One of my agent’s talents lies in writing a pitch. That pitch has garnered initial interest already. It was only submitted on Wednesday last week, and we had several replies and referrals to colleagues. Basically, those who didn’t align with the pitch or felt that the genre wasn’t right referred it on. Some of these may or may not be from dream publishing houses. Fingers crossed.

I forgot, however, that it was half term in the UK, despite knowing my cousin Pam and family being away in Cornwall (very jealous of the gorgeous photos) and my niece being off all week, too; it didn’t occur to me.

This means that we have only had one reply from a UK publishing house (a super, huge major one - eek) so far and quite a few out-of-office replies, but I hope next week, the UK editors will catch up on their emails.

Of course, editors are busy people. They often read and edit manuscripts on evenings and weekends. Their main job is working on books with authors that are going out for publication. But assuming at some point soon-ish, they can read my book, I really hope they like it enough to take it to acquisitions.

What happens is if they like it – as far as my understanding of the process – they have to take it to colleagues and get them on board. If they are on board, then they go to finance and marketing. Finance put together a P&L (profit and loss sheet), and that determines the advance on royalties offer. All this can move quite slowly, so I have no idea when I’ll hear back.

Fingers crossed!

I’m manifesting so so hard. Big-name editors who work with legit amazing authors (some very, very famous ones I love) are evaluating my novel, and I hope to goodness they see something in it that they want to develop further.

Heck, I’d rewrite the thing again if I had to. I want it to be a book readers love, and the right editor can take it even further.

and I worked so hard on the manuscript, and then it’s been further polished through my agent’s processes, so I truly believe it’s the best I can make it without further editorial guidance.

I’d say all in all it’s been rewritten at least 2.5 times with Kristen. Then edited a further 4 to 5 rounds.

It’s gone from 97k words to 111k words during the developmental editing process. Then, back down to 98k words and then cut further to 97k words, and now it’s cut down even further to 93k words, and that’s where it sits on submission.

I’ve learned so much through every round, and I can only hope I get better and better as I return to editing books 2 and 3.

If I have to do another 2 rounds of editing with editors at publishing houses, then that’s fine. I’m hoping for deals in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia, audiobook, and translation deals eventually.

I want to do what it takes to get my book out in the world with readers: the ultimate dream.

As much as I’d have loved to be a young prodigy writer like Sally Rooney or Coco Mellors and countless historical examples, I don’t think I’d have been capable of having the compassion, life experience, and understanding of the world at a younger age than now.

And I hope that for my 40th birthday in June 2027, I’ll be holding a copy of my published novel. Won’t that be incredible?

I hope those who are following along with similar dreams realise that it’s never too late and sometimes, when you finally finish that draft after all those failed or abandoned attempts in the past, it’s simply that your timeline is now and not then.

Mslexia longlist announcement

I found out in mid-January that I was longlisted for the 2025 Mslexia Magazine Novel Competition. This was super super exciting to me; however, I wasn’t allowed to announce it until May, as the shortlist will be announced in the next issue.

I wasn’t shortlisted, but it’s still a huge honour, and I think it will also help my novel on submission, as previous longlistees have had the leg up because of this longlisting.

Mslexia also doesn’t announce the longlist itself, unfortunately, but my social media post next week will screenshot the actual email. Heh! So look out for that on my Instagram.

This year’s competition was judged by award-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo; literary agent Olivia Maidment from Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency; and writer, editor, and art critic Lucy Popescu.

I’m sure the longlist was determined by readers at the magazine and not the above, but hey ho, my novel could have been read by them. Eek!

Neuroscience, delusion, and success: rewire your brain to get things done

I’ve written before about how winning the pitch competition in Mslexia magazine and my delusional thinking led me to finish The Broken Engagement Club in the first place.

But I read recently that there’s something to self-delusion and self-belief. Self-belief is a trained neural network. You can actually rewire your mind to overcome self-doubt. If your brain thinks you cannot do something, your amygdala treats that belief as a threat.

Your brain then thinks that your body is in physical danger. Your body is flooded with stress. For anyone who is a writer, you have to know that stress will not help you write.

Your body freezes, and you’re paralysed by fear.

We have all been there.

But a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of delusional thinking helps get things going.

You can rewire your pre-frontal cortex to shut that pesky amygdala up and tell it your body is all safe and sound.

When you finish tasks, such as showing up to the page, you’re telling your brain you can reach goals (no matter how small), and this is called the success loop.

This success loop pops your brain into an emotionally regulated state. You can then make decisions, you have a working memory, and you have impulse control. These are all brilliant things when you’re writing and want to achieve something.

To be fair, I’ve been frozen getting back in book 2 so I need to take a leaf from past Lainey’s book and just be delusional and pretend I can do it all again.I can finish all my WIPs drafts and get them over with so I can work on my very exciting fresh next ideas.

I think waiting for all these dreams, on the cusp of it all, just has made my brain feel tired from all the cloud dreams I’ve been building. Fingers crossed.

What I invested in my (hopefully future traditionally published) manuscript

It’ll be scary to put this down on (virtual) paper.

How much did it cost to work on my manuscript and get it turned into the best version of the novel it could be before submitting to agents and now publishers?

Let’s have a look.

• £250 coaching consultation: Before I’d finished anything, I scheduled a coaching call with the very talented writer . I wasn’t sure if I was going to try to write nonfiction or if I wanted to write what I hoped to write (rom coms), and she was so generous and so encouraging, providing exactly what I needed to keep me going and achieve my goals.

• £200 initial beta reads: The first cost was to beta readers. My beta readers didn’t ask for payment but I wanted to reward my friends’ time with a token gesture that they could go out for food or something because reading a novel takes hours, giving feedback is a generous act and I’m grateful. One of these beta readers was my gorgeous Glasgow colleague, Nicole, who was so lovely with her feedback and ideas for my influencer character (who is around her age).

• £1,900 (with exchange rate) to for developmental edits via PayPal: I’ll talk about this cost further down and why it was absolutely worth the investment for me. It was roughly $2,400 and Kristen is transparent with her fees of $25 per 1,000 words. My manuscript was 97k words.

• £895 for an Arvon writing retreat in Hebden Bridge taught by Katherine Clements and Andrew Michael Hurley: this retreat was life-changing for me. I’ve written about it, and the cost included catered vegan food, accommodation, individual 1:1s, classes, and writing time from Monday to Saturday morning.

• £72 for a BBC Maestro subscription (with the 40% off the subscription sale): I watched the courses from Jojo Moyes (one of my all time fave authors), Marjorie Blackman (new to me but loved Noughts and Crosses), Alan Moore (legend), Harlan Coben (also legend), and Bill Lawrence (Scrubs writer) so for £14.40 per course, I got my money’s worth.

• £40-90/month for Substack subscriptions: I didn’t include this in the rounded-up total but I subscribe to various writers I like, literary agents, publishing professionals, and more. I realised that I couldn’t sustain this habit as much but I love supporting fellow writers. I’ve also bought lots of novels recommended by various Substacks and from authors who are also Substackers. I think I’ve kept my monthly cost to around £30-40/month now.

• £150 founding membership to The Inkwell, which came with a 1:1 coaching call with . Katherine coaches writers on all sorts of issues. At the time, getting the thing done wasn’t my problem, but I did speak to her about how she edits her manuscripts for publication because I was getting ready to go into the querying trenches. She gave excellent advice on how to approach self-edits, as I really truly had no idea.

• £420 for copy edits to my freelancer (at my day job) Dan Bloch: despite being a copy editor myself, I know that it’s practically impossible to edit your own work – if my Substack typos are anything to go on. I knew that publishing houses and agents really look for manuscripts (rightly or wrongly) that are as close to perfect as humanly possible, and I wanted my manuscript to be polished. Dan did “mates’ rates” and only charged me £30/hour.

• £212 another beta read ($200): This beta read pointed out any issues that would flag up to American audiences. At this point, I had hoped my novel would go on sub back in February, but that was not to be.

• The final cost was £350 for a final edit ($415) of the first 100 pages plus a couple of later chapters, cutting down the word count. This is a rough estimate. PayPal offers a terrible exchange rate plus fees. Sigh. This edit was done by Eric who is an in-house editor at my agency and editor of multiple New York Times bestsellers (and like Kristen, a former Penguin editor). The rate started at 1 cent per word, but further edits were 1.25 cents per word (not sure if that increase meant my novel was too much work - LOLs). Anyway, I hope this will give me the edge with editors who are reading the manuscript now or soon.

I also learned that some in-house editors call a manuscript a ‘script.’ Heh! Who knew?

Now, since even if I do get a deal, I’ll need a ‘social presence,’ I paid local artist Java Bere for a social media consultation. She is an amazing creative force, and her Instagram has over 60k engaged followers.

• £150 to for social media consultation: Java did a deep dive on my Substack writing, cringey TikTok videos, and my Instagram posts and came up with ideas that felt authentic and genuine to me. She also said that I had a kind heart.

Her lovely words in the fancy summary document were: “Lainey has such a thoughtful, empathetic, and gentle approach to how she processes the world! Her writing is candid, funny, and thought-provoking.’ Blushes. Slap this on my future book cover! LOLs.

My first social media post in my new ‘content pillars’ got over 4,600 views. I’ve gained new followers and have almost 22k monthly views, which isn’t so bad for an account with only 1,040 followers.

I now have a new ‘strategy’ that feels organic and authentic to me and isn’t trying to jump on trends or do stuff I’m simply not good at.

Authors Jennie Godfrey, Adam Farer, David Nicholls (eek), Katherine Clements, Amy Lord, , Kristy Greenwood, , and more even commented (because I spoke about my 38 auto-buy authors in my last month of being age 38).

Of course, my musings posts and my posts about Yorkshire are getting less engagement than my bookish posts, but everything is more than I had before, so I feel very excited about it. And it doesn’t feel forced to me. It’s quite fun creating the graphics in Canva, too, if not time-consuming. Have to make sure it doesn’t take away from the actual writing part! (The social-media time-suck is something author posted about this week!)

I now have a 3-post-per-week strategy with a view eventually to try some videos if I can get shorter with them (do I do anything shorter? Should start calling me long-story-long-Lainey), but for now this works, and I hope it will help when I’m published to build an authentic audience who wants to buy my book(s) (or add them to Goodreads or check them out for free at the library).

So, the total cost invested in this one book that I hope will be traditionally published:

Yikes! It’s a lot of money. However, that’s also been over a couple of years.

But, you know what, my novel would not be where it is now without this investment.

But this is also why Michael and I haven’t had holidays abroad until our recent Turkey holiday, which he found at a great discount and paid for himself as a surprise to me.

I know I’m privileged that I even had that much extra cash to spare, although some months were tighter, to invest in the first place and with the rising cost of living and people with families who have to provide for families, they can’t do it.

Why I feel the investment is worth it

Some writers can do it all themselves. Some writers have great instincts for the big picture story and the little edits, but I needed help.

As a copy editor for my day job, working with talented journalists, and even from my previous role working with academics, I know even editors need editors. When you’re close to the work, you simply cannot see it objectively.

I do hope that I can spread the joy in future and if I do become a well-known, bestselling author to pay it forward to writers who cannot afford these services themselves. I’d love to team up with Kristen and other talented professionals in future and pay to give a person (or a few) that edge on their manuscript to help them reach their publication goals. I know that grad school me and 20s me could never have afforded something like this.

I don’t find expensive, and here’s why: Kristen saw me rewrite the manuscript 2.5 times.

She read every version of this novel.

So, that means she read and commented and provided an editorial note for the first 97,000 words. Let’s say she’s a fast reader and that takes her 5-6 hours. Then, I made changes and went off in a crazy direction and she read all that and reigned me in. I’d rewritten half the book.

I worked on a new outline, and she approved that direction. Plus, all the correspondence and support.

We worked on the novel again, a few chapters at a time, back and forth. Sometimes, she’d see those chapters a couple of times before the final.

She read the thing again when it was 111k words. Remember, she only charged me for the initial 97k words, and goodness knows how many times she’s gone over this manuscript now. Not sure what we are up to in hours here.

Then, she helped me polish my pitch, query package, and synopsis. She did that several times.

She answered my every email. Every drama. Every win at getting a manuscript request (of which there were only 3, heh).

She looked over the initial pages again. She looked over anything I asked her to look at (cheeky of me).

