✨Meagan Thompson-Mann is back in the querying trenches🫠
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thecrumpet.bsky.social
✨Meagan Thompson-Mann is back in the querying trenches🫠
@thecrumpet.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.5K following 890 posts
Legally non-blonde / writer of minor repute (I'm in the Congressional record!) / querying 1st novel THIS ENDS NOW / noodlings at meagantheauthor.com / co-host of podcast BAD LIT FRIENDS (@badlitfriends.bsky.social‬) / recovering English major
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thecrumpet.bsky.social
✨Meagan Thompson-Mann is back in the querying trenches🫠 @thecrumpet.bsky.social · 4d
Listen to the third and final part of our award-winning* podcast series which is stuffed with really** useful*** advice! You'll hear that @kirkrafferty.com does not write THE END when he completes his manuscripts which... what a heathen.

*I may have awarded us this award
**debatable
***debunkable
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 25 #WIPsnips – “system”

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Sure, okay Keats, whatever you say. But why have truth when its simulacrum is so shiny and fun? A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
The well-lit, clean brick of the hotel’s façade was a rebuke to the sleaze and grime of the streets they’d just navigated, sticking out like a single, healthy tooth in a row of rotters. Red-waistcoated doormen ushered them through the entrance to a plush lobby, all thick Persian rugs and many-antlered deer trophies suspended from oak-paneled walls. Guests lounged in low-slung leather and velvet club chairs in front of a marble fireplace in full flicker, even in the heat of July. It was ridiculous and de trop and Jenny loved it, in spite of its brazen artifice. Perhaps because of it. With the particular confidence that comes from being born filthy rich and growing up “oh, you know, everywhere”—everywhere being Hong Kong, London, Kuala Lumpur, and (tragically, according to her) Dayton, Ohio—Tessa led the others deeper into the lobby. The tightly chignoned hostess standing sentinel at the velvet curtain took Tessa at her word that they were meeting a hotel guest. And without any fanfare besides the low growl of Eartha Kitt on the sound system, Jenny’s summer worlds slapped into one another.
November 25, 2025 at 5:46 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Yes, I am capable of caring about dumbass shit like this. #TheGame
Screen cap showing the current score of the Game, with Yale on 45 points and Harvard 28. The poster is delighted but total annihilation would be better.
November 22, 2025 at 8:15 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
a man wearing a fur coat is talking to a woman
ALT: a man wearing a fur coat is talking to a woman
media.tenor.com
November 21, 2025 at 9:29 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Listen to the third and final part of our award-winning* podcast series which is stuffed with really** useful*** advice! You'll hear that @kirkrafferty.com does not write THE END when he completes his manuscripts which... what a heathen.

*I may have awarded us this award
**debatable
***debunkable
November 21, 2025 at 5:31 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
<<preen preen preen>>

Thank you! It's just come out of a full developmental re-edit and I'm SO stoked about how it came out.
two women sitting next to each other with the hashtag #schittscreek
ALT: two women sitting next to each other with the hashtag #schittscreek
media.tenor.com
November 21, 2025 at 3:09 AM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Thank you! Slaughters Falls, VT is a pinprick of a (fictional) town up by the Canadian border, and it's almost as much of a character in the book as the people who live in it. Glad you liked this! 😊
November 20, 2025 at 6:18 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 20 #WIPsnips – “special”

Ah, mud season. A glorious time of the year in northern New England. Lainey’s stuck in more than just physical gloop, though, and there’s no better place for her to seek clarity than Carter’s Woods. A snip from “This Ends Now” which is with my betas right now!
Mud season around these parts is no joke. This winter brought more rain than flakes, John Babbitt told me, so the ground soaked up water like a thirsty sponge. And with the trees being slow to bud and drink all that rain back up, some of the roads through the Falls were worse than ever. Even the old timers spooning Carla’s special spicy tomato soup into their beards down at the Lazy Daisy swore they’d not seen the back roads so bad in fifty years. Biblical, they called it, and these are not men prone to overstatement. You don’t mess with the thick stuff. It oozes up through the gravel, hungry for ankles and tires alike. It’ll strand you inside as easy as a blizzard, but at least you can plow snow once you’ve dug a hole out of your house. Mud just sticks around for a couple of months while the earth decides to wake up. And this year, Mother Nature was pretty comfy in bed. With all this in mind, I struck out toward the Sugden Trail anyway, bound for Carter’s Woods at the raw edge of April, right in the thick of mud season. I’d been untangling my existential crises and general fuckups along this stretch of paradise since I was old enough to ride my Huffy up and over the sharp incline of Hymnal Hill, puffing all the way. Where else would I bring my latest debacle? Not the Lazy Daisy, where Cheyenne Morgan would pat my cheek and tell me I was looking a little peaked after she cleared away what was left of my slice of apple pie.
November 20, 2025 at 5:26 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 19 #WIPsnips – “third”

