The Pre-Writing Groundwork that Helped Me Land TWO Book Deals

Welcome to Rising Tide Writers, a newsletter community of over 1.7k aspiring and published novelists. I’m Caroline Madden, author of The Marriage Vendetta (HarperCollins/Bonnier 2025) and The Village (April 2027). It took me more than a decade to get my first book deal and in this newsletter I’m sharing all the things I wish I’d known back when I was getting buried under rejections. Enjoy!

Morning fellow writers,

Last week I was lucky enough to get away for a couple of nights to my favourite place in the world, Wicklow, and while I was there it struck me that I really should check out the Sally Gap, a remote mountain pass that I mention in my second novel, The Village (currently going through the edit stage - out next April!).

I mean, I really should have researched it before this stage, but better late than never, right?

So off I headed from my little hotel in the glorious sunshine, music blasting, basically high on life. And then this happened 👇👇👇

Okay that didn’t quite happen, but… I suddenly found myself on a steep, narrow, cliff-edge road and boom! My fear of heights and sheer drops and roads carved into cliffs (why, just why?!?) struck all at once, a hundred times worse than anything I’ve ever experienced.

The road was too narrow to turn around. So there I was frozen on the road in my little red car. Couldn’t make myself drive forward, couldn’t go back. (Afterwards the situation struck me as a good metaphor for creating tension in fiction!) We’re talking full-on rabbit in the headlights frozen. Blocking the road.

Eventually, I forced myself to inch the car forward at approximately 1 km per hour till I reached a point where I could turn around… and then inched the car back down, shouting motivational nonsense at myself and forcing myself not to look at the spectacular drop to my right.

All of which is to say, I did not make it to the Sally Gap.

Apparently this is what it would have looked like if I had made it up to the top.

So if any of you have actually been there, and can let me know what it’s like to drive along, this writer would be eternally grateful if you could send me details 🙏

For those of you seeking an agent, you might want to consider querying the UK literary agent Hannah Sheppard. In 2023, Hannah left DHH to found her own boutique agency (the Hannah Sheppard Literary Agency), with a focus on commercial adult fiction and children’s fiction.

This interview with Hannah is from a few years ago but still relevant and extremely useful: Book Broker – An interview with Hannah Sheppard – The Darling Axe

Hannah just reopened to queries TODAY (May 1st), and is only open until May 7th. (Note: I believe that after this submission window, she’ll remain closed until September.)

Here’s what Hannah’s looking for in fiction:

• Crime/Police

• Graphic Novel

• Horror

• Middle Grade

• Romance

• Speculative

• Thrillers/Suspense

• Young Adult

And in non-fiction:

• General Non-Fiction

• Narrative

You can query Hannah here. Good luck!

When I wrote my first two novels, I had a very haphazard approach — I basically sat down and wrote whatever came to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t put effort in. I put massive effort in, but in the wrong places, and exhausted myself in the process.

I managed to get two agents but was rejected by every major UK publisher - twice. Those books remain unpublished. My two trunk novels.

For my next novel, no WAY was I going to make the same mistakes again.

I came up with and applied a strategy based on a combination of:

✨ What hadn’t worked for my previous two novels

✨ Epiphanies gained from mind-blowingly brilliant writing courses and craft books

✨ Insights from my agents (I’ve had five!) and super-sharp developmental editors

✨ Knowledge I’d gleaned from interviewing tons of successful trad pub’d authors, both for The Irish Times and my old writing blog

I combined it all and, in my head, I think of it as the Heartbeat Strategy.

The Heartbeat strategy does not involve:

• Writing to market

• Working to a formula

• Doing ‘busy work’ like irrelevant character questionnaires that give you a sense of achieving something but don’t actually bring the story to life

It helps me to figure out the story that only I can tell, the book I wish existed so I could read it.

The book that’s missing from the world that only I can write.

And a book that’s also designed to interest editors.

It’s an alternative to the pantsing V plotting debate.

Essentially, it involves pinning down the core inner kernel at the heart of your story and then working outwards to figure out the important layers around that kernel.

And then making sure the key elements are in place so that heart starts beating and your story comes alive.

So now, as I’m about to dive into my next book, am I going to use this strategy? Damn straight!

It involves doing a lot of groundwork before I write a single word.

There’s no plotting at this stage; it’s more like the process actors go through when preparing for a role.

So here’s the groundwork I always do as part of my Heartbeat Strategy, because I never EVER want to go back to those days of writing novel after novel that fail to come to life: