SPEAKER_00 0:00

The first time I hired a babysitter, I felt really guilty about it. I was like, I'm just doing it to write a book, but I'm a much happier person and therefore a better parent when I feel creatively fulfilled. So there's nothing wrong with allowing yourself that space to work on what you love. And your kids are perfectly fine with qualified babysitters. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

I'm your host, Stacy Fraser, a formally repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Red It Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi writer, welcome back to the Write It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacy. Today I have a fantastic interview for you. I'm talking with MK Pagano about her debut novel, Girls Who Burn, which is noted as a twisty, tense tale of power, murder, and how far a sister will go to find the truth by Rebecca Barrow, author of And Don't Look Back. MK was such a delightful guest and a wealth of knowledge on writing thrillers that she imparts with such generosity. And I deeply respect her willingness to be transparent about her author's journey and her vulnerability in talking about how difficult it can be to follow your writing dreams, especially when you're a mom, and how much guilt we can feel as moms about paying ourselves first when it comes to our writing, but how ultimately it's worth it and it makes us healthier, happier humans as well as writers. I can't wait for you to listen. Here is MK's bio. MK Pagano writes stories about messy girls, mayhem, and murder. Her debut YA thriller, Girls Who Burn, is now out in the US, UK, and more. When she's not busy pondering the angst of fictional people, she can be found reading from her own TBR and that of her children, or dreaming of restoring an old French chateau and wandering the weirder parts of New Jersey where she currently resides with her family. But before we jump in, I have a question for you. Would you like to plan and write your next novel or your first one with more confidence and less guesswork? Of course, right? Writing is hard. So let's make it easier. I have a free tool to help you do exactly that. First Draft Confidence is a free workbook and introductory guide to all the foundation work that my clients complete before they begin drafting. And it helps to prevent false starts and abandoned drafts. First Draft Confidence has seven simple exercises designed to help you overcome mindset wobbles, learn how to organize your thoughts so that you can start to see the story, help you set up realistic writing expectations and a schedule that fits your life, test drive your story concept to see if it will support a full-length novel, and develop your cast of characters as well as a high-level outline that will work whether you're a pantser or a plotter or somewhere in between. So let's take as much guesswork out of this drafting business as we can to avoid the first draft flail. To download first draft confidence, go to writeitscared.co forward slash novel planning guide. Or check the link in the show notes. And now let's go into the interview. Hi, MK. Thank you so much for coming on the Right It Scared podcast. It is awesome to have you here. How are you? I'm good, and thank you so much for having me. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Today we're going to talk about uh your debut novel, Girls Who Burn. But before we jump into that, could you please share a bit about your journey to becoming a published author?

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Sure. It is a long and winding one. So I'll I'll try to keep it brief. I I wrote a lot when I was little. I got away from it in high school. And it's not until I actually started my first corporate job and was really bored that I thought about giving a shot at writing again. And so I took a few years, I think, to work, and it was a whole mess. Like there was so much I didn't know. But for me, the only way to really learn was to do it, do it wrong, and learn from that. And then it's not until the second novel I wrote that I was agented. And that novel I also spent a few years on. I got a lot of help. I didn't have any critique partners with my first book. With my second book, I did. That's an extremely important step, at least for me. And that book, unfortunately, died on submission in 2020. And my first agent broke up with me after that. We were trying to revise another book to get ready for submission. And it just our our visions weren't really clicking. And she was like, you know, I don't think I'm the best agent for you. And that was like a huge blow at the time. But in retrospect, she did me a huge favor because she wasn't the right agent for me. She was a good agent, just not the right agent for me. And that kind of set me free to work on what I wanted to work on, which was thrillers, because I was writing contemporary before. And I wrote this book over the course of like 2020, 2021. Started querying in 2021, secured rep for it in 2022, and sold it actually just a month or two later. That one actually sold really, really fast and it came out earlier this year.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

It's always cool to hear people's origin stories around their debut. And you know what you find is that it's not the first book they wrote. No, almost never. Sometimes never. Yeah. And what what a can you imagine if the first book you ever wrote like flew and went?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Mine was such a mess. Mine is there's no way. Like at the time I thought it was amazing, but in retrospect, uh, that book was such a mess.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