We even had a last-minute edit a few weeks ago, and she fit me in. She’s just a delightful human; she really champions her authors. She’s truly genuine, and if she lets you into her circle, she wants to see you win.

She’s done so much I can’t even remember the half of it. But she’s there for every step of my journey, and I’ve been ever so grateful.

With this new manuscript that I’m calling book 2 (the terribly titled Wanted: Golden Retriever Boyfriend or Oriella Wants a Golden Retriever Boyfriend), Kristen read the initial manuscript, and I am going to have to re-outline and re-write it and add more and do lots more back and forth, so I’m ‘getting my money’s worth’ for her services.

I’ve never questioned getting my money’s worth from here. In fact, I’m sure she isn’t benefiting much from all the effort she’s put in with me.

So, for this next novel, I’ve invested a further $1,875 to Kristen for my next manuscript’s developmental edits, which she allowed me generously to pay over 6 months. PayPal fees and exchange for sending money internationally is horrendous (third mention but so annoying to me) but needs must. I think other alternatives are even worse. Some months this $312.50 payment worked out at £239 and others as high as £248 as an example so it worked out roughly £1,500.

I’m sure that I’ll develop the manuscript with Kristen and then pay for further polishes down the line. I hope to do this even when I have in-house editors and a team, just because I want whatever is in the world to be the best it can be.

Final thoughts

I plan to be transparent about the whole process. I’m excited that my manuscript and pitch has garnered so much interest in 3 days. I hope that as soon as humanly possible, I get an offer.

I’ll let you guys know all about it, and I plan on even telling you advance numbers and what that translates to as far as payments too (as sadly, you do not get this one giant lovely lump sum; you get four payments over a couple of years, and there are agent fees and taxes to consider).

Thanks for reading and being here.

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If you’re hoping to be traditionally published, how much have you invested in your manuscript already? Any questions about the process or anything you’d like to know, feel free to ask.

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The title sounds overly smug for sure, but I’m excited to be an agented future author. How did I do it without any industry connections? Well, first of all, I learned everything I could about the industry and that started with taking my very first writing retreat in July 2024.

Read about the nuts and bolts of landing an agent in the guest post I wrote for Kristen Weber’s Inside an Editor’s Brain.

Inside an Editor's Brain

Querying Is Brutal (But This Worked)

I’m thrilled to introduce—or, if you read her first guest post, reintroduce—you to my editing client, Elaine R. Frieman, author of The Broken Engagement Club, a novel I very much hope you’ll be seeing on bookstore shelves before long. From our very first conversations, I knew Elaine was on the cusp of something special—not only because of her beautiful…

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5 months ago · 32 likes · 41 comments · Kristen Weber and Elaine R. Frieman

The Arvon Writing Retreat coincided perfectly. wrote about how she was teaching at the retreat – and how the retreat itself had been her first foray into her writing dreams.

I’d met Katherine very randomly in the comments section of an post asking where people lived, and we both lived in West Yorkshire, and subscribed to each other’s Substacks (very generous of her since she’s a legit successful author), and I didn’t know she’d change my life – which sounds rather dramatic.

The Inkwell

The Magic Of Committing To Your Writing

The photo above was taken in August 2008 at Lumb Bank, once home of poet Ted Hughes, now a residential creative writing centre in Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, owned and run by Arvon. It was taken on the last day of my firs…

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2 years ago · 11 likes · 3 comments · Katherine Clements

My husband – as a former engineer turned postman – has to book his annual leave with The Royal Mail a year in advance, and we happened to have the very week off of the writing retreat. I also had enough saved to pay the £900-something pounds for the course.

What this meant was my husband had to sacrifice our week together. He did meet me for a walk on one of the days, but it was very sweet of him to let me off on my merry way at the last minute. And to support my journey over the last almost two years.

At this point, I’d successfully written my ‘first’ novel in the months prior – some of the time when I was on holiday in Madeira with Michael and Grammy. It was the first birthday I had without my Dad, too.

Why We Met

PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: MY BIRTHDAY IN MADEIRA

I’m on holiday in Madeira, having a lovely time. My husband surprised me with a beautiful card this morning – in an effort to ‘declutter’ my life in recent years I’ve eschewed presents and I mean it so Michael is not in the doghouse! – my Grammy gave me a birthday hug (my mother’s mother is on holiday with us) and then I proceeded to cry at breakfast. Why? Well, it’s my first birthday…

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2 years ago · 10 likes · 13 comments · Elaine R. Frieman

Consequently, since ‘investing’ in myself and my writing, it’s the last holiday we’ve had. (Sorry, husband.) #firstworldproblems and all that. I mean, we have been away to places in England since (mostly to see family), but it was our last holiday abroad. But also, holidays abroad used to be more affordable. I hope we will have another holiday this year. Perhaps to South Korea to visit some of the ladies (amazing military wives and their husbands) from my time in Germany. Fingers crossed.

The Arvon Writing Retreat: Writing the North

That week-long course with Katherine Clements and Andrew Michael Hurley was transformative. I met so many amazing new writer friends; read Katherine’s and Andrew’s books beforehand and even got copies signed (yay!); and learned more about craft, setting, atmosphere, and the industry itself.

On the course, I also met published author Amy Lord, and she sent me links to all sorts of competitions to enter, which helped give me deadlines and writing to work towards. I didn’t win any of the competitions, of course, but it started my journey to learning more.

I hope also that someday you’ll read the books of my Arvon friends: , , Kathryn Lee, Christina Amgwerd, Daisy Edwards, Sophie Palmer, Liz Holmes, Duncan MacInnes, and Connor Drake. I remember at the reading (where we had to read our work and I chose an expert from the chapter about the Air Traffic Controller, as I was too embarrassed to read my ‘fiction’ at this point), thinking how much further along and how talented everyone in the course was.

To hear me read a chapter, go here:

Why We Met

#10 A STARRY WALK TO REMEMBER WITH THE AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER

In university, I lived in a house on Slater Street, the coolest street ever, in the historical part of Valdosta, Georgia within very close walking distance to campus. There was our house, “the girls’ house,” painted yellow, tucked into some trees with a view of a red berry tree from the dining room and there was the “International Boys House” across the street. The International Boys threw the best parties…

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3 years ago · 5 likes · Elaine R. Frieman

So many of the group had been to other Arvon courses, Curtis Brown, or other retreats and won short story and poetry competitions, yet they were all so lovely, supportive, nurturing, and kind to me. I would highly recommend a retreat, and I’m ever so grateful to them all. And some of the laughs in our WhatsApp group.

I’d already started my Substack by then, which was an extension of therapy plus being inspired by my playwright/fertiliser journalist colleague .

He was so prolific and just did the writing that it inspired me. He was one of the first people I told that I wanted to become a writer – and we met because I was training him in what my department did alongside his when he was a new starter at the company!

I’d always wanted to be a writer. What was stopping me? Only fear of failure, of course, but if I wanted to write a novel, I just had to do it. That’s the trick. Just do it. (Easier said than done, I know.)

Substack community

Outside of Katherine, I’d started to build a small community on Substack with people like (another person I met in a comment section as we were of a similar age, married without children), (a published author with a children’s author husband), Dr , , (of Baby Brain), (an amazing poet), (Kristi, someone I knew from my grad school days) , , and eventually even . I’m sure I’ve missed out some of my inspiring friends, and it’s not intentional.

There, I also discovered the celebrity writing of , , , , , , , , , , , , and others.

I had a consultation with Poorna in December 2024, which was incredibly inspiring, right before I wrote my second novel (the one I hope will be my debut). She told me all about the difference between pitching non-fiction and writing fiction – and I told her of my novel ideas, and she was so encouraging in her enthusiasm that it really inspired me. Thank you, Poorna.

(If you want a consultation with Poorna, I think there are details on her website and I didn’t know her outside of reading and commenting on her Substack, but I’m a huge fan now and can’t wait for her upcoming non-fiction book – and I’ve read all her brilliant rom coms.)

As you can see, my ‘true’ journey was built slowly, brick by brick, learning as much as I could about an industry that seems quite opaque until you’re in it, somehow.

Reading the newsletters of agents like ; editors like ; publicists such as ; as well as writers such as (ever-cheerful and inspiring), , , , and (I’m sure I’m missing many that I read) have really helped de-mystify the industry for me (well, I’m not fully in it yet so as far as I know at least).

I took the Arvon course and consultations with writers, and learned as much as I could from people inside the industry. Not asking for help with connections, but being curious about their journey (and buying and reading their books, of course, too) and realising that everyone’s journey differs.

Before I’d even written a draft, though my nail lady, Carly. I say this loosely as I get my nails done about twice per year but I adore Carly and the ladies at my hair salon, Jay and Mille, but Carly said her client and friend India Rose Bower was being published by Penguin. I later found out she was a longlistee of the Discoveries prize, which is obviously prestigious and I read her debut this year, and it’s horror and gave me nightmares because I’m a wimp, but it was very good. Hah!

In January 2026 this year, I Zoomed with YA author Norah Lally. I met her painter sister Emma Jane Pierson at a kitchen table workshop hosted by . I’ll write about these workshops in another chapter as they have been such a wonderful, creative outlet and I had no idea what to expect. When I told Emma I was a querying writer, she said her sister had recently published and the book had done well and she’d put us in touch. I bought and read her sister’s book and met with her and she was also inspiring. I’ve made two friends from this workshop I now see regularly: another is a fashionista called El who lives in Haworth (Bronte Country), so it’s nice to start to build both a writer community and more of a local friend community.

Follow Emma here and El here.

In February 2026 this year, I met with author Rachel Bower for another paid consultation. She gave me feedback on my synopsis and gave me ways to tighten it, which has been invaluable.

I first heard of Rachel when I went to the Bronte Women’s Writing Festival to see speak and as a sucker for a signed copy, bought her book for her to sign and I remember her absolute kindness. I remember her looking at me with her beautiful blue eyes (also loved her dress for the event) and asking if I was a writer as well – not sure why she asked – but I said I was and I’d recently had a manuscript request. I didn’t take up much of her time because you never want to be one of those people, but in our consultation I was able to talk about how she gets the inspiration for her absolutely beautiful and poetic books. She’s also a poet. And she showed me her storyboard (a massive notecard kind) for her next book, which sounds incredible.

Follow Rachel here.

In another Why We Met chapter, I’ll tot up how much I’ve spent on this next book and if I ever do get published, show you what ‘return’ I made in the first year. And look, I know that I’m absolutely privileged in that my editorial day job allows me to save money to afford these consultations, developmental edits, copy edits, writing retreats, and so on. We have had to make sacrifices for me to prioritise putting our money in these places, but we have been able to swing it.

Mslexia Magazine pitch competition

My therapist told me about Mslexia magazine and in there I won the only thing I’ve ever won (until this year): a pitch competition and feedback from literary agent Catherine Cho.

I wrote about how that made me finish the draft of my book here:

Why We Met

PRESENT-DAY SNIPPET: HOW MY DELUSION CAUSED ME TO WRITE (FINISH) MY (HOPEFULLY DEBUT) MANUSCRIPT

My therapist Lorraine introduced me to Mslexia magazine. She knows I harbour not-so-secret dreams of becoming a novelist someday and she asked ever so gently if I’d heard of it. She said it was a publication for writers, a women’s magazine; they had competitions and calls for pitches and all sorts. I hadn’t heard of it but she let me borrow a small stack of copies she had and said I could take all the time I needed to look through them and return them when I was ready. They also have a website…

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a year ago · 9 likes · 11 comments · Elaine R. Frieman

The competition stipulated that the manuscript was complete and ready to query. Mine was not complete nor ready to query, but in my delusion – and I think to survive becoming an ‘author’ you have to be a little delusional as if all your wildest dreams will come true – I thought that Catherine Cho would love my book so much that she’d request the full and then where would I be?

Thankfully, that did not happen. I mean in my dreams, it would happen and I’d have cut the querying queue and had some amazing story about how I became an author and all that but that first draft certainly would not have gotten me an agent of a book deal. Comical to think of it now but it did motivate me to write the book between January and March, which then had to be re-written about two and a half times (with the help of Kristen) and edited at least five times since then, but hey ho.

My other prize…(sorry, teaser only)

The Broken Engagement Club has been longlisted for a magazine novel award. I can’t announce it until May but I found out in January and was quite shocked really. I wasn’t allowed to know how many had entered but the judges are very impressive and winning this competition or being longlisted and shortlisted has gotten people book deal attention, so that will certainly help my literary agent along – I hope – and I’ll tell you all as soon as I can.

