Insights from Lisa Unger
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bestselling thriller author Lisa Unger joins the show to talk about longevity, creativity, and the craft behind writing dark, layered stories. From surviving industry shifts to protecting your creative “deep work,” Lisa shares what it really takes to build a long writing career — and why the only constant is showing up at the page. Bianca and Lisa dive into writing multiple first-person POVs, creating authentic character voices, embracing organic storytelling, and how empathy and research shape powerful fiction. Plus: social media boundaries, reader relationships, and why the work always comes back to character.
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 | Hi there and welcome to our show. The Ship No One Tells You about writing. I'm bestselling author Bianca Murray |
| 0:14.2 | and I'm joined by Cece Leera of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary. |
| 0:21.8 | Hi everyone. I'm really excited about today's special guest who scared the crap out of me as |
| 0:27.9 | she hopped on because I was looking at another screen. |
| 0:31.5 | And I feel like this is an appropriate way for her and I to have met considering the books |
| 0:35.9 | she writes. |
| 0:37.1 | She is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author. |
| 0:40.6 | Her books have been published in over 30 languages and have been voted best of the year |
| 0:45.2 | for topics by the Today Show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly and others. |
| 0:51.5 | She lives on the west coast of Florida with her family. It's my pleasure to |
| 0:56.2 | welcome Lisa Unger. Lisa, welcome to the show. Well, Bianca, thank you so much for having me. I was so |
| 1:02.6 | excited to be here. I get a lot of hiccups. So I feel like you and I need to hang around each other |
| 1:08.6 | a lot because getting scared takes the hiccups away. |
| 1:13.1 | Exactly. |
| 1:14.0 | Whenever you're having like a hiccup jag, just schedule an interview and I'll hop on while you're busy with something else. |
| 1:20.5 | I'm going to have you on speed dive. |
| 1:22.1 | Okay. |
| 1:22.8 | So for everybody who's not watching on the YouTube channel, I'm holding up the book we're discussing |
| 1:28.2 | today, served him right. |
| 1:30.8 | Dun, dun, dun, done. |
| 1:32.8 | We're going to link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page. |
| 1:36.3 | If you get the book there, you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same |
... |
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