactions with other people.
[SPEAKER_09]: She does have friends, she does go out.
[SPEAKER_09]: you know, she parties, she takes drugs, she does all these things that you would expect a college student to do and you know, she'll go, I should date this guy because it's the kind of thing that will make me feel normal or it's the kind of thing college students do, so she does dates and all of that.
[SPEAKER_09]: But then rationalizes so much of it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so in that respect, I think you
[SPEAKER_09]: spoon feeding them because I kept going but the psychopath or social path wouldn't necessarily feel this way and yet she does which makes her even more fascinating.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes exactly and that's where I wanted that relatability to come in.
[SPEAKER_06]: So even though she is
[SPEAKER_06]: probably a lot more toxic than, you know, the average person reading this book.
[SPEAKER_06]: I wanted you to still be able to seek limpses of maybe your worst version in her, and if you really light yourself feed into your own delusions, since everyone feels jealous at some point, everyone feels like, you know, they want to trade lives with someone else.
[SPEAKER_06]: And what would happen if you just really, you know, let those feelings blossom and just acted upon them and let yourself rationalize all of the terrible things that you feel.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, there was a lot that you did that I could relate to.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I mean, social media, you know, I remember leaving.
[SPEAKER_09]: high school, what I'm giving my age away here in like 1993.
[SPEAKER_09]: We didn't know what any of our classmates were doing for the longest time.
[SPEAKER_09]: There wasn't Facebook, there wasn't Instagram, it was like if you didn't run into them some way, do you had no idea what was happening in their lives?
[SPEAKER_09]: Like if you, if you wanted to, you know, stalk people, you had to drive past their houses to see what was happening.
[SPEAKER_09]: You couldn't, you couldn't, you know, stalk them on socials and it did make me think that if I'd had all of these things,
[SPEAKER_09]: at that age, would I have given into a lot of that.
[SPEAKER_09]: And even as adults, we look at people socials.
[SPEAKER_09]: And we're like, oh my god, this person is always happy.
[SPEAKER_09]: And there was a vacation.
[SPEAKER_09]: And they always so well put together.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I'm such a shlub.
[SPEAKER_09]: And why am I such a mess compared to other people?
[SPEAKER_09]: But again, it isn't real.
[SPEAKER_09]: So much of this isn't real.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that, you know, particularly when I,
[SPEAKER_06]: was going to college.
[SPEAKER_06]: Instagram felt like everything.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was like, you know, the first time you meet someone, you're going to their Instagram.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that became just a representation of your personhood where sometimes you would see someone in person that you had only known through Facebook and Instagram.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it almost feels like the person on their social media is more
[SPEAKER_06]: where you're so used to forming an image based on the type of photos they post that when you actually see them in real life, you're like, well, like, they're not, like, that's what they look like.
[SPEAKER_06]: They look like this photo that is on their profile or they, okay, I'm seeing them in class now, but that's not their actual life.
[SPEAKER_06]: Their actual life is them going on, really niceifications on their Instagram.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's something that, you know, is talked about a lot at the same time, I think we can't ever talk about it enough for just that social media is just not it's just really not real.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I remember with the younger friend of mine showed me something, I don't know, it was on a story or something of somebody and he said, don't click on it or don't do something and I did exactly what he said, I wasn't supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_09]: And he freaked out and he was like, now they're going to know that I was stalking it and then I saw the story.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I was like, who the hell looks to see who's seen their stories?
[SPEAKER_09]: I said, I post stories all the time.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't look to see who's looked at my stories and he's like, everybody looks to see who's looking at their stories.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it was just like, oh my god, it was this whole world I didn't know about which was fascinating as well.
[SPEAKER_09]: We don't have much time left.
[SPEAKER_09]: Something that I want to say as well is that the social commentary in this book is so brilliant.
[SPEAKER_09]: There was so many times that I stopped to go
[SPEAKER_09]: That's so interesting.
[SPEAKER_09]: Like there's the scene where she's with her doctor or gynecologist and she comments on how this woman knows the most intimate details of her life.
[SPEAKER_09]: She knows the secret that she's told none of her friends and yet she can't ask this doctor about why she part so here that way.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it was just like fascinating.
[SPEAKER_09]: There's these little techniques.
[SPEAKER_09]: There's the
[SPEAKER_06]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and I think this is one of the most fun parts about being an author.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's that you start to notice your details about your own life more since those are the details that ultimately
[SPEAKER_06]: get fed into your writing.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I think ever since I started really taking writing seriously, it's almost like I see the world around me in a more precise light.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's it's really interesting or I even during social interactions, I think to myself, that is interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: Why do we talk about topics like this or
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think it's one of the most fun parts of being an author, it's that you become more introspective as well.
[SPEAKER_06]: You have to dig deeper into your own psyche since, you know, if you don't understand yourself, how are you going to be able to understand a character enough to write them in a compelling way?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I know, very, very much true.
[SPEAKER_09]: As writers, I think we in the moment, but we're also observing the moment and we're analyzing the moment and certainly at two a.m. when we're lying awake, we're over analyzing the moment which is interesting.
[SPEAKER_09]: Canon, we're so lovely speaking to you.
[SPEAKER_09]: Once again, I'm holding up the book, boring, Asian, female.
[SPEAKER_09]: Please get it from our bookshop.org affiliate page, support the podcast, support an independent book store.
[SPEAKER_09]: And we wish you so much success with this.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm so excited that we were able to do this.
[SPEAKER_09]: Hi everyone.
[SPEAKER_09]: Welcome to another awesome author interview.
[SPEAKER_09]: Today's guest is the number one bestselling author of a dozen books.
[SPEAKER_09]: As a book dealer, she has helped over 500 first-time authors
[SPEAKER_09]: A silver-felture and finalist book pipelines form adaptation winner and voted one of Marita's best fiction writers.
[SPEAKER_09]: Her work has been option for foam, featured on Good Morning America's CBS Saturday mornings and in the New York Times.
[SPEAKER_09]: To learn more, go to her website,
[SPEAKER_09]: Let me spell that for you guys, so it's R-E-A-F-R-E-Y dot com.
[SPEAKER_09]: Right, Maria, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the show.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, thanks so much for joining us, so for those who aren't following on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm holding up the book cover.
[SPEAKER_09]: Dear mother, this is the book we're going to be talking about today.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's an advanced read-a-copy, lovely atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_09]: cover there.
[SPEAKER_09]: Right.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, real before we go in, I know that our listeners immediately heard book Dula and their brains are all on fire and they will not forgive me if I do not begin there.
[SPEAKER_09]: What is a book Dula?
[SPEAKER_09]: Please take us through that.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yes, I love that.
[SPEAKER_10]: So, this is not a term that I
[SPEAKER_10]: clients started calling me a bookdula.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I think a lot of people have heard of a book coach where someone is helping you through all different sorts of writing processes.
[SPEAKER_10]: But as a bookdula, I am really helping writers burn their books into the world.
[SPEAKER_10]: Whether they come to me with a nonfiction idea, they want to write the next great American novel.
[SPEAKER_10]: They need an editor, they need coaching.
[SPEAKER_10]: They want me to pitch them to agents and editors.
[SPEAKER_10]: They need a ghost writer.
[SPEAKER_10]: tailor each individual's needs and take them from concept all the way usually to publication.
[SPEAKER_10]: And sometimes so I am with someone can be with a client for sometimes a year or more.
[SPEAKER_10]: So it's even longer than a real birth, but I've been working with authors for 20 years.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I feel like I love writing.
