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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 47m

GUYS I WON!!!! Now it's time to sell this book!

✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 4h

What a week for the #upmarket book I #amquerying, This Ends Now: ✔️ 1 agent like on DVPit ✔️ 1 partial request ✔️ 2 full requests (!) And in under three hours I find out if it won the Colorado Gold Rush Literary Award for literary fiction! I'm feeling humble but it's about goddamn time!!

A collage of photos: row 1 (l-r): the interior of Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library, showing a Gothic cathedral-like entrance; a classic red Vermont farmhouse in winter, covered in snow, nestled among bare trees; a woman silhouetted against a frosted window, while sunlight spills through the window; row 2 (l-r): two hands reaching for each other in low lighting against a black background; a dark-haired woman floating face upwards in water, surrounded by white flowers, her eyes open; Spilled glass candle with wax still aflame, flickering against a black backdrop; row 3 (l-r): Sunlight streaming through a quiet pine forest, illuminating a narrow dirt path; black and white photo of a person gripping the back of another person’s head from behind ; a man’s hand clasping a woman’s hand showing her wedding ring, with a snow-covered fir tree in the background; row 4 (l-r): three antique keys on twine; dark green leaves, covered in dew; the title of the novel, “This Ends Now” written on a scrap of spiral-bound lined notepaper.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This Ends Now is giving Hope Springs (the one with Colin Firth) with side quests into The Chair and that woo-woo Gwyneth Paltrow GOOP Netflix show plus extra helpings of lasagna because these people eat carbs. Plus there's a hot & awful professor who I have to mention just for @soph-pl.bsky.social.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Fuck everything, burn it down. NONE OF PANGRAM'S CLAIMS HAVE BEEN INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIED! The blind trust in Pangram's ability to meet its claims is staggering. Just because it's shiny and its owners say it works DOESN'T MEAN IT DOES WHAT IT CLAIMS TO DO. #writingcommunity #writesky

andibartz.substack.com

I am genuinely terrified about this shift in the publishing industry

Pangram is ruining authors' lives, and our window to do something about it is closing.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Transparency? Deadlines? Why, those are for YOU, sweet writer, not for anyone else in this publishing lark (except agents, we still 💓you). PLUS: more Pangram bullshit. ALSO: Kirk and i debate eating the rich and appropriate seasonings therefor. Listen and despair. #writesky #writingcommunity

static.klipy.com

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) Hot Sauce Quote

ALT: Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) Hot Sauce Quote

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Happy October to all! I'm Meagan Essary, and I write upmarket contemporary fiction that teeters sometimes on the edge of lit fic, but I usually manage to yank myself out of it. I just want to say: I am an inveterate dog ear-er. and I welcome your disdain. Thank you, Pam, for running this game!

A brown graphic titled "Literary This or That" with 16 paired preferences, completed with green highlighter markings and a few red typed comments.

Paperback / Hardcover: neither highlighted; red typed text reads "Maybe?" on the left and "I dunno?" on the right
Series / Standalone: both highlighted
Tears / Laughs: Laughs highlighted
Coffee / Tea: both highlighted
Hero / Villain: Villain highlighted
Character-driven / Plot-driven: Character-driven highlighted
Computer / Pen & Paper: Computer highlighted
Sweet / Salty: Salty highlighted
Silence / Soundtrack: Soundtrack highlighted
Bookmark / Dog-ear: Dog-ear highlighted with red text reading "YESSSSS" next to it because the poster loves this so much
Plotter / Pantser: Pantser highlighted
Lush / Minimalist: Lush highlighted
Vomit draft / Slow craft: Slow craft highlighted
Morning / Midnight: Midnight highlighted

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

WRECK x THE WEDDING PEOPLE THIS ENDS NOW: 2 husbands, 3 hometowns, 1 wedding planner ready to stop staging messy exits from her own marriages. But there's no breaking the cycle until Lainey confronts her clever, cunning first love, who's still dying to put her in her place. #DVPit #A #Upmarket

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

ALL FOURS x WRECK THIS ENDS NOW: Why has Lainey Pike fled another perfect marriage? At an Instagram-ready women's retreat, she recognizes the beast she must slay to break free: her brilliant, dangerous first love—who'd burn everything down before letting her go. #DVPit #A #Upmarket

