Set inside the elite world of classical piano competition, the novel follows Alexandra von Triessen and two extraordinary brothers—Sebastian, a dazzling “finger-proud” showman intoxicated by applause, and Conrad, a reclusive musical savant who composes with almost frightening emotional purity. Alexandra becomes emotionally and romantically entangled with both men, but it was her connection with Conrad that presented the greatest challenge on the page because Conrad and Alexandra often communicate through music rather than words.

At the heart of their relationship were scenes at two grand pianos positioned face-to-face, transforming performance into conversation. Their connection deepened not through exposition or dialogue, but through phrasing, restraint, trust. One introduced a melodic idea; the other answered. A pause became vulnerability. A variation became flirtation. A flourish became seduction. Music became the language of their courtship, until, as Alexandra reflects, “she was never quite certain where words had begun, and the music had left off.” For a novelist, that presented a fascinating challenge: How do you write a love story in which the most important conversations are never actually spoken?

And then I was plagued with how to make deeply music-centric storytelling emotionally accessible to readers who may know absolutely nothing about classical music? That question haunted me constantly because I knew from the beginning, I did not want readers to feel excluded or intimidated. Technical expertise was never the point. I wasn’t interested in showing off musical knowledge or writing scenes that felt academically dense. I wanted readers—especially readers unfamiliar with classical music—to feel what Alexandra felt. Longing. Recognition. Danger. Transcendence.

I wanted them to understand how two people could fall in love while barely speaking at all.

While writing the novel, I often structured scenes the way I would structure film sequences as a director—through rhythm, silence, interruption, escalation, release. Music became the emotional architecture beneath the prose itself. Even sentence structure began mimicking musical movement. Long flowing passages mirrored seduction or obsession. Sharp fragmented sentences created rupture and tension.

And then came the audiobook adaptation. And suddenly everything became exponentially more complicated.

The first time I heard portions of the manuscript read aloud, I realized something essential was missing. On the page, readers imaginatively “hear” the music internally. Their minds fill in the emotional resonance. But in audio form, silence becomes literal. Moments built entirely around musical connection suddenly risked feeling emotionally incomplete.

Multi-award-winning narrator and audiobook producer (and dear friend!) Mary Jane Wells helped resolve this issue. Add music to the book. We knew a traditional audiobook approach would flatten something fundamental about the story itself. So, we began exploring whether it might actually be possible to incorporate music directly into the audiobook experience—not as decoration, but as emotional storytelling. That decision opened an entirely new creative labyrinth.

I discovered Naxos of America, Inc., a stock house for classical music. Working with their excellent licensing agent, Laura Annick, I began exploring their extraordinary catalog of classical recordings. For the first time, I could imagine listeners hearing fragments of the same pieces inspiring the emotional life of the novel. Tiny snippets of Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Chopin—musical breaths woven carefully into the narrative fabric.

But then a much larger problem emerged. What about the original compositions written by Sebastian and Conrad themselves? These fictional brothers had distinct musical voices throughout the novel. Sebastian’s work carried passion, seduction, theatricality. Conrad’s compositions were intimate, haunting, almost spiritually exposed. Readers needed to believe these pieces existed emotionally inside the world of the story.

Mary introduced me to composer Sally Bishop Melbourne, a brilliant UK-based musician who immediately understood what I was trying to accomplish emotionally. Sally began composing original piano works not merely inspired by the characters but written as though Sebastian and Conrad themselves had composed them.

It was one of the most creatively emotional experiences I’ve ever had. For the first time, imaginary music that had lived only inside my head while writing the novel became real sound in the world. And something unexpected happened. The audiobook stopped feeling like adaptation. It became expansion. And I still get goosebumps through certain passages where Sally’s music makes all the difference.

The challenge then became restraint. We quickly realized the music could not overwhelm the narration. It had to function almost like emotional oxygen—entering gently, disappearing before overstaying, allowing listeners to feel rather than simply observe. I began to understand something profound during the process:

Just as score in my films, music in storytelling behaves very much like emotion itself. It is associative. Fragmented. Personal. Difficult to fully explain logically.

That realization ultimately changed how I think about writing altogether. Writers often believe readers need information to connect. But I think readers are searching for emotional recognition. They want to feel something true before they fully understand it intellectually. That is what music does almost instantly. And perhaps that is why I fought so hard for the audiobook to preserve it even when it became a technical nightmare to produce.

I desperately wanted readers—especially those who may never have entered the world of classical music before—to experience even fleeting moments of its transformative power. To hear how a single unresolved phrase can ache like longing. How a melody can seduce. How harmony can feel like intimacy itself.

Because for Alexandra and Conrad, music is not performance. It is conversation. Foreplay. Love. Confession.

In the end, the audiobook became something even more personal than I anticipated. The inspiration for Descending Thirds began with my mother, Christa Hoven, a classical pianist and piano teacher whose life was devoted to music. Some of her own performances are woven throughout the audiobook, allowing her artistry to become part of the story that she helped inspire. Sadly, she passed two days after the audio-book’s release and only heard snippets. But I was so happy to have her spirit woven throughout the book.

As I listened to those pieces alongside the original compositions and my own beloved classical works that shaped the novel, I realized I had come full circle. My father bought my mother a new piano the day after I was born. Family lore holds that she placed me in my crib and sat down to play. Some of my earliest memories are of lying beneath her piano, listening as music filled the room and vibrated through the floorboards.

Long before I understood words, I understood music. It was my first language, my first storyteller, my first experience of beauty and emotion. Perhaps that is why music became the language of Alexandra and Conrad’s love story as well. Just as the first communication I remember came through the sound of piano keys, their deepest conversations unfold not through words, but through music—where longing, intimacy, heartbreak, and love are expressed in ways language alone can never fully capture.