[SPEAKER_10]: I love being an author, but I feel like it is my duty to help authors navigate this space because as you know, it is such a difficult world to navigate.
[SPEAKER_10]: There's so much that we don't know.
[SPEAKER_10]: There's so much that we're not taught on the business side of
[SPEAKER_10]: publishing and that's what I'm most interested in is the business side and how to make a living at this how to again customize your own journey so it's on your own terms and you feel in controls the author so that's kind of what I do with with people and I absolutely love it.
[SPEAKER_09]: I love the kind of all of that because I believe in good literary citizenship and this helps writers feel so much less alone.
[SPEAKER_09]: So one question that I want to ask is you said that you will pitch agents and editors.
[SPEAKER_09]: So you're not an agent yourself, but you can act as an intermediary.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so first time I've heard about that.
[SPEAKER_09]: So tell us about that as well.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_10]: I've been asked to be an agent so many times.
[SPEAKER_10]: Like, isn't that basically what you're doing, but I'm kind of the pre agent.
[SPEAKER_10]: I like to call myself a matchmaker and in a world where there's so many gatekeepers.
[SPEAKER_10]: I'm a gate opener.
[SPEAKER_10]: I am really trying to help the author like jump over that flush pile because if you were an author who has ever pitched yourself to agents or
[SPEAKER_10]: straight to publisher.
[SPEAKER_10]: You know that you send these emails out into the void and then you just sit back and you wait and wait and wait and sometimes never hear from anyone at all.
[SPEAKER_10]: And so what I've learned in my career is this is a relationship driven business and I wanted to utilize my relationships with people that I've met.
[SPEAKER_10]: I have a wonderful arsenal of top literary agents that I've
[SPEAKER_10]: Just come to know throughout my business, same thing with editors.
[SPEAKER_10]: So when a fiction author or a non-fiction author comes to me on the non-fiction side, we create their book proposal, which is what you actually need to sell the book.
[SPEAKER_10]: You don't write the book first on the fiction side.
[SPEAKER_10]: You know, we go through a developmental editing process.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then I create their pitch letter or their query letter.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I pitch to agents in my arsenal.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's usually about 10 to 15.
[SPEAKER_10]: agents that I pitch, I have about a 95% success rate with landing matching people to an agent.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's not a guarantee, but I really, really, really try to make those appropriate matches.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's the hardest part of my job though, because it's like managing expectations.
[SPEAKER_10]: We can do everything we can, but I can't.
[SPEAKER_10]: dictate what an agent really wants to see.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's it's very subjective.
[SPEAKER_10]: But yeah, it's it's a really interesting part of my job.
[SPEAKER_10]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_10]: I think that's what people come to me the most for is they want those relationships.
[SPEAKER_10]: They want those open doors and it just thrills me.
[SPEAKER_10]: Like I get more excited when one of my clients lands a deal.
[SPEAKER_10]: Sometimes then when versus when I do, because I'm in the business of helping people make their dreams come true and it's just It's such a privilege like to walk that path with someone.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, no, I love all of that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Door opener.
[SPEAKER_09]: Gate opener instead of a gatekeeper, which is wonderful.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, so now yeah, I listen as don't say that I don't get you the information that I know you want.
[SPEAKER_09]: So now we're going to get to talking about the book.
[SPEAKER_09]: dear mother.
[SPEAKER_09]: So you said that this story was a long time in the making since like 2017.
[SPEAKER_09]: So take us through that process because I'm always so fascinated by books that kind of get put in the draw and then pull that again and dust it off.
[SPEAKER_10]: Well, this one is, I'm going to give you the truth about this one because yes, so my debut novel that came out in 2018 was called not her daughter that book went to auction different publishers wanted it and I envision that book is having a sequel which would have been dear mother one publisher wanted that two book deal they wanted dear mother the other publisher that I ended up going with did not they just wanted my standalone novel they were not interested in a second book.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I had about 70 pages written of dear mother and just I did.
[SPEAKER_10]: I shelved it.
[SPEAKER_10]: I put it in a drawer.
[SPEAKER_10]: Didn't really think about it again.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I started with a current publisher that I'm with now.
[SPEAKER_10]: It was time to come up with another book concept dear mother is my third book with this publisher and I kind of dusted that.
[SPEAKER_10]: story off brought it out and pitched it to her and she really liked it.
[SPEAKER_10]: But I had to make it completely different.
[SPEAKER_10]: It couldn't have anything to do with the original story.
[SPEAKER_10]: So this has never happened to me before, but I was like, okay, great.
[SPEAKER_10]: I know exactly where I'm going with this book.
[SPEAKER_10]: I'm going to tweak it.
[SPEAKER_10]: I wrote the book.
[SPEAKER_10]: turned it in early.
[SPEAKER_10]: My agent loved it.
[SPEAKER_10]: You know, I had a couple beta readers and I was like my editors are going to love this book.
[SPEAKER_10]: I actually have two editors with my publisher.
[SPEAKER_10]: right before I was supposed to get my editorial letter back I get a message saying hey can you hop on a zoom call we need to talk about this book and I said oh that's not a good sign I've never had an editor request to call so I said just tell me is this book going to be a total rewrite and they said yes so I was like oh if you're an author who gets to the editing stage you know that there's a difference between
[SPEAKER_10]: Preparing yourself to edit a book versus potentially having to rewrite a book from scratch So long story short.
[SPEAKER_10]: We hop on this call.
[SPEAKER_10]: They proceed for 10 minutes to tell me everything They hated about the book that it just didn't work for them and I was really shocked because again I was like I nailed this book.
[SPEAKER_10]: This is great and they for whatever reason they just they did not like it So I could not salvage anything
[SPEAKER_10]: from that book and they were like, we're going to scrap it.
[SPEAKER_10]: What other ideas do you have?
[SPEAKER_10]: And on this call, I was just like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_10]: I'm going to have to think about it.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I came up the only thing I kept is the setting, which is Cedar Lock Washington and my character's name, everything else shifted.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I rewrote the book that you're holding in your hands is literally a
[SPEAKER_10]: And my editors, I wrote everything in a Google Doc and they were in there with me live as I'm writing my first draft.
[SPEAKER_10]: They're editing like right behind me and I I do that with my clients, but I've never done that before and it's going to sound weird.
[SPEAKER_10]: I actually kind of liked it because it's the most attention I've had from them like actually getting live feedback.
[SPEAKER_10]: But as a writer, you're first draft like if you don't really want to not only do you not want anybody to see that you don't really want to publish that, but we were in such a pressure cooker and we were so behind.
[SPEAKER_10]: I did it.
[SPEAKER_10]: I learned that I'm a very fast writer anyway.
[SPEAKER_10]: My editors were really complimentary, but I joke like if you don't like this book, it's literally because it was written in two weeks.
[SPEAKER_10]: So sorry, not sorry.
[SPEAKER_09]: I've actually got chest pain as you described in English.
[SPEAKER_09]: The thought of busy writing and having an edit to live behind me, busy fixing out, oh my god, that that actually gave me chest pain.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think they'll be listening to that thing who's the same thing.
[SPEAKER_09]: I can't believe you turned around such an excellent book so quickly.
[SPEAKER_10]: Well, thanks.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, they were very kind about it.
[SPEAKER_10]: And it's just one of those things.
[SPEAKER_10]: I joke that it's karma because I offer a container for my clients.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's called the Collaborative Container.
[SPEAKER_10]: where I assign them a certain number of chapters for their book.
