Hi there. We've got a lot. We're really excited to tell you about, but I'm going to make this real

quick so you can get to the episode. The deep dive is coming up at the end of January. The lineup of

speakers is incredible and the range of topics is mind-blowing. You do not want to miss out on the last

deep dive ever. Then the beta reader matchup is open once again

with the matchups going out early in February.

Sign up to kick your creative year off with a bang.

Lastly, there's an amazing writer's workbook available

which will make the perfect gift for you

or the writer in your life.

Head to our website, The Shit About Writing, to find out more.

Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with literary agents, Carly Waters, and

Cici Lira, where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends, and the overall

state of the book business. If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two

literary agents, grab your mug and pull up a chair.

Hi everybody. This is technically the Happy New Year episode for me and Cici because we haven't

seen each other since the New Year crossed over. So this is our Happy New Year to each other. So we played ahead. We over-recorded in December. We didn't want to leave you guys high and dry in the holiday season. We knew everybody had lots of travel and long drives and we want to make sure you were all loaded up with lots of podcast listening. So yeah, so Cece, how are you? How was your break? How have you been? I'm well. Happy New Year. It's January 7th for us. I know it's not for our listeners, but we time travel because we're cool like that. I had a lovely break. I got a lot of reading done, which is always my favorite thing, and eat a lot of cookies. So really,

I was in heaven. How about you? How was your break? It was okay. My grandma passed away at the

break, so it was all sad. So I was driving from Ottawa to Sarnia and home for Christmas,

and then back Ottawa to Sarnia. For those of you that are not familiar with Ontario, I basically

traversed the entire province twice. Over the break, So yeah, it's my mom's mom and she was sad. So it's nice to be there for her, obviously. And I spoke at the funeral and I have so much speaking experience. And yet, like, when it's a funeral, you're like, oh, I'm hoping my train kicks in and I'm not going to fall through the whole thing. But anyway, I made it through my speaking and it was beautiful ceremony and yeah, she was 92 and passed in her sleep. And one thing that I actually haven't posted about this on socials, which was, I think you'll love. It's so sweet. So my mom would always, you know, bring some books to my grandma. Not any of my spicy books, but she would bring books to my grandma like my historical fiction, the things that I was working on. And obviously, you know, she would read my client's materials, which was really sweet. And so the book that she had in her nightstand when she passed was my client Jane Healy's book, the woman of Arlington Hall. And she had like, she had her bookmark in there. That was like her like, grandma's love reading bookmark and jane haley's book so that was

the last book that she read yeah that's so great first episode that we're recording in the year

and i'm already tearing up oh my god that's so sweet should have had a trigger warning for everybody

...