Of course, I don’t expect to be shortlisted and if I get a book deal between now and then, I have to withdraw from the competition, but it’s still like winning a trophy to me. Yay!

What inspired The Broken Engagement Club?

Obviously, loads of popular titles have ended with the word ‘Club.’ The Thursday Murder Club, The Joy Luck Club, Fight Club, The Book Club, The Astronaut Wives Club, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, The Jane Austen Book Club, The Friday Night Knitting Club. You get the idea.

Five-hundred and seventy titles on Goodreads to be precise, which is a little worrying. Hah!

I just looked up many of those so don’t know if they count as ‘popular’ titles, but I did used to have The Jane Austen Book Club and The First Wives Club as comps but was told to ditch those as the references were too old. Sigh.

Anyway, I’m sure some of that leaked into my subconscious as I’m a huge Osman fan.

I have been a big fan of since her Buzzfeed and Just Between Us days. I used to be more of an avid YouTube watcher with Allison and Gabe, Mr Kate, and Fleur De Force being some of my favourites.

Allison had always talked openly about how much she wanted marriage in a time when I didn’t think it was okay to admit to wanting that eventually and like many of her fans (and I get parasocial relationships are weird and I don’t actually know her personally), I was delighted when she got engaged, announcing it on Instagram.

I remember just a few months later, her fiancé had walked out on her out of the blue without explanation in 2020 – and there’s still no explanation. I was devastated for her because I felt we’d had a similar journey and could relate.

This was before my Substack and therapy and before realising the part I had to play in my marriage ending, but I felt that my ex-husband's leaving in 2016 was out of the blue. I mean, in some ways, it was but in others we hadn’t built a solid foundation, but that’s neither here nor there.

By this point, I was firmly established and happy with Michael and I remember commenting that I had a similar thing happen but there’s always hope to find the right person, the right match.

Fast forward, however many years later, she met and married , former CIA officer turned writer, and they seem like an amazing couple. I was legitimately delighted for these two internet celebrity strangers that they found each other, and Allison finally had the happily ever after she wanted.

So, my divorce plus Allison’s broken engagement made me think – what if a bunch of people had engagements end and met up, like in AA? I figure having an engagement end is treated sort of strangely. It’s not quite a girlfriend or boyfriend situation where breakups don’t have the same baggage as marriage, but it is a bit more than that, the loss of future plans, hopes, dreams, the other person’s family, friends, and network, the idea of who you’d spend your life with. It’s all so complicated. I Googled and this topic hadn’t been written about before.

I probably should have set the novel in the US, but I’ve set it in Yorkshire, where I live.

And in the delusional part of my brain where I become a multi-million copy bestseller, it gets optioned for a Netflix TV series and John Blakeslee can write it because his dream is to be a screenwriter and he’s very talented (so it would be a shame for that dream not to happen). Then, as TV and film adaptations change everything, it could be moved to the US and changed like how Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby became a totally different story in the film version.

I wouldn’t mind. Although it would be good if someone could make it true to Yorkshire but that would probably need John plus Sally Wainwright or something but I don’t think Happy Valley and Riot Women (filmed locally to me) have the same vibe as my women’s fiction meets rom com of The Broken Engagement Club.

Although it would be nice if James Norton could be cast and I could meet him, since fantasising that one day I’d meet a lovely man like his character in Grantchester – although thankfully not a ‘man of the cloth’ – helped me get over my divorce.

Why We Met

#87 HOW GRANTCHESTER AND ASMR GAVE ME HOPE AFTER MY MARRIAGE ENDED

Do you ever feel that some people are meant to be in your life even if it’s only for an hour or two? I felt that way when I met Sharon on a cold day in a Starbucks in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, which is a suburban city outside Minneapolis-St.Paul…

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a year ago · 7 likes · Elaine R. Frieman

I did meet a lovely, kind Yorkshire man in the end (my husband Michael), which is the opposite of the horrible Yorkshiremen in my re-reading of Wuthering Heights recently.

Part of that was also filmed on some rocks close to the ones I can see from my windows – called Bridestones Moor.

When people say that the book is romantic and the love aspirational, I wondered if I’d read the same book and how they could see that and on re-reading I also still find the love horrible and toxic and cruel, so there’s that. But I still want to see the film (hence why the re-read)! I assert that Anne is the best Brontë. What did you think of the book and the film? I haven’t read this book since my uni days.

Querying process and writing community

It took me 5 months and close to 200 rejections to get 3 manuscript requests and 1 single yes! If you’re in the trenches now, don’t give up. Again, my detailed account is here – no point re-writing for this Substack.

Inside an Editor's Brain

Querying Is Brutal (But This Worked)

I’m thrilled to introduce—or, if you read her first guest post, reintroduce—you to my editing client, Elaine R. Frieman, author of The Broken Engagement Club, a novel I very much hope you’ll be seeing on bookstore shelves before long. From our very first conversations, I knew Elaine was on the cusp of something special—not only because of her beautiful…

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5 months ago · 32 likes · 41 comments · Kristen Weber and Elaine R. Frieman

Via the piece above, I’ve now made even more Substack friends in the form of , , , , , and others, who are all querying and I’ve had the pleasure of reading opening chapters for some and I hope you can all read their books someday, too.

I’ve even been told (very kindly) that A) I’m quite motivating and B) I should become a book coach. Both of these things would suit me. Heh! That’s one of the things I love about managing a team: being a cheerleader for the amazing things they do.

I’ve built my writing community from scratch, and I think if you’re an aspiring author, it’s so important to make your own little writer’s salon for inspiration. You can be inspired by people starting out, further ahead in the journey, or authors willing to have paid consultations to inspire you.

Future book deal?

I’ll keep you posted about what’s happening with my book, but for now my agent has sent the book to one US editor who is enjoying it so far, so fingers crossed. We’ll see what happens.

My goal is still to secure a Big Five publisher, but my agent likes to do separate deals for the US and the UK, so we will see. I hope my advance will cover the expenses I’ve incurred over the last couple of years and then some. I plan to be transparent about the journey, so follow along.

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On a side note, I fully expect that I’ll have my corporate editorial job for the next decade or so – or maybe until retirement – as post-first-husband-divorce, I’m financially risk-averse and quite like knowing when payday is, and author life is very sporadic and uncertain in terms of pay but writing lights me up and gives me purpose. I’d love to be an ‘artist’ without a day job and live a continually creative life, but I realise I have to fit everything in around working hours, which is true for many of us.

I’d love to hear from you. Please like, subscribe, leave a comment, follow me on Instagram (my personal page and/or my cringey ‘author’ page and TikTok). Reply to my email if you wish as well. Are you a reader, aspiring novelist, Substacker, journalist, what’s your hope for your writing or reading journey?

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Inside an Editor's Brain

The Power of Developmental Editing

I was thrilled when I found an email in my in-box from Elaine R. Frieman, a new to me author inquiring about editing her novel The Broken Engagement Club. She had me at the title…and luckily, her writing feels fresh and exciting and her characters and their adventures pulled me right in. We had so much fun going back and forth while she revised - all my…

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10 months ago · 23 likes · 19 comments · Kristen Weber and Elaine R. Frieman

Welcome to new subscribers who came here from publication, Inside and Editor’s Brain, and other means. I’m excited to have you on board. And I’m always grateful for those subscribers who come over here from ’s publication, Sifter.

I was going to do a roundup post that summarised my Why We Met journey, but I’ve moved that bit of the draft for next week; otherwise, this post will be ridiculously long.

A little about me

I’m Elaine, but my close friends and family call me Lainey. I’m an elder millennial, thirty-eight-year-old married cat lady. I don’t have children – by choice – but I do love children, which is, perhaps, unusual for someone who doesn’t have them. My husband, Michael, turned forty-seven last week! We are obsessed with our geriatric cat, Kit Kat, whom we inherited from my late father.

I manage a European copy editing team for my day job in petrochemical and fertiliser journalism (i.e. plastics and other commodities/chemicals), so it’s not quite the glam Seventeen magazine editor job I fantasised about as a teen. Anyone remember Atoosa? Just me? I thought I’d be going full 13 Going on 30. Maybe even including the bad parts, such as dating the hot, sexy baseball player. But life had other plans.

Like many writers on Substack, I’ve also dreamt of being a novelist, but it was some faraway dream. Someday I’ll write a book.

How I actually eventually wrote a novel (or three)

Books are absolutely perfect in your imagination, aren’t they? A little different when they come on the page. Of course, I’d have loved to have been published at twenty-three and shot to stardom, but now, I’ll settle for being published by age forty. Or anytime really. Please let this dream happen. Heh!

And I’ve now written not one but three manuscripts. One should probably forever remain in a figurative desk drawer, but I’m very excited about the novel I hope will become my debut: THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT CLUB and another one I wrote right after it (which may need a better title), IN SEARCH OF GOLDER RETRIEVER BOYFRIEND or ORIELLA NEEDS A GOLDEN RETRIEVER BOYFRIEND? How long can titles be anyway? Suggestions?

I’m still waiting for a reply from the fancy New York agent who very excitedly requested “a full,” which means she asked to read my entire book based on my query letter, the opening pages, and my synopsis.

I hope to the benevolent universe, God, the flying spaghetti monster, whomever that she likes my novel and asks to represent me, launching my amazing novelist career in the process. But until then, I’m waiting, not so patiently.

Since I wrote the above, there’s been an update which I’ll share at the end. I’ve heard it can take months for agents to get back to you, but she read my manuscript in 20 days, give or take.

This agent requests manuscripts at a rate of 1.6% so I feel very lucky and elite (for once).

I sent off queries to 8 agents and only 2 have replied so far.

I’ve now sent off to another batch of agents and am waiting for replies. But so far 3 agents have replied.

I received a “form rejection” from Nelle Andrew at Rachel Mills Literary. Am I allowed to mention the agents I queried by name? I have no clue. But I plan to be transparent so anyone on their own journey can see how the process unfolds. And maybe just how long it can take.

I queried Nelle because she represents Jennie Godfrey (The List of Suspicious Things) and Candice Carty-Williams (Queenie), both brilliant novels.

According to Query Tracker, Nelle only requests manuscripts at a rate of 0.4% and she’s accepted none this entire year, so I don’t feel as bad, but it’s still pretty disappointing.

Also, in hindsight, she doesn’t really represent rom coms, so I was just so excited about her as a person and agent and her authors (via things seen on socials), but didn’t really think about what she represents, which was an error on my part.

Here’s what Nelle said in her rejection email:

Dear Elaine,

Thank you for sending me your submission which I have now had a chance to read.

I am afraid that after consideration I do not feel able to offer you representation but please do not be discouraged. This is a very subjective business and another agent may feel differently. Due to the volume of work, I do not give feedback to submissions at this stage – only if I call in a full manuscript. I wish you all the best of luck in finding representation for your work.

All best wishes,

Nelle

For those in the early stages of writing your novel, you can do it. I believe in you. Now might be your time, or a few months from now might be your time. Even ten minutes per day can get you further than nowhere.

How I wrote my novel around a full-time job

I wrote my three novel manuscripts in snatched moments. Ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour in the morning before work. Sometimes I left what I was writing mid-sentence, which helped me come back to it fresh. Writing also happens in the in-between thinking moments. For me, often the hazy times upon waking where plot problems would be solved, and I’d have been dreaming about scenes between my characters that I knew I had to get down on the page.

I acknowledge, though, that having a brilliant, supportive husband who does lots of the domestic load and only a cat to look after, a decent salary, a comfortable home, and all that gives me immense privilege, and even the ability to invest in my novel.

I work 35 hours per week. I start later in the day, so I had time in the morning to write whilst my brain energy was freshest. I also work from home, so no draining life-sucking commute to contend with. Anyone who has caring duties, longer hours, multiple jobs, commutes, and so forth has it much harder.

I’ll talk about it more in another chapter and break it down but I’ve invested a few thousand in this novel (£3k ish) between developmental edits by Kristen, beta reads, a final copy edit, and coaching calls and that’s just not feasible for many, so I do hope that if I ever become a moderately well-off writer that I can invest in other writers, help them pay for these things that have given me a leg up. Or that I hope has given me a leg up because I know how difficult it is.

I know that in the past, I never had the mental space or calmed nervous system to write. I’ve lived in very learn times, and if you’re constantly worrying about money, there’s no space for creativity, even if you want to be creative.

And when I was “better off” financially in my first marriage, the constant criticism and not measuring up to this man’s idea of what he wanted a wife to be also left no room for creativity. Failing at everything is quite exhausting, as is two jobs (not that financially we needed that), domestic work, and a packed social calendar. I digress.

Second round of queries and one reply so far

During my second round of queries, which I only sent out this week, I queried Jessica Faust at BookEnds Literary.

She has a really helpful TikTok account for new writers. I liked her vibe, and I thought I’d have a slight advantage given that she already had a working relationship with Kristen Weber back in the day, but two days after sending out my query, I got a form rejection.

For those not interested in publishing, that just means a cut-and-paste job with no personalisation.

Jessica does say in her videos (and in her rejection email) she is lucky she has a full client list and rarely accepts new authors these days. She only reads the query letter, and if that doesn’t grab her attention – like browsing the back of a book at a bookstore – she doesn’t request, which is fair enough. She gets thousands of queries, and she’s found that method works for her.

All agents let you know that it’s entirely subjective, and I also read something that authors have a 1 in 6,000 chance of being published. I don’t know if that’s with the Big 5 or in general, but I believe it.

Yet I live in hope.

Here’s Jessica’s form rejection below:

Dear Elaine,

Thank you so much for querying BookEnds and for giving me the opportunity to review THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT CLUB. I did read your letter and am going to pass on looking at further material.

There are typically a few reasons that might lead to me passing on a query. The obvious two are that the book you’ve written falls too far outside standard and required word count ranges — for adult fiction that’s traditionally between 75,000-100,000 words— or that you aren’t writing in a genre I’m currently representing — this could be memoir, anything in children’s, or another genre that might not have been on my list. And lastly, and most frequently, at the end of the day your pitch just didn’t grab me. I read my queries as if I’m browsing for a new book in the bookstore. I wander to the genres I’m currently looking to read, glance at covers and titles, and then read the back cover copy. It is based on the back cover copy that I buy a book and it is based on a pitch that I request to read more material.

I’m sorry I don’t have better news. I am lucky to have a full and active client list and for that reason, I’ve become very particular about taking on new clients. This is by no means a criticism of your work. It’s quite possible you’ll find someone else who feels differently. I encourage you to keep querying and even consider other BookEnds agents for your work. I also encourage you to keep writing and keep me in mind for future works.

I wish you all the best in your search for representation and thank you again for giving BookEnds the opportunity.

Best,

Jessica Faust, President

Since my book was in a genre she represents, within the word count, and so on, I’m going to go out on a limb and say my pitch didn’t excite her enough.

Kristen said that it was disappointing, but there’s no way to know what she’s working on, or what her clients are doing or if she has capacity.

Jessica Faust has a 3.3% request rate, a fast reply rate, and Query Tracker says she’s requested 8 full manuscripts in the last 30 days, and double digits in the last 90 days, but I wasn’t one of the lucky ones.

Who is this super-secret top New York agent who requested my full manuscript 36 hours after querying?

Now, finally, the super-secret big-deal agent who requested my work: Jenny Bent at The Bent Agency.

I can finally reveal it…but maybe not for exciting reasons.

I sent my query to Jenny Bent on 1 September. 36 hours later, on 2 September, she requested my full manuscript. I copied that email into this post.

Why We Met

PRESENT-DAY SNIPPET: 36 HOURS AFTER SENDING MY QUERY TO AN AGENT, HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED

Remember in my last chapter, where I said that Kristen Weber – my freelance developmental editor and former editor at Penguin and Hachette imprint publishing houses – said I was ready to go on submission after US Labour Day…

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10 months ago · 16 likes · 23 comments · Elaine R. Frieman

Jenny Bent represents some amazing big-name clients, and I was beyond excited and flabbergasted, quite frankly, even to get a reply.

You may have heard of some of her client authors: Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club series and Pointless on the telly), (Bittersweet, gorgeous debut – lovely Substack), Claire Douglas (The Girls Who Disappeared and many others), and Kristen Perrin (How to Solve your Own Murder series).

When I got a full request from Jenny, I thought how amazing would it be to be in these amazing authors’ company? I built cloud castles of this amazing author career I would have…but alas! This path is not to be.

As I said, Jenny requests manuscripts very rarely (1.6%), and she wanted to read MY book, and that was super exciting.

But yesterday, 23 September, I got a pass. Here’s what she said:

Dear Elaine,

Thank you for sending me THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT CLUB. You’ve created such an engaging premise and done an excellent job of filling your book with interesting characters that contribute to the group in very different ways, and highlight different facets of your protagonist. However, despite all the great work you’ve done, I’m going to respectfully pass. I found the pacing uneven for much of the manuscript. There were many instances where a scene would begin, you would cut away from it, jump forward a few days or weeks, and then pick up with Kathryn recounting what had taken place in the prior scene. I felt that this device led to a lot of the urgency of these scenes being lost, took me out of the story, and made it difficult for me to stay fully engaged to the end.

I’m sorry this was a pass, but I’m grateful to have had the chance to read your work. I wish you all the best as you continue to seek representation.

Sincerely,

Jenny

I mean how lovely is this reply? She said some kind and constructive things. I agree with the feedback.

I’m super disappointed, but if trying to be an author has taught me anything, it’s to take rejection a bit like water off a duck’s back. That’s not to say I haven’t been a bit crushed. I didn’t sleep well last night, but I want to succeed, and I’ll do what it takes.

Now, I’m going to revise my manuscript. I know the places she’s talking about, and she’s given very good, actionable feedback.

I think in one of Jessica Faust’s videos, she said something like “why don’t agents take on your manuscript if they just need a few tweaks” and the reason is agents are busy. They know their existing clients can take notes and deliver, but they haven’t built a relationship with potential clients, so Jenny doesn’t know that I can fix my manuscript and get it back to her, which is fair enough. Jenny’s at the top of her game. She doesn’t have time for manuscripts she doesn’t see are ready.

That’s why authors, agents, and publishing professionals do say publishing is more competitive than ever. Agents and editors want incredibly polished work as their day jobs are now so understaffed and so demanding they often have to edit client work in their home and weekend time, and I can’t blame them for not wanting to take on anything that feels just that little bit too, too difficult. Even if it sucks very badly to hear that when I thought my manuscript was there.

I asked Kristen if it’s the “done thing” to ask for a second chance, a revise and resubmit, I think they call it in the industry – and she said go for it. Kristen said something like if she says no, you’re no worse off than now sort of thing, so this is what I replied to Jenny.

Still waiting to hear back, if I ever do, but in the meantime, I’m thankful I’m off on annual leave this week and can get cracking on my manuscript again, from page 1.

Here’s my reply to Jenny:

Dear Jenny,

It was an absolute honour for you to request my manuscript to read. (I know how rare that is, so even being selected is incredibly exciting and encouraging.)

Thank you so much for taking the time to read it and providing invaluable feedback; I agree with your assessment.

May I submit to you again once I revise the manuscript, lengthen those scenes that are uneven, and correct the pacing?

Kind regards,

Elaine

Should have been “provide” instead of “providing” but oh well. Hopefully she will say yes, but if not, I will have a better manuscript for if and when the next agent requests a full. But until then, I’ll be dreaming that Jenny will love my rewrite and say yes.

And if not, then another agent will request a full (once it’s ready) and offer me representation instead. (I hope. Gotta keep positive and manifesting all the good things to happen.)

What I’ve been up to in the last few days

In the meantime, here are some images of some little day trips in the past couple of weeks: Michael’s 47th birthday with my in-laws; local walk (in the Todmorden hills near our house); leopard dress (didn’t get good pic with Michael but wore this for my anniversary brunch with Michael – and my cousin Pam and her husband came, too, which was amazing); Kirkstall Abbey (near my Grammy’s house with my Uncle Steve who is over from Florida); Chatsworth House (on the very wet day The Queen’s Reading Room literary festival was happening and I hadn’t even heard of it – Richard Osman, Jojo Moyes, Helen Fielding, Celia Imrie, Sheila Crowley and others were in the same vicinity as me for the first time ever and I saw Dominic West not once but twice from a distance with his wife. He’s still very handsome IRL, but also smaller than I imagined. And I saw Lord Billington, who is the current Duke’s son who runs the estate – also the closest I’ve been to aristocracy); Lumb Falls (just a local walk between Hebden Bridge and Keighley with a connection to Sylvia Plath’s husband Ted Hughes); and Skipton Castle (this was actually brilliant – my brother-in-law is an architect in Skipton but Michael and I had never actually been – besides driving through).

Michael and I plan to go to St Anne’s tomorrow to Lytham Hall for Georgian Afternoon Tea.

On Saturday, I’ll be going to an author talk in Haworth for the Bronte Women’s Writing Festival to hear speak, which I’m very excited for.

Coming up next, for new readers and those not here from the beginning, I’ll summarise my dating journey as quickly as possible in case you want a TL;DR version of my Substack to give context for future chapters.

Anyone else an aspiring novelist? I’d love to hear from anyone, and I’m always happy to give my (limited) advice. Aspiring writers should read this post as I had a shocking number of these “must delete” words in my manuscript.

The Inkwell

Delete These Three Words To Instantly Improve Your Writing.

Right now, I’m deep in final edits on my work-in-progress…

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9 months ago · 30 likes · 9 comments · Katherine Clements

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I’d also recommend subscribing to ’s Substack Creative. Inspired. Happy because she’s just a delight, and also I’ve learned lots about what I “know” about publishing from her behind-the-scenes looks and posts, which are super helpful. And she writes lovely books, too.

CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY

How Authors Make Money: Advances, Royalties, Foreign Rights, Translations & More

Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find…

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a year ago · 40 likes · 22 comments · Evelyn Skye

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The photo round-up

On Friday night last week, my niece had a sleepover at ours, and we watched 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer. I said I hadn’t watched it since it came out originally. Probably at my Uncle Tim’s house because he had all the latest gadgets, including a DVD player. And DVD players were new then.

Caroline, my niece, replied, “What? You were alive back then?” She’s thirteen. She was probably just making a joke because she’s legit very amusing, but I told her I was even alive in 1987. Gasp! (Albeit only briefly.)

Now, before you say that’s an inappropriate film for her age, she watches Squid Games, and I could only stomach season one, as well as that very popular American Horror show that I’m also too afraid to watch and far too many other gruesome films. None of this stuff scares her. I’d have had to sleep with the light on, but not IKWYDLS because, well, it’s a bit like Scream (same writer and Dawson’s Creek, apparently).

Anyway, Saturday morning, my niece sat beside me as I perfected every one of my query letters to my chosen agents, pasting carefully into the emails, ensuring I followed all the varying manuscript requirements. Only paste ten pages in this one. Attach fifty pages to this one. Attach 10,000 words to this one, and so on. I scheduled all of the emails to send on Monday morning at exactly 8 am.

(We also hung out and had lunch together, so I didn’t just make her watch me do work.)

Recent reading on how hard it is in publishing right now

Yesterday, I was a little disheartened to read a couple of agent Substacks (not agents I queried) going on about the query trenches and how authors rarely got represented if they didn’t know anyone, and people let their slush piles pile up. Slush pile is the term for when you send your novel to agents without ever meeting them or having connections, which is me! I have no connections.

I even heard rumours of people saying that agents don’t pick up authors from queries anymore, blah blah. So, I was thinking, well, I’m giving it a shot, and we’ll see what happens.

Then, I was thinking, is my manuscript good enough? Gripping enough? Unique enough? You know, usual thought spirals.

How many agents did I query?

I sent queries to exactly eight agents. Kristen only said to send to five in my first batch, but I discovered one late and two were closed for queries – usually a no-no to send to them, but I liked the authors they represented and thought, well, if they delete my email, then no harm done.

Most of these agents are a long shot, but in my mind, I had three top contenders.

How did I research the agents?

I have basically been keeping a list for months. Any time I read a book I loved, I’d look in the back of the book to see who this author was thanking. Authors always thank their agents because they launched their careers.

I also signed up for the premium version of Query Tracker. It’s about £20 for the year and Publisher’s Marketplace ($30 for the month, I think).

Query Tracker keeps a list for you like a virtual spreadsheet and tells you how old your query is, how the agent likes to be contacted, sometimes who they represent, what they are looking for “on their list,” and basic information.