Check out Nicole Conn’s Descending Thirds here:

Print Book | Audio

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The post Writing Music Into Fiction Is One Challenge; Translating It Into Audio Is Another appeared first on Writer's Digest.

You have to write every day.  

You’ve heard this, right? It’s a common piece of writing advice, that the only way to achieve your publishing dream is to get words on a page every single solitary day.  

And it makes a certain degree of sense. Having a routine can be helpful. Some words are preferable to no words, even if they aren’t very good; you can always go back and replace them with better ones.  

But on three separate occasions, I’ve had writers say to me they don’t think they’ll ever get published, because someone told them this little bon mot, and the demands on their time are too great.  

They have a job, a sick relative, a kid … whatever it was, they simply could not write every day.  

I told them all the same thing, and I’ve repeated this to other writers countless times, because it’s an important little piece of perspective: I do not write every day, and I’m a full-time author. In fact, I can’t remember the last day I wrote something (excluding, now, this article). 

Actually, I just went back and checked. It was two weeks ago when I sent pages to Jeff Rake for the sci-fi series we’re co-writing together.  

What did I do in the interim?  

It was summer, so I hung out with my daughter, celebrated my partner’s birthday, and took some much-needed rest because I was feeling a little burnt out. No one kicked in my door to cancel my contracts.  

I work best in large chunks. I know this about myself. Sometimes that means bingeing 8- to 10,000 words in a few days, fueled chiefly by Cheez-Its and Diet Coke.  

Point is, it doesn’t matter if you write every day, or every other day, or once a week.  

The only thing that matters is that the work gets done. 

And this, my friends, is why I think a lot of writing advice sucks. 

***

Wait, that’s a little pointed, and some nuance is required.  

The way a lot of people interpret writing advice sucks.  

It’s advice. It’s not fiat. Stephen King’s On Writing is not the Constitution. Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! is not the Bible. Lisa Cron’s Story Genius is not the Code of Hammurabi.  

Craft books are great. So are conventions, and writing classes, and MFA programs—and magazines like Writer’s Digest. They are chock-full of things that could possibly be useful. 

But you can’t assume something that worked for someone else is going to work for you. You should approach all of this stuff—even the stuff I’m telling you—with a big box of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt.  

Your process is like a fingerprint. Wholly and utterly unique to you. Sure, there are some writing rules I think are solid across the board. Elmore Leonard’s suggestion that every writer get no more than two or three exclamation points per 100,000 words of prose is a good one. 

Now, I know a lot of writers who don’t outline. Pantsers, they call themselves. Lunatics, I say. Doesn’t work for me. I need a road map. I have to see the shape of the story before I start, I have to know the ending, and even if I take some detours, I’ll write myself in circles without a clear pathway.  

Then there’s my buddy Jordan Harper, author of such novels as She Rides Shotgun and Everybody Knows. Jordan writes out of order—starting with his favorite scenes before stitching them together. To me, this is demented. I write in a straight line and cannot conceive doing it like that. 

And yet, Jordan is one of the best writers I know. 

Would I be a better writer if I wrote like Jordan? I doubt it. What I’m doing is working for me, so I’m going to stick to it. Not to say I don’t have more to learn; my process is always evolving. But I like my linear drafts.  

You never know when a piece of advice is going to become useful, even if you’re adjusting it or changing it to suit your needs. Another good example is my pal Jon Gingerich, who wrote The Appetite Factory. He also writes stellar short stories, and he once told me that he’ll draft a story and then delete it. A few days or a week later, he’ll write it again.  

He’ll ultimately do this several times before he lands on a draft he’s happy with. 

This is sheer madness. You’re going to spend so much time getting those words onto the page and just get rid of them?  

But it works! His stories are amazing. His thinking is that he’ll never forget the good stuff, the bad stuff will disappear into the ether, and the bits in the middle that were still coming to life will have time to marinate.  

I would never do this for a short story. But I have adopted this for my outlining process. I will often bang out my major story points for a book and then junk it. I’ll do it two or three more timesbefore I get started.  

Jon is right: The good stuff stays, the bad stuff goes, and all the liminal stuff in the middle comes into focus as you’re turning it over in your head.  

Then there was that time I thought I was writing my books wrong, because everyone I knew was writing these big, sprawling drafts, and then editing them down. Their first pass would come in at 120,000 words, and the finished product, after cuts, would be closer to 80,000.  

Overwriting, they called it.  

But my drafts were around 50,000 words, and then I would go back in and add stuff on. It worked, but still, I worried I wasn’t reaching my true potential as a writer. Then I had a conversation with thriller author Chelsea Cain, and she told me she did the same thing. 

Underwriting, she called it.  

Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t doing it wrong; I was just doing it the way that worked for me.  

***

This past summer I taught a module on outlining at Seton Hill University, where I’m a mentor in the MFA program. A few of the students pulled me aside after and asked to see one my outlines, so they could see how to do one. 

And I told them no.  

It’s not that I’m averse to sharing—it is caring, after all—but I didn’t want them to think that the way I do it was the way they were supposed to do it. I told them to start scratching down notes and let Jesus take the wheel. 

Yes, hearing about the habits of others can be helpful, but writing is an act of creation. It’s making something out of nothing.  

(Unless you’re using AI to assist you, then you’re just stealing the hard work of other people, myself included, and I will never take you seriously.) 

Sorry, went off on a tangent there …  

The point is, so much of writing is looking at a blank page and filling it. Your process is just another blank thing that needs to be filled out. And nothing is set in stone. You can do literally anything you want as long as your reader can follow along (just, really, hold it on the exclamation points).  

I say again, the only thing that matters is the work gets done. 

Which brings us back to the demanding jobs and the sick relatives and the kids. Life stuff. I’m in a position of privilege, where I can write full-time. I make my own schedule, and if one day I decide I’d rather take my daughter to a water park, I can do that. 

