✨Split/Lip Press Wants to Read Your Novel!✨

If you’re new here, welcome to Rising Tide Writers, a community of 2k+ aspiring and published writers. I’m Caroline Madden, author of The Marriage Vendetta (2025 HarperCollins/Bonnier) and The Village (forthcoming 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!

Celebrations are in order, people! This newsletter community of aspiring and published writers has now grown to 2,000 free subscribers and a mind-blowing 91 paid subscriber (whaaaat?!?) — I am OVER-THE-MOON grateful to each and every one of you! 🍾

Without this newsletter, I don’t think I would ever have gotten a traditional publishing deal. I would have quit before I got there.

The newsletter originally started out as a little blog I set up in 2015 to cope with the blow of parting ways with my second literary agent. 💔

It gave me something to focus on, something that did not require pleasing the gods of publishing. The lack of gatekeepers was so refreshing.

I interviewed authors I admired in order to find out how they got their first book deal. I learned a lot but something else wonderful happened. Some of those writers I interviewed, like Charleen Hurtubise, Miriam Mulcahy (whose new memoir Walking to the Foot of the Sky is STUNNING!), Lauren MacKenzie and Róisín Coyne, went from being my writing heroes to being… my IRL friends! Going to their book launches in now my social life and it blows my mind.

And then the blog morphed into a ConvertKit email newsletter, and through that I got to know subscribers like the talented Martha Higgins whose book launch I went to last year (check out her novel here!), and the columnist and award-winning writer Sarah Harte who has become like the big sister I never had and helped me salvage my second novel when I hit a wall. 🙏

And then I moved the newsletter over here to Substack, hoping it would feel more like a community where subscribers could comment and interact (it does!), and have gotten to know SO many special people here like Diane Roth Helene Laurie MacIntosh John Celestri Lauren Khan Dom Stéphane @ Happy Writing Sophia Chang Hilary Stéphanie de Geus Jennie Nash Eva Langston Bria Knudsen Hope Whitmore Writer Deirdre Whelan Mariam | Main Character Muslim Nicole Meier Elaine R. Frieman Patti Go book talk with lauren Karin Gillespie Jenna Satterthwaite and many more!

I thought that this blog-turned-newsletter would be a means to an end, something that might help me break into publishing.

I never anticipated that it would be this newsletter (and not my novel) that would help me find my tribe, both online and in real life.

So if you’re starting a podcast or a newsletter or an online book club or a writing group or whatever it might be in order to bolster your chances of making it as an author, open your mind to the possibility that it might not just be a side quest or a means to an end. It could become a WHOLE THING in its own right.

But I know you still want a book deal 😉, so let’s get on to the good stuff!

One of the first things I did after I fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally got my first book deal was email the legendary Lisa Cron to thank her for writing Story Genius because it had such an impact on me.

And not only did she send me a lovely reply (I was starstruck!), but recently she got back in touch to ask if she could put my email on her revamped website, so here it is (note: the title of my novel changed to The Marriage Vendetta):

Lisa understands story like no-one else and she’s offering coaching services that you can check out here. If that’s out of your price range, make sure you at least get your hands on a copy of Story Genius — it could change your writing life.

The indie publisher Split/Lip has announced an open call for previously unpublished novels and novellas. This submission window is open until September 1st.

They’re not looking for any specific theme or genre — they’re open to all novels and novellas as long as they’re at least 100 pages long.

According to its website, Split/Lip is dedicated to boundary-breaking books:

“We love work that questions the concept of truth and work that reinterprets what we think we know. We prize experimentation (physical, emotional, metaphysical, meta-emotional); we welcome the unanswerable. We want to see the dark and the light side of the moon—or we want to see it obliterated. If your book is a wedge in a crack, Split/Lip Press is the hammer helping you split the wall apart.”

Now I’m not one hundred percent sure what any of that actually means, but if you think your novel is a ‘wedge in a crack’, then why not let the good people at Split/Lip be the hammer? 🤷‍♀️

“We hope to find the next novel or novella addition to our press catalog during this reading period!” - Split/Lip Press

One thing that threw me a little about their open call is that they charge a reading fee of $15. This goes towards paying their reading team, so I guess it makes sense as they’re an indie press?

And if you can't afford the reading fee, they ask that you email splitlipthepress@gmail.com before submitting to receive a manuscript fee waiver, no questions asked.

Best of luck if you decide to submit to them!

Right, I’m off now to have a choc ice and watch the second half of Heartburn on Netflix. If the message turns out to be that Meryl Streep’s character finds happiness with her editor, rather than returning to writing, I will despair…

Caroline x

If you enjoy my writing, you might also enjoy my debut novel The Marriage Vendetta which one Goodreads reviewer described as “rage-inducing in the best way” (note: I want that engraved on my headstone)