For every agent I planned to query, I made a spreadsheet (my own) with the querying round (in this case Round 1, Agent 1, Round 1, Agent 2, etc), date of query (the date I sent it: 1 September), agent name, their agency, their query package requirements (who you email, how you title your email, query letter, synopsis, bio, how many pages to include, if you attach or paste, etc), their personalisation info (why I’m querying this agent: one I won a pitch competition with, most others represented authors I loved, etc), the reply time given on their submissions (officially 8-12 weeks but QT has stats about how some generally request fulls within 10 days, etc), and the info given from query tracker of their average reply, request, and reject time. This served as my cheat sheet.

All eight of these agents make careers.

In Publisher’s Marketplace, I looked to see which agents represented debut authors, which represented romance authors, and which gave six-figure (and even seven-figure) deals. The agents I queried were big-deal long shots.

If you get a book deal, will you be rich?

The short answer is no, but I’ll keep you posted and be transparent.

I know most of you are here for my dating disaster stories and not my publishing journey, but this is legit exciting to me!

So, even if I do get, say, a six-figure three-book deal, that’s likely to be paid over three to six years, depending on how long it takes for the books to be released. I’d pay my agent their rightful 20% (as no one gets paid until your agent sells your novel), and I’d be paying His Majesty’s Government 40% of my earnings, too. I’d have to figure out how that even works, as I have a full-time job in the UK.

You get the drift, it’ll work out to about an extra £10k per year, which is not a bad side hustle, I’d say, but I won’t be giving up my day job anytime soon.

Of course, I may – if I get to book deal stage – get a much lower advance, and that would be okay, too. I absolutely love writing novels, and I can do it for about an hour a day outside my day job (more if I get obsessive and wake earlier). I can see myself doing this for the foreseeable.

Still, it’s my DREAM to be published by one of the Big 5 publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster) and preferably in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and some foreign territories. You get paid for each of these regions, by the way.

One of the only ways authors become very rich is if they are high-brow literary (think Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nick Hornby, etc), win prizes (Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Walker, Faulkner, etc), are very popular (Jojo Moyes, Marian Keyes, Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Stephen King, et al) get big movie deals (and the films/tv shows get made), get in one of those book clubs (think Oprah or Reece – and thus sell millions of copies of their books), or have a long career (maybe with a full-time job at first).

What happened on Tuesday?

Tuesday was an ordinary day. I even had a dentist appointment and finished work early because of it. Just a routine checkup, X-ray, cleaning, and so on.

I started documenting my journey in very cringey, awkward TikTok videos. Someone has decided to report me for violating guidelines. No idea what I did exactly, but now I no longer have a TikTok and I’ll take that as a sign that my videos were absolutely too terrible and embarrassing and not to make more. My nutritionist, David, who is amazing at videos, has given me pointers, but I’m still awful.

Anyway, I tell Michael that I haven’t had time to read my physical book and I’d like to read for a bit after tea. He bought me the sequel of Miss Austen Investigates for my birthday, not realising it was a sequel, so I bought the first one and am very much enjoying it, and now cannot wait to get back to it and was disappointed that I didn’t spend all morning reading in bed. (To make said silly videos.)

Michael was okay with this plan because he (ironically, and if this comes off, I’ll tell you more) was finishing up Richard Osman’s final chapter of the latest Thursday Murder Club book. Not the orange one that’s due out this month, but the one before that.

We also watched the Netflix show on Thursday last week. It’s not a patch on the book, but it’s always nice to see something come to life.

Before Michael can finish, I go streaking down the stairs, heart pounding, all the way from the attic to tell Michael that an actual agent has requested my FULL MANUSCRIPT to read.

36 hours after sending my query.

What does a full manuscript request even mean?

Before agents decide if they want to represent you, they have to request a full manuscript (AKA your full novel). So, right now (maybe not right, right now) but at some point this week or this weekend or next week – who knows? This very big deal agent will be reading my (hopefully debut) novel! Eek!

Her response email said the following:

Dear Elaine,

Thank you for your query. If your book is still available, could you please send the entire manuscript to [redacted email address] attached as a Word document titled with the book title and date? Please also include the original query letter in the body of your e-mail and CC: [redacted email address for the submission inbox for the agency] for tracking purposes.

I don't ask for exclusive submissions because I feel they are unfair to authors, but I do ask that you check in with me if you get an offer of representation while I am still considering, and that you give me a chance to read and respond (I would only need a few days) before making a final decision. Can you please confirm that this is acceptable to you?

Thanks so much! I very much look forward to reading your manuscript.

Best,

[Agent name]

If I get an offer, I will absolutely share this person’s name with you. And probably even if I get a rejection, but this is so, so exciting for me.

It all hangs in the balance.

Will she love my novel, the beginning of my series, and will she be the agent for me?

Why didn’t I expect to hear from this agent?

This agent represents one of the biggest authors out there right now, as well as a brilliant debut from someone who is also on Substack and is having a big moment. I absolutely adored her debut.

This agent is a big deal New York agent whose usual book deals for authors span from $100k to $1m.

Plus, she was closed for queries. I really thought I’d be totally ghosted and never hear from her.

I have no idea what compelled me to reach out to her in the first place, except the fact I love these three authors she works with. And dream big, right?

According to Query Tracker, she requests manuscripts at a rate of 1.6% so I feel incredibly fortunate. I can only wait and hope she makes me an offer.

What does this mean for the other agents I queried?

Typically, agents take up to eight weeks or more to reply, but once you receive a full request or an offer, you can send a follow-up email and nudge them to read your submission package.

Once they do that, they will quickly decide if they want to pass (i.e. reject you), request more pages (i.e. do what this first agent has done and ask for the whole book), and then they’ll see if they want to offer representation.

What this means for me is I could potentially have an offer or two on the table within the next few weeks, and that’s very exciting to me.

The only trouble then will be deciding who to choose because my entire publishing career (literally and figuratively) rests on who you choose as your agent and what they can do for you!

Ever so grateful

I could not have done this without the help of or Katherine Clements at , whose newsletter I found inspiring and whose Arvon course I took last summer.

I know publishing is competitive, and I wanted to talk to authors who are published by the Big 5 as well as get my manuscript's big picture edits by a professional. I fully understand that not all aspiring authors can afford this luxury.

I could also not have completed my novel without the support of my Mum, who even caught a typo on the second paragraph of my manuscript (doh) – a really obvious one, too, so thanks for that! My beta readers (including beautiful Scottish Nicole); my Germany friend, Kate, who also caught more errors; and my copy editor, Dan, who worked on the opening chapters for me (and the query package).

**Amending to include my gorgeous 89-year-old Grammy, who instilled a love of reading, my late Father (also an avid reader), and my cousin Pam, who is always a huge cheerleader for me and ever so loving. Get to see her tonight (yay!).

I’m always grateful to my husband, Michael, who even made writing a novel possible because he was my biggest cheerleader and supporter and gave my nervous system the calm it needed to write.

He also read my novel a bajillion times and was a surprisingly good editor himself, and came up with some good plot ideas and ways to solve tricky bits – or add some extra funny bits.

I am also thankful for this little writing community we’ve been building on Substack, especially my amazing, encouraging writer friends and readers like , , (her book is still 79p btw), , Dr , , , , , , , , , , and so many others. I’m sure I’m forgetting key people, so sorry if that’s you. Three hours of sleep!

Also, to my readers who read and don’t like or comment, thank you. I mean, I’d love if you write or comment (wink), but I’m just grateful for readers, too.

Before I even finished the novel in January, I had an amazing and encouraging consultation with last December 2024, and she was just so inspiring. Her Substack is brilliant and clever if you don’t subscribe already!

As I said, I knew I needed advice from writers who had “made it” and I’m grateful for their generous spirit.

The luck gods are smiling

I’ve been rather lucky this week because Michael bought me a chocolate bar the other day: Cadbury’s whole hazelnut, in case you’re wondering. (Don’t tell my nutritionist.)

And I saw that competition barcode at the top and scanned it, and entered the details. I won £100. The caveat being you have to give the money away to someone, so I gave it to Michael, and he’s just had the email. When he gets the money, he plans to buy a new set of glasses. I hope he will need them for all the future novels he will be reading. LOLs.

I’m talking (writing) as if I’m giving my acceptance speech already, but please cross all your fingers and toes for me, and one day you may see THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT CLUB on shelves – and I hope on Audible because I love listening to audiobooks (not supporting Bezos).

Today, I’m running on about three hours of sleep because I was just far too excited – like a child at Christmas – to settle. And my body woke me before 6 am. So you can find me curled up with my cat, reading my novel (the Austen Investigates one) in bed this morning before work, cup of tea in hand, which is quite blissful. Oh, and Michael has just brought me breakfast in bed.

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I’d already begun submitting things about two years ago which began with The Nan Shepherd Prize. I’m nothing if not ambitious (read slightly delusional). Of course, I got nowhere near the £10,000 publishing deal prize with Canongate but it began my “spray and pray” approach to writing and submitting things. My fiction writing, of course, two years ago and perhaps even now wasn’t “quite there.” But it was a good way to keep going, keep practising.

Early readers were gentle with me even though my writing has been a work in progress.

A dream of decades

I found a post from sixteen years ago on Facebook where I’d talked about how I was working on a short story. That happened to be for one of my creative writing courses in university. One professor, Dr V, had told me that I was more of a ‘novelist.’ I think that was code for ‘waffles a lot.’ I never did have the brevity to become Raymond Carver, Alice Walker, or Truman Capote.

Another much-loved creative writing professor, Dr Hall, was such a wonderful teacher, who taught by modelling. We’d read a sample and try to emulate it. She said how one of her former students had gone on to be a well-off novelist of the type of novels like The Babysitter’s Club but about horses or something for Middle School aged children. In a way that gave me hope that it was okay to become any sort of writer. We didn’t have to be high-brow.

Dr V assigned brilliant books like The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a Pulitzer prize winner by (who now has an amazing Substack), and that year some of us saw him speak at Florida State University. I’m still missing my signed copy so if someone borrowed it, please let me know. It feels like a hole in my heart. Diaz was very lovely in the signing queue for the three minutes of conversation (so, thank you, it left a huge impression on me). I knew in my writing I was never going to reach such literary heights. But that book has stayed with me, the power of it never forgotten.

Diaz that day read from his book but he also said something else that stuck with me: how powerful storytelling and reading out loud is, how we all used to gather around and tell stories. I remember sitting happily listening to my grandparents, mother, and uncles recount family lore. I’ve always been drawn to stories and to people.

I’ve always been that person on the park bench that people would tell their life story to and I loved that. So many people hate that sort of interaction. They don’t want to be the keeper of other people’s stories but I do. I love to be nosy and learn more about people and so many pieces of things that I’ve gathered over the years may have made their way into my manuscripts. I’ll never know.

I also found that in 2010, many months after writing those first short stories, I was perhaps very prematurely collecting information on literary agents and emailing advice to myself, filing it away in a Gmail label called “literary agent information.” Thanks to high school sweetheart being an early invitee to Gmail I was one of the early people with a Gmail email address (I think circa 2006).

Pitch competition win

Those readers who follow my social media will know I won a pitch competition in Mslexia magazine (the March/April/May issue 105, page 61).

I’m a little (a lot) miffed that the editor cut down my pitch. The call was for 300 words exactly with very specific parameters and I worked hard to write 300 words on the dot. But it was also at cross purposes. I guess I was supposed to write it as if it was a query letter. But I wrote something different. Either way, it’s semantics. I’m thrilled I won and even got paid £50 for it. I would have absolutely done it for free.

It’s not like winning something for fiction writing but I’m still buzzing. I won something. The very first time. I have submitted so many dozens of things now, I am so used to rejection. I was beyond surprised to be emailed that I won something. I have no idea how many people entered but I suppose that doesn’t matter.

Semantics aside – whether it was meant to be a pitch or a query letter – I won feedback from legendary literary agent Catherine Cho, who was incredibly generous with her feedback. I was emailed the longer version and she gave me almost 1,000 words of things to improve, which I most definitely will do. In preparation, I also read her brilliant memoir about her postpartum psychosis called Inferno. Definitely a must-read even for those of us without children.

So, on 29th January, I found out I won this competition. I was asked to fill out a form with banking details and bio – none of which was actually used so who knows. The only problem was that the pitch said: “Do you have a novel or memoir ready for submission?”

A whole novel. Um, I had two beginning manuscripts. One of roughly 15k words and another of roughly 9k words. I submitted pitches for both so I had to – rather embarrassingly – email the editor to ask which pitch won? She replied The Broken Engagement Club pitch. Guess which one was my least-started manuscript? You guessed it right! That one!