You know, I look back at the first one I wrote and I got it to as good as I could possibly get it. And that was several years ago, right? And now I look back at it and I'm like, ooh, because we just keep growing. And and yeah, so I we have to honor the work that came before, try not to cringe at it too hard and just be like, oh, and be grateful for all the stuff that we know now. For sure. Yeah. So tell us about your your debut thriller, Girls Who Burn, if you want to give us a little bit about what that book's about.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Sure. Girls Who Burn is the story of Addy. Her sister was found dead in the woods last summer. She accused the rich boy down the street of killing her. She was sure she was right until that boy is found dead in the woods this summer in an eerily similar manner. So she has to team up with her childhood frenemy, who's the dead boy's cousin, also from the wealthy family. And together they have to find out what actually happened before they are potentially next or before the murders are pinned on them. And there's uh a little bit of a romance there as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, I absolutely loved this book. And I'll be very careful not to share any spoilers, but it's so cute for me, it's a it was a really beautiful character-driven YA suspense that gave me that delicious growth arc thing versus kind of the more static arcs that were that are more common in this in this genre. So I thought it was phenomenal. And if anybody likes like angsty, YA, thriller, and not just thriller, but there's like a bunch of layers of mystery in here. So kudos to you for keeping all that in your head. That's I don't that's wow. Thank you so much. Yeah, please go read it. It's it's a great, great book, and it's out everywhere. Books are sold now. Yes. Cool. US, UK, and Commonwealth right now. So you said you were writing contemporary and now it's you're in the you know the mystery thriller suspense world. What draws you there and have you always been drawn to young adult? And if so, why?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, so I think I didn't know much about genre when I got started. I think I pitched my first book when I was querying it as a historical, mystery, speculative love story. Like I I check them all. All the boxes. Yeah, basically. And so then when that one no one wanted it because it was a mess, then I started to do a little more research into genre. That one just came out YA because I think I started writing it in my early 20s, and I still felt like a teenager then because I had no idea what was going on. And so once I started doing research into genre and age category, I was like, okay, I'm writing YA. And then the next one was kind of more solidly contemporary, because that's what I thought I wanted to write. But there was this missing girl element in it. And when I got rejections from editors, because that one I did get agented, but that's the one that died on sub. They were, there were a few editors that said something along the lines of, you know, this is too quiet for a thriller. And I was like, Well, I didn't write a thriller. We didn't pitch it as a thriller. Like, what are you talking about? And then I looked at it and I'm like, there is a Chase scene at the end. There is a missing girl. And I was a huge thriller reader. I always have been, YA and adult. And so I was like, well, what would happen if I actually tried to write a thriller? And this book was the result. And it's just funny that it took me a couple of books to get to this one because it's such a natural place for me. Like I love the kind of puzzle aspect to thriller books. Like you're reading because you love the story, but you're also reading because you want to try and figure out what happens. And I really like that aspect of mysteries and thrillers and stuff. And trying to create it myself seemed really daunting at first. Like I wasn't sure it was something I could do. I'm like, how am I gonna do this? How am I gonna plant enough red herrings? How I'm gonna fool people, but also make the twist believable. And it took a while, but I I think I did it based on how many people told me they didn't see the ending coming. So Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

No, you mission accomplished to promote everything. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's such it's such a tricky genre to write in. And I think, you know, your experience shows so well. Like when we when we start writing, we often don't think about who's gonna be reading this book. You know, and that's that's the reader's expectation. That's the market. So that's a really good takeaway, is and it's unnecessarily wrong to not be thinking about who's gonna be reading the book, but at some point you do have to kind of Yeah, it has to come into play.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

For sure. And when you said YYA, like why I continue to write in the YA space, I just I just think there's something so interesting about that time in all our lives. Like I'm clearly not a teenager anymore. It's been a while, but that period in my life just still looms so large in my head. Like it's like things are changing so fast. You're trying to figure yourself out, you're trying to figure out the world around you and like merge what you've learned in childhood with what your expectations for adulthood are. And I just think there's something so interesting about that. I don't think I'm ever gonna get tired of writing about that that time period.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah, me either. I guess maybe a piece of it for me is like the lessons that I've learned. I wish I could imbue or impart. It kind of there's a piece of that in there and just a lot of drama. Yeah, a lot of age like you can take those emotions like yeah up, right? And yeah, kind of let reality slip away just a tiny bit. So I I do love that. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you spoke a little bit about what how tricky it was to write a thriller. I do you have any tips that you could share to any writers out there who are writing in this genre?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Sure. I mean, for me, every writer is different. I'm not big on prescriptive writing advice because what worked for me might not work for someone else, but what worked for me is having a beat sheet. I need a beat sheet. And I have one that's kind of based on save the there's like a column for the save the cat beats. And then there's like a thriller beat sheet that I crafted next to it, largely based on Alexa Dunn, actually, has a really great YouTube video. She has several great YouTube videos on how to write thrillers. There's one specifically on like a thriller beat sheet, and I use that video to create my beat sheet. So full credit to her. She writes amazing thrillers as well. And then I also have a column for actually the romancing the beat beat sheet, because I always have a romance arc in my thrillers that doesn't always line up exactly like you, it's it's not it first and foremost, it is a thriller, not not a love story that comes second. So the plot has to take over at certain points. But where the major romance beats hit, I want them to hit at the right part of the story. So I have that on my beat sheet as well. And then it just a lot of revising. I revised this probably 10 times before even querying it. I got new sets of beta readers every time because with a thriller, unlike maybe other genres, you need to make sure that the reveal is still working, that the twist is still working, that people can't see it coming too soon, but that it makes sense in the end. And to do that, you need new readers each time because if someone already knows what happened. Yeah, then they're then they see it coming. Or they already know. Yeah. So I that's why my acknowledgments are so long. I had to thank every single person who read it because there were a lot of them. Yeah. So just lots of revising, lots of going back and checking the timelines. I mean, once you sell your book, you'll have an editor and you'll have a copy editor, and they will be able to tell you, like, hey, you said it was Tuesday here, but actually it's Sunday. But trying to get as much of that down yourself before you query is definitely important. So I can't stress enough the importance of just taking your time. Thank you. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Do you have any particular way you go about it? Do you think from the antagonistic forces lens or the villain's lens first?

