This episode is long and all of it worth your attention, mostly because Allison Tait - who writes as A.L. Tait - is one of the most dynamic people working in Australian writing and publishing, and you can find her bio below. Also because it’s an unusual conversation we have for some of it - and that’s because Allison talks about her contemporary women’s fiction book being rejected by its publisher after it was accepted for publication and she did more work on it. The extra angle is that Sophie w...
Jun 28, 2025•1 hr 25 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Dear listeners-slash-viewers - or ‘liewers’, as Soph has taken to calling you - this episode was recorded in April and because Soph mentioned her upcoming appearance at the Festival of Fiction in it, we had to hold it until the festival was announced, which has just happened! And the reason we mention the festival is that our guest, Mona Farrokhi, is involved with the festival. Mona volunteered a little while ago for writer ‘therapy’, in which writers bring us their writerly challenge and we try...
Jun 21, 2025•54 min•Season 3Ep. 14
Kimberley Freeman is an award-winning writer in children’s, historical and speculative fiction under her birth name Kim Wilkins. She has written several bestselling novels, including Wildflower Hill , Evergreen Falls and Stars Across the Ocean . Her latest novel is The Secret Year of Zara Holt , published by Hachette Australia (read more about the novel below). Kim has an Honours degree, a Masters degree and a PhD from The University of Queensland where she is also a senior lecturer. There is ve...
Jun 14, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 3Ep. 13
Welcome to our atypical episode in which co-hosts Rachael Johns and Sophie Green do not chat amongst ourselves or with guests but, instead, tell you all about some wonderful new books to put on your TBR list or in the TBR pile. They’re organised by genre, as Soph learnt her lesson the first time we did this and shall never again attempt to present them haphazardly. All these books are by Australian (and one New Zealand) author and released in the month of June 2025. GENERAL FICTION Title: Rise a...
Jun 07, 2025•14 min•Season 3Ep. 12
Karly Lane is the bestselling author of 25 rural romance novels - the latest of which is NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK (blurb below) - which have sold over 600 000 copies. When Sophie was a literary agent Karly was her client, but they never actually met, as Karly lives on the mid north coast of New South Wales and at the time she had young children and was fitting in writing books around all the demands of running a household. It turns out Karly’s pace has not slowed, as she’s writing two books a year, ...
Jun 01, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 11
It was Rach who suggested we invite award-winning children’s author, literary agent and writing teacher Danielle Binks onto the podcast. I know Danielle, as we’ve both worked in the publishing industry for years - and we are both industry professionals who have published multiple books - plus I’ve spoken to her RMIT class. The reason Rach wanted to invite her on the pod, though, was to talk about plotless novels, which Danielle says she loves to read and teach but cannot write. When I contacted ...
May 25, 2025•1 hr 16 min•Season 3Ep. 10
This week’s episode wasn’t planned, in that the list of subjects Rachael Johns and I want to cover on the podcast did not include talking to a new literary agent with a background in book marketing - simply because not many new agents come along. Until recently Chloe Berry worked at HQ/HarperCollins, where she masterminded their digital marketing and appeared in quite a bit of it - if you follow them on socials you’ll know her. Chloe also has her own bookish social accounts - @chloeraebooks on T...
May 18, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 9
This week we have a wonderful guest, Dinuka McKenzie , who was willing to talk about perfectionism and procrastination, paired subjects that have been on our list for a while … not that we were procrastinating about discussing them (or were we??). Dinuka was honest about her perfectionism and how it affects her writing, for good and bad, and the good includes the Detective Kate Miles crime series, with novels The Torrent, Taken and Tipping Point published in Australia and the UK. Dinuka was the ...
May 11, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 8
New books mentioned in this episode: General fiction The Remarkable Truth of Alfie Bains by Sarah Clutton (Allen & Unwin) Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley (HarperCollins) Everything Lost, Everything Found by Matthew Hooton (HarperCollins) The Good Mistress by Anne Tiernan (Hachette) – NZ author Boom Town Snap by Jay Martin (Fremantle Press) Romance Salty, Spiced and a Little Bit Nice by Cynthia Timoti (Pan Macmillan) Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty Book 2) by Emma Pignatiello (Penguin Random...
May 03, 2025•16 min•Season 3Ep. 7
There have been several well-known books written about creativity. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a classic. Rachael and I talked about Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic in an episode last year. Both of them deserve the hype and longevity, and there are others too of course. None of the books I’ve read about creativity or writing, even a book that might be classified as inspirational self-help (or perhaps I just made up that category), has quite the combination of warmth, compassion, urgency a...
