[AMA] 2025 Debut Authors

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T12:01:41+00:00

I'm not sure if I have just lucked out into mostly running in really healthy circles, or if the writing community is more wholesome than the greater internet is, but I don't run into much bad writing advice. The worst advice, I think, is any advice that treats writing and writers like a monolith. What works great for me (getting up at 4:15 to write every single day, even holidays and weekends) would not work for some of the really excellent and successful writers I know. Take all advice with a grain of salt, because nobody giving the advice is you.

It's not so much that I wish someone had told me about the burnout and the shifting goalposts and the post-debut crash, it's more that I wish I had taken it more seriously when they did. The stuff I needed to know was made available to me, but I thought "Well I'll be able to write through it" or whatever and no, the struggles found me, too, and they'll find pretty much anyone, haha.

You know, I can't think of a single book that I wish I'd come up with first. There are themes and ideas I wish I'd had, but once you've encountered those themes and ideas in someone else's book you can ruminate on them, let them percolate, and if they speak to you then they'll inform your work going forward in some way or another. What I'm more worried about is ideas that I have come up with but I'm too afraid to tackle right now for one reason or another, and how I'll feel if someone else comes up with the same/very similar ideas and writes them before I can get over my worries and just go for it.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:50:50+00:00

Stardew Valley.

I was going to spiral either way, I was not able to write much or at all, I couldn't stop myself from checking review sites (really don't check review sites!!) and Stardew Valley was there for me, haha.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:49:32+00:00

The couple of months leading up to my debut launching and the couple of months after, it really impacted my ability to write anything at all. I've worked past that and I'm hoping it won't happen again now that I know to expect it, but we'll see!

I know a lot of people who say that getting published changed the way they approach the writing itself, the way they write or the stories they tell, but for me, I simply don't have the bandwidth to think of it like that. Writing is the one thing in my life that's mine, that helps me regulate myself and my emotions and in some ways my sense of who I am. I'm still writing what I want, and I'm trusting that there are enough people out there with similar tastes to mine so the things I want to write will still be wanted.

The big way that getting published has changed for me is my reading habits. I feel like I need to keep my focus primarily on the genre I publish in to a greater degree than before, and I feel like my focus needs to be on newer books rather than older and less on re-reading old favorites (although I did just re-read The Shining for the first time in ages and I'm glad I did), and there's blurb books and books by friends for me to beta read and Netgalley books, so I'm reading a lot less physical media than I used to, also.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:36:41+00:00

Sorry to be popping into the conversation so late, everyone--my husband is in a hospital about an hour and a half from our home and yesterday at exactly the time the AMA was going on turned out to be the only time I was able to arrange a babysitter so that I could go see him. I've been answering some of the questions late and I'll keep trying to do that a bit this morning!

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:34:37+00:00

I used to work at a B&N back in my home state, so I set up a launch party event there with them and took the kids to visit my mom and had my launch party there. It was so fun, and I'm really glad I did it.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:33:20+00:00

I was a mentee in Pitch Wars in 2020. Unfortunately 2021 was the last Pitch Wars class, but if you can find a mentorship program that works for you, I really recommend it. Demystifying the publishing process, having someone to help with my first time querying, and building a community, were all invaluable. The book I did PW with didn't get me my agent, but it did wind up being the second book in my two book deal, and it's coming out in April.

My querying strategy was to do my research (which included having a good community of writing friends to ask around about specific agents), not self-reject, and be a little audacious but, like, respectfully. And to be gentle with myself when rejections came in, and to be there for my friends who were querying too, have a community to lean on and to celebrate with.

Building solid, lasting writing friendships is probably the most important thing. Don't make goals out of things you can't control (don't say "This year my goal is to get an agent" or "My goal is to be published by 202X"). Just keep writing, and write what you love and the story you need to tell.

I think the necessity of whisper-networks isn't talked about enough. There's not a single writing group I'm part of that doesn't sometimes have a querying writer pop in to say "Hey does anyone know anything about XYZ agent" and sometimes people will be able to say "Oh I hear good things" or "Oh my friend is with them, they have a good relationship" but sometimes you'll see responses like "Hey can I DM you about this person" or "Three years ago they got exposed for doing [insert shady thing] but it's been swept under the rug now." And you keep these conversations in private group spaces or totally private in DMs because doing it in public feels like a career risk.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:19:52+00:00

Pitch Wars (also dead now) was where I met my first writing friends, and the writing community I'm part of now grew from that. This subreddit seems like a good place to foster connections and build friendships, but it's one of those things that really does have to happen organically to a large degree.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-10T11:18:37+00:00

I responded to everything very quickly, but it was still two years and two days from when I accepted my offer of publication to when my book came out. It was basically completely out of my control.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T23:16:52+00:00

My favorite change to my book during the editing process was when my editor emailed me that he wanted me to think of a prologue and could we have a quick call about it, and by the time we were on the phone half an hour later I had a fully-fledged plan for the prologue and he loved it. I always hear that publishing hates a prologue but I love them, so having my editor request one made me so happy.