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

THE WEDDING PEOPLE x ALL FOURS THIS ENDS NOW: Matrimonial escape artist Lainey is ready to stop running from good men. But first she must disarm the slippery ex who programmed her to bolt from love—and whose poisonous ghost still sabotages her every chance at happiness. #DVPit #A #Upmarket

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

WRECK x ALL FOURS THIS ENDS NOW: Serial husband-ditcher Lainey hasn't met a functional relationship she didn't want to escape—until now. But she can't stop bolting until she takes down the charismatic man who wrote the toxic love playbook she's ready to toss out. #DVPit #A #Upmarket

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

THE WEDDING PEOPLE x WRECK THIS ENDS NOW: When her second marriage crumbles, a Gen X wedding planner spots a pattern: she always dissolves into the men she loves. To break free, she must confront her first love—the man who taught her she was too much and never, ever enough. #DVPit #A #Upmarket

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

ALL FOURS x THE WEDDING PEOPLE THIS ENDS NOW: Ditching perfectly good husbands is a bad look, especially for a wedding planner. But Lainey can't stop running until she confronts the slippery ex who's always gotten to tell their story—and he’s not about to let her rewrite their ending. #DVPit #A #UP

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I did another one of these ridiculous videos. Hey, at least I improved the lighting! Editing Surface Tension grinds onward. For those who asked if they could beta read, I know I told you September but guess what? I LIED! What do you expect from a lawyer anyway? #writingcommunity #writesky #amediting

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sept 28 #WIPsnips: prime CW: mild smuttishness from a woman with a brain on spin cycle. Jenny’s irritated that Gregory’s stealing her pop culture analyses to write his book on the Romantics and the birth of modern celebrity to decide if she feels, well, good. A snip from my #WIP Surface Tension.

Jenny spread her legs wider as she arched her back against the desktop’s cool surface, staring at a jagged tear in the ceiling’s acoustical tile while Gregory’s tongue traced a circle around her navel. She tried to be “more a creature of the body, not the mind,” as her terrible therapist Dr. DeMeo had encouraged her sophomore year. Easy for a man to say, she’d thought at the time. As if the world didn’t already drill into you that as a woman you are a body first. A body “miraculous,” “marvelous,” fecund and beautiful, made for men’s pleasure and procreation.

That wasn’t how she saw herself, not even now as the Persian rug she’d admired earlier muffled the clank and rustle of Gregory’s belt and chinos hitting the floor. When she told DeMeo that she often felt disconnected from her body, like it was just a meat sack to tote around her brain, he’d asked if she wanted some Lexapro. (She did not.)

While his hand slid between her legs, she focused on the ceiling tile tear and not the edge of his laptop nudging the side of her head. She’d shown up for the reception, primed to play the part she’d been practicing for weeks. And him? He’d been here, at this stupid desk, tip-tapping out his Great Big Thoughts about Keats and Kylie Minogue, half of them filched from her over croissants and jam or while they were getting ready for bed.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

September 27 #SundaySnips: turn EXTREMELY FRESH SNIP! Instead of, you know, doing the sensible thing and editing my #WIP, I decided to start another book, a sequel to the one I'm querying now. Great use of my time! In the book's opening paragraphs, Lainey grapples with the usefulness of going home.

Look, I know my Thomas Wolfe, blah blah blah, all that malarkey about how you can’t go home again. Not to the past you or your old loves or the hometown that swaddled you until you slithered out of its too-tight bounds for somewhere, anywhere else. I mean, Wolfe’s not wrong, and I should know better, but I’ve never let a little bit of knowledge hold me back from testing a hypothesis or two. After all, pretty little aphorisms sometimes are just that: pretty, and little, and incapable of capturing truths universal.

Turns out, some aphorisms are right. I never should have come back to Slaughters Falls, Vermont assuming I’d find my true self. While my formal mathematics education terminated with Algebra II, even I understand that You + Time = Not-You-Anymore.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

TFW you re-read the book you're querying and discover that in renaming a character using "Replace All," you've accidentally created a seasonal beer for all the former prep school lacrosse players out there. I even came up with a light variety, for those watching calories. #writingcommunity #writesky

The author wrote this: Receiving a selfie of Ted’s parka-clad shoulder at seven-thirty in the morning was weird. Weirder still was the composition of the tableau behind him. In the image, two men—one white, one Asian—hunched over a convenience store display of Hostess cupcakes and Pringles. A family-sized bag of Ruffles dangled from the latter’s hand; the strawberry blond had a six-pack of what looked like Nate Adams Light tucked under his arm.