Apr 27, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 3Ep. 6
‘It’s solving overwhelm’. Our guest this week, novelist Karina May , is an experienced user of writing software Scrivener and the above is one of the reasons why she uses it. Rachael has tried using it; I never have. Will I be convinced to try by the end of this episode? Listen and find out! We cover this subject because we like to have a theme to these episodes, and mainly because we thought it would be interesting and useful to chat about. And we also wanted to talk to Karina about her latest ...
Apr 19, 2025•1 hr 5 min
Not that long ago I put a message on social media basically saying that Rachael Johns says she gets ‘writing therapy’ from me and asking if anyone else would like some. We had responses! Thus, this will be the first of several episodes of such ‘therapy’ [NB: neither Rach nor I is a therapist, although teaching yoga can feel like it sometimes]. Our guest for this episode is Emily Paull , whose debut novel, The Distance Between Dreams , is historical fiction and out now from Fremantle Press. Like ...
Apr 05, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 4
This is our first episode dedicated to books that are being released, as we’d like you to know what’s coming out so you can find your next favourite read! As it’s the first one, and organised quickly, there’s no order to how we present the books, other than sequestering April titles from titles released between January and March (as we decided to do those too). Please note that these are the titles we were told about and the list is not comprehensive. Unfortunately there isn't space here to list...
Mar 29, 2025•40 min•Season 3Ep. 3
We like to have a subject on Dear Rach & Soph, so when we learnt about Sydney author (originally from Canada) Catherine Greer and her novel The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe (Allen & Unwin, March 2025), and saw her website Love Our Age , we asked if she’d be interested in talking about stories for women in later life. What followed was a wide-ranging conversation about Catherine’s life, her interests as a writer, and her extensive writing background, which includes several works of non-fiction...
Mar 22, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Season 3Ep. 2
When we started Dear Rach & Soph last year, we named it that because we hoped readers (and writers) would send us questions. For this first episode of season 3, we have mainly reader questions to answer and one writer question. Plus we generally have a chat, per usual. Coming up this season we have some fabulous guests to talk about a range of subjects and we’ve had some writers volunteer for ‘writer therapy’ so you’ll see/hear that too. Plus we’re adding an episode a month to cover newly re...
Mar 15, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Rachael Johns has a brand new book! And it is called THE BAD BRIDESMAID. Those who read and loved Rachael’s novel THE OTHER BRIDGET, which was released last year, will recognise the character Fred, who is Bridget/Bee’s best friend. In THE BAD BRIDESMAID (TBB for short) Fred has the starring role. TBB is a delightful rom com that you will not want to finish, and has a quite lovely hero in the form of Leo. You can find a blurb for TBB on a gazillion bookseller websites so we're not going to reprod...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 16
We had such a great time chatting to Rachael Treasure on episode 10 of this season that we thought, heyyyyy - let’s ask her back! And we also wanted to have her back because in that first chat we barely scratched the surface of the richness of Rachael T’s life and endeavours. In this episode we catch up on Rachael T’s latest daring adventures, as well as talk about what we’ll be reading over the Christmas break [NB: we recorded the ep in late November as it was the only time the three of us were...
Dec 14, 2024•1 hr 21 min•Season 2Ep. 15
This week Rach and Soph discuss the Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey and also delve into whether or not we usually read award-winning books and why/why not. We’d love to know if you read them or do not, and why, so please let us know in the comments! Also for the comments: an answer to a question Sophie poses near the start … about the title of her 2025 novel. It was to be called one thing - a title she gave it at inception - but now it’s not. There are some options. Which s...
Dec 07, 2024•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 14
From time to time on this pod and elsewhere Rachael Johns mentions her virtual assistant, Annie Bucknall. Through her business Well Creative Annie helps Rach with her social media, website and newsletter, and recently moved that newsletter to Substack. Rach and Soph have been talking about Substack, especially about the fact that there’s a lot of book coverage on there at a time when book coverage is disappearing from mainstream media. We have read some opinion pieces (on Substack) about how tra...
Nov 30, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 13
We like to have a subject to speak about on this podcast, even when we have a guest. Rach raised the idea of ‘do you read your own reviews?’ and said she had one guest in mind: Sally Hepworth . Sally not only reads reviews of her books but is especially fond of the one-star reviews, as she talks about in this episode. Indeed, she is very fond of one-star reviews. And she and Rach both very much do not like three-star reviews. You’ll have to listen to find out whether or not Soph pays attention t...