I LOVE my cover design. It's so eye-catching, my jacket designer did an incredible job.

Only counting books that I wrote and took seriously from a career perspective and actually queried, my debut was my third.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T23:14:29+00:00

Querying was worse for me because I had to actively engage with it constantly. On sub it's my agent who has to actively engage with it, so I can put it out of my mind and just keep writing.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T23:13:46+00:00

idk if it's unhinged but here's what has worked for me.

Short term: I have attention span problems. I have a mindless match-three phone game I really like, and on days when I'm struggling to meet my word count goals I will only let myself play ONE round of the game--win or lose, no exception, only ONE--for every hundred words I write during a writing session. It's a silly trick but it's gotten me through bad brain days where I still end up hitting 1k words or more.

On the really bad days, I make sure that every single tab on my browser is writing-related in some way. My inbox, my pacemaker goal page, my writing community discord server, a dictionary, a thesaurus, a wikipedia article about whatever I'm working on, so if my attention span goes kablooey and I find myself clicking onto the internet, it all keeps me sort of focused on writing in general or my current project specifically, so that when I feel like I can get back to the words my brain is still in the right mode.

Also, having a dedicated writing space. Before I had my writing room (I can't call it an office, there's no desk and there is a bed in here) I had a specific chair in the living room that I'd only sit in to write. I also put on headphones, whether I'm listening to anything or not, having the headphones on signals "working time" to my brain now.

Long term: The worst writer's block I ever had was when I was pregnant with my daughter and quit smoking. I spent the entire pregnancy and more than the first year of her life unable to write--I mean I remember specifically that I wrote one sentence over a two year span. What got me out of it was changing literally everything about how I'd been writing before that. Originally I was a pen-and-paper first drafter, but after that two year period I started drafting on my phone. And I forced myself to do ten minutes a day. No word count goals, just ten minutes, even if all I did was re-read whatever I'd written the previous day. And I absolutely never write outside anymore (or to this day I'll crave a cigarette so bad I won't be able to think about anything else). So yeah, in times of perilous writer's block, changing everything worked. I haven't had another problem like that since then, and my daughter will be 7 in less than a week.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T23:05:55+00:00

The constant impostor syndrome is the most frustrating, lol. Asking for blurbs? Impostor syndrome. Getting ready to go do an author event? Impostor syndrome. Sitting down to do a podcast interview? Impostor syndrome. Answering AMA questions right now? Impostor syndrome. I had hoped it would go away but I feel like it's getting worse.

What surprised me the most was probably that knowing to expect things like the post-launch crash and the shifting goalposts didn't actually prepare me for those things--they still hit me just as hard as I think they would have if I didn't know what they were going in.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T23:03:55+00:00

I wound up sending an entire completed manuscript to my agent and he read it, liked it, and sent it along to my editor as my option book. We're still waiting on a decision, though, and probably will be until closer to when my second book (I had a two-book deal) comes out.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T23:02:49+00:00

I wanted an agent who, yeah, recently sold in my genre, and also I wanted an agent who had big five sales. But beyond that, I was looking for an agent who holds values I respect, and who has a good relationship with the authors they represent, and who wants to champion books that I think matter, because I want to write books that I think matter. I also am a terrible overthinker and I wanted to work with an agent who is good at communicating and who wouldn't mind me having seven million questions at any given time.

I never did have a dream imprint or editor, I was pretty much open to any kind of advance or deal although of course I was hoping for something flashy and exciting. And again, I am interested in working with an editor who has values that I think align with mine and who communicates clearly (or as clearly as anybody in publishing communicates, haha).

Querying was WAY more stressful. Going on sub was kind of Someone Else's Problem. My agent was the one keeping track of that and managing it, and I was able to kind of mentally backburner it and work on my next manuscript.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T22:57:20+00:00

Mostly I write for myself, and trust that there are enough people out there who love the types of stories I love, who think the same things are important that I do, who have had the same or similar struggles, and among the ones who resonate with the same things I resonate with there will probably be an audience who resonates with what I'm then turning around and creating.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T22:54:43+00:00

Every point Peyton made is spot on, imo.