Waiting for a breakfast sandwich, Jenny wonders: is she more than just a convenient body for Gregory this summer? She must be, if his texts are to be believed. By summer’s end, she’s going to wish she’d just been convenient. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
By Thursday, she’d heard from him twice, very briefly. Once was to say how he couldn’t stop seeing her everywhere on campus, in the corridors of Lang Hall, on the library steps, on a bench in the Shakespeare Garden. “Stop haunting me,” he’d joked. “I’ve got enough unruly spirits in my life.” The next was a series of texts, received as she sprinted from Margaret’s office to collect a replacement BEC (no B, and Margaret Dees wasn’t satisfied with an EC): » Free tonight? I’m back at 5. Got Thorne to find me somewhere closer to you. » Bowery Hotel. Do you know the bar? You probably do, you seem to go everywhere. Say you’ll come. » I can’t wait to touch you again. But then again, if you knew the things I’ve been thinking about you since Tuesday night, you’d never let me touch you again. » Say yes. Please say yes. She scrolled through the chain twice, then a third time, as she waited for Julio at the bodega to assemble a replacement sandwich. Her skin prickled like she’d stepped into sub-arctic air conditioning after a long walk across Central Park. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning and Gregory was already consumed by thoughts of her. That had to count for something more than convenience.
November 19, 2025 at 5:40 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 16 #WIPsnips – “run”

“Just for fun,” Gregory says when he takes Jenny to Bergdorf Goodman. “Only dress-up,” she insists. But when a sales assistant spins a fairytale about a dress, Jenny’s tempted to accept his offer of making fantasy a reality. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
But as in any storybook, it was the third dress that was just right. Right, and deceptively simple, with a low scoop neck and an Empire waist, cut higher in the front than in the back. Featherlight black chiffon fluttered on the hanger as Violet held it still for their approval. A length of silk climbed from the skirt’s front hem to the shoulder in a liquid line, making Jenny want to trace it and figure out why it reminded her of a Moebius strip. Violet twirled it on the hanger so they could get a better view of the back, where a chapel-length train drooped onto the floor. “Alexander McQueen. From his ‘Girl Who Lived in a Tree’ collection, which—sorry if I gush a little here. I just love the story behind it.” Jenny slid her palm along the fabric, its faint waffle weave a surprise. “What’s the story?” “It’s a fairy tale.” Violet turned the dress around again, running a finger along the squared-off scoop of the neckline. “Once upon a time, there was a feral girl who lived in a tree. It was very, very dark up there in the tree, but it was the girl’s home. It was all she knew.” There was that buzz again, the honeybee’s beating wings from the Strand, from Ludlow Street, from the bar of the Bowery Hotel, a hypnotizing drone. “And one day,” Violet continued, pointing to the fine line of stitches forming the Empire cut to the bodice, “the girl spotted a handsome prince through the branches. She wanted to meet him, even though she had never climbed down before. Even though she had never felt the sun on her skin. But her curiosity was greater than her fears, so down she came. And when her feet met the earth for the very first time, she transformed into a beautiful princess in a sumptuous gown.” “Just like this one,” Jenny said softly. “What happened to the princess?” “She married her handsome prince, of course.” Violet folded the dress over her arm. “And one day she became a queen.”
November 16, 2025 at 5:57 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Oh stawp, you're making me blush!!!
a woman with her eyes closed is wearing hoop earrings and a necklace with the number 20 on it
ALT: a woman with her eyes closed is wearing hoop earrings and a necklace with the number 20 on it
media.tenor.com
November 14, 2025 at 5:42 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
This week (on our new drop day of Friday... for now) Kirk and I get into it on The Importance of Being Total Garbage as you get moving on your first draft. It doesn't matter if you're total pants. Nobody's grading you and you haven't failed. (Yet.)
November 14, 2025 at 5:35 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 14 #WIPsnips – “week”