For In Search of Golden Retriever Boyfriend, I had characters, backstories, an entire outline of every chapter written, I had a whole plot done and a good chunk of the beginning. Sure it’s a basic rom-com plot but there were things ready. If that pitch had won, I’d have been away!

My (un)healthy delusional brain

I got it in my head that Catherine Cho could possibly potentially provide feedback and then think she loved my pitch idea so much that she’d request the manuscript and I didn’t want to start our brilliant relationship off on the wrong foot, so I’d have to say that “yes, I have a manuscript but it’s only my zero draft” which is not the same as “manuscript ready for submission” (i.e. ready for a literary agent to see pages and chapters or maybe the whole thing) but better than “I only have a smidgen of an idea.”

I had dream cloud castles of finding a literary agent so miraculously, like skipping from square negative two to one-hundred and two. I’d be a billion per cent ahead of the game and I’d have this lovely story to tell as if I won some kind of mall model competition but the literary equivalent.

Backtracking, 29th January, I found out that I won the competition. The magazine was due out 1st March. In my head that meant I had approximately thirty days to write at least 65k words. I worked it out. I had to write roughly 5,000 words per day. And you know what? I did it.

After feeling like a bleary-eyed bear, barely able to awake from bed in the winter light, barely making progress with my writing all January as the reminders on my calendar said on a Saturday, “Write 5,000 words of GRBF” (the name for the manuscript pitch that wasn’t chosen) and I thought in three months I’d have a draft of that if only I could write that much per week.

Winter blues and grief of losing so many men in my life around January and February in the last half-decade, just made me not want to wake early.

But suddenly, I was waking at six something, cleaning the downstairs, thinking, and then spending one to two hours before work writing. Then, I was writing during my lunch break, sometimes writing after work. Always pondering. As I went to sleep at night, scenes would play in my head, a problem solved for my characters and as I awoke, they’d be speaking to me as well, playing out scenes as if I was watching the film version of my novel in my head.

By 28th February, I had over 97k words of a manuscript and I felt utterly elated.

Of course, Catherine Cho did not reach out to represent me.

That was never going to happen but in the infinitesimal chance that it might, it meant I was motivated enough to finish. I am proud of the manuscript and the story. I think it’s some of my best work.

Maybe see me in a couple of weeks when I edit it and then maybe I’ll be crying into my cup of tea, but for now I’m happy with it.

I used an outline but I also let my characters tell me their stories – and other wishy-washy writery things. In my subconscious, I’d dream about my characters and wake with solutions, wake with them playing out scenes at a cafe, say, and I knew what to write for that scene. It flowed out of me. I absolutely loved the process. I was shattered, working it around my full-time day job, yet I was still able to take breaks and days off. But now I know just like my failed romance novel last summer (50k words), I know I can do it and keep doing it.

I’m now 25k words into the Golden Retriever Boyfriend novel and I have about three more novel ideas lined up to write about so I’m going to keep going. Yay!

I mean I may still be delusional but at least I’m a motivated delusional writer?

Help from friends and my wonderful husband

Michael is my biggest cheerleader and surprisingly good editor. He’s already read my draft and made suggestions and caught some typos that spell checker would miss, such as when I wrote stray instead of spray (or the other way around).

He’s always had an eye for detail and I love his quirky commentary and his suggestions of things that can be cut (i.e. the times I sound like an advert for the town in which we live, practically describing every pub on the road) and other details that could potentially be added (like the mention of the lucky dog in the park – that’s more rumour but a fun one).

Nicole, my gorgeous Glaswegian colleague, read the manuscript as I was writing. I’d send her chapters periodically. She’s been a tremendous help with one of my younger characters, who is around twenty-six. I can’t fully recall how old Nicole is but she’s around that age bracket and this age bracket is rather fascinating in its world outlook.

Apparently, ‘booty call’ is no longer a word and young people say ‘situationship’ or just ‘hook up’ but they’re all so woke now they probably wouldn’t say that.

Nicole has been great at giving gentle but helpful feedback.

I was in Hebden Bridge (West Yorkshire) the other day and I overheard some young ladies very wisely dissecting the trauma of a friend and this was why they understood why this friend sought ‘safety’ above all, staying in a dead-end job and afraid of change. I thought how very perceptive of these young women. There’s loads of conversations now about psychology and consent and I love that for this generation.

They understand terms like ‘gaslighting’ and they can see relationship red flags better; however, I’ve also read articles about how many of the women in this generation also haven't had sex in which they haven’t had choking as a routine part of that.

Back in my day (I sound really old now), that was not a routine or expected part of sex. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve been choked in bed all that often. I am probably too boring and vanilla for all that.

Contacting a developmental editor

Further into my delusions of stardom and quick fame (one can dream, eh?), I contacted a developmental editor I follow on Substack called . She worked as an editor at both Hachette and Penguin and does freelance developmental editing for a very reasonable rate.

I figure that’s my best shot at getting my manuscript and query letter truly ready to pitch to agents.

Anyway, despite my manuscript being the zero draft, I asked if Kristen was willing to take me on as a client and very thankfully she saw something in my opening chapters. She typically works on rom-coms and mysteries, which very conveniently are two genres I’d love to write, and I have also realised that every good rom-com has elements of mystery to it.

I was just as delighted when Kristen said yes as when I won the magazine pitch.

I feel like it’ll get my foot in the door and make the manuscript the best it can be. Fingers crossed and I’ll keep you guys updated.

Anyway, in my future dreams, I hope Catherine Cho will be one of the first literary agents I pitch and I can then say that she provided feedback in the magazine competition and blah blah does she vaguely remember me and does she have any interest in this project? The authors who sign with her usually become actual famous superstars so fingers crossed. Hah!

And decodes in her Book Deal 101 post what it means when Publisher’s Weekly announces debut author book deals. I have noticed that Catherine Cho has routinely secured “good deals” and “significant deals” for her clients, which translates to $100-250k for “good” and $251-499k for “significant.”

Of course, even if I do get my delusional dream life, then I’m not suddenly going to be very rich even if it seems like it.

Literary agents take 20% (well earned as they are taking a gamble on you and work for free at first). Taxes take a further 40% (I’m sadly now in this tax bracket – obvs happily but also it would be nice if I was on the higher end of it). Then things get paid out in four installments. You get 25%1 on contract signing, 25% on manuscript submission, 25% on publication of the hardcover, and the final 25% on paperback release. All of this can take two years or more.

Even with a $100k book deal, that’s $8,000 ish left per payment. Of course, most debut authors are probably lucky to get a $10k book deal, never mind ten times that.

Plus, that means that the publisher is hoping that you’ll sell at least 5,000 copies of your debut novel to earn out your advance on royalties. You never have to pay back your advance, but if you don’t sell out your advance – apparently all hearsay as I’m nowhere close to this – that can impact future advances and debut novelists are very lucky to sell anywhere between 500-1,000 copies of first-time novels and supposedly even 500 copies is considered quite good.

Long story long, I will not be quitting my day job for £15k a year.

But still £15k extra per year would be very cushy with mine and Michael’s day job incomes. We may even be able to go part-time. I know! I know! I’m dreaming again. But I suppose that’s the point of an imagination.

We all think when authors get book deals they are laughing to the bank and it’s Stephen King, Lee Child, Marion Keyes, Jojo Moyes, and JK Rowling from here on out. Even Nicholas Sparks back in the day got a $1m advance on The Notebook and that was really more like a novella but gone are the days of this sort of book deal, unfortunately.

I think in a way, people have more of a shot at publishing now than they used to. It’s simultaneously harder and more egalitarian.

I have heard rumour that the TV, Netflix, or film deals are where you get paid the $250k to $1m plus, unless, of course, it gets optioned by Reece’s Book Club in which you mostly get paid in publicity, but I’m dreaming before my manuscript is even sent off for step one of many.

The next manuscript

Since I can’t really rest on this one manuscript, I figure I need two to three completed manuscripts as I go out on submission because if an agent doesn’t like that novel, I have a backup.

Of course, this one is slower as I am writing it at a pace of five chapters per week (under 2,000 words per chapter) as opposed to three chapters per day (which was my goal for The Broken Engagement Club), but I’m plugging away and it gives the outside of work hours purpose. I feel happy doing it and I’m thankful I have Michael as a huge support.

He’s spent a lot of time on his own lately but I’m thankful he believes in me and is always there to read my drafts.

My family, friends, and colleagues are also super supportive and I’m thankful for that. Let’s hope if I do make it to a book on the shelves, I have plenty of people who at least buy one copy. Hah!

Kit Kat news

Our beloved Kit Kit (my late Father’s cat we inherited) had to go in for dental surgery this week and my goodness mine and Michael’s obsession with this cat reared itself in that we were like what I imagine worried parents are like when their child is in hospital (or the closest approximately child-free cat people can be – I think having a human child would be too much to contend with emotionally).

Michael barely slept the night before and all day at work I could barely concentrate worrying if our sixteen or seventeen-year-old cat would make it through anaesthesia. I think Kit Kat sensed our unease the night before surgery because he took turns sitting on both of our laps and slept on my pillow right by my head and I cuddled him all night.

Then when he was home Thursday night, he was standoffish but last night at 4 am, he did his usual chirping to me which indicates for me to smooth out the duvet and make a spot for him to curl up and he’s been curled up with me all morning.

Hopefully, he will start eating more than the homemade chicken broth we made for him. I hope his mouth heals as he barely had teeth left before and now he has fewer but we already fed him a soft diet so that will continue. We are also rather indulgent with him (Michael buys him a cooked chicken each week as well as smoked salmon), which may have to stop as the vet said something about early stages of kidney failure and that we need to talk ‘renal diet’ in future, but we are all about giving him some very loved and indulgent final years as he settles into his new life away from my Daddy. Will keep you posted.

Grammy’s 89th birthday

Grammy is 89 today! She’s my mother’s mother. We are taking her out for lunch and I look forward to seeing her. She is one of my all-time favourite humans and as a former2 Reader for the Church of England, she has always been a wonderful writer and public speaker. All of my presents were books (the best kind) and she introduced me to Narnia, Harry Potter, and all kinds of magical stories when young. She encouraged my love of reading and writing.

Grammy (Dolores or Dee as English friends call her) moved to England from southern Illinois and Wisconsin in the 1960s with my English grandfather and has lived in England ever since. She’s over in Leeds now and the traffic gets worse but she still lives independently with no carers and is still sharp – and refuses to walk with a stick. After so much loss in my life, I’m thankful and grateful still to have her – and let’s hope we can have a big family bash when she turns 90!

Substacker shoutout

If you haven’t discovered , check him out. He writes these little poems and ‘garbage notes,’ all read in his beautiful voice (I’m a sucker for a good reading voice). I’m not particularly one for poetry but I enjoy his.

Also, I have read twenty-seven books this year. Yay!

I recently read/listened to ’ novel The Crimson Ribbon. I don’t love this time period (1600s, Cromwell era, beheading the King) but she is such a brilliant, beautiful writer and her novels are true page turners. One chapter in I was hooked with Ruth’s story and when Lizzie and Joseph came onto the scene, I wanted to see what would become of them all.

I have a coaching meeting with Katherine next week, so I figured I wanted/needed to read more of her books after having taken her life-changing Arvon course last summer and reading The Coffin Path, which has stuck with me. I became a founding member of The Inkwell because it was the same price as her coaching and I figured why not but I’m coming to the end of my year and needed to schedule in my coaching call quickly. I’m not sure what to expect but I’m excited nonetheless.

Another read this year was a recent very hilarious book called Over My Dead Body by Maz Evans and as I was listening, I kept thinking this is exactly the kind of thing writes. The premise hooked me anyway. It was a page-turner. It was funny and wry. Anyway, if you like that sort of funny murder mystery thing, read Katie’s book The Man in the Wall. That was also hilarious and so well-written. It’s a short read (roughly 6 hours) to tick off on the old Goodreads. Katie is truly not paying me to write this stuff. I just really love her writing (and you can buy the book for £2).

Now to continue on one of my many projects. Watch this space. And please send good vibes to the universe that I find the perfect literary agent and that my developmental edits go well!

Thank you all for reading and your support and coming up next, as promised, the beginning of how I met my gem of a Yorkshire husband.