(The author has learned her lesson.)

More proof that you should do replace all without checking:

What happened next is a matter of some debate between Nicky and me. I recall bumping into her on High Street, on my way to pick up a six-pack from Chapel Wine before it closed at eight. Nothing like a wild evening in with a couple bottles of Nate Adams and a VHS copy of Pride and Prejudice.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Did you know an AI detector might flag your writing because of the language you grew up speaking? Or that writers better be like Caesar's wife? Maybe authors should strip away their voices lest they offend? HELL NO! More hypocrisy in this week's BLF. I get a bit shouty.🫠 #writingcommunity #writesky

static.klipy.com

Cecily Strong: It's an Outrage

ALT: Cecily Strong: It's an Outrage

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Hi, I'm an old and I suck at video shit. Just look at the thumbnail! But I'm editing my #WIP SURFACE TENSION and I hear the youngs do the TikToks and what am I for as a writer of middling age but fanning the fading embers of my youth? I dunno, enjoy this or whatever. #writingcommunity #writesky

youtube.com

Editing sucks but them's the breaks. Stream of consciousness is a thing but not for this book.

YouTube video by Meagan Essary

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

September 23 #WIPsnips: “tumble” Mmmmmmm, nothing like the delicate perfume of a New York City taxi in the summer. Evocative of many a poor, heat-inspired decision. Not that Jenny knows much about poor decisions. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.

Summer in Manhattan had disabused Jenny of several misconceptions born from her weekly appointment with Gossip Girl, where New York resembled a candy box stuffed with gold-plated bon-bons. Now that she’d lived through a sweltering July in a fourth-floor walk-up with a semi-functional air conditioner, she understood there was no way Blair Waldorf’s hair could look like that with only a headband to keep it from frizzing into a bird’s nest. Peyton Bancroft may have been the Serif intern most likely to play Serena van der Woodsen in a GG-inspired reality series, but she had no earth-shattering secrets besides a boob job and the emotional depth of a Jägerbomb. And Chuck Bass had been exercising self-preservation when he refused to slum it in a fetid taxi.

Poughkeepsie was no Manhattan, except when it came to cabs. The one Gregory had called for her twenty minutes before carried the same miasmic tang of body odor, wilting hot dogs, and very recent sexual congress as the ones she and the rest of the Baby Serifs had tumbled into and out of all summer. She cracked the window and leaned back against the seat’s worn vinyl, her hand resting on her nylon overnight bag as still-green trees lining Route 9 blurred by.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sure, I'm querying one book and editing another. So this is the perfect time to start writing a third, right? How could this possibly be a bad idea? It won't be a distraction, nosireebob. This is a very normal thing, okay? OKAY??? 🫠😭💀 #writingcommunity #writesky

static.klipy.com

Station 19: Maya Bishop's Question

ALT: Station 19: Maya Bishop's Question

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

September 19 #WIPsnips: “tube” Looks can be deceiving. Why, most people would think Jenny sensible and serious, a budding scholar dedicated to a life of the mind. Funny how costume doesn’t always equal character. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension

The gold locket he pressed into her palm at the end of August as “just another little pleasure” had felt less like a lucky guess on his part and more like the sort of impossible knowledge goblin princes in fairy tales possessed to lure girls into the woods. And like most of those girls, Jenny knew better than to believe that such a beautiful, perfect gift had no diabolical origin, but she lifted her hair anyway to let him secure the clasp around her neck. She also understood a girl from Mansfield had no business wearing something so expensive, so she wore it only when she could keep it tucked beneath a crewneck, or when she expected to see him.

Like at that evening’s departmental reception for Dr. Sandra Tang, who’d given a talk on Wollstonecraft and Radcliffe earlier that afternoon. Dr. Tang, he’d told her, was a “can’t miss” in his eyes, and yet Jenny had done just that when the talk conflicted with her semiannual teeth cleaning. He’d frowned when she begged off, but admitted plaque waits for no one, even someone as esteemed as Dr. Tang.