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Or do you roll with your protagonist first? I always start with my protagonists. Like I know some people that will start with the crime and then go backwards, but I always start with the protagonists and the setting usually. And then usually the love interest will come to me next. And then I kind of have to figure out, okay, what happened to this person in their past? Cause you want to start with like their core misbelief, the thing that they're operating by and like their start of their character arc, basically. Then from there I have to figure out the plot. I'm like, all right, I have this person, this is what happened to them. I have this other person I want to be involved. This is where it happens. And then you kind of have to figure out, okay, this is what this is gonna be the crime. I mean, I like a thriller because it's relatively straightforward in terms of plot. Like, there's a dead body, let's figure out who killed them. And not every thriller is gonna go like that, but a lot of them are. And so the dead body is sometimes not always the inciting incident. And then there's the decision to investigate, and you have to figure out your red herrings. And you obviously I did know who the killer was close to the start of my brainstorming, because you kind of have to have that in mind as you're writing. Like I can't just write and then figure out who the killer is at the end, that doesn't work. Though I had there have been other stories where I have changed the killer halfway through drafting, because I realize that I have another character who would make a more interesting killer. But with this one, I knew it from the beginning. And then just layering in that character along with your other characters to make sure they're there, but not too obvious and that there's other potential red herrings and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Um Yeah, it's directing the reader's, the reader's lens a lot of playing with that. Wow, great. Thank you. Well, so a big part of this podcast is dedicated to telling the truth about why it can be so hard to write a novel, exposing like and unhelpful internal narratives that often come up uh when we craft our stories. So, and the reason that we do this is to, you know, identify those unhelpful thoughts, normalize them, help people work through doubts. So they keep writing and keep growing. And that will result in more stories in the world and more voices in the world. So, will you please share a time when the writing has gotten hard when you struggled? What was it like? And how did you get through it?

SPEAKER_00 17:17

I think the hardest time for me is what I touched on before is when my first agent left me because it felt like I'd made this huge step by securing rep after writing for so many years. And then suddenly it felt like I was back at square one. But I wasn't back at square one because I had learned so much along the way. Importantly, I had built a community. I had found people online, I was in group chat, and I was able to go and talk to these people and be like, oh my God, this just happened to me. I'm so upset. What do I do? And there are several people who just talked me through it. And what you find out when you lose your agent is that so many writers have been repped more than once. I think that's actually more common than people who have been with the same agent since the beginning of their career. And so this is a very common thing. It's not something you need to be ashamed of, regardless of who initiates it. It just wasn't the right fit. And so, you know, I took a moment to cry and grieve and talk to everybody. And then I had already actually started writing Girls Who Burn, and I had a plot problem calling my name. And so I think when the publishing aspect of this whole thing gets you down, like for me, it's returning back to the writing part, because that's my favorite part. It's like publishing is amazing and being having my book out there is so cool. But my favorite part is still just me alone with my laptop just writing the story. And when that gets hard, which it does sometimes, I think it just taking a break, allowing yourself to take a break, go for a walk, take a shower, cook a pie, like bake a pie. That's that's more accurate. I think like staring at the screen can be detrimental at times and just you need to refill your creative well well from time to time. So that's my advice to anyone struggling with the actual writing part. And for anyone struggling with the publishing part, I say focus back on the writing part.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

That's a really great piece of advice. Lean back into what you enjoy. So I know you're a very busy person.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