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In contrast, he’s only spent seven birthdays with me because we met when I’d already just turned 29 and moved to England on my third wedding anniversary to my first husband. (Thanks to my ex for kindly planning that plane journey on that date – well, I suppose he did upgrade my flight to premium – yay! Happy impending divorce!). A month after that fateful plane journey across the Atlantic, I met Michael. Fate? I’d like to think so.

Celebrating a year!

My Substack is now a year old. I’ve written 98 chapters. (Wow! A lot of reading for you guys!) Thank you to my over 130 subscribers. You all mean a lot to me. I may be a small publication but I have half a dozen to a dozen engaged readers and I love that. It means so much that people read and resonate with my words – even if some of them are super embarrassing to share.

I may post twice this week and bring you to the next chapter which is how I met my first husband. It’s either a cute or creepy story, depending on your view (i.e. he sort of stalked me and orchestrated a meeting, which to insecure me seemed romantic that he liked me ‘that much’ but middle-aged me is like, ‘hmm’).

#100daysofwriting starts TODAY

I’m excited to try ’ 100 days of writing challenge. Sign up here. It’s free and writing can mean anything – fifty words, five thousand words. It’s a low-stakes way to stay accountable and create a daily gentle writing habit. It starts today (sorry, I meant to post this yesterday) and I’m excited to see what I can accomplish. My plan is mainly to alternate between writing Substack chapters and novel chapters for my commercial fiction rom-com attempt!

In writing news (or rejection news, rather)

So, my screenplay actually didn't make it to either competition but I can rest easy knowing most likely hundreds to thousands of people submitted and only ten reached the first round.

I thought I’d reached the quarterfinals (embarrassingly) because the status on Coverfly (submission manager) said ‘In Consideration’ even after the quarterfinals announcement for the TITAN awards, but then I got an email a couple of days later rejecting me and another rejection for the Big Break Screenwriting competition. Maybe one day I’ll sell this TV pilot but until then I’ve submitted a bunch more things.

I received a rejection yesterday for the longed-for Penguin Undiscovered Writer’s prize (they shortlisted fifty books but goodness knows how many submissions they got). I still plan to finish my rom-com but it’s difficult to know what exactly captivated them this round.

In one of her workshops, told the unusual story that she got three agent offers on her first round of querying because she perfected her first fifty pages and her query letter within an inch of its life and she does this type of coaching so that’s my plan – ask for her help when I’m ready. I’ve also seen that some people pay for developmental editors to help perfect their work, too, so these are all options.

I plan to finish that rom-com and then start my next novel and go from there. Speaking of Katherine again (am I obsessed?) I attended a workshop of hers on rejection and resilience (replay here) so basically I’m just building up skills now. I’ve had quite a few rejections for various things and I’m learning to be more like ‘water off a duck’s back’ about them. What would be more remarkable is if I got yeses straight away than rejections. I’m part of the “writer’s club” now as most people get lots of rejections before they get any successes.

In submission news (I’m still waiting…)

I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much but I checked on my Harlequin/Mills and Boon submission (yes, old literature major me would have been snobby about this publication but at this point, anything is experience and why not?) and it says ‘in progress’ (last Friday, 6th September) which means someone may actually be reading it right now and deciding my fate. They are always open for unagented submissions and the novel length is around 50,000 words.

My therapist, Lorraine, told me about Mslexia magazine. How did I not know about this publication? I found two other competitions in the Mslexia Women’s Fiction Competition 2024 – one for a short story and another for a Children’s and Young Adults novel – so I’ve submitted pieces to both of those. The deadline is 23rd September, so any writers who want to submit still can. 

I find out re the short story in November (but I don’t have high hopes here because I’ve never been much of a short story writer) and for the YA novel in January/February. I even had my niece read my YA submission (with a small monetary bribe for feedback) and see what she thought and to make sure I’m down with the Gen Alpha lingo (apparently ‘cringey’ is not a word now).

I submitted my Grandad’s memoir to the Bridport Prize Memoir Competition (forgive me for butchering the competition names). The deadline on that is the 30th of September so there’s still time. In November, I’ll find out if we are part of the long-listed 12 (obviously, a long shot). They are all long shots! 

Amy Lord from my Arvon Writing Retreat told me about this competition. (The retreat was taught by Katherine Clemments and Andrew Michael Hurley). All three have written amazing books so check them out! 

Things I’ve read recently

Recently, I finished Call It What You Want by and my goodness it could be my 20s! Hard relate! I mean this character, Sloan, was a tiny bit worse in that she kept going back to this toxic ‘sitationship’ with a man she was ‘in love’ with who treated her like a glorified booty call when she had the option of the ‘perfect’ guy who treated her like gold. But really Sloan could have been me. I was that desperate and pathetic (at times) and inexplicable but thankfully, as all good characters do (and good character arcs), she learned! It’s a good read but it truly highlights how blind we can be by the cocktail of good sex, inexplicable infatuation, and low self-esteem. Plus, a splash of emotionally unavailable men.

My therapist’s newsletter last week highlighted this concept perfectly. Was she thinking of me when she wrote this (before I got lucky and found Michael, of course):

“Women whose self-esteem is low are more likely to tolerate rudeness or belittling language from partners or to make excuses for their behaviour. Sometimes the fear of losing a relationship (or the dream of what it could have been) can result in them ‘accepting’ what others would consider unacceptable. Those with higher self-esteem know that they deserve respect and aren’t afraid to walk away from people who are abusive or manipulative, or when the relationship isn’t nurturing.”

I just accepted being treated as lesser and that sucks. I hope all those who accepted less in the past do not tolerate that now!

Watched the BBC Maestro course on writing for young adults by Malorie Blackman. It is a short course, but incredibly well delivered. She says in the course for a long time, she didn’t want to write about race. She just wanted to write protagonists that looked like her doing things that other children did in books and I love that. But eventually, she did write about race in a really compelling way. In her novel, Noughts & Crosses, which I finished a couple of weeks ago now (I love Audible), white people (noughts) are not the ruling class and black people (crosses) are. She does clever things with language and changes racial slurs to ‘daggers’ and ‘blankers.’ It’s about forbidden love between two young people of the opposite race and her depiction truly highlights all the ways racial, financial, political, educational, and socioeconomic disparities play out. I think it’s a must-read for anyone even though it’s intended for young people.

Another young adult novel I’m working my way through (I’m so much slower with print books these days – sorry, guys) is The Soulburn Talisman by . I’m enjoying it so far but will let you know!

I also finished How Not to be a Supermodel: A Noughties Memoir by . I randomly found Ruth’s YouTube channel a while back (probably, like, when she started) and I just love her vibe (I even bought her dry shampoo when she came out with that). Plus, she’s just legitimately funny. I’d like to say she’s ‘real’ but let’s face it, she looks like a model but she’s also as real as someone can get for being a model and living in a Georgian mansion with two children and some cute cats. Her book isn’t an expose of the gritty underbelly of the modelling world; it’s hilarious and lighthearted really but does highlight how tough the industry can be. Thank goodness Ruth seemed to have an iron-level self-esteem.

Fascinated by everything she said and wanting more, I even watched the Channel 4 documentary she featured in This Model Life (I think it’s called) and you could tell how intelligent and resilient she was back then even when she was lonely and broke in a Tokyo flat. I can’t believe the agencies charge the models something like £2,000 in rent for a poky, dirty New York flat before they’ve even earned money. I’m not sure how she stuck it out for twelve years but I’m definitely gunning for her success and I mostly follow her on Instagram now.​​ I’d have loved her to write more things and reveal more and could easily have listened to all the life stories she had to share.

I just finished A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf and it was like reading an enjoyable journal article in grad school. wrote about it in her newsletter here and I only just got around to reading it. The sort of thing I wish my Master’s thesis on Elizabeth Gaskell had been like. (Sorry, Dr Elliott, for having to read my boring diatribe a million times over.)

I’ve just started Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Has anyone read it?

A walk in West Yorkshire (two different days)

Michael and I are lucky that we live in a beautiful part of West Yorkshire. We have hills not even a five-minute walk from our house. We have views of hills around our house. We sometimes walk in those hills. I mostly do it went the weather is nice.

There’s also a whole hype about a local beauty spot called ‘Gaddings Dam.’

I’ve always wanted to go there as many of my local friends have been there. People talk about it. The internet even talks about it on TikTok. My old amazing personal trainer, Nicola, who only stopped training me because she got a fancy job for the NHS helping elderly people exercise (etc) always said we’d go up there but we never made a solid plan.

On Saturday, Michael said he was finally going to take me there. In his past life in his 20s, he’d even run up the trails there, he said. He always said he didn’t rate Gaddings Dam and the beach because he thought it was ‘a bit shit’ but I wanted to go so – and we have only been together over eight years – it was time.

I’ll let the screenshots of my Instagram story tell the story…

TL:DR: We get piss wet through like drowned rats; the walk is not an ‘easy’ jaunt (it turns into 11 miles and my husband used to run this before work in his 20s – did I mention he is 46 today…); we are both cold and miserable as the wind whips around us and into our ears; my flimsy Primani £12 actually gives a valiant effort of holding up for some of the way but eventually just can’t keep up; the trail doesn’t lead to Gaddings Dam; Michael only thought it was the Dam. It was, in fact, a series of other reservoirs that, perhaps, are beautiful on a sunny day but certainly felt miserable on this day. I’d never been so glad to be home and having a hot shower. We did go for a Thai meal date night in Hebden Bridge to make up for our shit four-plus hour walk of misery. To be fair, we were laughing and holding hands most of the way in our mutual misery. In a ‘you can’t make this shit up’ kind of way. 

I really felt like I was taking the ring to Mordor in that I loved reading LOTR when I was 15-16 but, equally, I’ve never glamorised hiking, camping, or suffering for some ‘greater good’ mission. I’m a fair-weather walker. As my brother-in-law, Rob, is all about there’s ‘no bad weather only bad clothing’ philosophy, I’d rather don the bad clothing and have the fair weather.

Also, I somehow lost my lovely and actually stylish hiking coat. I’ve probably been banging on about this to Michael for two years. I’m not prone to losing things but all I can think is that it mistakenly got put in a charity pile somehow someday. I’ve yet to replace it because I don’t usually walk in weather that merits it.

In contrast, our Monday walk (we are off work and we don’t usually just have time to frolic in the hills) was much less ‘adventurous’ and it was a nice, sunny, crisp day. We went to our usual side of the hills but a walk we don’t do as often that has us passing ‘David’s memorial bench.’ David was my sister, Jae’s, father-in-law (my niece’s grandfather and my brother-in-law, Rob’s adorable father). He was one of the most lovely, gentle Yorkshiremen I’ve ever met and it was sad to lose him too soon, but Michael and I sometimes go on that walk that has us stopping at his bench to look over the hills and valleys and the farm where he grew up.

It always touched me that before he died, David got all those in his family a gift. He bought my sister a beautiful watch with a touching engraving on the back and a lovely handwritten letter. I wish I remembered the simple, beautiful lines but it’s always brought me to tears. What a beautiful legacy, I have always thought, to leave words behind for loved ones.

I’ve always been shy to ask my husband to take photos of me. Because self-esteem issues at being fatter, naturally! Thanks, elder millennial body issues. I’m usually the photo taker or I take selfies but I thought I’m going to get old and not have pictures of myself full-length throughout my life (mid-life crisis brewing?) so I asked my husband to take some photos of me on the tops.

Michael doesn’t like doing tasks like these, so he just snapped away with me talking and my mouth opened half the time, in odd poses, but maybe we will get it right eventually. At least, this time he didn’t take it from an impossible high-up vantage point as he’s quite tall (6’2”) but he did take a few from, like, 1,000 feet away (probably 100 feet away) claiming that he didn’t know he had to take them from closer up! 

Side note

Somehow, even though (love her posts and her book Ugly) doesn’t subscribe to my Substack she (very kindly) recommends me and I’m getting a lot of subscribers via her as well as some through , so thank you to you both! 

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I’m now off for some birthday cake and tea as my mother-in-law (also called Elaine so Michael uses my family childhood nickname of Lainey for me) has just popped round to give Michael his card. (We have eliminated non-perishable presents for the sake of decluttering/inventory management over the years.)

Reading anything good and do you plan on doing the 100 days of writing challenge with me? Let me know what you’ll be writing.

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I said that it seemed like many posts were paid (beside the point really) but there were definitely some posts of interest and now he had a new subscriber. He kindly subscribed to me in return.

