Pen Pals

Odcinki

• The Case for Abandoning Your Book (For Now) 01.06.2026 49min

  📋 WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Pen Pals has a listener survey and we need your feedback to make the show even better. Fill it out at: https://form.typeform.com/to/kIosWT3L — it takes just a few minutes and means the world to us. In this late-season check-in, Krisserin and Kelton answer a listener letter from Paige, a new mom asking whether to return to her pandemic-era novel or start one of her shiny new ideas. Their answer surprises even them — and leads to an honest conversation about burnout...
• What Breathwork Unlocks for Writers with Amanda Fletcher 25.05.2026 57min

  Krisserin and Kelton are running on fumes — sleep-deprived, burned out, and staring down a summer deadline that feels impossible. Enter Amanda Fletcher: writer, breathwork practitioner, PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellow, and one of the most magnetic people in the Los Angeles literary community. Amanda shares her winding path from born storyteller to mathlete to kinesiology major, and the losses that knocked her off course — including her mother's death by suicide when Amanda was 24. What ...
• ER Visits, Cozy Reads, and the Grace of Not Writing 18.05.2026 54min

  Krisserin checks in from a Kansas City hotel room fresh off an unexpected ER visit in St. Louis — chest pains, a CT scan, and a lot of unanswered questions — while Kelton battles a household plague of sickness, broken blow-dryers, and postpartum burnout. The two trade brutally honest book reviews: Krisserin DNFs the buzzy bestseller Yesteryear (great concept, rough execution), while Kelton grinds through the literary sci-fi of The Other Valley and falls head over heels for Heather Fawcett's A...
• Alli Hoff Kosik on Writing Christian Influencers with Heart in Too Blessed to Stress 11.05.2026 1godz 21min

  This week on Pen Pals, Krisserin and Kelton sit down with debut novelist Alli Hoff Kosik to discuss her buzzy new novel, Too Blessed to Stress — a sharp, funny, and unexpectedly tender story about Christian influencers, megachurch culture, and the complicated women behind perfectly curated feeds. Alli shares how a pandemic-era fascination with influencer culture inspired the book, why she wanted to approach her characters with empathy instead of judgment, and how social media, capitalism, fa...
• The Compulsive Liar at Your Desk: A Conversation About AI and Reading 04.05.2026 1godz 4min

  Krisserin and Kelton are running on fumes—and they're honest about it. Both hosts arrive at this week's accountability check-in feeling ragged: Krisserin is limping toward summer with a fried brain and a work trip on the horizon; Kelton is two years postpartum, pausing her newsletter for the month, and trying to remember what living feels like. Their respective goal updates are modest and real: Krisserin squeezed in two revision sessions (one of them in the car), while Kelton wrote 2,500 word...
• Rachael Maddux on Self-Publishing a Book You Can't Let Go 27.04.2026 1godz 21min

  Krisserin and Kelton sit down with writer Rachael Maddux (Life Expectancy: A Memoir, The Void, Third Person) to talk about what happens when a book you’ve spent 14 years writing never sells through traditional channels — and how you decide to make it exist anyway. Rachael walks us through her journey from first draft to cold querying agents to three years on submission to ultimately self-publishing through Ingram Spark. They get into the real mechanics: ISBNs, the difference between fulfillme...
• Who Are We Writing For—And Who Are We Reading? 20.04.2026 48min

  Krisserin and Kelton barely make it to record — 15 minutes late despite trying to be 30 minutes early — and that kind of week sets the tone. Kelton's survived two weeks of Colorado spring break without daycare, while Krisserin's mom is in town and the two have been watching movies and running around together. A conversation about Hamnet opens up a question that runs through the whole episode: who is a book actually made for? That question gets personal when Krisserin responds to a listener l...
• Ramona Ausubel on Getting Unstuck 13.04.2026 1godz 23min

  Kelton is on a record-breaking week — 5,563 words across three chapters — after ditching Scrivener for the freedom of a Google Doc. Krisserin finished two short stories and sent them to beta readers, though she's staying up until 1:30 AM to do it (thanks, Juliet Marillier). Then they're joined by a very special guest: Ramona Ausubel, Krisserin's former PEN Center USA Emerging Voices mentor and beloved teacher of writing. Ramona is the author of the National Book Foundation Science and Liter...
• Our First-Draft Summer Pact 06.04.2026 1godz 2min

  Spring break writing wins, a faux lip ring verdict, and the announcement of a big summer challenge: both hosts commit to finishing their first drafts by Labor Day. Krisserin wrote three times this week and Kelton locked her gothic novel's timeline and finally wrote the prologue she didn't know she needed. They also get into Kazuo Ishiguro's “Never Let Me Go” (craft: yes, ending: no), Juliet Marillier's “Daughter of the Forest” series that BookTok surfaced from 1999, the screen-time-as-wealth ...
• "No Agent Is Better Than a Bad Agent": Lauren Khan on Finding the Right Fit 30.03.2026 1godz 8min

  Krisserin attended Rachel Hochhauser's birthday book signing in Studio City and wrote 3,300 words on her middle grade love story. Kelton got a rejection with feedback from her dream agent — a thoughtful no that somehow made everything clearer, even if the proposal still needs a full rework. Both hosts are sitting with that particular in-between feeling: not stuck exactly, just parked on the side of the road with their thumbs out. Which makes the timing of this week's guest feel almost cosmica...
• Art Witch, Money B*tch: Courtney Maum on Writing Across Genres and Getting Paid 23.03.2026 1godz 25min