It’s not that she’d rather hang with Gregory than her roommate Hallie—because Jenny definitely doesn’t. But she’s in NYC to burst from her chrysalis, and figures the soundtrack to metamorphosis is more likely Haydn than hipster. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
If Jenny was honest, and she did try to be honest in most things, a midnight show in a marginally cooled Brooklyn basement on a Thursday night sounded like two hours of getting mashed into other people’s sweat-soaked bodies while music she could listen to just fine on her iPod mini blew out her eardrums. But Hallie was insistent. “This is the cultural zeitgeist we’re talking about,” she said, flopping onto her stomach next to where Jenny sat on the living room floor. She propped her head of sproingy curls in her hands and affected the expression of a beatific Pre-Raphaelite muse. “Pitchfork basically anointed them folk rock gods last month.” Jenny continued flipping through that week’s New Yorker, looking for the short piece in “Goings on About Town” about the Brentano String Quartet concert Gregory was taking her to the following evening. “So you said.” “I mean, this is the kind of thing you can do when you’re in New York, know what I mean?” Hallie blew at an errant ringlet determined to obscure her eye. “This is part of why we’re here.” “What, to get bankers to buy us overpriced drinks at some hipster bar in Park Slope?” “They’re not all bankers, J. Some of them are lawyers.”
November 14, 2025 at 5:22 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Just listened to the rough and it is definitely bringing this energy, so please indulge us. We're not producers. We're barely podcasters!
November 14, 2025 at 2:13 AM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 11 #WIPsnips – “burger”

In this snip from “This Ends Now,” Lainey reflects on the hellscape that was dating in her late 30s in Los Angeles, before future husband Scott barged into her life. NOT THAT THE AUTHOR KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THIS HELLSCAPE AND IS THANKFUL FOR ESCAPING IT. (Ahem.)
What was more shocking was how they all talked about their feelings all the time, including the men. Especially the men. And not only Scott. Half the guys in L.A. I went out with before him confused “date” with “psychoanalysis with bottle service.” Over expensive burgers and strip mall sushi, I learned all about their grasping ex-wives, their well-paid but soul-sucking jobs, the kids (often very young) being kept from their doting daddies by she-devil moms. Look, I tried to give each putz—Kevin or Stu or Trevor—a chance. Maybe he’s nervous, I’d say to myself. Maybe he wants me to understand he’s in touch with his feelings. But if we got halfway through our oysters and he hadn’t asked me a thing about my life, I’d flag the waiter—hey, can I have another sauvignon blanc? The gloomier my date—Gianluca or Brad or whoever—got, the more glasses followed. I don’t feel too bad about it, even now. I got fed and watered; they got some therapy. Sometimes I let them go down on me back at their shitty divorce apartments, if I wanted to. I didn’t usually. I rarely saw any of them again.
November 11, 2025 at 5:31 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
No shame at all! My only two collections right now consist of (1) earlyish Penguin/Puffin/Pelican paperbacks and (2) books published before 1950 about, um, British railways, preferably about the Great Western Railway.

(yes I know that last one is weird)
November 11, 2025 at 4:08 AM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Re #2: I am the daughter of a rare bookseller and a former used and rare bookseller myself! It is a terrible profession, because you want to keep all the best ones for yourself. Do you collect in a particular area or are you more eclectic in your tastes? (Sorry, I am nosy. >.< )
November 11, 2025 at 3:55 AM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 9 #WIPsnips – “picture”