[SPEAKER_10]: They write like a chapter two a week and then I am actually in their editing live behind them as they move on to the next one.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I'm like, oh, this is payback.
[SPEAKER_10]: I actually get to know what this feels like.
[SPEAKER_10]: But it taught me resiliency.
[SPEAKER_10]: This is my 10th book and it's such a humbling industry this industry because you would think I like oh I know what I'm doing by now But this taught me that no not every book is a hit and you have to be have to be malleable in this industry and I was really proud of myself that I did not crumble and just refuse to do it
[SPEAKER_10]: Because, again, I was not in that headspace to write a book from scratch, but I actually think this one turned out better.
[SPEAKER_10]: It's a different story, but ultimately, you know, early readers are enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_10]: So there's always that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Wow, okay, mind blown, right?
[SPEAKER_09]: So for our listeners who have got that manuscript that somewhere in the drawer, and I'm sure you have that with your own clients as the book dealer, like at what points do you say to somebody at its time?
[SPEAKER_09]: to put this aside and move on, because I think that's one of the hardest things for writers, especially the more time you've spent on it, the more invested you are in it and the less inclined you are to go, okay, it's time to move on.
[SPEAKER_09]: So what you're advice there?
[SPEAKER_10]: That's such a tough, because again, it's so subjective, right?
[SPEAKER_10]: Like, who am I to say, whether this is?
[SPEAKER_10]: Selable or not, but I think if you've been tinkering with something for years and years and years, the next step, if you don't want to just shove it, is finding a few very high-level beta readers, not peat not your mom and not your partner, not people that are just going to tell you it's great, but actual maybe potential readers or someone with an editorial eye to see if
[SPEAKER_10]: It has legs if people are interested in it before you decide to shelve it or you know if you've had it I cannot stress enough like making sure your book has been professionally edited that it has gone through a developmental
[SPEAKER_10]: at it, even if you can't afford that, finding someone with that really great sharp editorial eye.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then, you know, if you go through the pitching process, if you're someone who wants to traditionally publish and let's say you've tried to pitch it here and there, maybe to five or 10 agents and you're not getting any sort of feedback or no one's jumping at it, that might tell you that it might be time to shelve it.
[SPEAKER_10]: And when you shelve a book,
[SPEAKER_10]: It's always hard to remember that the books you see out today were acquired likely one to two years ago, so like what is popular now like let's say your book is so in line with what's out right now that's not necessarily what editors are buying right now so you almost have to
[SPEAKER_10]: what are people reading not that you want to fit your books into those genres, but it does matter because it is a business and you want to see how you can sell your book.
[SPEAKER_10]: But again, if it's something that you're just tinkering with and haven't shown it to anyone, I think that's the obvious next step is letting a few people read it and see what kind of feedback you get.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, something that I also found really interesting and interviewed Lyara Tamani quite a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_09]: Shout out to Lyara, she's actually got a new book at the moment.
[SPEAKER_09]: So for those of you who loved her first one, go check out this new one, is that she had written a book to be in trying to query it for, I don't know, how long.
[SPEAKER_09]: Just put it in the draw, gave up,
[SPEAKER_09]: wrote something else and then later I think she said it was like three or four years later.
[SPEAKER_09]: She pulled out that exact manuscript and was like, let me just try and query it again.
[SPEAKER_09]: She did nothing to it, didn't even change the query later and suddenly agents were fighting over this book because their topic was, you know, something that people wanted to hear about.
[SPEAKER_10]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_10]: And that's what I love is like, you know, a lot of us have many different manuscripts, you know, sitting around or maybe partially written and you never know when the time is going to be right.
[SPEAKER_10]: And that that's something to if people are listening and let's say they do want to get traditionally published a lot of times, if you do land a book deal, you'll get a two book deal.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I remember when I started out my novel, not her daughter came to me in a flash.
[SPEAKER_10]: I wasn't trying to write in a specific genre.
[SPEAKER_10]: It was just a story that I channelled.
[SPEAKER_10]: I was so excited about it.
[SPEAKER_10]: Got a two book deal.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then another two book deal with the same publisher.
[SPEAKER_10]: I did not have another idea.
[SPEAKER_10]: So great advice too is just like keep writing.
[SPEAKER_10]: You never know when you can use one of those manuscripts and having a few books ready to go.
[SPEAKER_10]: It saves you a lot of mental stress in time so you don't have to manufacture something out of thin air.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and I know the most of our listeners always sort of glorified two book deals because they're like, right, it's a certainty this 18 and whatever was my last book I turned down a two book deal and I'm so glad that I did because the whole publishing house just banded it, it became I lost my editor, it became a romance, you know, publisher, it was such a mess and to have had to be contractually bound to write a second book
[SPEAKER_09]: but have got freaked out.
[SPEAKER_09]: So in this instance, I'm really glad my agent was like, I don't think we'd go that route.
[SPEAKER_10]: I love that you said that, and I give that advice too.
[SPEAKER_10]: I actually really regret doing a four-book deal.
[SPEAKER_10]: You know, I did that two-book deal initially.
[SPEAKER_10]: I was with St. Martin's Pressotes, an imprint of McMillan, the Big Five, I was so excited.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then my last two books with them, and I was on the fence.
[SPEAKER_10]: I was like, oh, do I really want to lock myself in for another two years?
[SPEAKER_10]: because if I'm being honest, I wasn't overjoyed with their marketing efforts and then those last two books came out during COVID.
[SPEAKER_10]: And they just, I feel like just didn't really care and it really affected my career.
[SPEAKER_10]: I was so excited about this third book.
[SPEAKER_10]: I think it could have really launched me in a new way and they just didn't put it was a 2020 book, you know, and I was in the same boat as so many other authors.
[SPEAKER_10]: But because I was locked in, there was nothing that I could do.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I pivoted to a different publisher.
[SPEAKER_10]: Again, signed a two book deal left after the two book deal.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then because I write in two genres, the one with that dear mother came out with, it's a single book at a time.
[SPEAKER_10]: I've done three with them.
[SPEAKER_10]: But I think that's so great to do one book at a time.
[SPEAKER_10]: See if you're happy.
[SPEAKER_10]: See if the publisher is happy or like what you said, your editor could leave the publisher can shift.
[SPEAKER_10]: You just have to really do your due diligence and a lot can change in a year.
[SPEAKER_10]: I know people want that safety net, but I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_10]: I think it's nice to just check in after the book to see if both parties are happy.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, there was another author I spoke with who stayed with one publisher I think for five books and the books that did okay, but the publisher had now decided that they were an X type of author right they weren't going to launch anything big and then when as soon as she took her next book to another publisher she launched hugely with them, you know, so sometimes it is good to have that change.
[SPEAKER_09]: absolutely definitely yeah okay so back to the box so you put in what we call it well it's not even a sneaky prologue we call it sneaky prologue because it's not called a prologue but so this is an announcement so I just want to read it for our listeners so they can see a really effective prologue that plants a lot of curiosity seeds so beloved foster mother or
[SPEAKER_09]: 25 years after deadly fire.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's an article in the paper by Eliza Harrell may 11th, 2026, the Cedar Lock Sentinel.
[SPEAKER_09]: So it's a Cedar Lock Washington, 25 years after the fire that killed three children and shattered the community.
[SPEAKER_09]: Gale archer, the woman at the heart of it all, has died, cause unknown.
[SPEAKER_09]: Once hailed as a generous foster mother, opened her home to children in need, archers reputation took a doctor and one of her foster children Marcus, aged 15 when missing in the seat of luck woods, never to be recovered.