But I remember those dark days, in the before times, when I would wake up at 4:45 a.m. to go to the gym before work, so that when I got home, I could focus on finishing my first novel. It wasn’t fun, but it’s what I needed to do.  

I’m not saying you have to wake up before the sun.  

But the work had to get done.  

You might need a ritual or a routine. And that’s fine. Some people are wired like that. I’m not a fan myself, because I found if I didn’t nail down all the various elements of the ritual, then I couldn’t write. It became more of an impediment than it was empowering.  

What I learned from being a parent—and was far more in line with who I am as a writer—is that sometimes you have small windows to work, and you have to take them.  

This is a useful muscle to develop. After my daughter was born, I knew that when she took her afternoon nap, I had two hours to write as much as I could, because after that, the terrors would resume.   

But what about writer’s block, you might ask?  

What happens when you’re all jammed up in those stolen moments?  

Let’s talk about that. I’m of the belief that it doesn’t really totally exist.  

Forgive me for going a little lowbrow here, but it’s the best analogy I can think of: Do you sit on the toilet if you don’t have to go to the bathroom? I suspect not, unless you have very limited seating in your home.  

Sometimes you may not want to write. 

And that’s OK.  

Writer’s block is not an invisible fence built around your creative ability. It’s not physically restraining you. There have certainly been days where I did not want to write, but knew I had to get some work done—to meet a goal or a deadline—and I pushed my way through that feeling. 

Because, again, sometimes a few words are better than no words. 

But if there’s a day that I carve out for writing and I find myself staring at Word as I catapult between Instagram and YouTube and my inbox … sometimes the best thing to do is to close the laptop and put on a movie, or go for a walk, or do the dishes. Something to get me out of my head. 

Something that refills the creative well.  

It’s the same way that sometimes when I can’t fall asleep, I get frustrated because I can’t sleep, and that makes it harder to sleep, and then I’m in a doom spiral, scrolling through TikTok videos at 2 a.m. and wondering how many gallons of coffee I’ll have to drink the next day to be functional.  

Writer’s block is just a little frustration spiral, and the best way to get out of it is to give yourself a little grace. Focus on something else. 

 Sometimes a good movie or book is enough to shake things lose—something to remind us how powerful stories are, and the privilege it is to create them.  

What I’m saying is, don’t be so hard on yourself. 

***

That’s the point of all of this, really.  

Don’t be so hard on yourself.  

This is such a nutty thing that we do. We spend months, sometimes years, sitting in a dark room, by ourselves, with something inside us we want so desperately to share. We have to be stubborn and deluded enough to think that one day it might pay off. Until it does, we have no way of knowing.  

And there are impediments everywhere.  

Some can’t be avoided. If you have to work 80 hours a week to keep your rent paid and your family fed, that’s what you need to do. No one’s going to blame you if you can’t stick to a daily writing schedule. 

But if someone says you can’t be a writer because you should only do things a certain way? Tell them to kick rocks.  

Better than that, prove them wrong.  

You come across an accepted piece of wisdom, and it just doesn’t work for you? Ignore it. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to crack the exclamation point thing.  

(But I doubt it—seriously, stop using so many!!!!) 

The most important thing is that there are countless pathways on this beautiful and insane journey. And your success or failure has nothing to do with reading a particular craft book, or studying with a certain author, or joining an MFA program, or writing every morning at 5 a.m. 

It’s whether you’re stubborn and deluded enough to keep going.  

***

There’s one last thing I’m going to encourage you to do. One piece of advice I do think is worth following.  

Own what you do. Be proud. 

Because I’m tired of meeting folks at conventions who tell me they’re “trying” to be a writer. To me that says every time you open up Microsoft Word, Clippy shows up like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria and proclaims: “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”  

You’re not trying. You’re doing.  

My CV is pretty long—10 solo novels, numerous collaborations, short stories, comic books. I am blessed.  

(Though there are still days imposter syndrome looms large, and I wonder why anyone would want to read my dumb stories; spoiler alert, that feeling never goes away).  

If you’re still working on the first novel and don’t have a single publication credit to your name, just remember, you and I are on the same road. 

I’m just a little further down. That’s all.  

It’s up to you to catch up. 

And if you are stubborn and delusional, if you find the time and put in the work, you will.   

The most important thing you can do is commit your time and energy to building your process—one that is yours, and yours alone. That’s the thing that’ll carry you a little further on down the road.  

My first novel took me five years to write. These days, I can turn a book out in five to six months. Part of that comes from the fact that I’m a former journalist, and I’m used to meeting deadlines. Part of it is that I do a ton of outlining and research, so the book is mostly in my head by the time I write the first sentence.  

And part of it is because I type absurdly fast. 

But the most important thing I did was spend time developing and honing my process. I’ve taken advice, and I’ve ignored it. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve learned from them. I’ve adopted techniques and made up others entirely.  

My process will continue to grow and change, because no one ever steps into the same river twice.  

That’s fine. 

All you have to do is get the work done.   

The post Comparison Is the Thief of Joy (and Success) appeared first on Writer's Digest.

It’s the curious case of identical twins: one fertilized egg that suddenly splits, producing two human beings with the same DNA. It’s a biological event scientists still don’t fully understand. But culturally? People think they’ve got twins figured out.

Every time someone finds out I’m one half of this arrangement, they ask the same question: “Wow. What’s it like to have a twin?”

The question is sincere, but the expectations behind it usually come from pop culture—which has a surprisingly limited imagination when it comes to twins. You’ve seen the familiar versions: seductive twins, creepy twins, sinister twins, or the inevitable third-act reveal that solves the mystery.

It was the twin all along.

As storytelling devices go, it’s a pretty tired toolkit. And to me, it misses the most interesting part entirely. The real story of identical twins isn’t deception or gimmicks. It’s identity.