Jenny stood in front of the mirror over her dresser and twisted up the tube of dusty rose lipstick Gigi had helped her pick out at the MAC store, smoothing on another layer. She straightened the locket and gave herself a nod: perfect, or close enough. In her charcoal wool skirt, black tights, and thrifted burgundy sweater, she could pass for a grad student or a junior librarian. Someone serious, and definitely not someone dumb enough to be in love with Gregory Shipp.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Did you know if you're a writer you better be goddamn perfect while the industry flips you the bird? Or that you should be grateful to even be near Booklandia? Because we're going to talk about it for at least 3 episodes. THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES! #writingcommunity #writesky

static.klipy.com

Woman with Whip Discipline

ALT: Woman with Whip Discipline

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

118k words (gulp). 28 chapters. One VERY rough draft. Starting a video series where I edit my second novel, Surface Tension, in public because I guess I have a humiliation kink? I DUNNO! Watch me hate ever deciding to write this mess and question my talent over and over! #writingcommunity #writesky

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

September 12 #WIPsnips: “wedge” What, like it’s weird to be thinking about Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” when you’re horny? Uggggh, okay then. Be judgmental, knock yourself out. Jenny’s too distracted to care (much). A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.

He pressed his lips to her shoulder. Fleet-footed lust sped through her body, flickering and hot; she arched her back, exposing her neck. She should tell him she was wrong, to go faster, to ease the ache between her legs, that she changed her mind about going slow. Had she insisted on that only because that’s what a nice girl should say? Maybe she didn’t need to be nice.

Before she could decide, his mouth was at her ear. “I was very, very good that night,” he whispered. “But I don’t want to be good right now.”

Rocking forward, Jenny ground against his lap, seeking release against the hardness beneath his khakis like she was some idiot teenager who was happy enough with a furtive dry hump on a basement couch. No, she was an idiot who could legally buy a drink at a bar, a whole fucking round at the Beech Tree if she could afford it. An idiot who wanted this unsuitable man to just get on with it already. She could want, too. Nobody told her she couldn’t.

She reached for his hands, bringing them to her waist. “I don’t want to be good either.”

Gregory hooked his thumbs beneath the edge of her panties, his breathing rougher, deeper than before as she rose just enough for him to slide the fabric over her hips and down her thighs. He kept his eyes on hers as she helped him ease the fabric past her knees until the scrap of lace and silk fell away.

He said her name, just her name, but it came out broken, rucked up in the middle as his fingers dug into the backs of her thighs. Shifting her from his lap onto the bed, he eased her against the blood red pillows, wedging his shoulders between her knees as a soft smile bent the corners of his mouth.

Little lamb

Here I am

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This week on BLF: I give a half-assed synopsis of The Satanic Verses slapped together from decades-old memory and a perusal of the Wikipedia article as we wrap up our accidental series on the suckiness of book bans. Only the best research for our listeners. 🫶 #writingcommunity #writesky

static.klipy.com

Glee Quinn Fabray

ALT: Glee Quinn Fabray

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

"We invite you to demonstrate your authorship by providing browser histories going back sixteen months, childhood diaries, school reports, and testimony from the OB/GYN present at your birth. If you wrote early drafts by hand, please submit the original notebooks for carbon dating."

mcsweeneys.net

A Note from Your Editor Regarding the Entirely Routine Authentication of Your Humanity

“To establish that AI did not write your book, we will upload it to an AI detector. The detector will retain your words, learn from your distinct syntax and ...

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

post one of your favorite breakfast foods: Anything can be breakfast if eaten to break one's fast; noodles (pref. spicy) are but one option towards morning culinary happiness. Also I like a nice tuna sandwich or cold green chili (with or withour beans). I KNOW THIS IS WEIRD.

static.klipy.com

Hyuneeeats Taking a Big Bite of Ramen

ALT: Hyuneeeats Taking a Big Bite of Ramen

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

New queries submitted for THIS ENDS NOW (aka Book One, if you're a @badlitfriends.bsky.social listener) as I grind the QueryTracker machine back into gear. Fingers crossed this new round bears some fruit now that the MS bears the imprimatur of an #RMFW Gold Rush Finalist! #writingcommunity #writesky

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

September 7 #WIPsnips: “elevator” Margaret Dees has left the building; anyone with sense is following in her elegantly perfumed wake. While Jenny has some horse sense, she’s not got much capitalist pig sense. Yet. Under Carlos’s tutelage, she’s working on it! A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

Wednesdays were usually frantic in the bullpen. Assistants like Cassidy and Justin were preparing for the weekly meeting with Margaret and the senior editors, while the interns stapled copy upon copy and shuttled up and down the elevators with baroque coffee orders. But with the Fourth of July weekend only two days away, a solid half of the Serif staff were already en route to Montauk.