How do you find the time to write despite well now I'm very fortunate I have one child in school, the other one I have a babysitter four mornings a week for. So that is extremely helpful. I've gone through a period when the kids were really little when I didn't really have much childcare. And then I would write, you know, during naps, like in the evenings. I went through a long period of time where I was writing on the side of a full-time job, a period of time where I had a full-time job, a baby, and trying to write. And that was that was the hardest period of my life. Fortunately, that was less than a year. I don't have a full-time job anymore. So that makes things definitely easier. But if you can set aside dedicated time, I think that is the best because it's time you can literally just dedicate to your writing. If you can't, you just you just find the time. You you do it during nap time, you do it with a baby asleep on your chest, you do it in the evening. I think I went that period where I was working full-time and had a kid and trying to write. I don't think I watched TV for like a good six months. I was just writing in the evenings. And that was I don't necessarily recommend that. Like I think you do need some downtime to, like I said before, refill your creative well. Yeah, we can't be robots. Yeah, yeah. I don't, don't be a robot. Don't be like me. But yeah, finding some balance, allowing yourself the because, you know, like the first time I hired a babysitter, I felt really guilty about it. Like I was like, ah, like I should be the one taking care of my children, like hiring a stranger to do this. This is so weird. And just doing it to write a book. Like, it's not even making me like a millionaire or anything like that. But like I'm a much happier person and therefore a better parent when I feel creatively fulfilled. So there's nothing wrong with allowing yourself that space to work on what you love, or in my case, my career. And your kids are perfectly fine with qualified babysitters. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I think as parents, probably especially as mothers, we we tend to feel guilty when we're not like 100% focused on our families. But I think it it is beneficial to your family for you yourself to be happy and fulfilled. So that's what I tell my past self.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Absolutely. I mean, the mom parent, primary parent guilt, oh, it is super real. But you know, and I was in the same kind of position as you, working full time, trying to write this novel and had a year old, two year old, you know, so writing in the wee morning hours, right? Just for 30 minutes at a time or whatever. But you know, and and then sometimes also like getting a babysitter or going to the coffee shop and having my my my husband stay home with her. And you know what's cool though is that today I gave her my old laptop because she's eight. She's writing her own little stories. Oh, that's you know, so I and that's because like she saw mom like doing her own thing and now she's gonna so who knows? Maybe that'll go somewhere. But I totally agree. Like I'm a more centered human being, and I have more to give if I have filled up my cup a little bit. So I totally agree with you. So when you look back over your your writing life, like what do you think is one of the biggest takeaways for you just personally for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 22:48

I mean, sticking with it, like that sounds so cliche, but like I think we hear these stories of quote unquote overnight success a lot. And in reality, most people have been working at this a really long time before they get their overnight success. And you just you don't see all that hard work that goes into the years and the failed manuscripts and the ex-agents. Like, people don't usually talk about that, I think, when it comes to like their big breakout novel. And we like to glorify people who publish really young or really fast because that's impressive. But like there are things like when I was in my early 20s, all I wanted to be was to be published like immediately and be able to quit my job and live this fancy life as an author. But A, like, most people don't get to work full-time and make a living off of this. Some people do, but it's really hard to do. And B, there's a lot that I wouldn't have been able to bring to my writing in my early 20s that I can bring to it now. And so I'm glad that it took me this long to get here because I feel like the work that I'm putting out is better than anything I could have done that young. Not to say that people that young can't put out great work because they can and they do. I'm just saying, me personally, I was not writing at the level that I would want to be writing at to have a published book that I am now.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Yeah. It's kind of an acquired patient. Mm-hmm. No, you don't like it as you're going through it, but then you get to a certain point and you can look back and you're like, okay, everything happens kind of for a reason and it turned out that way. And it's hard. It is hard, especially with our social media culture that we have. You know, it looks like things come fast and easy indie side of publishing. You know, you see authors out there rapid releasing. Well, you what you don't hear is the story about the it took them 10 years to write that trilogy. And they have held it until it's really ready. And now, now they're able to do that. So you don't hear those stories unless, you know, what just as you said, we just gravitate towards. Well, I think the danger comes when we compare what we're doing. Yeah. What is what what may or may not be true that's out there in the world. Um, I just focus the lens on on what you're doing and why you're doing it, and on the enjoyment piece. And I think we'll all be happier. And I don't know about you, but I definitely have to be slapped into remembering that sometimes because my eyes start to wander off and I start to try to want to swim outside my own lane. Yeah. Um and it's like, no, no, just be right here. For sure. So just wrapping up with a couple more questions, the best piece of writing advice is that you've ever received.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

