💫Meagan Thompson-Mann is zhushing up her manuscript 🌿
@thecrumpet.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.4K following 770 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) / transplanted Nutmegger / Valley Girl
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thecrumpet.bsky.social
Look, what did the Good Lordt create the "listen at 1.75x" function for on podcasts if not to get through our 1.5hr extravaganza? Come on, live a little. Listen to @kirkrafferty.com and me disagree about adverbs (I AM RIGHT) and why you should kill your darlings, especially if they are super cute.
badlitfriends.bsky.social
NEW EPISODE OF BAD LIT FRIENDS IS UP!

Wherein we talk about writing rules and why every single one of them is complete trash. (not really)

Bad Lit Friends is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts!
#WritingCommunity #Podcasts

open.spotify.com/episode/1eMk...
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Look, what did the Good Lordt create the "listen at 1.75x" function for on podcasts if not to get through our 1.5hr extravaganza? Come on, live a little. Listen to @kirkrafferty.com and me disagree about adverbs (I AM RIGHT) and why you should kill your darlings, especially if they are super cute.
badlitfriends.bsky.social
NEW EPISODE OF BAD LIT FRIENDS IS UP!

Wherein we talk about writing rules and why every single one of them is complete trash. (not really)

Bad Lit Friends is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts!
#WritingCommunity #Podcasts

open.spotify.com/episode/1eMk...
thecrumpet.bsky.social
THE WEDDING PEOPLE x SANDWICH

THIS ENDS NOW: Serial husband-ditcher Lainey hasn't met a functional relationship she didn't want to escape—until now. But she can't stop bolting until she takes down the charismatic man who wrote the toxic love playbook she's ready to toss out. #DVPit #A #UP #WOC
thecrumpet.bsky.social
SANDWICH x THE PAPER PALACE

THIS ENDS NOW: Ditching perfectly good husbands is a bad look, especially for a wedding planner. But Lainey can't stop running until she takes down the manipulative ex who made disappearing feel like devotion—and who's still rewriting their history. #DVPit #A #UP #WOC
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Love love love this! I've said it before and I'll say it again: I want this book!
thecrumpet.bsky.social
THE WEDDING PEOPLE x THE PAPER PALACE

THIS ENDS NOW: When her second marriage crumbles, a Gen X wedding planner spots a pattern: she dissolves into the men she loves. To break free, she must confront her first love—the man who taught her she was too much and never, ever enough. #DVPit #A #UP #WOC
thecrumpet.bsky.social
THE PAPER PALACE x SANDWICH

THIS ENDS NOW: Why has Lainey Pike fled another perfect marriage? At an Instagram-ready women's retreat, she recognizes the beast she must slay to break free: her brilliant, dangerous first love—who'd burn everything down before letting her go. #DVPit #A #UP #WOC
thecrumpet.bsky.social
October 8 #WIPsnips – “dungeon”

No dungeons in this snippet from “This Ends Now,” but the dank cellar of Lainey’s worst memories is where she keeps thoughts of her first, worst love. She’s forbidden herself from peeking inside—only terrors dwell there. Handsome, rotten terrors named Gregory Shipp.
The night before we left for Lost Acre, I broke one of my rules. I let myself peer inside the room I kept the bastard in, in the furthest, foulest corner of my mind’s cellar. Little Lainey lived there, too, and she was so sad, and he so awful, that I didn’t want to revisit their cheap little scenes. Nothing ever changed—the players jangled their bones the same, spoke the same, raved and cried and loved the same. There was nothing new to learn.

Looking this time through the keyhole, much seemed unchanged over the years, a bit dustier, a bit more faded. Little Lainey still made herself small, small, so small. Small enough to fit inside of him. And he—strong and tall and brilliant—reminded her in his seedy, silky tone that she hadn’t been quite as clever before he walked into her life and into her mind to sweep away the clutter. Without the clutter, there was more room for him, and wasn’t it marvelous that their thoughts and moods now echoed each other, chimed in each other’s tones? They’d become parts of one another.