[SPEAKER_09]: Only a few years later, a 2001 fire came the lives of Celia, 12, Ben 15 and Jude 17, siblings through foster care.
[SPEAKER_09]: The fire laid ruled accidental, broke out in an underground bunker on Archer's 28 property, trapping the children inside.
[SPEAKER_09]: Two surviving children, Archer's biological daughter, Isabelle, 13 and Harper West, 13, and another foster child of the same age who were found safe at home.
[SPEAKER_09]: Archer was never charged with a crime, but questions lingered.
[SPEAKER_09]: Why were the children in that bunker?
[SPEAKER_09]: How did the fire start where was Gael and why did she do nothing to save them?
[SPEAKER_09]: For years, Seedlock has been divided, some defending Archer as a misunderstood woman trying to do good in a broken system.
[SPEAKER_09]: Others convinced she got away with something unthinkable.
[SPEAKER_09]: Now with her sudden death, the town is left to wander.
[SPEAKER_09]: Did Gael Archer take her secrets to the grave?
[SPEAKER_09]: Or is the truth finally about to surface?
[SPEAKER_09]: It was always just a matter of time, says retired share of fear of melons, who led the original investigation and now consults privately.
[SPEAKER_09]: There were pieces that never fit, maybe now, will find out why.
[SPEAKER_09]: Isabelle Archer now in a late 30s, returned to see the lock this week to settle her mother's affairs, when asked for a comment she declined, but sources confirm there are more questions and answers here.
[SPEAKER_09]: in a town still haunted from these losses.
[SPEAKER_09]: One thing is certain the past isn't finished with cedar lock not yet done done done done and I love that and then we start with Isabelle's standing over the graves and she's back again.
[SPEAKER_09]: So was that sneaky prologue always in there was a thumbnail?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah you see because sometimes we just need something really smart to give context
[SPEAKER_10]: Exactly and I love starting actually this book is not as like normally I'm just like we drop right into action and we're we are off to the races and this one is a little bit more of a slow burn but I love that it's not a gimmick but like just using I love the the newspaper article I was a journalist for a really long time I worked with Inmate's on death row
[SPEAKER_10]: I used to write newspaper articles and love, like you said, it just kind of fills in some of the backstory and the details.
[SPEAKER_10]: You know, it's at stake.
[SPEAKER_10]: You are introduced to the characters, to the victims, and it just fills in some of those blanks.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I don't have to spend so much time on the page, and hopefully by reading that the reader wants to know what happened to the kids was
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, it sets up the setting, it sets up all these curiosity seeds, it sets up who the players are, we get who all the characters are, etc.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, you know, on the podcast, we're often saying, don't use a prologue, because many people use a prologue as a bandaid to fix bad opening chapters.
[SPEAKER_09]: And we're like, if the prologue is really got elevated as opposed to, you know, being their bandaid, and this is an excellent example of that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_09]: the multi-POV in multi-time lines.
[SPEAKER_09]: Take us through that structure again was I mean was as part of one of the reruns was it there originally wasn't there originally
[SPEAKER_10]: Nothing was there originally.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, what is on that page was constructed within two weeks?
[SPEAKER_10]: However, I love, so I write kind of time-bending women's fiction as well.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I play with time.
[SPEAKER_10]: I play with dual POVs.
[SPEAKER_10]: I play with alternate timelines.
[SPEAKER_10]: I'm a big fan of, I love a multiple POV, but in two different timelines, because I feel like you almost have two mysteries going on that we have to figure out.
[SPEAKER_10]: While we have the current timeline with Isabel trying to get to the bottom of I'm not giving anything away but her mother's autopsy comes back maybe suggesting that she was murdered instead of dying of of natural causes so we already have one thing that we're trying to figure out and also was it tied to the children dying.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then the book takes place when Isabelle was a teenager, the night, all of the kids died in this fire in the bunker.
[SPEAKER_10]: So we know that we're creeping closer to hopefully finding out what happened.
[SPEAKER_10]: And so if I'm going to make the reader flip back and forth, I want them to be interested and not just want to skip one section.
[SPEAKER_10]: I want them to learn something about the characters get closer to.
[SPEAKER_10]: figuring out what happened.
[SPEAKER_10]: So, you know, that the kids kind of came to light.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, it's sad.
[SPEAKER_10]: Ultimately, but I actually really enjoyed going back in time and trying to to construct that the night that they died.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it's interesting because we get the prologue, we understand there was this tragedy, and you go, it is a tragedy in that side, but it's only once we start seeing the kids in the back story, interacting it's a trend, and then they come alive for us, which is, you know, enhances that tragedy as well, as we get to know each of them.
[SPEAKER_09]: through the past multiplayer v narratives.
[SPEAKER_09]: So with Isabelle, we've got a character who doesn't want to think about the past or the trauma, which is great to write in third-person close, because you can keep the read out a bit of a distance, because every time this character is triggered,
[SPEAKER_09]: They can be like, I don't want to think about that.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't want to go there, which allows you to withhold certain things until the point where the character has to face them.
[SPEAKER_09]: So when it comes to choosing third person close or first person, again, I'm always saying there needs to be intentionality.
[SPEAKER_09]: So what was your intentionality here?
[SPEAKER_10]: Well, again, the first version of this was actually first person.
[SPEAKER_10]: So when I scrapped the whole book and started over,
[SPEAKER_10]: I was like this has to be third person.
[SPEAKER_10]: I have to have a little bit of distance.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I tend to be, I've written in both, I tend to be a little bit more first person, but I think for Isabelle's character, and then also with the children, it just made more sense.
[SPEAKER_10]: It gave me perspective as a writer, and I wanted to have a little bit of distance there, but I tend to prefer actually first person when I'm writing, because I feel like you can get a little bit closer to the character,
[SPEAKER_10]: But for this type of book, I don't know that just dropped in for me and I wanted to kind of keep it clean clean that way with third person.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: No, it worked really well.
[SPEAKER_09]: And like I say, that works especially while when the characters with holding information from themselves are not just from the reader, you know, you can have an unreliable first person orator who's withholding things from everybody.
[SPEAKER_09]: But in this, like often when it comes to trauma, people are like, I don't want to think about that.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't want to deal with that right now, which allows you to sort of stretch that out a bit.
[SPEAKER_09]: Let's talk about second acts or modeling models as a lot of people deal with that, because again, as a bookdooler, you must see that a lot, because you start off with a lot of tension.
[SPEAKER_09]: We know that, you know, that there's this question looming over it.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's this woman evil, while she misunderstood, did something happen to her.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so you've
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, you set up at one really well.
[SPEAKER_09]: But then you cannot have a deep intention or pacing in the second act.
[SPEAKER_09]: So for you, do you certain plot art all of that or the action beats that you know you have to hit?
[SPEAKER_09]: How do you deal with your with your second act?
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, for, you know, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_10]: I call myself kind of like a plancer.
[SPEAKER_10]: Like, I'm not one of those people who does like a 40 page outline, but with this one, I had to know where I was going because I had such a short period of time to write it.
[SPEAKER_10]: And in the past, when left to my own devices, I could get through that first act and then, yeah, would almost like,
[SPEAKER_10]: stall on the second act, but they're without giving anything away.
[SPEAKER_10]: There's an introduction of something that happens in the second act to hopefully keep the tension and the action moving forward and really trying to figure out
[SPEAKER_10]: What this tether is between, you know, what happened to these kids, there is a discovery that propels the narrative forward.