I then asked that it was a random question but how did he segment his audience and reach out to them and I acknowledged that actually DMing followers was a good marketing strategy. He kindly shared that he had sent a few DMs to people who followed him but didn’t subscribe to him yesterday – he didn’t send out a whole lot of messages, but what he could do in about ten minutes – and he got a ton of new subscribers. A definite win!

He said there was a Reddit thread where this other guy is trying to message 200 people per day (he thought that was OTT for him personally) but he took the concept and tried the DM strategy and it worked.

Outreach campaign?

I’d gotten all 98 of my subscribers organically and my posts get anywhere from 1-4k views per month (yay!) but I felt I wanted to hit that magic 100 number of subscribers, so I thought what do I have to lose by DMing a few people, taking a leaf from FWN’s book and saying it’s a ‘shameless plug’ but would they pretty please subscribe to me too?

I chose a few people whose Substacks I had subscribed to and had followed me but who did not subscribe back. These were people whose Substacks I enjoyed – they made me laugh, they made me think, etc. 

The outreach process itself also made me think of how I write sort of personal narratives about people I dated (or married), lessons I learned, and all of which led me to where I am in life now – happier, in therapy, an editor, living in West Yorkshire. Of course, I haven’t written all the main posts yet so I’m in the middle of the journey. But what exactly was I offering to subscribers? Why would they care? 

I often Subscribe to substacks that give something back, even if that’s just something to think about. With The Freelance Writing Network, as an example, he was offering posts that are useful for writers who want to be paid for their work. Why would people care about my Substack and what I have to say? But then I thought, yes, although I have to have something of value to make my subscribers want to read,  I also have to be true to myself and find ‘my audience,’ however small. 

That seems to be what this new Small Stack philosophy is about, which I am very excited about! 

SmallStack

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It’s June, and I bet you’re wondering what’s happening here at SmallStack! Well lucky you, I’m here to update you and give you a quick behind-the-scenes tour. Be sure to stop by the SmallStack home page to see all the ways we are growing and changing…

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2 years ago · 216 likes · 71 comments · Robin Taylor (he/him)

There are some very popular and talented writers on Substack, which I like to call ‘celebrity Substackers.’ They had amazing careers and followings before they came to Substack and sometimes it can seem like us smaller fish are writing into the void – or, conversely, what we write isn’t valuable because we don’t have x amount of revenue and hundreds of paid subscribers. But what I have found is that all of the Substacks I’ve subscribed to or seen are penned by talented writers – and there is an audience out there for everyone, however small.

Some of the ‘celeb Substackers’ I love – as do many of you – are , , , , , , , and (Zeta actually recommended I start my own Substack). I’m sure I’m missing out on some people but I love seeing those newsletters/issues/whatever people are calling their bits (I like to think of mine as ‘chapters’) hit my inbox.

There are others like , , and that have big and much-deserved audiences, too, albeit slightly smaller. 

When I DMed a few people – celebrating my centennial (of sorts)

I reached out to Sam at , , , , Charlotte at , , and – and a couple of others who didn’t respond. I wrote personal messages to each of them because I do read their Substacks and I chose people who followed me but whose Substacks I liked (or people like who followed me because I commented on one of the ‘celeb Substacker’s’ posts). I hope those I reached out to don’t mind my naming you in this post.

I had a few DM conversations with the above and it was lovely to connect to a writer’s community. I went from hovering between 95-98 subscribers to a whopping (to me) 106 subscribers, which feels lovely! (And now I’ll get that little badge that says 100 people subscribe! Yay!)

I’ll tag the posts from some writers that I’ve enjoyed recently.

• – if you were ever a fan of Cracked.com and hilarious and very embarrassing stories, Sam is for you! There are many, many gems, but I happened to love this one on why men are friends with cunts. (I may have found a few in my dating life).

• – Barbs subscribed to me early on (I appreciate it) but (understandably) didn’t love a bunch of paid posts but when I reached out she resubscribed (thanks). She has had some similar dating trajectory as i Have but now has a wonderful boyfriend and she lives with him in Australia. She is Italian and I (probably rudely) asked if ‘Barbara’ was a common Italian name – and actually it is! She has this funny post I read recently that involves koala bears (who doesn't love them?)

• was someone who followed me because I commented on a workshop that Farrah Storr ran and I watched the replay. It was a class about memoir writing and Krissy wrote and read a beautiful piece about female friendship that resonated with me.

• shares her own words alongside beautiful classic poetry. She recently wrote this piece about going against societal expectations, a lesson anyone in a capitalistic world might want to know. 

• – he’s another very popular channel (with 8k subs so maybe he’s more ‘celeb substacker’ level) but he writes posts about how to write for a living, useful for many of us on Substack who want to do just that. He has this interesting piece on How I became a 5-figure writer online.  

• – Charlotte writes a Substack about parenting. I’m not a parent but I’m a child-free thirtysomething who absolutely adores the children in my life: niece, nephews, my cousin’s children, my friend’s children. She recently wrote this piece on the difficulties of bringing a new baby into the world during the pandemic and it made me think of the mummy and me classes I went to with my sister Jae and my niece, Caroline, when she was young and how we are still friends with the beautiful ladies she met in those classes. Those classes were something for my sister to schedule in each day, an activity to do, and a saving grace for her. I think how isolating her experience may have been without that. But equally, I feel for mothers who are feeling the ‘mum guilt’ for all the ways they feel they don’t measure up to an invisible yardstick. I think part of the reason I’m not a parent is that it’s so difficult. I see mothers and whilst their children bring them joy, it’s hard work! I’ve never been sure if I wanted to add that to my life (plus, my gorgeous husband is firmly team ‘no children’).

Founding memberships

I recently became a founding member (first ever purchase of a founding membership) of . I found Katherine because of a post that did asking where we all were in the world.

I said I was in West Yorkshire as did a couple of other people. I subscribed to The Inkwell and Katherine kindly subscribed back (thanks). She is a historical fiction writer but also does consulting work/coaching/mentoring for writers about their novels so I hope to consult with her at some point soon (hence the upgrade because basically a year of her Substack is the cost of one session so it was worth it).

Shoutout to my founding members too. You know who you are. (I’ve even written about some of them so readers can guess which very generous men would give me big chunks of money when I wrote a tell-all of my version of events. Heh!)

Final shoutout

A final shoutout to two of my early supporters and . By which I mean two of my early supporters not in my family (or not written about in a chapter)! 

Tacita recently wrote a piece on being a daydreamer (yet practical) and as a practical daydreamer too, I completely related. Tacita writes about her sober journey and writes some beautiful words. 

Kristi at was inspired by my early Substack (we used to work together long ago when I was a grad student and an intern before she went off to grad school to become an ordained minister) and decided to write about her dating life too but from the perspective of someone growing up in the Bible Belt (as we both did), being a Christian, and being asexual. It’s an interesting read so check it out.

Having a reading with a psychic medium

has over 1,000 subscribers so I appreciate that he not only answered my message but he also subscribed back. I’m tagging him in this ‘woo woo’ section because of my experience on Monday and because he writes things that align with connection to a deeper realm.

My go-to psychic doesn’t allow you to book readings when you’re recently bereaved. As some of you know, I lost my Father in February.

This year, we also lost my former stepfather, Carl, (and father to my baby sister, Hannah) in May, and a dear, dear family friend, Derek, unexpectedly in January. What a year, eh? Let’s just say as someone who never really suffered from depression, it has been tough and I thought I was getting back into a better groove…

Before I lost my Dad or maybe whilst he lay dying in the hospital, I was on TikTok. TikTok usually isn’t my jam – the endless scrolling and clips made it so that I didn’t have to concentrate on anything much in a time I could barely form coherent thoughts – but I came across one of those ‘lives’ with a psychic and I followed her: Sara Taylor.

I reached out to her secretary, Lesley, to ask about the reading price and she was reasonable but this was January and she was booked up all the way until June. I finally got a reading and expected it to be a basic tarot reading, like I’d had before with Zeta and a local lady I go to in Hebden Bridge, Donna Preece (both of whom accurately predicted things for me, by the way).

I did not know that Sara would tap into ‘the dead’ and some of the details were so specific and eerie – messages from my Dad, Derek, Carl, and my Grandfather (and maybe my late father-in-law George). Talking with Hannah, my older sister, and my Mum also clarified some details that I hadn’t known or been able to understand in the reading. It was scarily specific and accurate. I hope that my loved ones are watching over me. Maybe it’s the hope of the bereaved, but maybe it’s comforting either way.

The reading also brought up so many emotions I’ve been subconsciously repressing of late so that I could ‘get on with things.’ Again, who knows if my Dad really was connecting with her or if some things could mean anything or that my prompting/answers made things happen but there were details that she talked about that when I shared what she said with my sister, my sister knew what it could relate to, things that I didn’t even know. I hope Dad is there watching over us – and if I spy a robin in my garden then I’ve been told that’ll be him trying to say hello.

I’m writing other things!

In other news, I’m submitting a one-hour TV Pilot to a competition soon. Of course, nothing may come of it but the logline is: ‘An American woman living in Yorkshire faces deportation after her husband dies in a tragic accident before she obtains a spousal visa – and finds an unusual way to solve the problem.’ (Spoiler: her postman, who is a friend of a friend of hers and her late husband, suggests they get married – you know, for the visa – and I’ve named it ‘Displaced’ – or my friend Sam helped me come up with the better name for it than ‘Spousal Visa’ which may, if it ever gets made, make people feel like they’d be watching a show about the DMV.) I won’t hear back from this opportunity until between August and December. (Oh also big shoutout to my declutter lady, Sarah, a former journalist, who read the script and helped me improve it. If it goes anywhere, I hope we can co-write the rest of the episodes.)

I finally submitted my first piece to the Modern Love column of the New York Times. I won’t hear for four months but it would be amazing if I get in. I pay £4/month to the NYT JUST to read this column, which is how I discovered ’s.

I love the column. It makes me cry each week. I used the podcast to help get over my divorce and broken heart (now I have my amazing second husband so all good). 

I’ve wanted since 2016 at least to write something and submit a piece but everything fell short. Even the entry I did write about my Dad seemed to fall short but we will see. And you can’t have things if you don’t try, eh?

Also, I’m working on a romance novel to submit to Harlequin. They accept unagented submissions and I figure it’s good practice at writing a novel. After all, you can’t learn how to write a novel without actually trying to write one, even if it starts as a ‘shitty first draft’ as Anne Lamott says. Thus far – and I only just started over the weekend (with planning weeks in advance) – I’m 15k words in of a 50k novel. 

I love rom coms a la Poorna Bell (newly discovered), Marian Keyes, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Jojo Moyes, Beth O’Leary, Emily Henry, Julia Whelen, etc with a mix of thrillers and murder mysteries (a la Richard Osman, Agatha Christie, PD James, Val McDermid, and the Strike novels). And since I did my Master’s degree in literature some classic lit and ‘literary fiction’ thrown in. I try to read anywhere from 60+ novels per year (mostly on Audible these days, which some people don’t think counts).

Thank you and here’s a FREE way to become a paid subscriber

Thank you. THANK YOU! To all of my subscribers. It means a lot. Truly.

I would love to make some amazing living off Substack, but the truth is I have quite a good full-time job in editorial for a data analytics/publishing company that is one of those FTSE 100 fellows. So, I don’t exactly need the money, but hey, it’s nice. I mean eventually, I’d love to write books and travel the world (wouldn't we all) with my amazing husband but I really don’t expect I’ll ever do that writing about my sex life.

If you’ve ever wanted to read the juicer paid posts, but can’t afford the £4/month, let me know. I can upgrade you for free (if you DM me with your email address). I put those posts behind a paywall because I don’t want everyone and their nan (or mine – or people from work if they ever happen to stumble across this Substack – eek I hope not) reading very embarrassing diary details of men I dated and my shocking thoughts as a mid-twenty-something. 

But if you want a paid subscription, just DM me. But alternatively, you can also pay the monthly or yearly subscription, too, and that will also be appreciated.

Thanks again for helping me reach 100 people!

P.S. This week Kit Kat, my later Father’s cat, bless him, has decided only tinned, smoked, or poached salmon (you know, human food) will do. Yes, yes, I know cats need cat food for essential vitamins. I’m sure we’ll convince him to eat some cat food soon, especially when we are away in Madeira next week and my mother-in-law and sister-in-law are minding him! 

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