Margaret, decked in head-to-toe ivory silk and linen, had herself vanished before eleven in a cloud of Diptyque Philosykos and a pile of jade bangles clattering on her wrist.

“Keep the peace,” she’d said on her way out, patting Jenny on the head like a favored Pekinese as she passed.

Before Margaret’s perfume dissipated entirely from the bullpen, Carlos was already digging his satchel out of his desk drawer and slinging it across his chest. When Jenny pointed out that the Serif handbook they’d signed designated Independence Day only as a holiday, Carlos encouraged her to think strategically.

“My darling Jenny,” he said, straining open his bag wide enough to stash an unopened box of Ferrero Rocher he’d purloined earlier from the bullpen’s kitchenette. “If I’ve learned anything from the nest of vipers I was raised in, it’s that if you want to get ahead, you copy what the top brass do. As long as you can get away with it, that is. Justin, can we get away with this?”

Justin palmed one of his mini-basketballs and dribbled it against the low-pile commercial carpet tile beneath his pleather chair. “Fuck if I know, man,” he said, chucking the ball through its matching mini-hoop. “But I’m not sticking around.”

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

September 5 #WIPsnips: “panel” Rooms are stages are cages are traps. Carve a door on anything and stick a lock on it, soon enough you’ve got yourself a jail cell. You might not even want to break out if your jailer makes it perfectly shaped, just for you. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Sorry, no ep this week: summer is harshing my mellow and making me hate everything because my natural habitat is tundra. We WILL be back next week to finish our series on why books bans are for suckers and losers. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER -- MTM #writingcommunity #writesky

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

September 4 #WIPsnips: “collapse” On an unseasonably warm November evening, Autumn has its last hurrah. Time for a final, bittersweet good-bye between Jenny and Gregory, a chance to tie bows on the past—who am I kidding? 'TIS THE SEASON TO BE FOOLISH! A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

The taxi had just rounded onto Hooker Avenue when the driver asked Jenny if he could crack the window, just an inch. Before she got a chance to respond, the glass started juddering downward, sucking in the warm breath of a world only partly aware it was supposed to be November. The dark, mineral perfume of long-damp earth rushed into the cab interior, tugging in its wake the tang of leaves rotting in gutters and wood smoke from someone’s backyard bonfire. Everywhere, everywhere, the organic reek of a world unwinding, collapsing, the rosebuds long gathered and molding away.

Outside the smeared back window, the familiar route to Hyde Park sped by, tree after tree, September’s shocking greens and October’s bruised red now surrendered to yellow and tan and brown-brown-brown. While a few resolute leaves clung to branches scrambling at the evening sky, most had cried uncle and were dissolving into thick ruts of roadside mud.

Jenny pressed her nose to the glass as they swept north along Route 9, past darkened storefronts and little houses already buttoning up their overcoats for winter. A freeze tomorrow, the car radio warned: “Nights like this one won’t be back in the Valley for a fair few months, folks. Make the most of it.”

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

If you haven't listened to our @badlitfriends.bsky.social eps about AI detection software and its inequities, please read this then have a listen. These are the people who are apparently the ultimate arbiters of what's real and what's AI writing. I'm even more furious than before. #writingcommunity

open.spotify.com

Guilty Until Proven Human

Bad Lit Friends · Episode

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

September 1 #WIPsnips: “garden” Ah, it matters not how clever we are, how accomplished or discerning or witty or droll. Even the wisest, prettiest, kindest amongst us can be flutter-gutted fools in the firelight before a handsome prince. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

“Jenny.” He’d moved to her side, looking down at her while she fumbled in her jeans pocket for the cash she’d stashed there earlier.

She expected him to say something else as he held her gaze, as the air around them grew stifling. “Dr. Shipp,” she said, her voice meeker than she liked, so she tried again. “Dr. Shipp.”

“Gregory, Jenny.”

That smile again, the one that reminded her of an illustration in one of the fairytale books her Grandma Nell shared with her. A handsome prince in velvets and silks, smiling through an open castle window at the garden below, where four maidens danced on a green, green lawn. The prince must choose one, but which will it be? The wise one, the pretty one, the kind one, the fool?

The prince chose the fool, for she was more than a fool—she was wiser, prettier, kinder than any other woman in the land, once the prince took pains to see who she truly was. Character, not costume.