[SPEAKER_10]: So yeah, I tried to kind of map that out a little bit.
[SPEAKER_10]: So we don't lose too much action or tension.
[SPEAKER_10]: And again, this one doesn't move as fast as some of my other thrillers.
[SPEAKER_10]: So that was challenging to me, just just not make it like one thing after another and hopefully still keep the readers attention.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I think that's what characterization is so important because when you're getting to know a character so much and there's layers there, you know, there's layers of backstory, there's layers of of of the history etc, then you don't need the propulsive and then this happens and then this happens because you're reading to really understand character and who they are and how that affects the plot.
[SPEAKER_09]: So I think that helps with pacing.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I mean, every book teaches you how to write it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And there's some books that need that proposal of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[SPEAKER_09]: And then there's other books where you can, it's almost like an exhale where you can spend some time with this character, right as opposed to dragging them through a scene.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yep, completely.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I, you know, with all these characters, because my main character, she shifted so completely like my first version was she was like a school teacher and very, you know, compulsive sleep walker and, you know, had all these like different issues.
[SPEAKER_10]: And this person, this version is just a stronger protagonist way more, you know, sure of herself.
[SPEAKER_10]: But I did not get too spend time with,
[SPEAKER_10]: these characters like I typically would to really get to know them.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, it was so fast and furious, but I still along the way felt like I got, you know, I got to know who they are, but just not in a typical not this is nothing about this book was typical for my typical process.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, and I mean sometimes it's a good thing because I feel sometimes I can overthink things.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'll sort of a character for like six months completely overthinking them and they'll probably end up being the character who I thought they were in week two, you know?
[SPEAKER_09]: So sometimes this is a good thing as, you know, to rush us.
[SPEAKER_09]: One last question, Maria, before we will let you go, what are the biggest mistakes that you see writers making as a bookdooler in terms of advice, just advice for our listeners?
[SPEAKER_10]: What a great question.
[SPEAKER_10]: I mean, I feel like so many people talk about craft like, you know, oh, just write the best story that you can or oh, they're making this mistake or that mistake, the biggest mistake I see on that side, the craft side is actually pitching your book or if you're indie publishing publishing it before it is actually ready.
[SPEAKER_10]: you either skip to step, it has not been professionally edited.
[SPEAKER_10]: You've become really precious about the material and don't want it to change in service of the story.
[SPEAKER_10]: I always say, especially for fiction, if you're not willing for your work to change at all, traditional publishing is not gonna be for you because it's gonna go through so many hands, so many iterations.
[SPEAKER_10]: And at some point, like you have to have a little bit of distance from that and not just cling so tightly to it.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's amazing that point because people will cling to it as if it's really true.
[SPEAKER_09]: And with memoirists, memoirists, I'm like, okay, it's really true.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's fine because you can approach it from a different angle.
[SPEAKER_09]: But when it comes to fiction, I say to writers, well, can I not do this?
[SPEAKER_09]: And it's like, no, this is the way it happens.
[SPEAKER_09]: And it's like, but you made shit up.
[SPEAKER_09]: So you can make other shit up.
[SPEAKER_10]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I say, I say this all the time, if you aren't willing, if you love your story
[SPEAKER_10]: indie publishing, self-pullishing, all the way, you can put out whatever you want.
[SPEAKER_10]: But if you are going to be in this business and you do want book deals and you want an agent and all of that, there has to be the understanding that any sort of feedback is about the work and not about you.
[SPEAKER_10]: And as a professional, you do have to be willing to shift things, however, sometimes it is your work.
[SPEAKER_10]: There has to be a balance there, but the number one mistake I see all writers make, whether they're nonfiction fiction first time authors 10 books in is not learning about the business before you ever have a book to sell learning everything not only where your readers are how you're going to connect with them what it means to build an author platform but on the business side how much do you want to get paid do you know how to negotiate a contract do you know how you
[SPEAKER_10]: get paid.
[SPEAKER_10]: Do you understand how the business works?
[SPEAKER_10]: What do you want your book for?
[SPEAKER_10]: What's your what's your main goal?
[SPEAKER_10]: When I work with clients, we always start with what they actually want a book for, which sounds obvious, but it's actually not.
[SPEAKER_10]: And then we kind of go through which publication path is the right
[SPEAKER_10]: thing, the right path for them based on those goals and then the process to getting it out into the world, how to market your book, how like you have to understand that I'd say 90% of the sales effort, the marketing effort falls on the author's shoulders.
[SPEAKER_10]: I don't care if you're with the biggest publisher in the page in million dollars.
[SPEAKER_10]: or you're putting it out yourself, that's the biggest shock that I, my clients come to me with is they, you know, their books are out, they're with these, these great publishers and they're always shocked that how little their publishers actually did for them.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I always push back and like I signed up to be a creative.
[SPEAKER_10]: I want to sit in my pajamas and right all day, I did not sign up to be a salesperson and marketing guru, a social media,
[SPEAKER_10]: Genius and to me, in my opinion, that is the publisher's job.
[SPEAKER_10]: I did my job, now it's time for you to do your job.
[SPEAKER_10]: So I always try to help authors figure out ways to be very comfortable when it comes to marketing because so many of us don't want to be.
[SPEAKER_10]: But really taking that time to figure out what you want, how this business works on both sides of it, whatever publication path.
[SPEAKER_10]: what is expected of you and what your publisher is going to do and a lot of times we just need to ask more questions as often.
[SPEAKER_10]: Ask all the questions.
[SPEAKER_10]: So many of us are afraid to ask any questions.
[SPEAKER_10]: We don't want to rock the boat.
[SPEAKER_10]: We don't want to look at our numbers.
[SPEAKER_10]: We don't want to know but it's a business.
[SPEAKER_10]: You're an entrepreneur.
[SPEAKER_10]: Your book is a product.
[SPEAKER_10]: So that is my biggest piece of advice is figure out who you can talk to about the business or where you can learn about it.
[SPEAKER_10]: So you can be successful on your own terms.
[SPEAKER_09]: absolutely love that perfect place to stop.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thanks so much, Rhea.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm holding up the book again, dear mother.
[SPEAKER_09]: We're linking to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page.
[SPEAKER_09]: You get the book there.
[SPEAKER_09]: You support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you everyone.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for joining us for our monthly Comps segment.
[SPEAKER_11]: My name is Emily Summer.
[SPEAKER_11]: I am the book buyer at East City Book Shop in Washington, DC.
[SPEAKER_11]: And I am as always very glad to be here.
[SPEAKER_11]: I love it the most when I'm here to talk with my friend Bianca, but I am recording by myself today as they let me do sometimes.
[SPEAKER_11]: So Bianca, thank you for having me and everybody else.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for listening.
[SPEAKER_11]: We will dive in to our Comps.
[SPEAKER_11]: We've got 10 today.
[SPEAKER_11]: So we'll start with number one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hey there, I'm looking for Comps from my dystopian novel, I think it's YA with crossover potential.
[SPEAKER_04]: 19-year-old Adrienne accidentally portals herself to an alternative earth, where all of the people are different but the buildings are the same.
[SPEAKER_04]: She becomes a fugitive and finds the people chasing her, split the population in two, sent half to this new earth and erased everyone's memories of the other halves.
[SPEAKER_04]: She must decide if she will speak out and try to reunite everyone, putting her and her family in danger, or
[SPEAKER_04]: if she will accept their bribes and stay silent, but then she'll have to forget all about the cute boy that's helped her on this new planet.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's also themes of grief coming of age, romance, and memory.
