Pen Pals

In their final episode of 2025, Krisserin and Kelton reflect on a year that transformed them both—32 episodes of accountability, pivot points, and hard-won victories. While Krisserin celebrates landing an agent and finishing her duology, Kelton reveals her elaborate "Year of 40" planning document complete with astrological mapping and a manifestation app.

Looking ahead to 2026, Kelton unveils her ambitious plans—the Rewilding winter practice, a new monthly writing group called the Murmuration, and manifesting a business partner with a very specific JD. Krisserin's playing it closer to the vest, applying to an MFA program and hoping for a book deal she's still too protective of her heart to fully visualize. 

Between debates about who's more commercially-minded (Capricorn wins), pleas for listener ratings, and their characteristic mix of commiseration and ambition, this episode celebrates what a year of showing up—for your writing and for each other—can actually accomplish.
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TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com
The Rewilding

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

In this episode of Pen Pals, Krisserin and Kelton confront the reality of December's chaotic energy—where seasonal disruptions, holiday stress, and looming daycare closures threaten to derail their writing routines entirely. While Kelton grapples with her lack of structure (going without coffee until noon, navigating postpartum dairy restrictions, and awaiting news of hand-foot-and-mouth disease), Krisserin celebrates a hollow victory: typing "THE END" on her manuscript, only to feel completely disconnected from the work.

The friends trade strategies for building sustainable writing habits in the midst of life's upheaval—from Kelton's plan to reclaim her most reliable morning hour from client work to Krisserin's decision to explore short story writing and grad school applications while her novel rests. They debate the ethics of platform-building on TikTok, where algorithmic luck matters more than generous engagement, and wrestle with the pressure to create "uniquely differentiating" content when billions of people are doing the same thing. Through Emily Halnon's wisdom about training like an athlete and the reminder that 30 minutes of writing beats zero minutes every time, Krisserin and Kelton offer a refreshing antidote to December chaos: sometimes the goal is just to show up, even when showing up feels like the hardest thing in the world.
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Follow Krisserin and Kelton:
TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com
The Rewilding

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

Krisserin and Kelton sit down with Ali Gordon, author of "We Have Reached the End of Our Show," to discuss her unconventional path to publication without an agent. Ali shares how she wrote her debut novel during the pandemic as a "cozy treehouse" where she could escape—a meditation on grief and the end of the world inspired by her experience losing both parents to cancer within two years.
The conversation digs into the brutal reality of querying: from agents who loved her novella but wouldn't represent it without expansion, to the personal sting of form rejections when you've poured your trauma onto the page. Ali explains why she stopped "tap dancing" in her query letters and started reaching out directly to independent publishers—landing at Wildling Press, where the entire team read her manuscript within weeks and called to say "we all cried, we love it."
Ali gets honest about the trade-offs of publishing with a small press (no advance, years of unpaid work) versus the reward of working with people genuinely in love with your material. She reflects on how querying hurt her feelings in ways even acting school rejection never did, why writing "in love" with your project matters more than outlining obligations, and how four hours of forced airplane boredom gave her the idea for her next (hopefully funny) novel.
Plus: Kelton's toddler still isn't sleeping so she's giving herself permission to rest despite memoir proposal deadlines, Krisserin shares the embarrassing story of fumbling repeated follow-ups from an interested agent twelve years ago, and both hosts grapple with social media metrics while pushing toward their January deadlines in a season when they should be pulling back.
Learn more about Ali Gordon:
Website: https://www.whatdoesaligordondo.com/
Book: "We Have Reached the End of Our Show"
Instagram: @msalicenutting
Write to us:
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YouTube: @PenPalsPod

Follow Krisserin and Kelton:
TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com
The Rewilding

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

When you're chasing publication dreams and battling rejection, gratitude feels like a luxury. But Krisserin and Kelton argue it's actually a practice—one that keeps you grounded when writing feels impossible. In this candid Thanksgiving conversation, they explore gratitude as a skill you build, not a feeling that arrives. They tackle the envy that lurks behind ambition, answer a listener's question about returning to abandoned projects, and get deeply personal about the people who've shaped their writing—from long-time readers who stuck with them for decades, to short-lived aunties who passed through their lives leaving permanent gifts. Krisserin celebrates a week of wild productivity. Kelton reflects on the readers who've been loyal since her Date by Numbers days. Both hosts reckon with how family, mentorship, and financial anxiety shaped their relationship to art. If you're oscillating between genuine gratitude and performative thankfulness, this episode holds space for both.
Write to us:
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Follow us:
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TikTok: @penpalspod
YouTube: @PenPalsPod

Follow Krisserin and Kelton:
TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com
The Rewilding

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios

Krisserin's brain is scrambled from her massive Excel spreadsheet organizing her 24,000 remaining words, while Kelton is juggling unexpected client work that threatens to derail her memoir proposal. But this week they're joined by Emily Halnon, USA Today bestselling author of To the Gorge: Running Grief and Resilience and 460 Miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, a writer, trail runner, and mountain athlete who set the fastest known time on the 460-mile Oregon PCT.
Emily's here to talk about the gap between landing an agent and getting published—and why the submission process was far more brutal than her surprisingly smooth querying journey. After three agent offers in six weeks, Emily faced publisher after publisher saying no, not because of her writing, but because her platform wasn't big enough. She breaks down the "pitch deck" strategy for positioning your memoir, how market bias shows up in publishing decisions (including the absurd reasoning that there's only room for one book about women on trails), and the practical realities of book marketing that most authors do themselves.
The trio discusses what actually gets your book into readers' hands—from strategic podcast appearances to NPR affiliate targeting to direct DM outreach. Emily shares her candid breakdown of launch strategy, sustainable (and unsustainable) approaches to self-promotion, and the vulnerability hangover that comes after pouring your grief onto the page. Plus: Emily's discovery of poetry as creative renewal, Krisserin's push toward December 1st manuscript completion, Kelton's chapter outline goals, and their shared realization that sometimes the best writing investment is permission to rest and let ideas compost.
Through their different paths to publication, all three writers circle back to the same truth: authenticity and persistence matter more than perfect platforms or publishers' initial predictions.
Get Emily's book: To the Gorge: Running Grief and Resilience and 460 Miles on the Pacific Crest Trail
Learn more about Emily:
Website: https://www.emilyhalnon.com/
Instagram: @emilysweats
Substack Newsletter: Trail Mix
Recommended Reading from Emily:
The Salt Stones by Helen Whybrow
Poets Square by Courtney Gustafson
Tilt by Emma Pattee
The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan
The Comfort
Write to us:
[email protected]

Follow us:
Instagram: @penpalspod
TikTok: @penpalspod
YouTube: @PenPalsPod

Follow Krisserin and Kelton:
TikTok: @krisserin, @keltonwrites
Kelton's Substack: Shangrilogs
Krisserin's Substack: krisserin.substack.com
The Rewilding

Music by Golden Hour Oasis Studios