From Books with Hooks to Published Author-How Writing is Rewriting

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra

How To, Books, Education, Fiction, Arts

4.8 • 733 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, debut author Melissa O’Connor takes us behind the scenes of her publishing journey with ‘The One and Only Vivian Stone.’ She shares how her query letter evolved, what it was like navigating the submission process, and the pivotal decision to restructure the manuscript with a dual timeline. Melissa opens up about weaving romance and mystery into her story, the role of character relationships, and how agent and editor feedback shaped the final book. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that celebrates creativity, persistence, and the thrilling milestones of a first-time author.

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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It’s Beta Reader Match Up time again where you can be matched up with those writing in a similar genre and/or time zone, so they can critique your work as you critique theirs.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Beta reader matchup time is happening again. It's been so gratifying over the summer to be tagged in so many posts about beta readers who've become writing besties and who are still going strong many years after they were first matched. Some even travel to meet up and do writing weekends together, which sounds incredible. I can't guarantee
0:23.0	any of that. That's entirely up to you, but what I can guarantee is that you'll be matched with a
0:28.6	group of people working in your genre and or time zone who will critique 3,000 words of your work
0:35.0	as you critique theirs in return. You can sign up from now until the 31st of
0:40.2	August with the match-up emails going out on the 1st of September. Head to my website, Bianca Moray.com,
0:47.6	and look for the beta reader matchup tab.
0:59.3	Hi there and welcome to our show.
1:02.2	The shit no one tells you about writing.
1:09.6	I'm Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and C.C. Lira from PS Literary Agency.
1:15.1	Hi everyone. Today's guest became obsessed with stories involving family secrets,
1:21.7	betrayal and forbidden love after being gifted a box of used V.C. Andrews books at the age of 10.
1:26.8	She lives in Buffalo, New York, where she can usually be found cheering on her kids' hockey teams and sneaking words on the
1:28.4	page between games.
1:30.1	It's my pleasure to welcome Melissa O'Connor.
1:32.9	Melissa, welcome to the show.
1:34.6	Thanks for having me.
1:36.2	It's so wonderful having you because this is one of our full circle moments.
1:40.2	The amazing thing about doing Books with Hooks for so many years is that this year we've got a solid,
1:46.1	strong lineup of authors who are now publishing whose work we looked at and critiqued somewhere
1:52.8	along the way. And it's wonderful to see these works go from being submissions we get in our
1:59.8	inbox to suddenly having covers, to being
2:02.5	out in the world, to being on bookshelves. So we're super, super excited, Melissa, and we're
	...

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