It’s the second Booklab: First Pages episode! At some point, these episodes will go out only to our fellow Stickers—supporters of the podcast. Want to join that crew, where you’ll be able to send in your own first page for the pod, join write-alongs and get AMAs from our hosts and guest book coaches?

I’m a sticker! Or I want to be. Also I get that y’all need support to get this out here and I love that it’s here so yeah.

On today’s episode, we discuss the first pages of Title Redacted, a novel and Welcome to Heaven, an upper middle grade novel. Would we turn the page? Opinions are mixed, but good advice for improving—these first pages and yours—abounds. THANK YOU to the writers willing to submit their work for our discussion.

Did you like First pages? Have ideas for how we can make it better? We’d love to hear it and we’ll talk back, so comment away.

We offered some comps to our first submitter:

Whip Smart, Melissa Febos

I Love a Man in Uniform, Lily Burana

A Certain Appeal, Vanessa King

Want to submit a first page to Booklab? Fill out the form HERE.

Theme music credit: “Circle,” by Phoebe Lahey

It’s hard to believe the summer is almost over, and in the next few weeks, we will be wrapping up our special Blueprint Challenge that we did here at the #AmWriting podcast. As a part of that challenge, anyone who signed up for and completed it will be getting a list of exclusive offers from Author Accelerator book coaches to help them with their blueprints.

But if, as the summer closes, you're at a point where you feel like you could use some help from a book coach, we suggest you check out Author Accelerator’s book coach directory. They’ve certified more than 260 book coaches in fiction, nonfiction and memoir, and one of them may be the perfect person to help you get your book back on track.

Head to https://www.authoraccelerator.com/matchme to find the book coach that’s right for you.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit amwriting.substack.com/subscribe