April Bonus Episode
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Debut author Canwen Xu joins Bianca to talk about ‘Boring Asian Female’—the dark, addictive novel that began as women’s fiction and evolved into a razor-sharp psychological thriller. They discuss, turning personal failure into emotional truth on the page, the 25 drafts and major genre pivot that changed everything, writing a morally messy, hyper self-aware protagonist and why internal validation matters more than external wins. A candid conversation about obsession, identity, and the long road to getting it right.
Part two of this month’s bonus episode, Bianca connects with best-selling author, Rea Frey. Rea dives into the behind-the-scenes realities of writing and publishing, with a sharp focus on what truly moves the needle for authors. From the power of agent meetings—offering market-savvy, no-nonsense feedback you won’t get from peers—to the brutal truth about rewriting entire manuscripts under pressure, this episode pulls back the curtain on the process . She shares hard-earned insights on resilience, why some books need to be shelved (for now), and how timing can make or break a manuscript. Plus, a candid look at the biggest mistakes writers make—from submitting too early to ignoring the business side of publishing—and why understanding the industry is just as critical as mastering craft.
And lastly, don’t miss out on Emilie’s comps!
Note: CeCe Lyra is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you’d like to query CeCe, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wsherman.com. Carly Watters is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Have you been sitting on the fence about signing up for the Bateser-read a matchup, |
| 0:04.5 | or have you signed up before but haven't yet found your writing soulmates? |
| 0:08.6 | The next matchup is the last one for the summer, so don't snooze on it. |
| 0:13.1 | Get matched up with those writing in a similar genre and or time zone so they can critique your work as you critique theirs. |
| 0:22.5 | Your manuscript doesn't have to be complete to sign up for those 3,000 word evaluation. This particular matchup will be open to |
| 0:28.4 | registrations from now until the 1st of June with the matchup emails going out on the 2nd of June. |
| 0:35.3 | For more information and to register, go to Bianca Moray.com and go to the beta reader |
| 0:40.9 | matchup page. |
| 0:48.5 | Hi there and welcome to our show. |
| 0:51.2 | The shit no one tells you about writing. |
| 0:54.1 | I'm bestselling author Bianca Moray and I'm joined by C.C. Lira of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary. |
| 1:04.0 | Hi everyone. Today's guest is a debut author whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, the Kansas City star, Chalk Beat, |
| 1:13.2 | Era Magazine, and more. She is a graduate of Columbia University. It's my pleasure to welcome |
| 1:19.4 | Kanwen Shue. Canwin, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. I actually |
| 1:25.4 | listened to this show when I was querying, so in preparing to query. |
| 1:29.9 | So it's really exciting for me to kind of be on the other side now. |
| 1:33.8 | Oh, wow. That's amazing. We love hearing those full circle moments. That's incredible. |
| 1:38.8 | Well, for our listeners, we are actually going to have Kenwin read us her success or query letters shortly, which is |
| 1:45.3 | always exciting. And we're going to put that in our substack. But let me just firstly tell you |
| 1:50.6 | about the book we're discussing. Those of you who aren't watching on YouTube, I'm holding up |
| 1:55.8 | the cover of the book. It's called Boring Asian Female, very striking cover. And we're going to link to it on |
| 2:02.8 | our bookshop.org affiliate page where if you buy the book there, you can support an independent |
... |
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