[SPEAKER_04]: Some camps that come to mind are the ugly series by Scott Leicesterfeld.
[SPEAKER_04]: The giver, lowest rat lullary, fits the best, but it's too big and too old, or the TV show stranger things, minus demonsters, and set in the future.
[SPEAKER_04]: Would love to hear any more ideas and current camps that you have.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you all so much at the podcast the Year of the Best!
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, I think you're right that the comps that you have suggested ugly's is probably a little bit old the giver.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think too big.
[SPEAKER_11]: Although I'm right there with you because what a fantastic book that is I like the idea of stranger things minus the monsters set in the future.
[SPEAKER_11]: But that might be too many caveats.
[SPEAKER_11]: So in thinking about more recent young adult dystopian that might work in place of those.
[SPEAKER_11]: The first one I thought of is cold wire by Chloe Gong.
[SPEAKER_11]: That's a great recent YA dystopian.
[SPEAKER_11]: She has a very strong name in YA, but it's not low as Larry Big.
[SPEAKER_11]: And that's a new one.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think there's a sequel coming out.
[SPEAKER_11]: We did an event with her that was very popular.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I would look at cold wire.
[SPEAKER_11]: And I just read about a book in book Riot, I think, called The Danger of Small Things by Carol Lewis.
[SPEAKER_11]: It sounded very interesting.
[SPEAKER_11]: It sounds like a classic YA dystopian with a lot of intrigue, a very strong female main character.
[SPEAKER_11]: So maybe take a look at that one as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm seeking Comps from a memoir titled How to Love a Hell Hand that follows my journey from isolated, but don't want to have a dog mushroom.
[SPEAKER_02]: After a scary encounter with a naked male running, I decided to make my daughter's dream of having a dog come true, a big dog who could also run with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I adopted the world's worst dog in the story that follows as a comedy of errors.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't find any success with the hound until accidentally discovering the group of dog measures and it'll end in Georgia of all places.
[SPEAKER_02]: They can have been a train to hound as a sled dog by strapping her first to my body and then to a bike.
[SPEAKER_02]: We take a deep dive into the quirky sport of dryland mushing and rescue of a manic coonhound to add to the team after I flew myself about how well it's all going.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I've done it right, the story will convey how the quirky sports that you've made and my dogs while at least have convincing you to give it a try yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Chris may do goes running with Sherman.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like he's a great comp in terms of topic in tone, but maybe too old and too big.
[SPEAKER_02]: Rick Braggs, the speckled beauty in Marcus Zusex, three wild dogs and the tree could also work, but maybe too big.
[SPEAKER_02]: Blair Braggs from his writing may also work except she's an expert and I'm a novice in comparison to her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay for our second one.
[SPEAKER_11]: Wow, I'm so impressed because one
[SPEAKER_11]: This sounds like such an interesting story for a memoir.
[SPEAKER_11]: I mean, it's so specific, it's so unusual.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm right there with you.
[SPEAKER_11]: And two, your comps are to my mind, absolutely perfect.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I was thinking about the speckled beauty and three wild dogs in the truth before you mentioned them.
[SPEAKER_11]: I had not thought about running with Sherman, although I think that's great.
[SPEAKER_11]: So that's exactly what I would have suggested.
[SPEAKER_11]: And I don't think these are too big, even though obviously Mark Azuzak, Rick Bragg, are big names.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's such a specific topic and such a specific type of book that I think the cops are naturally going to be fairly limited.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think these are right on the money, and I wish you the best of luck.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, Bianca Emily.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm looking for comp titles from my new adult
[SPEAKER_07]: tries to get his life back on track by taking a job at his old high school.
[SPEAKER_07]: The story loosely explores themes of the failing education system, Tani drama, generation anxiety, and messy family dynamics, mainly drifting brothers.
[SPEAKER_07]: In terms of tone and thematic overlap, Jonathan Everson's lawn boy is similar but too old, and Margaret's got money troubles has the right energy, but it's too big.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's some similarity to the workplace dynamics and Natalie's who's I hope this finds you well.
[SPEAKER_07]: The mine isn't really a romcom into the new adult banks and our humor and Emily Austin's we could be rats to my book does not include LGBTQ themes.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you for any help you can provide, it is greatly appreciated.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, we need more.
[SPEAKER_11]: dromities in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I'm glad that you have this one coming out in the pipeline.
[SPEAKER_11]: Hopefully.
[SPEAKER_11]: We'll keep out.
[SPEAKER_11]: We'll all keep our fingers crossed.
[SPEAKER_11]: The first book that I thought of is this is where I leave you by Jonathan Tropper.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's such an excellent book.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's so it's full of you just the exact right mix of comedy and drama and just a messy family dynamics.
[SPEAKER_11]: But I think it's too big and too old so that doesn't really take us where we need to go.
[SPEAKER_11]: The next book I thought of is called We're All
[SPEAKER_11]: also too old so that doesn't really help us.
[SPEAKER_11]: One that I think is good, timely and could work is help-wanted by Adele Waldman for the workplace setting of it all.
[SPEAKER_11]: This one feels right to me.
[SPEAKER_11]: So maybe after the ones that you've listed, start here.
[SPEAKER_11]: In terms of an additional possibility,
[SPEAKER_11]: Because I think hers are really good adult coming of age, but her protagonist or women, they are a little older, but they are also very funny with a lot of heart and figuring things out, so it's possible that there could be something there that feels like it's in the same general family, I also along those lines thought about Mama by Jessica George.
[SPEAKER_11]: So that main character is a black British female, so not the probably the same demographics, but she's so lovable.
[SPEAKER_11]: She's younger than Linda Holmes's character, so it feels a little more new adult than adult adult.
[SPEAKER_11]: I want at least look at that to see who blurb it and see if that provides any hints.
[SPEAKER_11]: And at the very least, it's a wonderful book.
[SPEAKER_13]: Hey team, I'd love some help with finding comms for my grounded speculative romance novel.
[SPEAKER_13]: It's about a 30-something-year-old career woman who feels very behind in life, and yet somehow finds a way to travel to a parallel world where all of a sudden she's living the life she's always dreamed of.
[SPEAKER_13]: including a surprising relationship with her on and off professional nemesis.
[SPEAKER_13]: It would appeal to fans of Ashley Postan's this several years slip because of its elements of magical realism, whimsical and introspective tone, and single POB focus on one woman's journey towards love and healing.
[SPEAKER_13]: Another possible comp would be Taylor Jenkins reads maybe in another life, which similarly explores the what-if scenarios of life and how different
[SPEAKER_13]: However, both of these feel too big for a debut novel, so I'd love more options.
[SPEAKER_13]: Thank you, Nivance.
[SPEAKER_11]: So anytime I hear that someone is looking for cops for a grounded speculative romance novel, I think in a few lists in any of these segments before, I think you're right on the money with Ashley Postan.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think she's still helpful.
[SPEAKER_11]: She is big now, her books have done really well.
[SPEAKER_11]: To my mind, she is not too big, to be helpful and useful.
[SPEAKER_11]: And she's just the best at that grounded speculative romance her book sells so well, so I think that's a great one.
[SPEAKER_11]: I would probably skip.
[SPEAKER_11]: Maybe in another life by Taylor Jinkens Reed, just because Taylor Jinkens Reed is, I think, so much of a brand and a machine and a superstar, right now that feels a little big, and that one is old, so I would skip that.
[SPEAKER_11]: But I think you should go with the seven year slip in my humble opinion.