Jenny stepped backwards, bumping against the sofa, and Gregory reached out to steady her, his fingers circling her wrist. His touch was warm against the skin there, warmer even than the fire in the hearth. The sound of her name in his voice flattened the rippling unease fluttering in her gut, her mind, her everywhere. She didn’t resist when he drew closer, instead tilting upward her lips for what she knew he wanted. What she wanted.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Friends, I have purchased a vegetable chopper/slicer/julienner at a singlularly shit (no pun intended*) time in America to get obsessed with salads but NO REGRETS. Pray for my microbiome. (*okay maybe a little)

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Reposted by ✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨

MapQuest @mapquest.com · 30/08/2026

Hey, Questies. #GulfofMexico and #LakeOntario are available here. iPhone: apps.apple.com/us/app/mapqu... Android: play.google.com/store/apps/d... No printer required.

apps.apple.com

MapQuest GPS Navigation & Maps App - App Store

Download MapQuest GPS Navigation & Maps by MapQuest Holdings LLC on the App Store. See screenshots, ratings and reviews, user tips, and more apps like MapQuest…

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

August 30 #WIPsnips: “soup” The easiest way to keep a fortune is to marry another one, and the Sergio-von Alvensberg nuptials are no exception. (The swag bags were killer.) Meanwhile back in bourgeois reality, Jenny admits to pestering Gregory. His silence, Gigi says, speaks volumes. But does it?

“Earth to Jenny.” Gigi waved a hand between them over their salads. “You still there, babe, or do I need to call the paramedics?”

“Nineteen,” Jenny said, looking up from the cherry tomato at the end of her fork.

Gigi blinked. “Nineteen what?”

“Texts. And two voicemails.”

“Christ. What were you thinking?”

“In my defense, one of the voicemails was me butt dialing him.”

“That doesn’t make it better!” Gigi threw her napkin over the remains of her salad and dragged a hand through her tousled dark bob, which had somehow survived three soupy-hot days in Miami for the Sergio family’s latest in an impressive run of dynastic weddings, including the moment her cousin pledged eternal love to a German countess while eighty caged doves soared high overhead and promptly shit all over the dearly beloved in the aisles below. Whoever did Gigi’s blowouts deserved canonization.

“I know it was dumb,” Jenny muttered. “I guess I thought I was more in control.”

Gigi crossed her arms over her burgundy sweater and leaned back in her chair. “It was extremely dumb. And real out of character for you. But, babe,” she said, her voice softening. “Babe. It also sounds like it’s over, okay?”

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

A bit of microfiction I wrote a while ago, based on the same prompt as today's. While certainly micro, this isn't fiction. #writingcommunity #writesky #writingprompts

Sanctuary

In the soggy churchyard, the crimson phone box stuck out like a hammer-thwacked thumb.

“In here!” he panted, pushing me in. “Just until it passes.”

Inside, each pane of glass steamed, glazed by our young bodies’ damp heat.

“Just until it passes,” I repeated, tilting my lips for his kiss.

May it never pass.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

In this week's Hot Goss: an agent launches an IP company, asks her clients to write for it, then uses TikTok to call her critics losers because YOLO. Part 2 of our series on book bans and boycotts. I hate everything, and it’s worse because my central AC is borked. Listen! #writingcommunity #writesky

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Callie Torres Crying in Grey's Anatomy

ALT: Callie Torres Crying in Grey's Anatomy

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

August 26 #WIPsnips: “symbol” Everybody’s a critic in Dr. Babe Benedetto’s advanced writing seminar, including Jenny, who can read the subtext in everyone’s story but her own, and diagnose everyone but herself. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

In Babe’s Wednesday afternoon seminar, Jenny spent fifteen minutes drawing vindictive little boxes in red ballpoint ink around every adverb in Tara Moon’s short story. She’d never say it to her face, but she was glad Tara was going to law school; the literary world hadn’t sinned enough to endure yet another self-insert story from Tara’s hand about a misunderstood young woman who finds her true self in New York City. In this one, at least, she’d named the protagonist Nat instead of Sara or Cara or Mara or Dara. Growth, Jenny scribbled in the right-hand margin.

Across the table, Babe was asking Tara whether she knew her narrator was lying to herself about the city being salvation, or if the story’s tension hinged on the reader understanding what Nat did not.

Before Tara could defend herself, Valeria jumped in. “That’s kind of a cheap trick, don’t you think? No offense, Tara.”

