by Writing Workshops Staff
53 minutes ago
We are thrilled to share that WritingWorkshops.com alum Dan Robert has sold his debut novel, The Monster's Wife, to Dutton in a pre-empt—the first acquisition for editor Lara Blackman at the imprint. The deal was brokered by Michelle Brower at Trellis Literary Management.
If the name sounds familiar to anyone who follows television, that's because Dan arrives at fiction with an already formidable career behind him. An Emmy Award–winning writer, director, and actor who grew up in western Massachusetts—"where the coffee is strong, the women are stronger, and the first hour of parking is always free"—he began as a child actor (for which, in his own words, "therapy has been very helpful") before landing at Shondaland, where he worked alongside Debbie Allen and Shonda Rhimes. With his longtime writing partner Lisha Brooks, he won the 2022 Emmy for his work on Netflix's "The Baby-Sitter's Club," and his credits since then include Hulu's forthcoming "Nine Perfect Strangers," the Audible original podcast "Excessive," and the festival-favorite web series "Beards."
The Monster's Wife marks his turn to the page. The novel follows the family left behind by a notorious serial killer—and the reckoning that arrives when one of his children agrees, for the first time since his death, to sit for a documentary about his crimes. It's a premise that trades on the very thing Dan has spent his screen career mastering: the uneasy distance between a public story and a private one.
To shape the manuscript, Dan worked one-on-one with novelist Ethan Chatagnier through our 6-Month Fiction Mentorship, a program built for writers committed to a book-length project and ready to see it through to a finished draft. We were glad to be a small part of the road that led here, and we couldn't be more excited to watch The Monster's Wife make its way into the world.
Every published book starts as a draft and a writer willing to keep going. If you have a novel or story collection waiting to be finished, our online creative writing workshops and mentorships pair you with working authors who've been exactly where you are. Join a community built on expert instruction and a long track record of helping writers reach the finish line—your own success story could be next.