Isn’t it romantic?
thecrumpet.bsky.social
SANDWICH x THE WEDDING PEOPLE

THIS ENDS NOW: 2 husbands, 3 hometowns, 1 wedding planner ready to stop staging messy exits from her own marriages. But there's no breaking the cycle until Lainey confronts her clever, cunning first love, who's still dying to put her in her place. #DVPit #A #UP #WOC
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Thanks! But he's not a literal ghost, just to clarify. Not all ghosts are dead -- some haunt our lives despite being still very much on this mortal plane, and Lainey's ex Gregory is alive and well and shuffling around as a horrible human being. 🙃
thecrumpet.bsky.social
I love the conceit of a third world in this pitch--living between cultures is such a fertile ground to dig in. And your fertile ground has secrets buried in it!
thecrumpet.bsky.social
THE WEDDING PEOPLE x THE PAPER PALACE

THIS ENDS NOW: Matrimonial escape artist Lainey is ready to stop running from good men. But first she must disarm the slippery ex who programmed her to bolt from love—and whose poisonous ghost still sabotages her every chance at happiness. #DVPit #A #UP #WOC
thecrumpet.bsky.social
LOL only took me 4 attempts to post this... @kirkrafferty.com to the rescue with advice to clear cookies.
thecrumpet.bsky.social
October 7 #WIPsnips – “safe”

Not all villains twirl mustaches and tie damsels to train tracks. Some villains are handsome and witty and terrific fun to be around, when they aren’t ruining your life, that is. Lainey found that out the hard way. A snippet from “This Ends Now.”
It’s funny—whenever I describe Gregory, he always sounds darker than he really was. Like he stomped through life beneath a little black cloud that could fatten until it blotted out all warmth, all light. But that lets him off too easily.

Most of the time, he was the charmer who pulled me from yet another shitty frat party into the crystalline chill of a late February night with nothing more than a “you’re too cool to be here” and an offered hand. Chatty and bright, as comfortable talking about his favorite Ninja Turtle (Raphael) as reciting chunks of Byron’s Don Juan from memory. If not for him, I might never have learned to love John Waters films and Mulligatawny soup or play the bass line from Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” on his roommate Jim’s shagged-out Fender.

Gregory, I’m sorry to say, was fun.

And he wanted to learn all about the thoughts rattling in my head like pennies in a jar. He called me witty, ambitious, the prettiest wild rose, and I craved his steady attention. There was something of the snake charmer about him, lulling me with his deep brown eyes and tender words. Ssssssssssafe.

He loved me, and I broke his heart. All of that’s true. It would be easier to explain if he’d been consistent in his cruelty. But villains are simple only in fairytales. In real life, they look like everyone else, just normal people. In real life, they could even be stars.
thecrumpet.bsky.social
Next project - #WIP 50% complete!

GREEN DOT x THE RACHEL INCIDENT

SURFACE TENSION: The problem with studying women who make bad choices? You start to see yourself all over the syllabus. Jenny’s entanglement with her English professor isn’t fiction, but she’s starting to wish it was. #DVParty #WOC
A collage of photos: John Singer Sargent’s “Portrait of Madame X,” a painting of a young woman in a sleeveless black dress; a classroom with a dark green chalkboard illuminated by the sun, with several wooden desks; library books on a shelf held behind iron bars; a man and woman embracing, both in rather woolly sweaters; a picture taken over the shoulder of a woman who is holding a polaroid picture of another woman; several drooping, dying flowers against a dark background; 7 or 8 old books, lying on floorboards, and with their pages opened as if the books had been dropped; a pink and white flip phone with a heart charm on its closed cover, next to a bottle of pink nail polish and a pink lipgloss; a black and white photo of a young woman in ¾ profile with her eyes mostly closed—over this the title of the WIP  “Surface Tension” is superimposed.