Jenny tapped the edge of her gnawed-on ballpoint cap against her lips. That didn’t seem fair, even if it was Tara Moon and Her Big Big Manhattan Adventure, Part Sixteen they were discussing. Why, some narrators needed time to wise up, and sometimes symbols were sigils, not signposts. Some narrators needed to put glasses on. Some needed therapy and psychopharmaceuticals. Some narrators just needed to get laid.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

UMMMMM so this just happened. Time for some bubbles to help me forget about my big big job for autumn: how to whittle an actual manuscript out of a sprawling mess of 119k words. Until then, bottoms up! #writingcommunity #writesky

Black test on a white background:
THE END / First draft complete: August 22, 2026 at 7:11 PM

The poster can scarcely believe this, since she was supposed to be done writing this goddamn book 3 months ago.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Lists? We don't need no stinkin' LISTS! Especially when those lists are context-free zones where the sins of Colleen Hoover are (checks notes) equivalent to Queen TERF JKR's. This week, we mourn the death of nuance. She was so young, with so much left to give.🥀☠️ LISTEN! #writingcommunity #writesky

static.klipy.com

La Guarimba Film Festival: Friends Mourning

ALT: La Guarimba Film Festival: Friends Mourning

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

August 21 #WIPsnips: “wine” Sometimes a lover can be more than just that: he's a giver of gifts, an opener of doors, someone to tip over a cornucopia just for you. Is it greedy to want what’s freely given? Is it really a sin to covet if you truly deserve more? A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

Nothing rushed about how he lifted her breast to his lips, nothing unsure. Certainly none of the fear he’d shared with her the other weekend: his ever-increasing terror of the compartments in their shared life collapsing, spoons tumbling into sharp knives, slicing open their secret to let love bleed.

“And then what?” he’d asked her, lifting a glass of Barolo to the firelight. “I’m not like Babe or Malcolm or fucking Boyard. I don’t have the luxury of tenure. We get caught and that’s it. I’m out, Jenny. I’m out.”

Long, golden licks of flame had illuminated the sea-dark wine to a deepest ruby as he swirled it in the glass. Streaks of liquid clung to the bowl’s rounded sides, putting her in mind of thick pig’s blood collecting in slaughterhouse buckets, as she tried to feel something more like heartbreak at such a future without him, and less like pity. Pity for a man who was wagering his greed just to have her, and pity for her own poor fortune should she lose him.

Because without him, there would be no more excellent Barolo, no leg up with her applications, nary another stitch of Leavers lace. Every advantage in life she’d have to spin herself from silk she could not afford: in time, in price, in effort, in pain. Ambition, she thought, without privilege demands too much. She’d seen it in her parents, who’d tried and failed and tried and failed to grow the farm without selling out. She’d seen the filth under her father’s nails that no brush could dislodge; she’d watched her mother stir yet another pot of bean stew with a wooden spoon even older than her grandmother.

She wanted more, and Gregory was the most efficient route toward plenty.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

August 18 #WIPsnips: “press” Turns out that for all his polish, he was just a man after all. To be fair, he’s not wrong that she’s greedy. But it’s not sex she's after (though that’s nice): it’s all the doors his privilege can open for her. Plus, some Yeats! A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”

“You’re always like this, aren’t you?” He touched his forehead to hers, searing her skin there. “Ravenous, even when you pretend you aren’t. But I know you, Jenny. I know who you are.”

The urge to steal from him—his thoughts, his body, everything—surged within her, though she could not meet his eyes. She didn’t want to know what she’d find there. When her hand gripped his waist, he didn’t pull away.

His mouth moved to her temple, brushing his lips over the fine hairs there. “Greedy little thing,” he rasped, his breath shuddering against her skin.

The rawness in his voice shocked her, chilled her. This was not the Gregory whose days and hours she’d shared for four weeks. Not her Gregory. Her Gregory was solicitous, careful, generous in bed, always checking-checking-checking that she was pleased, that she chose how far they went and for how long. He never pressed for more, not like the other men she’d known. Wherever he was, she was safe.

Need had stripped this Gregory bare of all polish, all pretension, leaving only pure animal want. Nothing here was safe—not the room, not his hands, not her own desire. Everything unstable, tilting, drowning.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

HA HA HA 1500 WORDS? YOU THOUGHT THIS BOOK ONLY NEEDED 1500 WORDS TO FINISH? FOOLISH MORTAL! 😭 I've knocked out 3,772 so far this weekend and... I think I have a thousand more to go. Editing this behemoth is gonna be a laugh riot, I swear. Hysterical!