  Kelton's launching the Rewilding Spring Almanac and kicking off the first night of the murmuration, while Krisserin just landed back from Ohio—sick kid and 90-degree weather whiplash. Both hosts hit the reset button on goals this week: Kelton powered through a low mental health stretch by focusing on necessary work, and Krisserin squeezed in 400 words of writing between travel chaos. This week's guest is Courtney Maum, author of six books including the Vanity Fair-recognized publishing guide ...
• Bad News at 5AM, Good News from New Mexico, and the Minimum Viable Writing Week 16.03.2026 46min

  Krisserin opens with a rollercoaster week: a 5 AM email from her agent pushing book submission to late spring, followed by the joyful news that she's been accepted to IAIA's MFA program in New Mexico. Kelton channeled a burst of creative energy into writing her novel's climax in a single marathon session and is preparing to launch the Spring Almanac of her Rewilding course. The conversation turns to Kelton's concept of the "living week" — the minimum your writing practice needs to survive, l...
• The Co-Host Lore Episode 09.03.2026 1godz 2min

  Krisserin and Kelton finally answer the question listeners keep asking: who ARE these people? This week it's just the two of them — no guest, just origin stories, childhood chaos, and big three energy. From Krisserin's desert horses and Newport Beach culture shock to Kelton's Gettysburg ghost childhood and lunch money con, they dig into how they grew up, how they became writers, and why this podcast is the friendship neither of them knew they needed. Plus astrology deep dives, a secret projec...
• From Dramatically Quitting Writing to a Major Two-Book Deal: Rachel Hochhauser on Lady Tremaine 02.03.2026 1godz 5min

  Kelton wraps up her Rewilding winter class and launches something new—a free monthly writing practice called the Murmuration—while Krisserin confesses she's started a secret new project (2,400 words and counting, but she's not telling us what it is). Both hosts are taking a beat from their main manuscripts, and this week's interview is the perfect reminder of why stepping away can be the most important part of the process. Then they're joined by Rachel Hochhauser, author of Lady Tremaine, a r...
• Cait Flanders: From Blog Experiment to Bestseller (and Back Again) 23.02.2026 1godz 13min

  Kelton gets her first agent rejection and refuses to sugarcoat it—while Krisserin shares what she learned about advances, deal structures, and editor wish lists from her meeting with agent Kima Jones. Then bestselling author Cait Flanders joins to tell the unlikely origin story of The Year of Less—how a blogged shopping ban went viral on Forbes, attracted six literary agents, and became a Wall Street Journal bestseller now resurfacing on TikTok a decade later. Cait gets refreshingly transpa...
• Bonus Episode: Inside the Debut Author Survey with Emily Zipps 21.02.2026 22min

  We couldn't just talk about Emily Zipps' debut author survey — we had to talk to her. Krisserin and Kelton sit down with Emily herself — author of Alice Rue Evades the Truth and the forthcoming The Two Lives of Amelia Waxler (both from Dial Press) — to dig into what inspired her to survey 60 fellow debut authors, what surprised her in the results, and what she found genuinely hopeful. Find Emily online: Instagram & Threads: @emilyzipps Website: emilyzipps.com Substack (Fun Announcements ...
• What Debut Authors Actually Get Paid (And Why We're Mad About It) 16.02.2026 52min

  What does a debut author actually get paid? Krisserin and Kelton dig into Emily Zips' survey data and don't love what they find—average two-book deals for $50K, most authors working day jobs, and advances that won't cover daycare. Plus: Kelton's Scrivener file predicted her dream agent, Instagram shadow ban drama, the identity question of "writer vs. mom," and why chapter summaries feel like showing your work in seventh grade math. Krisserin's IAIA MFA application is complete, and someone's...
• Mark Sarvas on Writing Novels That Can't Be Ignored 09.02.2026 1godz 25min

  Krisserin panics her way through a grad school application (wrong link, wrong deadline, wrong page numbers), while Kelton enters the querying trenches—19 Google Docs open, three agents contacted, and the immediate certainty that something went wrong. But the real treat this week is their interview with Mark Sarvas, award-winning author of Memento Park and Harry, Revised, Krisserin's longtime teacher and mentor from the UCLA Extension Writers Program. Mark shares the full arc of his writing j...
• When a Miracle Slides Into Your DMs: On Agents, Advances, and Anxiety 02.02.2026 1godz

  Kelton's inbox delivers a dream: an agent from a respected agency slid into her DMs after discovering her writing on Substack. The excitement is real—but so is the anxiety of navigating what comes next. Do you query other agents simultaneously? How do you know if you vibe? And what does a "good deal" actually mean on Publisher's Marketplace? This week, Kelton and Krisserin break down the research-heavy world of finding representation—from decoding deal tiers to building agent lists through ...
• Paper Prototypes and Publishing: Vicki Tan's Non-Traditional Book Deal 26.01.2026 56min

  What happens when a designer walks into a Manhattan publishing office with paper prototypes that look like children's toys? In this episode, Kelton reconnects with Vicki Tan, a former colleague from Headspace turned author, to explore her unconventional path to publishing Ask This Book a Question—an interactive cognitive bias book that defies easy categorization. Vicki shares how a chance conversation with a friend (who also connected her with an agent) led to an in-person pitch meeting, a tw...