The Writer’s Bone Crew
Network Hosts
Daniel Ford is the author of Black Coffee and Sid Sanford Lives!. His work can be found on danielfford.com and HardballHeart.com. Ford once performed as the Cowardly Lion in an eighth grade production of the "Wizard of Oz." Follow him on Twitter @danielfford.
Stephanie Ford is a storyteller, journalist, and marketing copywriter based in Boston, Mass. She once made Daniel write a boring story so she could interview Shaquille O’Neal.
Caitlin Malcuit is the former editor of The Backstage Beat, an entertainment site that covered music and the arts in Boston. A one-time "Jeopardy!" champion who can tell you that Alex Trebek is “exactly like that in person," she also swept up a broken wine glass in front of Pat Sajak. Follow her on Twitter @badlycooked.
Kelly J. Ford is the author of Real Bad Things from Thomas & Mercer, and Cottonmouths, named one of 2017’s best books of the year by the Los Angeles Review and featured in the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” from the Los Angeles Times. An Arkansas native, Kelly currently lives in Vermont with her wife and cat. Kelly likes to order a voluminous amount of food that makes servers ask, "Are you sure you can handle that?" She can. Follow her on Twitter.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong is a best-selling author and co-host of Pop Literacy and #Authoring. She’s the author of the New York Times best-seller Seinfeldia: How the Show About Nothing Changed Everything; a history of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted; and Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love. She now lives in Manhattan. You can visit her online at JenniferKArmstrong.com. Follow her on Twitter.
Kimberly Potts is the author of The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch and co-host of Pop Literacy and #Authoring. She has written about TV (the greatest form of pop culture) for the likes of Vulture, TV Guide, The Los Angeles Times, Variety, and Yahoo. She’s also interviewed some of her TV heroes, including Bryan Cranston, Carol Burnett, Robin Williams, Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, Laurie Metcalf, and Conan O’Brien. Oh yeah, Shaquille O’Neal once called her Kimberly Wimberly. Follow her on Twitter.
Dave Pezza is the host of NovelClass, the first spin-off in the Writer's Bone Podcast Network. He spends his time trying to justify printing "writer" under "Occupation" on his passport application. Pezza has never been to a concert and not screamed "Freebird" at the top of his lungs. Follow him on Twitter @dpezza02 and @NovelClassPod.
Phoef Sutton is a New York Times best-selling author and the co-host of Film Freaks Forever!. The winner of two Emmy Awards for his work on the classic television comedy “Cheers” and a Peabody Award for the legal drama “Boston Legal,” he also wrote for the cult FX show “Terriers.” As a screenwriter, his credits include “Mrs. Winterbourne” and “The Fan,” starring Robert DeNiro. He has written several movies for television, including “Darrow & Darrow,” “Past Malice,” and “Darrow & Darrow II.” Together with his good friend Mark Jordan Legan he created the cult comedy “Thanks.” Follow him on Twitter @phoefsutton.
Mark Jordan Legan has worked professionally in many fields of the entertainment business. He’s also the co-host of Film Freaks Forever! As a professional television and film writer, he has worked for more than 20 years in Hollywood—writing for many sitcoms and selling pilots to NBC, CBS, FOX, and Disney. As a screenwriter, he has sold screenplays to 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Gold Circle Films. Legan has appeared more than 300 times on the NPR airwaves as an in-house film historian/pop culture expert. Follow him on Twitter @MJLegan.
Daniel Paisner is well-known to publishers (and, alas, somewhat less well-known to readers) as the author or co-author of more than 70 books. As a ghostwriter, he has written more than 50 books in collaboration with athletes, actors, politicians, business leaders and ordinary individuals with extraordinary stories to tell. He’s the host of As Told To: The Ghostwriting Podcast. Follow him on Twitter.
Melanie Padgett Powers is the owner of MelEdits and host of Deliberate Freelancer. She is a longtime writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., area. She was a writer/editor at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Public Health Association before becoming a managing editor at the content marketing agency TMG (now Manifest) for the magazines for the Lupus Foundation of America and the National Hemophilia Foundation. Padgett Powers founded MelEdits in 2013, and was a newspaper reporter for seven years in her home state of Indiana before moving to D.C. and focusing her career on membership associations. Unlike a lot of Hoosiers, she visited Florida for the first time only after traveling to 19 countries.
Bianca Marais is the author of the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh. She holds a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies, where she now teaches. In 2021 she was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing. Before turning to writing, she started a corporate training company and volunteered with Cotlands, where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans. She runs the Eunice Ngogodo Own Voices Initiative to empower young black women in Africa to write and publish their own stories. She co-hosts The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Follow her on Twitter.
Carly Watters began her publishing career in London at the Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency. She has a BA in English Literature from Queen’s University and a MA in Publishing Studies from City University London. Since joining PSLA in 2010 Carly has had great success launching new creators domestically and abroad. Never without a book on hand she reads across categories which is reflected in the genres she represents at PSLA. Representing debuts and bestsellers, Carly is drawn to: emotional, well-paced fiction with a great voice and characters that readers can get invested in, and platform-driven non-fiction. She co-hosts The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Follow her on Twitter.