On one of those blistering summer Sundays in NYC when you feel like your toenails are sweating, cooling off at the Met is good idea. It would be a better idea if Gregory could stop being a condescending prick for an hour. A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
The museum quietened as they moved from gallery to gallery, their footsteps soft upon the polished floors as they entered the American Wing. The rooms narrowed here, the lighting dimmed, the air chilly enough that Jenny rubbed her arms as they paused in front of painting upon painting. Gregory kept rattling on about how Homer and Bierstadt and Remington captured the essential loneliness of America as its people pushed ever further west. “Your people,” he said at one point with another pulse to her hand, but she didn’t squeeze back. He was so curious about Iowa, at times peppering her with strange questions that made her wonder if he’d ever stepped foot in a state that didn’t border one ocean or another. Was there really a gigantic butter cow at the county fair? (Yes.) Was high school football a religion? (Blasphemous, but not untrue.) Was sex ed limited to abstinence and shame? Jenny had given him a long look for that one. “Gregory. I was raised by two progressives who caucused for Howard Dean in a church basement. They made sure I knew how to put a condom on a banana by sophomore year of high school.” He’d called that hot, which seemed to miss the point. She’d let him kiss her anyway.
November 9, 2025 at 6:06 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
I only succeeded by keeping this in mind
A thoughtful raccoon looks out of a car window with the text in white bold superimposed over the image: Just because you're trash doesn't mean you can't do great things. It's called garbage can, not garbage cannot
November 8, 2025 at 9:14 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Ahhhhh thank you! A year away from the "final" draft gave me not only perspective on its problems, but also the courage to kill many, many darlings. 🪓
November 8, 2025 at 6:47 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
It was a good book before but it's so, so much better now. In my 'umble opinion of course!
November 8, 2025 at 6:45 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
There's only one way to celebrate: get back to book 2. 😵‍💫
November 8, 2025 at 6:44 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
UMM THIS JUST HAPPENED
The poster has just completed a full developmental re-edit of her manuscript and this image--allegedly proof--consisting only of black text on a white background states: THE END Eighth draft/developmental re-edit complete: November 8, 2025 10:15 AM
November 8, 2025 at 6:32 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Thank you! He's the most loathsome, gorgeous toad in the swamp.
November 8, 2025 at 6:25 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
November 8 #WIPsnips – “little”

Sometimes it’s size, and sometimes it’s perspective. Jenny and Gregory are discussing Shelley’s “Mont Blanc,” but is that really all they’re talking about? As he likes to tell his students, “There’s no text without subtext.” A snip from my #WIP “Surface Tension.”
“Gregory,” she said, and the shape of it was wobbly in her mouth. She decided she liked it. “I guess… I get what it means to be in awe of vastness. Like, back in Mansfield—that’s where I’m from in Iowa, it’s up by the Minnesota border—sometimes, I’d be outside at night, just to look at the stars, and I felt so small. Like the night sky stretched on forever, and here I was, one miniscule person, but that was okay. That my smallness was my place in the world.” Gregory leaned closer again, even though Malcolm had turned the music down a few songs ago. “Go on.” “But Shelley isn’t just talking about Mont Blanc, about the mountain, is he? He’s talking about that moment when you’re facing down something enormous, something completely unconscious of you, little you, and…” She trailed off, embarrassed. She’d never exposed herself like this to anyone, let alone to a teacher, and she ducked her head. “And?” The room’s warmth squeezed the breath from her lungs, like she was drowning without a drop of water nearby. She looked up, and Gregory’s brown eyes were kind, so kind, had she ever known someone so kind? “And beautiful. Beautiful, and terrifying. Beneath the sky, I was nothing to the stars, no matter how beautiful I thought they were. The vastness scares me, but I have to look.” Gregory—for he was Gregory now, as he ever would be from now on—exhaled. “‘Power dwells apart in its tranquility,’” he recited. “‘Remote, serene, and inaccessible…’ Inaccessible, but we can’t keep ourselves from trying to touch it, can we?” Jenny nodded and finished her glass. “You’re right, Gregory.” Yes, she liked the shape of his name in her mouth just fine.
November 8, 2025 at 3:43 PM
thecrumpet.bsky.social
This is accurate. I used to bring back entire pizzas with me in my suitcase when I lived in London, just packaged 'em up as slices wrapped in waxed paper and tin foil and packed them in my checked bags. Hey, those holds are refrigerated!
November 8, 2025 at 5:25 AM