Growing Up as Half of a Set

Imagine starting life sharing a womb with another human being. From the moment you arrive, comparisons begin.

Lauren walked first.
Lindsay talked first.
Lauren looks more like her mom.
Lindsay’s the dramatic one.

Even well-meaning adults do it without realizing it. They’re trying to categorize two nearly identical faces the way someone might sort puzzle pieces.

And whenever someone sees one of you, they ask: “Where’s your sister?”

It’s an innocent question, but it carries a strange implication: that you’re not quite complete without the other half present. Kids pick up on that dynamic quickly. And like most people struggling to figure out who they are, twins often respond the same way. By trying very hard to be different.

For my sister and me, that process initially looked like a lot of screaming and hair-pulling. Twins, like most siblings, are exceptionally good at pushing each other’s buttons. But the tension between us was always layered with something deeper. Because we also knew each other extraordinarily well.

We shared the same childhood memories, the same private family history. We knew each other’s insecurities, embarrassing moments, and worst mistakes. That kind of familiarity can be dangerous when you’re young. But it can also be incredibly valuable when you’re writing a novel.

Writing With a Twin in the Room

The central characters in My Twin the Murderer are identical twins who no longer know or trust each other. One is a neuroscientist who believes in data and rationality. The other is a volatile writer and addict with a messy past. When a murder occurs and the twins’ identical DNA appears at the crime scene, the question becomes simple: Which twin is telling the truth?

To clear their names, they’re forced into an uneasy alliance—one that leads them into the shadows of a secret government program, the psychedelic underground, and ultimately, smack dab in the center of a looming catastrophe. While drafting those scenes, I often found myself thinking about my own relationship with Lauren. How deeply we as twins can understand each other, and how easily that understanding can turn into friction.

I also did something many writers hesitate to do. I showed my sister the early drafts.

Lauren reads differently than anyone else in my life. She’s an award-winning screenwriter, which means she’s reading the pages differently than most. She knows when a reaction rings false, when a piece of dialogue doesn’t feel authentic. Her feedback shaped the book in ways I didn’t initially expect.

Some of the sharpest moments between the fictional sisters grew out of conversations Lauren and I had about our own childhood; the competition, the fierce loyalty, the quiet resentments that can simmer beneath both. We also talked about how we each carried the grief of losing our father when we were young, and how differently we processed it. Those conversations reshaped parts of the story and eventually became a key emotional thread in the novel.

At a certain point, writing the relationship stopped feeling like invention and started feeling more like truth.

Twins and the Monster Within

Writing this novel taught me something about fiction I hadn’t fully appreciated when I began: The most compelling stories rarely come from tidy ideas, but from contradictions.

At first, the premise felt straightforward. Identical twins. A murder. The uncertainty of shared DNA. But the deeper I went into the draft, the more I realized the story wasn’t really about solving a crime. It was about identity. About how fragile it can be, and how much of it exists in tension with itself.

Each of us carries contradictions—compassion alongside cruelty, loyalty tangled with resentment, courage shadowed by fear. The longer I worked on the novel, the more those tensions began shaping the characters and the plot.

Once I leaned into that complexity, the story opened up. The novel became less about answering the question of who committed the crime and more about exploring who these people really were. What did they believe about themselves? What were they capable of when pushed far enough? And how well can anyone truly know another person—even someone who shares their face?

Fiction, at its best, gives us a way to investigate those questions safely. It lets us follow characters into uncomfortable territory and sit with truths that are harder to confront in everyday life. For me, writing this book became an exercise in acknowledging that identity is never singular. We are shaped by memory, experience, and by the people who know us best.

Sometimes those people are the ones who see the darkness most clearly. And sometimes they’re the ones who force us to face it.

This novel is for anyone who has ever been fascinated—or unsettled—by the idea of people born as two.

But mostly, it’s for Lauren.

Check out Lindsay Kent’s My Twin the Murderer here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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The post Of Twins, Monsters, and the Duality Within Us appeared first on Writer's Digest.

While you will likely leave inspired, energized, and overflowing with ideas, you may also return home feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, and wondering where the last few days went.

(10 LinkedIn Goals for Authors.)

Conferences go by fast—especially the good ones. You may leave with a ton of business cards and lots of notes. Chances are, however, they will get pushed aside while you catch up from being gone for a few days, never to be looked at again. And that is not okay.

Here’s the thing about conferences: You can’t meet everyone, you can’t learn everything, and you definitely cannot do all the things. Yet, you can make meaningful connections, learn valuable information, and create opportunities that continue long after the conference ends.

Set Conference Goals

In the weeks leading up to a conference, if you haven’t done so already, set goals for networking and knowledge.

• Who do you need to meet (essential people for the next step of your author journey), who do you want to meet (a dream speaker), who would be nice to meet (author friends/accountability partners)?
• What do you need to learn (art or craft of writing), what do you want to learn (a fun bonus skill, perhaps related to platform building), what would be nice to learn (related to a side or future project)?

Next, instead of framing these as goals, look at them as future wins. What 10 wins—5 networking, 5 educational—do you plan to achieve?

Possible Networking Wins:

• Meet X number of agents
• Meet X number of publishers
• Meet “big name” and invite him/her to be a guest on your podcast
• Meet a web designer/editor/event organizer
• Make at least one new friend in the audience at each session

Possible Educational Wins; Learn About:

• Structure
• Dialogue
• Queries
• Comp titles
• Author platform

Make a Plan

Look at the conference schedule and note the networking opportunities. This is the kind of access you only get at in-person events, so make them a priority. Make your list of “must meets” based on speakers on the schedule, conference sponsors, and the titles of your ideal new connections.

