Sourcing for a cover story, dog surgery and THE gift guide guide you need to read

Parade, AARP, Pet stories and more!

Someone recently learned how to use the custom button page so I apologize in advance if I went a little button crazy with this edition. :-p

Hi all. How is your week going? It’s been a busy one over here the past week. Our doberman, Lyla, had ACL surgery and is rocking the cone of shame. So we’re trying to keep her calm and also taking her out to the bathroom 16x a day + coming up with fancy tricks to try to get her to drink more water (like mashing up dog food in it and creating doggie stew). Anyone been through dog TPLO surgery and have any good tips? Did you do doggie PT? We’re currently researching that.

Rocky being a good big brother and keeping his sister calm while she heals up

Writing this while on hold with Cuisinart customer service (trying so hard not to be about the multitask life but sometimes you have to). We had a toaster that I loved that had the lever break off 4 months into purchasing it. My husband tried to fix it with super glue (because husbands :-p) and that (obviously) didn’t work. Customer service said: “It’s under warranty for 3 years, we just need the # on the bottom of your toaster.” But in the chaos of the dog, a family emergency, life and my husband’s frustration, he threw it out.

Annnnnnd right after I wrote this, the Cuisinart phone rep JUST said “You’re SOL” basically. At least I got to be on hold for a half hour and listen to fun elevator music. :-p And at least I’m not multitasking anymore haha.

RIP little toaster. We had a good 4 months together.

Other bits of housekeeping, if you haven’t yet, check out Top Tier Consulting! It’s my joint venture with fellow writer Jill Schildhouse where we help publicists best work their magic, placing an emphasis on teaching them the ins and outs of pitching, networking, cold reach outs, relationship management, etc. to land their clients in top-tier publications.

We also created a Top Tier Consulting Substack where we’re delivering our best weekly tips on working with writers and editors so that you can land your clients in their dream publications.

Our 1st newsletter talked about how to pitch your sources around the holidays when it seems like people only care about gift guides. Well guess, what. Outlets care about a lot more than just gift guides in this Oct-January time. So we’re helping you learn how to make all of your sources appealing right now. We’re talking how to get your therapists, dog trainers, authors, hairdressers, stylists, real estate experts, finance experts, CEOs and beyond into stories when it seems like people only care about gift guides. You can check that out here:

Our 2nd newsletter was all about the gift guides because yes, those are a very big part of holiday coverage and practically every writer we know (including us) is working on them right now. We talk about how to make your gift guide submission stand out from all the other ones, how to properly position your client to land in a gift guide, how to handle affiliate links, the angles to go with, what to tell writers about your product, things that will make your gift guide submission get instantly deleted and more. You can read that here:

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT EMAIL INTERVIEWS & YOUR CLIENTS:

This week’s newsletter is being polished up is going to tackle the world of email interviews. We’ll tackle why do writers want to do email interviews, how to prep your sources for them, why your client’s submissions might not get used (and how to prevent that from happening), how to coach your clients to give writers compelling answers, how to handle follow-ups, and more. With so many writers preferring email interviews these days, you’ll learn a lot here and won’t want to miss this one!

Click here to sign up for the TTC Substack if you haven’t yet. And if you’re a free subscriber make sure to upgrade to paid so that you can take advantage of reading our current and past newsletters. We are charging a small fee for these but as two professional writers, we’re treating these like we would any article we’d being commissioned to write. We’ll be putting our two heads together to pack these full of our best tips of information, past experiences, personal examples and more. As a reminder, these newsletters will go out WEEKLY so you’ll be getting four articles from us a month. And if you sign up/ upgrade your subscription to a founders membership, you’ll get monthly access to us where you can ask us questions that came up during the month in our virtual Ask us Anything sessions.

Now onto the good stuff.

What I’m sourcing for this week

AARP Cover Story: Experts to weigh in on top health grievances. This is the priority for the week so will need to connect ASAP. I need experts to comment on common health grievances they hear from patients and how to navigate those. Looking to speak with:

Sleep doctors, internists/general health practitioners, eye doctors, audiologists, orthopedic doctors/Physical therapists, cardiologists, registered dietitians, gastroenterologist (cannot be tied to a brand for this). These are the types of grievances I’d love comments on:

No matter what pillow I use, I wake up with a sore neck.

 4 a.m. and I’m back in the bathroom, peeing.

 Every now and then I wake up in the middle of the night with my calf muscle in a frightfully

painful spasm

 My spouse’s snoring just gets worse and worse.

 I’m barely five minutes into a nice walk and I’m sweating like mad.

 Middle of the afternoon and I can’t resist dozing off.

 Bright sunlight by day and headlights by night make driving ever harder for me.

 I bit into a sandwich made with a crusty roll, and wow, it hurt!

 I seem to have a headache at the end of most days.

 Out of the blue, I start sneezing and my nose starts running.

 Bouts of gassiness seem to come out of nowhere.

 Keys, hat, glasses, mask – I am constantly searching for my everyday things.

 How can I read this? The type is so small!

 Every now and then, a wave of anxiety just washes over me.

 I am constantly having to ask people to speak louder.

 No one in my home is willing to eat quinoa, tofu, kale, or other healthy foods.

Please email your submission, with the story name in the title, to NCPajer@gmail.com

Parade Celebrities for Cover Stories

Parade is now moving to e-issues and we are looking for celebrities with upcoming projects to be featured as cover stars. Looking for mainstream actors and personalities (we rarely do reality stars), with upcoming film and television projects to feature. Must be well-known stars.

Parade: Top Gifts for Adults for 2022

Still looking for some more products to feature on my top gifts for adults of 2022 gift guide for Parade. Would love to hear about what came out this year that is slated to be hot hot hot this holiday season?

Please email your submission, with the story name in the title, to NCPajer@gmail.com

Great Pet Care

Looking for experts to weigh in on top nail caps for cats & best puppy chew toys + looking for product recommendations for both!

Please email your submission, with the story name in the title, to NCPajer@gmail.com

That’s it for now. I will be back in pitching mode middle of the month after I work though some deadlines so will be back in touch with more things I’m looking for soon.

Thanks as always. And I wanted to remind everyone that I am reading your submissions. I may not be able to get back to them all but I read them and appreciate them. And I do save a lot of them so if they aren’t right for the current story I’m working on, I do sometimes reach back out for future stories.

Thanks all!

Nicole

P.S. I wrote this entire thing and then it didn’t save and I went to send and it was gone. So if there are any typos in here, they are just a reflection of how crazzzzzzy trying to work and keep a 71-pound super active dog with stitches in her leg calm has been. :-p