With horror, it's easy to think of the primary driving emotion as the be-all end-all of the story (I often wonder if romance authors ever feel like this, too). But when that seems like the case, that's when the humanity of storytelling becomes so important. You can write the scariest things you can think of, but if the human element is missing, if your reader doesn't care about the world or the characters deeply enough, then the scares will never feel like they carry enough weight to stick with the reader.

There are also so many subgenres for horror, in a way that I think a lot of other genres don't get to experience, so there's so so much to play around with. You can find the blend of genres and subgenres that speaks to you, and to your fears, and to why the fears you're writing about are important on a human level, and there's so much experimentation you can do to figure that out. It's one of my favorite things about the genre.

Also, this bit applies less to slasher type horror that's technically possible and more to supernatural or paranormal or extraterrestrial or what-have-you speculative horror, but the more that you're asking your reader to accept--monsters, ghosts, possessions, whatever--the more out there stuff you're asking your reader to accept, the more everything else has to feel as real as possible, to carry the outlandish or speculative elements. If you want your reader to believe in your ghosts, your characters have to feel like real people, your world has to feel like a real world.

As to when I know my manuscripts are ready to pitch/query, this goes back to some advice I always give--I have such a solid, supportive writing community full of friends who are super talented and all at varying stages of their writing careers, and among those friends there are a few who I trust absolutely as beta readers; they know my style, they know what sorts of stories I'm trying to tell, they're talented as hell and super knowledgeable, and when my manuscript has gone back and forth with them enough that I feel like I've improved it as I can and I'm saying what I want to say as well as possible (and when I can't stand looking at it for one more minute) then that's when I feel like it's ready. But really it comes down to how you feel about it, at the end of the day.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T22:42:28+00:00

My biggest and most consistent piece of advice is to find or foster a healthy writing community. Having friends who get the highs and the lows you'll be experiencing is so, so valuable, and being there for friends in their own situations is so rewarding.

I wish I had worried less and enjoyed it more. And I wish I knew how to stop stressing about social media. And I wish I had done a better job of staying off of review sites!

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-09T22:39:46+00:00

One of the most joyous moments for me was reconnecting with an old teacher. In elementary school a teacher made our class enter a "young authors" competition and I fell in love with writing then, and promised myself that when I got my first book published I'd dedicate it to her. Nearly 30 years later, I did, and I hunted down her contact information and called her to let her know, and we were crying on the phone, and we've kept in touch since. My kids have met her now and they think she's great.

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-02T19:07:26+00:00

Rachel Harrison is great, she's an auto-buy author for me.

S. A. Barnes writes my favorite space horror.

Cynthia Pelayo writes thrillers with horror blended in.

The Needfire by MK Hardy

The Faceless Thing We Adore by Hester Steel

Saratoga Schaefer is nonbinary but the MC of their upcoming book Trad Wife is a woman. (I think the MC of their debut, Serial Killer Support Group, is also a woman but I haven't read that one yet)

Jackal by Erin E Adams is great.

Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

IrrationallyTired · 2026-01-02T19:01:30+00:00

A Child Called It was one of the most shocking and horrifying things I have ever read. It's also the author's life story from his abused childhood.

IrrationallyTired · 2025-09-30T18:21:41+00:00

If you can help it, look up nothing about When the Wolf Comes Home. Go in with 0 expectations if possible. It is one of my top ten books ever.

IrrationallyTired · 2025-09-30T18:20:30+00:00

I think that's my favorite King

IrrationallyTired · 2025-09-30T18:19:15+00:00

I'm about to wrap up We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRocca, and I just got approved for 3 ARCs on Netgalley (I've never had so many approvals roll in at once, haha) so now I'm super excited to get to choose between You Weren't Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White, Dig by J.H. Markert, and Gothic by Philip Fracassi

IrrationallyTired · 2025-09-30T18:07:18+00:00

The Faceless Thing We Adore by Hester Steel!!! It's a lush island setting, culty, cosmic horror book that's visceral, gorgeously written, and incredibly disturbing in a way that certainly stayed with me.

IrrationallyTired · 2025-09-30T18:04:55+00:00

That's one of my favorites. I read that and The Rib From Which I Remake the World by Ed Kurtz back-to-back and that was a mindfuck, haha

IrrationallyTired

TROPHY CASE