Now, go through the sessions. Most conferences have multi tracks, so prioritize the sessions by dividing them into categories: must attend, interesting topic, and backup options. When making your schedule, build in breaks for downtime and conversations. Some of the most valuable conference moments happen in hallways, coffee lines, and casual chats before and after sessions.

Create Action Items

During the conference, you will meet a lot of people and receive a lot of information. Come up with a strategy to make sure you follow up and follow through.

After you make a new contact:

• Make a note if they are an A, B, or C connection. A is new BFF, B is nice vibe with potential, C is everyone else, as long as they are not a red flag.
• Make notes of things that are memorable about them or how/where/when you met during the conference; this is important for you and them to have a frame of reference
• Follow everyone on social media. Connect with the As right away – on LinkedIn and/or via email, connect with Bs within a week, and Cs within a month.

During and after each session:

• Don’t take notes on everything, just mark the highlights
• From the highlights, mark 3 to 5 takeaways
• Create 3 action items to go with each takeaway
• Prioritize which session takeaways you will implement first
• Schedule time in your calendar—at least a weekly appointment post conference—to put the things you learned into action.

Also:

• At the beginning of each day, take a look at your list of goals/future wins.
• At the end of each day, make a list of your networking and knowledge wins.
• At the end of the conference, compare the list to the goals you set.
• Celebrate all of the wins! Your commitment to yourself and getting the most out of the conference is a big deal. Good for you!

Remember

Before your next writers’ conference, schedule prep time, set goals, and make a plan. You will show up ready to connect, learn, and grow … and inevitably get the most value out of the conference.

The post Pre-Event Planning: Setting Writers’ Conference Goals appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, E.L. discusses how a love for self-aware horror movies helped inspire her new novel, Slasher Summer, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: E.L. Chen
Literary agent: Dorian Maffei of Kimberly Cameron & Associates
Book title: Slasher Summer
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Release date: June 23, 2026
Genre/category: Horror, Slasher
Previous titles: Summerwood/Winterwood,  Sweetside Motel
Elevator pitch: The Breakfast Club meets Scream. Seven old friends, former members of their high school’s horror film club, reunite at a remote cabin where a cult slasher was filmed, only to find themselves targeted by someone dressed as that movie’s iconic killer.

Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?

I’m afraid my inspiration was rather prosaic. I was between projects and my agent thought I might be interested in writing a slasher, because I’d touched on Final Girls—the archetypal “last girl standing” in slasher films—in another book I’d written. At first, I wasn’t sure I had a slasher in me, but I started thinking about the kind of slasher movie I’d want to watch. Being Chinese Canadian, I’d want to see an Asian Final Girl, and I love comic, self-aware horror films like The Final Girls, Freaky, and The Blackening. The next thing you know I had about 20 pages of notes, so I thought, Welp, I guess I’m doing this!

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

It’s been roughly two years from idea to publication. I’d learned a lot about pacing from working from my agent’s feedback on a previous book, and once I got started I couldn’t stop. So, I was able to write a fairly clean first draft in under four months—smiling the whole time because I was having so much fun. 

The core idea of a killer imitating a cult movie slasher never changed, but it grew layers as I kept asking myself questions. In a world dominated by the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, why is this movie also famous? I decided a small-town festival and Rocky Horror-like interactive showings had kept it alive. Then how do the characters relate to this experience, and to each other in the roles they’ve been expected to play, both in life and as teenagers performing slasher character tropes for an audience? And so, the book evolved from there.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

It’s common knowledge that publishing moves at a glacial pace, so I was prepared to sit and bite my nails with anticipation of the book’s release date. But I’ve been surprised by how fast the time flies, and how full it is. From acceptance to publication, there have been rounds of edits, then copy edits, multiple proofs to scrutinize, emails about marketing and publicity and cover art, plus authors are more engaged in self-promotion these days. And you have to do all this while simultaneously working on your next project. At no point do you dust off your hands and wait for the book to magically show up in bookstores. I was recently on a conference panel about querying, and the other panelists and I half-joked that we should warn the audience of aspiring authors to be careful what they wish for, because you’re signing up for homework for life!

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

This was my first time writing a book with multiple POVs, so I had to come up with an entirely new writing process! I’m a plotter as opposed to a pantser. I need to hit the ground running when I write because as a single parent with a day job, it’s rare to get more than an hour to myself at a time. 

Normally my outline is a list of bullet points, and I draft in a very linear fashion. Multiple POVs posed a challenge because I needed to decide who would be the best POV character for each scene before I started writing. But how can you know who will be the best narrator until you have a better idea of the big picture?

A lot of people think that writers generate words out of sheer instinct. That it’s all rainbows and lightning bolts. Even writers themselves—I was one of them for the longest time! For years I resisted working on craft because I assumed writing should just come naturally. But I’ve since learned to be more intentional and pragmatic with my writing practice, and I think my work has improved a lot because of it. So as boring as it sounds, I came up with a spreadsheet. I put my scenes along the x-axis and characters on the y-axis, and then I entered notes on what each character is doing in that scene, even if they’re off-page. This way I got a precise view of the book’s timeline and could also see who would be the best character for telling each scene. (I did end up rewriting a couple scenes from a different point of view, but my method was largely successful.)

What do you hope readers will get out of your book? 

I had so much fun writing Slasher Summer, and I hope readers have just as much fun reading it! I intended the experience to be like watching a movie like Scream or The Blackening, slashers with characters you root for in scary situations, but which also have moments of levity. I also hope fans will enjoy recognizing the various nods to other horror films, but you don’t need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of slasher movies to enjoy the story.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Just because something is hard doesn’t mean you’re not good at it. I suspect a lot of aspiring writers and artists give up too soon because they think if they were “talented” then it would be easy. “Talent” is mostly hard work, persistence, and a willingness to learn as well as fail. Slasher Summer is the fifth book I’ve written, and although some aspects of writing get easier as you pick up more skills and start to recognize your own habits, it’s never completely smooth sailing. And I wouldn’t want it to be. It’s the challenge that makes it rewarding.