Cecilia Lyra is an associate agent at PSLA representing adult fiction and non-fiction. She is particularly drawn to books centered around dysfunctional families, ethical or moral dilemmas, and taboo subjects. As a mixed race Latinx immigrant, Cecilia is passionate about representing under or misrepresented voices and stories that contribute to a larger cultural conversation. She began her publishing career through the Centennial College Book, Magazine and Electronic program and The Rights Factory. Cecilia is also a recovering lawyer but asks that you do not hold that against her. She co-hosts The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. Follow her on Twitter.
Jane Healey writes fiction about lesser known women in history. Her novel The Beantown Girls was a Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller. Her latest novel, The Secret Stealers, was an Amazon First Reads Editor’s Pick, one of the New York Post’s Best New Books, a Historical Novel Society's Editors' Choice pick and was also on Cosmopolitan’s Best Historical Fiction of 2021 list. She’s the host of Historial Happy Hour. Follow her on Twitter.
Emily Thiede is the author of This Vicious Grace. A former public school teacher, Emily teaches creative writing and serves on the board for Writer House, a local writing nonprofit, and co-hosts the Basic Pitches podcast. An alumnus of PitchWars and Author Mentor Match, she loves mentoring aspiring authors, fostering kittens, and getting lost in the woods near her home in central Virginia. Follow her on Twitter.
Anna Mercier is a writer of fantasy romance for both young adult and adult readers. To survive the query trenches, she uses her love of teaching to share all she's learned from her time as a PitchWars mentee with others by co-hosting the podcast Basic Pitches. She also has a healthy love of tinkering with new hobbies, so you can catch her baking, flipping furniture, and gaming. Follow her on Twitter.
Sarah Nicolas is a recovering mechanical engineer, library event planner, and author who lives in Orlando. Sarah writes YA novels as Sarah Nicolas and romance under the name Aria Kane. Sarah has published both traditionally and independently, and has also worked in the publishing industry as an editorial intern, editorial assistant, publicist, publicity director, cover artist, and art director. Sarah is the current Board Treasurer and Agent Liaison for Pitch Wars and the host/producer of PubTalk Live, AgentChat Live, and Queries, Qualms, & Quirks. When not writing, Sarah can be found playing volleyball or drinking wine. Follow her on Twitter.
Guest Hosts
Sean Tuohy currently resides in Boston, Mass., and is working on his next screenplay. His love of pop culture and films scares small children. Tuohy once worked as a professional clown.
Rachel Harrison is the author of The Return and a lover of all things spooky. Except for garden gnomes. She has a legitimate fear of garden gnomes (AKA gnomaphobia). You can find her on Twitter @rachfacelogic.
Mike Nelson is technically an adult. Mike runs Mostly America, a music blog that only gets traffic for philosophical posts that have nothing to do with music. Still, he goes to more concerts than most college students and has a knack for identifying the next big things, so you should go check some of his Top Songs of the Year lists, which he has been doing since 2011. One time he tried to eat one of every item in his office’s vending machine. And like most things for Mike, the emphasis is on “tried.” Follow him on Twitter.
Network Scribes & Friends
Cristina Cianci is the visual editor for Condé Nast Creative Group (Self.com and Brides.com). Cianci is an enthused Italian New Yorker who is into 1980s anything, green tea, and Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen. Visit her official website.
Lindsey Grant is a native Detroit suburbanite living her lifelong dream as a city dweller in New York City. A journalist and editor by trade, she has covered the New York City scene, jewelry store crime, the cuddly business of pets, and the supermarket sector. The former Times Square barista has also served coffee to A-, B-, and C-list celebrities. Follow her on Twitter @lindseykwojcik.
David Joy is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated novel Where All Light Tends To Go and The Weight Of This World. For a long while, his sole entertainment each night involved a case of Busch Light and shooting rats that scampered across the living room with a lever action rifle. He survives in Jackson County, North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter @DavidJoy_Author.
Rachel is an event manager for a beer company (yes, it's awesome). She doesn't contribute often, but when she does, it's....all right.
Rob Masiello is a Boston-based social worker who prefers dogs to people and drives a bright orange car. His first concert was Celine Dion when he was in fourth grade. Follow him on Twitter @rjmas8.
Rebecca Weston is owner and editor at Rebecca Weston Literary, an independent editing company, where she provides expert edits for writers of middle-grade, young adult, and adult fiction and memoir. Previously, Rebecca worked as an editor at Random House Children’s Books. Visit her at www.rebeccawestonliterary.com, and follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Jessica A. Kent is a fiction writer, freelancer, bookseller, reader, and founder of the Boston Book Blog, a website that covers the Boston literary community. Find more writing at www.jessicaakent.com. (And in case you were curious, her master’s thesis on Moby-Dick won the Director’s Prize at Harvard University in 2018.)
Gary Almeter is the author of The Emperor of Ice-Cream. He’s also an attorney in Baltimore, Md. and lives with his wife, three children and Beagle. He grew up in Buffalo, N.Y. and is proud to have lived in Boston and New York City before settling in Baltimore. He and his brother saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman play Willy Loman in Mike Nichols' "Death of a Salesman" on Broadway in April 2012 and it was the greatest artistic anything—play, movie, show—he ever saw. And plus, a droplet of PSH's spittle landed on his brother's arm in Act 2. Gary has contributed to McSweeney's and The Good Men Project.
Matt DiVenere is a freelance automotive and sports journalist. Didn't think gear heads and jocks got along? Neither does he. His inner monologue is a constant battle of a revving engine and the crack of a baseball bat. It's probably why he talks so loudly on the phone. Follow him on Twitter @Matt_DiV.
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