Panel Discussion: What Makes a Great Story? Paula Munier, Jessica Reino, and Alison Weiss.

Paula Munier is a literary agent and the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones was a Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee and named Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search, inspired by the real-life rescue of a boy with autism, also won a DWAA award. The Hiding Place debuted in March 2021. The Wedding Plot will come out in 2022. Paula credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep love of New England as her series’ major influences. Paula has also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Fixing Freddie and Happier Every Day.
Working for many years as a freelance substantive editor and being a multi-genre author herself, it is no surprise that Jessica Reino has a wide variety of tastes when it comes to storytelling. She’s a member of SCBWI New England, The Women’s Fiction Writers Association where she was a Webinar Program Leader. She has also been a contributor for The Children’s Writer’s Guild Online Magazine as well as a reviewer for Story Monsters Ink. She has experience as an author coach and freelance editor with Pandamoon Publishing. She also runs a monthly Twitter chat #thewriterszen.
Jessica is a Senior Literary Agent for Metamorphosis Literary Agency. Whether the story is tackling tough topics or serves solely to entertain, Jessica is looking for manuscripts that are well-written with a strong voice in order to make that emotional connection.
Alison Weiss has been in publishing for more than ten years. She’s currently acquisitions editor at Pixel+Ink (part of the Trustbridge Media Group), a publisher focused exclusively on series publishing with transmedia potential. There, she’s worked on many series, including Twig and Turtle by Jennifer Richard Jacobson, The Great Peach Experiment by Erin Soderberg Downing, and the forthcoming The Curious League of Detectives and Thieves by Tom Phillips. She’s run her own editorial consultancy, working with publishers including Simon & Schuster, Audible, and Arctis, as well as private clients, and was Editorial Director at Sky Pony Press, where her list included William C. Morris Finalist Devils Within by S.F. Henson, the Project Droid series by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser, illustrated by Mike Moran, the Timekeeper trilogy by Tara Sim, and the Mahabharata-inspired Celestial Trilogy by Sangu Mandanna. In 2016 she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She’s been trying to live up to the title ever since. You can follow her on Twitter @alioop7 and learn more about Pixel+Ink at Pixel+Ink Books.