SP: Hi Kara! Thanks for joining us! Before we get into book stuff, we’d LOVE to know a bit about you and your writing journey?

KM: Hello! Thanks so much for having me! My writing journey began in earnest in Summer 2016. I’d spent the last year lackadaisically querying agents with the contemporary YA novel I’d written in the Spring of 2015. I was getting requests followed my rejections, and I knew my manuscript needed more help than I knew how to give it. I entered Pitch Wars and my manuscript was selected! I credit the program with changing my writing life. Not only did it teach me how to revise a book, but also it connected me with other writers, which has been so important to my journey. A few months after Pitch Wars, I signed with my first agent. A few months after that, my debut novel JUST FOR CLICKS sold!

SP: Hi Shannon! Thanks for joining us! Before we get into book stuff, we’d LOVE to know a bit about you and your writing journey!

I’m originally from Pittsburgh, PA but now live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband and kids. I’ve worked as a business writer for a long time, but am definitely a dreamy creative person at heart, so I always had this idea that I’d try to write a book “someday.” And I did spend a couple of years kind of trying it but not really committing – I’d start something and put it away when I got stuck and then I’d do that again and I guess at some point I realized that if I didn’t commit to finishing and seeing it through it was never going to happen. So, when I had the idea for this book, I just tried to turn off the self-doubt as much as I possibly could and I kept going, while simultaneously learning all I could about craft and the writing business. I was introduced to my agent, Nicki Richesin, through a mutual friend. Nicki has a great editorial eye and this made all the difference for me in prepping the book for submission. And I couldn’t be happier about the book landing at Candlewick Press – it’s been a great experience working with the entire team there and especially working with my editor, Kaylan Adair. After going through the debut experience, I will say that persistence and patience are key – taking a book from concept to publication is a loooong process. It was two years between when I sold my book and when it came out and that’s not counting drafting, prepping for submission, waiting while on sub. It’s good to have more than one project to think about because there’s a lot of waiting involved.