In today's Books with Hooks, Bianca, CeCe, and Carly are joined by Jennifer to discuss her thriller submission. They chat about trigger warnings and their necessity in a query; ensuring your stakes aren't too obvious while illustrating the bigger 'why' at hand; framing your query letter in a way that highlights your POV characters and not others; the need for causality when it comes to plot points; utilizing similar pitch copy to help write more difficult or unique aspects of your query; tips for writing a query for a novel that is first person POV; avoiding overexplaining and trusting your reader; and how interiority that’s surprising can elevate pages.

After which, Bianca interviews bestselling author, Lesley Crewe. They discuss Lesley's latest novel, Death & Other Inconveniences; the art of writing humour well; writing attention-grabbing opening pages; inciting incidents that don't occur on the page and how to write them successfully; the inspiration behind the novel; the importance of characters' wants and needs; Lesley's main character's arc; successfully writing from multiple POVs without head-hopping; viewing omniscient POV as passing a baton; and writing for yourself before writing for others.

Note: Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra are literary agents at P.S. Literary Agency, but their work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly and CeCe on this podcast are solely that of them as podcast co-hosts and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.

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More information about Lesley can be found at https://www.lesleycrewe.com/

She's also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lesleycreweauthor/

Carly's course for writers, The Author's Publishing Playbook, is available at carlywatters.com/course. If you haven't grabbed it yet, podcast listeners can use discount code POD15

To sign up for the Beta Reader Match Up, go to https://www.biancamarais.com/beta-reader-match-up.html