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Woman Crying with Red Eyes

ALT: Woman Crying with Red Eyes

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Me: I am totally finishing the first draft of this book this weekend. Last push. 1500 words to go. You've got this. Also me: LET ME TELL YOU WHY YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT DEFAMATION LAW & BEHOLD MY PINCITES TO CASE LAW, FELLOW LADY LAWYER! I'm never finishing this draft, am I? #writingcommunity #writesky

Threads post and comments:
Author Threads · 5h

Lawyer tips to help defend allegations re: AI wrote your novel:

Keep phone notes and scrap paper, even if it only includes a few words.
Save drafts separately.
Save inspo websites/research.
Be honest about AI. (Use for spellcheck? Use a writing software?)
You have to prove the statement is “more likely than not” false (preponderance of the evidence). There’s no 100% way to prove AI did/did not write your novel. But civil cases (defamation, breach of contract) don’t require 100%.

noshacklesarefirmer · 2h

“You have to prove the statement”

No.

Anyone accusing another of using AI has zero evidence beyond prompts, or commentary by the bot, left behind. “It has the vibe” is not evidence.

2h

In a legal case, you would be the plaintiff and you carry the burden.

meagantheauthor · 1m

It depends, of course, on the jurisdiction in question. In California, where I practice (caveat: I am but an ’umble commercial real property litigator), if the plaintiff is a private person and the statement concerns a matter of private concern, the burden as to the truth of the statement is the defendant’s, not the plaintiff’s, and should be pleaded as an affirmative defense. See, Moyer v. Amador Valley Joint Union High School District (1990) 225 Cal. App. 3d 720, 724, fn. 2.

meagantheauthor · 1m

This gets flipped and becomes the plaintiff’s burden if the plaintiff is a public figure (a la NYT v. Sullivan) or the statement is one of public concern (like Gertz v. Welch). This is discussed in Sonoma Media Investments, LLC v.Superior Court (2019) 34 Cal. App. 5th 24, 37; CACI 1720 also spells this out. But again, this is California law, and it could be quite different where you practice. Also, I am not changing my writing practice to suit some putative allegation of AI use. YMMV.

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Friends, we are so very tired. All we want is to write our weirdass stories for other people to read 'em. But now writers have to pass AI smell tests proctored by (checks notes) AI predicated on the proposition "trust me, bro" instead of human taste? No. ABSOLUTELY NOT. #writingcommunity #writesky

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Mad Men: I Want To Burn This Place Down

Alt: Mad Men: Joan saying to Peggy: I Want To Burn This Place Down

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✨Meagan Essary swears she's querying✨ @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

August 14 #WIPsnips: “horizon” Hot damn, it’s been yonks since I last WIPped a snip but much has been afoot chez moi! I quit my job of 15 years (!) for the role of my evil lawyer dreams & got nominated for a writing award. Jenny however just wants coffee (v sensible) while cogitating on abacuses.

May Larson liked to say that one of the many blessings of morning chores was how much thinking you could get done while your hands were busy doing something else. And on a farm, there was always something for hands to do before the sun slipped over the horizon: mucking out stalls, collecting eggs, hauling feed to the troughs, hosing down the pens with night-cold water that bit at your fingers. Muscle memory took care of the grunt work, freeing your brain to untangle the day’s pressing puzzles. Or retangle them, as the case often was.

Her daughter Jenny’s four-cup Sunbeam coffeemaker required less from her hands than feeding a couple hundred hogs ever had, but the principle was the same. Peel the lid off the canister from HomeGoods, dump three scoops of Folger’s into the paper filter, top up the reservoir from the oversized water bottle she tried to remember to take with her to class, flick the plastic switch. Wait while the machine gurgled to life, for the first spatters to hit the bottom of the glass carafe plip-plip-plip. As much a mindless and comforting a ritual as saying the Lord’s Prayer in the pews of St. Luke’s back in Mansfield.

forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us

She watched the coffee darken as it filled the carafe, breathing in its earthy, comforting scent. It had been years since she’d been to St. Luke’s for anything but a cousin’s baptism or a great uncle’s funeral, but the words still slid across her memory like beads on an abacus. Forgive and be forgiven, trespasser and trespassed against, like it was some fucking profit and loss report in God’s Excel spreadsheet.

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