[SPEAKER_11]: I will also suggest the memo by Rachel Doeds and Lauren Meshling.
[SPEAKER_11]: That is a speculative feminist time travel novel.
[SPEAKER_11]: It absolutely interrogates the questions
[SPEAKER_11]: Like, what's a good life?
[SPEAKER_11]: What's the right life for you?
[SPEAKER_11]: It's super fun.
[SPEAKER_11]: I flew through it, really solid and a really different book that could be right here.
[SPEAKER_11]: So definitely check out the memo.
[SPEAKER_11]: Lauren Mashling also has a really good sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I would subscribe to her sub-stack as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd appreciate your input on cops from my upmarket novel, in which a man with a severe mental illness finds himself in voluntarily committed to a mental health facility far from home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Set in New Orleans, this first person POV novel, is a bleak exploration of the internal and external damage, rock-by-mental illness, an overstressed mental health system, and the assumptions we make about who can be abused and who can be the abuser.
[SPEAKER_01]: My current cops are the river's waiting by Wally Lamb for the institutional setting and the overall
[SPEAKER_01]: and more or less Maddie by Lisa Genova for the strong mental illness component as well as the self-hating inner voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know the Wally Lamb book is already huge, but it's a spookily close comb considering I didn't know about the book until a beta reader turned me onto it, so I'm conflicted.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love to hear any suggestions you may have.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, I think both of the books that you mentioned are are useful.
[SPEAKER_11]: I would suggest both of those.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yes, Wally Lamb is huge.
[SPEAKER_11]: But I think if the content is similar enough, if it feels right enough, you can use it, caveat, I am not an agent, we got agent experts here at the shit no one tells you about writing, I am not one of them, but this is just my instinct as a reader going on the vibes and trying to find similar audiences.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I would stick with Wallylam if that feels right to you.
[SPEAKER_11]: And I think more or less Maddie is probably more upmarket than that, so if that feels right to not too large, that seems like a good one.
[SPEAKER_11]: One additional novel I will mention, a personal favorite of mine, is Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason.
[SPEAKER_11]: Absolutely, a brilliant novel about a character struggling with an unnamed mental illness.
[SPEAKER_11]: I actually can't remember if or how much of the book might take place in an actual hospital.
[SPEAKER_11]: So, TBD, if it really fits well.
[SPEAKER_11]: But,
[SPEAKER_11]: It is at the very least a brilliant book about struggling with your own mind, struggling with an illness.
[SPEAKER_11]: It has an incredible voice.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think everybody should read it.
[SPEAKER_11]: And Meg Mason has a new book coming out this year that is one of my most anticipated of 2026 just on the street of how great sorrow bliss was.
[SPEAKER_05]: Hi, my name is Stacey and I'm looking for a comps for my why supernatural murder
[SPEAKER_05]: It's about a teenage girl who gets banshee powers and starts seeing visions of people before they die.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she uses her newfound powers to solve a string of murders at her high school.
[SPEAKER_05]: The best comp for the mystery elements is the agethas for its found friendship and odd couple detective pairing.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I'm really looking for a comp or two for the supernatural elements, with the band cheese and there's also an Irish headless horseman called Adulan.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think Jenny Myers-Sane's dark and shallow lies is almost there, but it's a little darker than what I'm doing in my book.
[SPEAKER_05]: So if you can give me any ideas for something supernatural, but in our world, that's a little lighter and has a little more heart, I would be so appreciative.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Hi, Stacey.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you so much for calling in.
[SPEAKER_11]: I love your pick of the agathas, that is one of my favorite YA mystery books, love it, I think, A plus, and for one that has a supernatural element, but is lighter than dark and shallow lies, I will suggest that series the naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, so this is a series about teen detectives with special abilities, actually don't know.
[SPEAKER_11]: How much of it is magical and how much of it is just that they're very, very, very talented.
[SPEAKER_11]: They have exceptional gifts.
[SPEAKER_11]: They are very special, very advanced.
[SPEAKER_11]: But I think it would probably fit in the same niche.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's definitely not that dark.
[SPEAKER_11]: There's plenty of heart.
[SPEAKER_11]: So take a look at the naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes.
[SPEAKER_12]: Thank you, Emily, for helping us with comp titles.
[SPEAKER_12]: I'm writing a thriller, a psychological thriller that I would compare to wrong place, wrong time by Jillian McAllister, maybe yesterday or which hasn't come out yet.
[SPEAKER_12]: But really the most, I think the best comp is an older TV show called Dead To Me.
[SPEAKER_12]: The main character inherits her aunts, lucrative MLM business,
[SPEAKER_12]: But she also believes that she's living in the wrong timeline.
[SPEAKER_12]: She joins a timeline support group to prove it, makes a reckless choice to fix it, and repeatedly wakes up in the wrong body.
[SPEAKER_12]: Her and her bestie from the support group go on a journey to try to figure out what happened to the team that the main character is inhabiting.
[SPEAKER_12]: Before they completely lose touch with real reality.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, I love a thriller so I'm very interested in this.
[SPEAKER_11]: I also the only kind of like speculative that I read personally on my my free pleasure time is some time travel or like wrong timeline multiverse stuff.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I'm very intrigued here.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think this sounds really great to me.
[SPEAKER_11]: It sounds like quantum leap.
[SPEAKER_11]: which is a compliment also might be a very dated reference, but in quantum leap for our younger listeners, I think there's a new version of it, but in the original version, it was an 80 show where Scott Baccala wakes up in somebody else's body and has to figure out what happened to the, you know, while he's inhabiting someone else's self.
[SPEAKER_11]: So it sounds, it sounds quantum leap to me and that is a compliment.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think wrong place, wrong time by Jillian McHallister is a great comp.
[SPEAKER_11]: I would absolutely stick with that because it's got that like wrong timeline over and over again, like trying to figure out, solve the mystery that way, I think that feels very appropriate.
[SPEAKER_11]: Weirdly, I think yesterday, I might already be too big, which is crazy to say, because it came out what last week,
[SPEAKER_11]: But you're absolutely right.
[SPEAKER_11]: It shows people are extremely open to the wrong timeline plotlines, so maybe it maybe is perfect.
[SPEAKER_11]: An older book that is probably too old, and might not have quite enough of a thriller or mystery feel to it, but it's called All Our Rongs Today by Elon Messiah.
[SPEAKER_11]: And that's a good like time travel.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm living in the wrong timeline book that's worth a look.
[SPEAKER_11]: And to that end, I would say dark matter by Blake Crouch is also worth considering.
[SPEAKER_11]: You know, I cannot get through a comp segment without mentioning Blake Crouch.
[SPEAKER_11]: So here is the Blake Crouch mentioned for today.
[SPEAKER_11]: If you're if you're playing the Emily's comps drinking game, you can take a drink every time I recommend Blake Crouch.
[SPEAKER_14]: I am Lee, I would love help with contentiles for my campus novel with the psychological thrill of the film Black Swarm.
[SPEAKER_14]: Told in a pastillary format, this story follows Maggie Rivers, an aspiring surgeon secretly battling the twisted voice of her eating disorder, as cultural beliefs surrounding mental health, looming med school entrance exams, and a physician who declare she's not thin enough to be in danger, for sure toward collapse.
[SPEAKER_14]: Maggie writes and receives letters to the five main people in her life.
[SPEAKER_14]: all of whom she keeps at various levels of distance.