The post E.L. Chen: It’s the Challenge That Makes It Rewarding appeared first on Writer's Digest.

For the first time ever, the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards offered a category for a chapbook collection. In 2026, more than 130 collections were submitted, and I ultimately selected Brian Cameron’s Finding Tiamat: A Book for Broken Democracies for the First Place Prize of $1,000, publication in Writer’s Digest, and a 20–minute consultation with yours truly.

Cameron is a therapist with a private practice in Colorado Springs, who produces goth culture events, sponsors music gatherings around the city, and trains in the martial arts. His collection Finding Tiamat stood out to me for its narrative honesty and unresolved introspection. Be sure to scan the QR code to read the full collection yourself.

Here’s a quick Q&A:

What inspired Finding Tiamat?

Frustration—frustration with the cultural climate of the country and the level of polarization we are living through. I see a great deal of division and malice, and I became interested in understanding the psychological forces that have led us here.

The poem moves through a series of voices: a veteran I call Marcus—23 years old with two deployments, still living at the checkpoint where he had to decide whether a speeding car was a threat or brakes; Jamila, whose uncle built his store over 30 years only to find his windows smashed and a slur spray painted after an election; and the narrator—which is me—reaching for his phone the way his mother reached for her rosary, not in prayer but in hunger to watch someone fall. These are the kinds of human experiences I encounter as a clinician, and in this book, they function as a psychological examination of the nation.

The mythic structure comes from Tiamat, the ancient Mesopotamian goddess and primordial matriarch who existed before the rise of patriarchal mythology—a symbolic return to the root source, to presence and connection. Finding Tiamat represents rediscovering that deeper ground beneath our divisions.

Ultimately, the project is about dialogue. Democracy depends on our ability to remain in the room with one another, even when we disagree. If we stop speaking to each other, democracy dies.

How did you go about putting this collection together?

I listen. I watch. I observe. I tried to quiet my ego, my own lens, as much as possible. I stand in two worlds. I live in majority conservative circles as a veteran, but also as a poet. As a poet I move in worlds that are often majority liberal. I want to be a bridge. To help facilitate the kind of conversation where people can vehemently disagree and still be in conversation with one another.

Dialogue, however, should not be confused with moral passivity. Things that threaten human dignity and integrity must be called out, plainly and with great vigilance. “You get to theorize about empathy until it’s not being directed at you,” Jamila says plainly in the poem. She’s right. Her uncle’s windows are broken. You can still see the spray paint under the fresh paint. I don’t resolve that tension in the poem—because it can’t be resolved. It must be held.

Why did you choose to enter the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards?

Writer’s Digest has been around for over a century. It has meant something to writers for generations—a place where the craft is taken seriously, where emerging voices get real hearing. That matters to me.

Submitting was a way of joining something. There’s a long line of writers who have trusted this magazine, and I wanted to be part of that. Not just publish—participate. To stand in that lineage and say, here is what I believe poetry can do. And when you know how many talented poets send their work—poets from all over the world—the recognition lands differently. It doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like being heard.

If you could pass on one piece of advice to other poets, what would it be?

Stop trying to use your poetry to project a self-image of who you think you’re supposed to be. Write from what is real and vital within you. When poetry comes from that place, it becomes a force for growth rather than an instrument of narcissism.

When you write, you should not be seeking attention, you should be seeking to attend to something. Poetry is the act of noticing what needs to be seen, held, and shared so that individuals and communities can grow.

A poet’s task is not to explain an experience, but to show it. The poem should not be commentary about life—the poem should be the experience itself. Trust images. Find the image that embodies what you want to communicate and trust your reader to enter that world with you. Use metaphor and simile the way a cook uses spice: enough to deepen the flavor, never so much that the dish disappears beneath the seasoning.

Download the winning chapbook here!

The post Rediscovering the Deeper Ground Beneath Divisions: 1st Annual WD Chapbook Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.

Want to see your name on this list? Keep checking our competitions page for upcoming competitions.

1. Finding Tiamat: A Book for Broken Democracies by Brian Cameron
   
2. The Museum of Forgotten Things by Julie Butler
   
3. Tiny Poem Tuesday by Tamara Erickson
   
4. The Durable Gift by J.D. McGee
   
5. Acapella by DUGGAN
   
6. Allow by Patsy Creedy
   
7. Things I Found in a Dead Man’s Pocket and Selected Poems by Chuck Collins
   
8. Finriffle by Pamela Lerner Hines
   
9. love is a loaded gun by James Jones
   
10. Odd Birds Flocking by Shannon Keil
    
11. Lived Fragments by Marielle Bethelle
    
12. THE DISPLACED by Paula Brancato
    
13. Short Songs by Mel Konner
    
14. Telemachus Dreams by Stephen Jones
    
15. Sway by Charles Gillispie
    
16. Achieving Being by Alexis Verdini
    
17. WHEN YOU GO AWAY, I PRETEND THAT YOU’RE DEAD by B. Fulton Jennes
    
18. DANCING TO BLUEBELLS, a haiku chapbook by Kenda Turner
    
19. Growing Up Girl by Beth McCullough
    
20. Beyond Blood by Susan Chambers
    
21. When Vietnam Calls by Minh-Tam Le
    
22. Shadows and Their Sonnets by Laurie Holding
    
23. blueBlack magic: a family archived in poems by Kendra N. Bryant Aya
    
24. But It Doesn’t Mean That I Don’t Love You Anymore by Joyce Schmid
    
25. Distaff: Voices by Terri Simon

The post Announcing the Winners of the 2026 WD Chapbook Poetry Awards appeared first on Writer's Digest.

