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A single question on a cold Hudson Valley walk: What if there’s a body in that hunter’s tent? sparked the debut thriller The Gallagher Place by Julie Doar. 

In this episode, we chat about how she wrote the first draft by instinct, then shifted gears into precision: charting dates, timelines, and cause-and-effect until every twist landed in a way that made sense. 

When the manuscript worked its way to 100K+ words, cutting became an act of getting clarity on what stays, what goes, and how much weight the opening chapter really has to carry.

As it turns out, her years working at Starbucks trained the same muscles that make a thriller work: anticipating and executing under pressure. We talk about turning that fast-twitch instinct into a writing rhythm, plus the art of finishing one idea before chasing the next.

We also chat about how querying parallels sales strategy: staggering submissions, treating rejections as market data, and refining pages until they convert. The mindset shift from “why not me?” to “what did I learn?” keeps momentum alive until the right agent says yes.

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Write the Damn Book Already is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with authors as well as updates and insights on writing craft and the publishing industry.

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Email the show: elizabeth [at] elizabethlyons [dot] com

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