Nov 23, 2024•57 min•Season 2Ep. 12
BookTok is now an entrenched part of bookselling and publishing - it is not a temporary glitch, as it may have appeared to be during the pandemic when readers were looking for escapism. The genres that are at the core of BookTok - romance and romantasy - remain popular, and may have been said to have increased in popularity. Certainly TikTok isn’t going away and nor is #booktok. Rach and Soph wanted to find out more about the phenomenon from someone who has been involved in it for a while: Sophi...
Nov 16, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 11
From Sophie: I met Rachael Treasure for the first time in the middle of this year on the Gold Coast, as we were both attending authors at Rachael Johns's Readers Retreat. I've read Rachael T's books, including her now-classic Jillaroo , which can be said to be the first ever rural romance (even though she wouldn't necessarily classify it as that). To say that Rachael T is a delightful human being is to seriously undersell her. She is whimsical, hilarious, astute, generous and hugely warm hearted...
Nov 09, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Thanks to lovely reader Elaine in New Zealand, whom Rach and Soph both met at the RJ Book Club Readers Retreat on the Gold Coast this year, for this question that Rach and I answer in this week’s episode: ‘Which has been the book you've written that you've most enjoyed writing, and did reader feedback reflect your own feelings?’ There’s a bit in there about the one time Soph drew heavily on her own near-death experience to for a chapter in THE SHELLY BAY LADIES SWIMMING CIRCLE and then subsequen...
Nov 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Sometimes Rachael Johns and I wonder if we have any listeners/viewers (well, not really - I can see the stats so I know you're out there, and thank you for listening/watching!). Then a question or two comes in and, lo, we are reassured that there are, indeed, listeners/viewers. Such is the case with this week's episode, in which Rach answers a question from Nina Kenwood about community building and we both answer a question from a listener who wished to remain anonymous. That question is about l...
Oct 26, 2024•56 min•Season 2Ep. 8
This week we talk about writing craft books. Rach loves them - indeed, she collects them, and if you watch this episode on video you’ll see the collection. She’s also read a lot of them. Soph have not read too many but likes what she's read thus far. Possibly the most important information we could convey in this post is the list of books mentioned in the episode, and this is it in the order of mentioning: Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody Pride and Prej...
Oct 19, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Dear Rach & Soph - podcast Hosted by bestselling Australian novelists Rachael Johns and Sophie Green Rach is currently writing a book about twins who are adopted. As can happen for an author, she needed to do some research. Which is where Soph comes in … she's adopted. It’s not something you’ll find in her author bio because for her it’s a mundane fact. She's always known. But it is out of the ordinary, and it is complex, and there is often heartbreak on at least one side of it, and there ca...
Oct 12, 2024•56 min•Season 2Ep. 6
This week on the podcast Rachael Johns and Sophie Green talk about points of view in novels: first, third - and the little-seen second (and Sophie cites Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney as an example of this point of view). We also discuss use of past and present tense within these points of view, and whether the point of view (and tense) choose us or we choose them. So this is a 'craft' episode, and we do get feedback from listeners that you like us talking about craft, so here you go! ...
Oct 05, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 5
This week Rachael Johns and Sophie Green talk to author Christine Wells, and the theme is 'staying published' - that is, what it has taken for Christine to stay published over the course of her career. She's published 16 books with four different publishers in the United States and Australia, so she has quite a lot of experience to draw on! There's more about Christine and her latest novel, THE PARIS GOWN, below. *** Christine Wells writes historical fiction featuring strong, fascinating women. ...
Sep 28, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Even if you don’t read spicy books, as they’ve come to be known, you’ve no doubt read spicy scenes in other books (and we're using the term ‘spicy’ instead of the other because we’d have to use an asterisk in that to avoid internet-consequences, plus we're sure you understand what we mean when we say ‘spicy’). If you are a writer of spicy books, you’ve definitely written them, and even if you don’t write spicy books you may have written spicy scenes anyway. Soph reads spicy books. Both Rach and ...
Sep 21, 2024•55 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In this episode we talk to Lainie Anderson , author of the new novel The Death of Dora Black: A Petticoat Police Mystery . We had a lovely time, as Lainie was warm and engaging and very, very interesting. If you'd like to see Sophie's review of the book, it's here . If you'd like to read more about the book and Lainie, you're in luck! That information appears below. ABOUT THE DEATH OF DORA BLACK A charming, uplifting cosy murder mystery inspired by the true story of Australia's pioneering police...
Sep 14, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 2