In this interview, Krista discusses writing about parasocial relationships in her debut novel, Close Relationships with Strangers, her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Krista Diamond
Literary agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord
Book title: Close Relationships with Strangers
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release date: June 23, 2026
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Elevator pitch: Close Relationships with Strangers follows a Las Vegas wildlife photographer who moves to Los Angeles to become a paparazzo and in the process loses his relationships, his morals, and eventually his tether to reality.

Bookshop | Amazon
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What prompted you to write this book?

I spent my 20s working in the national parks and have always been outdoorsy, but I’ve also always been really into pop culture. These two interests seemed totally separate. It never occurred to me that I would ever find a way to write about wilderness and celebrity at the same time. When I was playing around with the idea for this novel, I started interviewing paparazzi. One of them compared the work that he did to wildlife photography. He said that in both paparazzi photography and wildlife photography, you have no control over the lighting, you’ve often got this subject that’s running away from you, and you might only get one decent shot. Hearing that unlikely comparison is where it clicked for me, and the novel just opened up. Suddenly, I was able to bring together my love of nature and my fascination with celebrity lore.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I started an MFA in 2021 with the intention of writing a completely different novel while I was there. While I was procrastinating that novel, I wrote a short story about a paparazzi photographer named Ben trying to get a picture of an elusive movie star. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I procrastinated starting the other novel some more by spending the summer in Los Angeles, doing research and expanding the paparazzi story into a novella.

In the fall of 2022, I returned to campus and told myself it was time to put the paparazzi project aside and actually start the other novel, but I just couldn’t let it go. Maile Chapman, who is an incredible writer and teacher, was leading the fiction workshop I was in that semester. Everyone in the class very kindly agreed to workshop my 110-page novella. Hearing them talk about it made me want to keep working on it. After class, I told Maile I was thinking about expanding it into a novel even though it was not the novel I’d set out to write. She told me that being totally obsessed with a writing project was rare, and if I felt that way about this story, I had to follow that feeling, so I did. I’m so grateful to her for that advice and for reading a million subsequent drafts once I started expanding.

After finishing my MFA, I revised the novel a few more times and then I started querying literary agents. I signed with my amazing agent, Danielle Bukowski, in 2024. She understood the book right away and had such faith in it. I revised a bit more with notes from her, and then we went out on submission in early 2025 and sold it to Olivia Taylor Smith at Simon & Schuster, who was so passionate about the book and so thoughtful and generous during the editorial process. She gave me great notes but always reiterated that it was my book and she would never push me to make changes to it that didn’t align with how I saw it. Everyone who has been a part of this book has had that same generosity. I’m very grateful. From 2021 to 2026, the idea has pretty much always been the same—in fact, the first page of the novel is very similar to the first page of the original short story—it has just expanded and evolved.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned throughout the process is that no two paths to publishing are the same. Some books sell to publishers in just a few weeks; others take months or even years. Not every agent or editor does things the same way. And of course, every author is different. You can’t compare the experience of someone publishing a romance novel to that of someone publishing narrative nonfiction. Before selling Close Relationships with Strangers, I spent a lot of time on various forums where writers discuss querying agents, submitting to publishers, and things like that. I thought it would give me some idea of what to expect. Some of those places are helpful, others will make you even more anxious. Ultimately, what I learned from trying to predict the future of my book is that it’s impossible. You just have to focus on the part you can control, which is the writing.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

The biggest surprise was realizing the novel needed a non-linear structure. The story goes back and forth between Ben’s desperate quest to take a photo of the actor he’s obsessed with and his life before that point when he was working at a restaurant in Las Vegas and falling in love with a burlesque dancer. I have always believed in writing things chronologically whenever possible, so an early version of the novel began with Ben’s pre-paparazzi life, and it was about 100 pages of that before we were even in Los Angeles. I thought it could be a slow burn but honestly, it just lacked momentum. I resisted changing the structure for about a year and then when I finally did, it was so obvious that that was how it was supposed to be.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

This is a novel about parasocial relationships, the one-sided relationships we form with public figures, so I hope people will reflect on that element of it. I would love for this book to make readers think about the role that parasocial relationships play in their own lives, because I think it’s actually a pretty nuanced topic. Everyone, regardless of gender, age, or any other identity markers, experiences parasocial relationships to some extent, whether it’s having a favorite music artist or feeling like a politician is someone you’d have a beer with. There are versions of parasocial relationships that are actually quite healthy. Spoiler alert: The one in this book is not.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Write the story that only you can write, the one you want to write, not the one you think will impress people in your life or sell for a lot of money. Readers’ tastes and the publishing industry are always changing, but if you write something you love, you’ll love it forever.

The post Krista Diamond: No Two Paths To Publishing Are the Same appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(I Got 8 Agent Offers; Then, My Book Died on Sub.)

There were no offers. Not for that first book, and not for the second one either. At the risk of being annoyingly woo woo, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m glad those projects didn’t make it. I was still figuring out my voice as an author, and though I’d been writing my entire life, I still had a lot to learn about craft to tell the kind of story I wanted to tell.

By the time I queried Christina Miller at Nancy Yost Literary with my third project, a storm chaser romance, I wasn’t sure what to expect. She’d sent me a very kind pass on my second project, one that boiled down to liking my work but it just wasn’t a good fit. I hoped for a better outcome this time, while also quietly making plans to self-publish if this third round of querying didn’t work out for me.

Thankfully, querying that first storm chaser romance went much better—and faster—than my first two attempts. I sent my first query out the first week of July 2023 and signed with Christina by October. It was close enough to the holidays that we decided to send the book out on submission in January.