So for me, I took I took a writing workshop very early on. I think probably even before I started my first terrible novel. Maybe that's when I started my first terrible novel. And, you know, we submitted chunks of our work for the class to critique. And the the teacher of the class, and I I think I was a little, I was a little cocky. I was young. I I knew that my line level prose was pretty good. And the teacher of the class was like, so when she got to my work, she was like, Well, she's like, Your prose is really good. And I was like, Oh, of course it is. She's like, but you can't rest on good prose. And I was totally perplexed. I was like, What do you mean rest on good prose? Isn't good prose everything? And she was like, No, there's character development, there's pacing, there's setting. And she like went through like all the other elements that are necessary to write a good novel. And I feel like very early on in my career, I was so focused on like writing pretty sentences that I didn't really focus on anything else. Like I thought, as long as I could write a good sentence, I could write a book. And that is simply not true. And that is why that first pad novel never got picked up by anybody, because I don't think I even had a character arc. I didn't really have a plot beat. I just had these like scenes and this beautifully described like countryside and these little falling in love montages. But the plot was nonsensical, the pacing was non-existent, the character art wasn't there. Like, so for me personally, I think when you're good at something, you kind of want to lean into that thing. And there's nothing wrong with that, but you can't ignore all the other things that go into making a good book just to focus on like your pretty little sentences.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

So yeah, it's a really big melting pot of a lot of things that have to come together and work in time. And I have to sometimes I have to remember that I can't for me when I draft, like I can't get it all done at once. Like I can't, I can't, I can't make it pretty and make it push forward. Yeah. So like I have to, I I push it forward and let it be really bad. Yeah. And then come back and like worry about making it pretty later. But everybody has their own process, but eventually, like you'll you'll have to learn to touch all those pieces.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

So good advice. All right.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

So, what is your wish for your fellow writers? I wish you would be kinder to yourselves. If you've read my debut, you probably understand that the theme is like girls need to be kinder to themselves, but that goes for everybody. I would say celebrate your wins and understand that it takes a while. Don't be in a rush. I know that's hard to hear for some people. And, you know, just keep pushing yourselves forward to be better, not than not better than your neighbor, not better than that book you just read, but just better than your past self. And I think with persistence and consistently working on your craft, I think you could get there. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Is there anything you can share about what you're currently working on? If if anybody wants to go look, she put up a she put up kind of a mood board on her Instagram. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

Yeah, I was allowed to put up the mood board. I wasn't allowed to share that much more, but I am writing another YA thriller. Everyone said that your book too, like the book after your first published book, is one of your hardest to write. And I didn't believe them because I'm like, I've I have a bunch of Shunt books before this. This isn't even my second book, but no, they were right. This book is is really challenging, I think, just because starting to write it before your first book was even published, and then like working on it while you're trying to promote your first book and you have the reviews from your first book in your head, and you're trying not to make whatever perceived mistakes that you made before. But they say don't read your reviews, which is good advice that I didn't take. But I definitely had some of that criticism in my head as I was trying to draft this one. But it is a another way thriller. It takes place at a coastal estate in Maine, actually on an island that you can only reach um through a causeway that gets splitted out a lot. So it kind of has a little bit of that locked room mystery feel to it. But it's about first loves and a friendship group coming back together after a long time apart. And there might be a little bit of a haunting, or is it not a haunting type thing there? So yeah, I'm really excited about it. It's a lot of work, but I'm I am excited to share more in the future.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

It sounds delicious, and I cannot wait for it.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

That's awesome. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

And last question is where can listeners find you?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Sure. I'm at mkpagano.com. You can find me at mk underscorepagano on Instagram. I think it's just MKPagano on TikTok. I am in the process of debating, deleting Twitter. So you might not be able to find me there for much longer, but I am also on threads under the same handle. I think, yeah, MKPagano pretty much everywhere that social media is besides the ones I delete.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

So fantastic. And your novel, Girls Who Burn, is out everywhere that books are sold. And I I thought it was a fantastic read. And uh thank you for the the recommendation for Alexa Dunn's Thriller Meet Sheet on YouTube. I will look up the link and post that in the show notes along with all your contact information and links to your book. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It was a pleasure talking to you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Hey writer, I hope you enjoyed the interview with MK. She was an absolute delight, as was her book. And don't forget, if you need help with story development or working through your draft, or maybe revamping your first draft, you can download First Draft Confidence, the free workbook and introductory guide to all the foundation work that my clients complete before they begin drafting their novels. And this helps prevent false starts and the flail of the first draft. You can find that at writeitscared.co forward slash novel planning guide or check the link in the show notes. Thank you for listening to the Ride It Scared Podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.