[SPEAKER_14]: Since there are a few novels that explore the reality of eating disorders among black people, I'm very open to camps that individually touch on other aspects of my book, like navigating relationships while struggling with mental health challenges, medical gas sliding, mother-daughter relationships like in genet macardis I'm glad my mom died, even though that's a memoir, or another angle that may better make sense when trying to comp.
[SPEAKER_14]: Thanks so much for your help.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, for a campus novel with the psychological feel of black swan, I'm so intrigued for that, I immediately thought about the bells by Lacey Dunham.
[SPEAKER_11]: Like, just a new, really good, campus, gothic novel that I think might feel right.
[SPEAKER_11]: But I know you are also looking for the relationships and the other aspects of your story.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm sure that the care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls by anissa gray is on your list because that is about a black character with an eating disorder.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's a little old, but it did well.
[SPEAKER_11]: So on the off chance, it's not on your radar.
[SPEAKER_11]: I would look at that.
[SPEAKER_11]: In terms of the medical aspect of your work, the memoir, The Beauty and Breaking by Michelle Harper is about a black doctor and it covers her experience in the medical profession and also examines the systemic biases, the racism, the misogyny that do exist in medicine that she and we come up against.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I think that's a possibility for the medical aspect.
[SPEAKER_11]: But yeah, I would say the bells for the campus, part, a nissa grave for the eating disorder, and the beauty and breaking by Michelle Harper for the medical aspect.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking for subtitles for my book club fiction novel, about a waitress and a small town diner who just wants to keep her head down and her heart protected.
[SPEAKER_03]: Until Billy Mullins, the 16-year-old son of her nemesis, shows up at her doorstep, drunk and with nowhere else to go.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had been thinking that Allison Larkins, the people we keep for the found family dynamics, and Gabrielle talents, the crux, because of the damaged female protagonist in both.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, if we were doing the Emily drinking game, Comps drinking game, I think anytime I suggest the people we keep or mention the people we keep since she used suggested it first, we drink.
[SPEAKER_11]: We can just drink a diacoke.
[SPEAKER_11]: It doesn't have to be an alcohol drinking game.
[SPEAKER_11]: So to the people we keep, yes, definitely, one of my favorites, I thought of that one immediately.
[SPEAKER_11]: It is probably my favorite found family chosen family novel since Tales of the City by Armistead Mopin, which is not a cop here, but truly a classic for a reason, also a total hoot, a pleasure to read.
[SPEAKER_11]: For crux, I would say, I would actually say no to crux if only because the two real perspectives that we get in crux are the teens themselves.
[SPEAKER_11]: to down and out struggling teenagers.
[SPEAKER_11]: The adults in their lives are very much present.
[SPEAKER_11]: Well, they're very much, they're present in the text if only for the reason that they are so absent in the teen's lives.
[SPEAKER_11]: So they loom large because of their negligence and how their issues impact these teenage characters.
[SPEAKER_11]: But the story really belongs to the teenage friends.
[SPEAKER_11]: which doesn't feel like exactly what you're describing if we've got the waitress as the first.
[SPEAKER_11]: Although maybe if she's a teen too, that was not how I heard your voice mail, but if it is a teenage, if it's two teens, then I would say yes to crux, if it's an adult helping out a teen, I would say, it's just stick with the people we keep.
[SPEAKER_11]: I was also reminded of the book where the heart is by Billy Letz, which is way too old.
[SPEAKER_11]: It was really good.
[SPEAKER_11]: And it was also made into a movie a long time ago with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd.
[SPEAKER_11]: If you catch yourself on a Sunday afternoon, flip in channels, I guess that's not what we do any more since everything's on streaming.
[SPEAKER_11]: But if you have a free afternoon and that one comes across your way, it's worth watching.
[SPEAKER_11]: I'm also reminded of an even better book and even better movie adaptation, which is about a boy by Nick Kornby, also probably too old, too big.
[SPEAKER_11]: but it's so wonderful.
[SPEAKER_11]: So if it's new to you, check it out.
[SPEAKER_11]: And if it's not new, then it's worth revisiting, both the book and the movie.
[SPEAKER_11]: So good.
[SPEAKER_11]: A book that may be too old, probably as too old.
[SPEAKER_11]: And honestly, it's probably too under the radar and too small to be effective in getting someone to look at your work.
[SPEAKER_11]: But it's called Stray City by Chelsea Johnson.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's a wonderful chosen family book about breaking out of one comfort zone.
[SPEAKER_11]: when something or someone unexpected pops into your life.
[SPEAKER_11]: I really liked it if you find a copy of that, that's a pleasure to read.
[SPEAKER_11]: And something more recent that I think does fit really well and is a comp to consider is called sky falling by me and McKenzie.
[SPEAKER_11]: And that's about a protagonist who also delights in being fiercely independent.
[SPEAKER_11]: She's not settling down.
[SPEAKER_11]: She travels as a career.
[SPEAKER_11]: And then a teen shows up in her life unexpectedly, very much uninvited and throws everything for a loop change everything.
[SPEAKER_11]: It's a great book.
[SPEAKER_11]: Mia McKenzie also has a new book out since then called These He Thens and it doesn't fit here, but it was very enjoyable and I liked it very much.
[SPEAKER_11]: So I'm throwing it out as a bonus wreck.
[SPEAKER_08]: Hi everyone, I'm Karo really looking forward to getting some ideas for comps for my young adult fantasy
[SPEAKER_08]: When a white raven lures her younger brother Finn into another realm, 17-year-old Alchemist doble follows without hesitating.
[SPEAKER_08]: She's captured in a hostile kingdom where she learns about a prophecy centered on a rare wielder of three forms of magic.
[SPEAKER_08]: She's convinced her brother was taken because of this prophecy, and she strikes a desperate bargain with a royal century who was meant to hunt her to help her find Finn within three days.
[SPEAKER_08]: Along the way she uncovers the truth, the Queen's consort has orchestrated everything to control the prophecy.
[SPEAKER_08]: And the prophecy does not belong to her brother, it belongs to her.
[SPEAKER_08]: To safe and open must decide who she is willing to become the weapon, others expect, or someone who chooses her own fate.
[SPEAKER_08]: Even if it means risking the one person she's come to trust.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, for our last one, the first thing I thought of was conformed by Ariel Sullivan.
[SPEAKER_11]: which is recent, but it also has just its sequel has just been released beneath.
[SPEAKER_11]: I think that those are adult books, but they look YA to me, and I think they have a lot of crossover appeal.
[SPEAKER_11]: So in this space, as you know, there's a lot of crossover.
[SPEAKER_11]: I also think this woven kingdom by Tahira Mafi is a great YA fantasy with a prophecy, so I would absolutely look at that one.
[SPEAKER_11]: Again, I think that might be an adult fantasy, but it also has a prophecy at the center, and a lot of intrigue.
[SPEAKER_11]: And for another YA for sure, series, maybe look at Stephanie Garpberg's Carovall series.
[SPEAKER_11]: She could be too big, but I think it might work because it starts out with the main character trying to save her sibling.
[SPEAKER_11]: In that case, it's a sister, but still, it's like, I gotta go save my sibling.
[SPEAKER_11]: And, you know, everything, all the danger
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you everybody for tuning in.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for sending in your questions.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you for listening to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_11]: And thank you to Bianca and everybody for letting me do this month after month.
[SPEAKER_11]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_11]: And I will see you next time.
[SPEAKER_09]: And that's it for today's episode.
[SPEAKER_09]: I hope you'll join us for next week's show.
[SPEAKER_09]: In the meantime, keep at it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Remember, it just takes one yes.