We were both pretty optimistic about my chances with editors, but before long, the passes started rolling in. I was disappointed, of course, though still hopeful. At least until the last Monday of February when four passes, two of which were from houses I desperately wanted to work with, came in back-to-back. I’m not sure who felt worse—Christina, who had to forward those emails along, or me, who opened each one with an increasingly tight knot in my stomach.

By the end of the day, I wanted to simply give up. Two and a half years of querying had already shaken my confidence. The passes were hard to understand—one editor loved the tension, but didn’t like something else, while another editor felt there was no tension at all, but loved the exact thing the other editor felt lacking. It began to feel like searching for a needle somewhere in a thousand different haystacks.

Because I am exactly like other girls, I had recently watched Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana documentary. When I woke up on Tuesday, I was still feeling sorry for myself and frustrated. But there was a moment in that documentary that really stuck with me, the one where she finds out that the reputation album wasn’t getting Grammy nominations. Taylor is obviously upset about the news, but after taking a beat, she gathers herself together and declares the only solution is to make a better album.

I needed to write a better book.

Fueled by that determination, I dusted myself off and started breaking out what ultimately became Chase Me If You Can. I looked at my old emails as I was preparing to write this piece, and though it felt like an eternity at the time, by Wednesday evening I emailed Christina the first pitch. Two and a half weeks after that, I sent her a very messy half-draft to get a gut check on where I was going. That was the middle of March, and by the end of April, I hit send on the finished draft.

I’m usually a pretty fast drafter, but this was fast even for me. I wondered if maybe I was just fooling myself about the book being any good—six weeks from concept to finished draft seemed like it was an impossibly short amount of time. In hindsight, there was a magical alchemy to this book, one of those rare instances where every time I sat down to write, the story was just there in my head, waiting to be transcribed onto the page.

I think that in some ways the crushing disappointment of that first book dying as quickly as it did forced me to get out of my own way. I didn’t overthink it. I just wrote. I added self-indulgent pieces to the book that made me happy, which seems self-evident, but like many authors, the noise of querying and rejection over the years had gotten in my head. There was a certain kind of freedom in the failure of that first book, not that I could have told you that at the time.

Despite how quickly I wrote it, the main story of Chase Me If You Can remains largely unchanged from that original draft. It’s been thoroughly revised, of course, fine-tuned and polished over several rounds of edits to become the book it is today, but the main beats are the same ones I wrote in that fever dream madness of drafting in March and April of 2024.

In the end, much like those two failed rounds of querying, I’m glad that things turned out this way. Chase Me If You Can is a better book, not only in terms of craft, but in giving readers a (mostly) realistic look at what the world of storm chasing is truly like for those of us out on the plains every spring. It’s a love letter to a hobby that’s given me so much, and I’m incredibly proud of it.

As for that first book, the one that I called time of death on back in February 2024? Turns out it’s not actually dead at all. Though it’s been heavily rewritten, that original storm chaser romance featuring a meteorologist burnt out on her broadcasting job will be on shelves in 2027. And if I could go back and do it all over again? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Check out Heather Frances’ Chase Me If You Can here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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The post How Rejection (and Taylor Swift) Inspired My Publishing Success Story appeared first on Writer's Digest.

I love getting to select the winner of the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards each year, even if it is always a bit of a challenge. In 2026, there were more than 800 entries covering a range of forms, subjects, issues, and themes. In the end, I selected Susan Rounds’ “The Starling and the Hedgehog” for the First Place Prize of $1,000, publication in Writer’s Digest, and a 20–minute consultation with yours truly.

Rounds is a first grade teacher with a busy life, “But I’m always writing.” In fact, she’s participated in Moriah Richard’s February Flash Fiction Challenge and my own April Poem-A-Day Challenge on WritersDigest.com, in addition to other writing challenges. For me, her poem “The Starling and the Hedgehog” was a fun combination of story and rhyme (and misunderstanding).

Here’s a quick Q&A:

What inspired “The Starling and the Hedgehog”?

I wrote this poem during a PAD challenge with my writing group. I was fighting cancer at the time (all better now), and a friend advised me to participate to keep my mind occupied on other endeavors. I didn’t know much about the various poetic forms and hadn’t written much poetry before the challenge.

Each day in the challenge included a poetic form and a key word. I had to consult WritersDigest.com every day to learn how to write the various forms. “The Starling and the Hedgehog” came from this challenge with the key word of rendezvous.

There happened to be starlings in my yard that day. It made me wonder with whom a starling might rendezvous, and could they possibly be friends? (Remember that I spend my days with 6-year-olds.) The rhyming was my choice.

Did you have to revise this poem before submitting?

I did revise this poem. It didn’t start out as a rhyming poem. It started almost like a story. But I enjoy playing with words and loved the sound and rhythm of rendezvous, so I decided to incorporate rhyme. I also wanted the cadence to be right, so I read and reread the rhymes out loud, counted syllables and beats, and listened for emphasis on the beats.

I also changed the “snafu” once or twice. But as a teacher, I wanted to make the poem a lesson, so I included the diurnal and nocturnal animals in there along with the theme of friendship and how it takes effort.

Why did you choose to enter the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards?

I have submitted my writing to a variety of publishing professionals in the past but was not successful. The experience discouraged me a bit. Now, I write mostly for myself. Entering the Poetry Awards was a first and required some risk-taking for me. But for some reason, this poem stuck with me. I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

When I saw the announcement for the Poetry Awards, I remembered that I would have never written “The Starling and the Hedgehog” and the other 29 poems during that April challenge without Writer’s Digest’s resources to guide me. So, I submitted, hoping that someone would like the poem as much as I did.

If you could pass on one piece of advice to other poets, what would it be?

Keep writing—no matter what! Your words are important. They are important to you, and you never know, someone else might need those words too.

The post Illustrating the Effort of Friendship: 20th Annual WD Poetry Awards Winner appeared first on Writer's Digest.