The author of 49 books and counting, Graham Hurley returns with his latest WWII thriller The Blood of Others. He takes us through his extraordinary career and discusses writing in a genre that he wasn't a fan of, writing a series without a recurring lead character and the benefits of long publisher lunches.
Fiona is an acclaimed bestselling author, whose books have sold millions of copies and been translated into more than thirty different languages worldwide. Her latest novel is The Cypress Maze, set in Tuscany and is the perfect book for these long winter nights. Fiona has a degree in Geography, has worked as an IT systems engineer, then in PR and marketing and the wine industry and as a yoga teacher... but writing is when it all made sense.
Mira V Shah is a British-African-Indian author and legal writer who lives in North London with her husband, three good dogs and one mediocre cat. She studied History at the University of Warwick before practising as a City lawyer. During the pandemic, Mira wrote her first ever novel, HER, a psychological drama, which explores themes of female friendship, flawed perception, trauma and race. Mira tells about writing the novel during lockdown, telling the story from two different perspectives, and ...
Hailing from Scotland's wet and wild west coast, Michael writes sweeping and epic fantasy and since 2018 has sold over 330,000 books topping Amazon and Audible charts along the way. He’s also worked for Bloomsbury publishing, and is the co-founder of digital publisher Portal Books. He’s written The Dragon’s Blade trilogy and now returns with Defiant, the third book in the ongoing Songs of Chaos series. Michael tells us how he’s found success in epic fantasy and epic audiobooks, and how he’s take...
Ivy Ngeow was born and raised in Malaysia and is a multi-award winning author. Her latest novel The American Boyfriend was longlisted for the Avon x Mushens Entertainment Prize for Commercial Fiction Writers of Colour 2022. Ivy is a musician, she’s also written non-fiction cookery books, diet books, interior design books, she sells tie-in merch for her fiction, she’s a powerhouse of creativity and she tells us how it all began with a house full of boring books.
We celebrate seven years of the podcast with the amazing Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which has sold over 6 million copies worldwide. She returns with a new novel, Sisters Under The Rising Sun, which transports the reader to the women in Japanese POW camps in WWII and is another incredibly powerful story. Heather talks about the role of listening in her work, creating fiction from reality, and what she learned from screenwriting.
Mountain Ash Press is the brainchild of authors Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Caroline Topperman who wanted to bring a combination of writer services and publication experience to create a new kind of Hybrid publisher. They talk about the challenges of being an independent publisher and what they can offer to authors.
Julie Owen Moylan is a novelist and filmmaker. Her graduation short film ‘BabyCakes’ scooped Best Film awards at the Swansea Film Festival where Ken Russell was a judge! And Julie has written two novels, THAT GREEN EYED GIRL and 73 DOVE STREET, which was released just this summer. Julie talks about how she knows when it’s the right time to tell a story, about her pivotal careers day at school, and why her tiny, weird obsessions make all the difference.
The award-winning Gareth L. Powell returns to the podcast with Descendant Machine his new science fiction epic. He also tells about working with Peter F Hamilton, how starting a commercial thriller led him to writing his most personal book, how he wrote a book on writing almost by accident, and he gives us some insight to the future of authors and social media, but how being positive pays dividends.
Jesse Sutanto is the award-winning, bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers and I’m Not Done With You Yet. Jesse tells how she learned about human behaviour through real estate and weddings, why she doesn’t dwell on projects that are on submission, and why she writes in 15 minute sprints she calls pure writing.
We are delighted to welcome back Suzie Edge for this special episode of the podcast! Suzie is a phenomenon on TikTok and after her smash hit debut book Mortal Monarchs she returns with Vital Organs, a wonderful dissection of history’s strangest body parts. Suzie takes us through her incredible career so far and reveals the role that vital organs, poo and wee and have played in getting her the ultimate accolade: an AI-generated biography on Amazon.
Harriet Muncaster is an award-winning author and illustrator. Her Isadora Moon books have sold over two million copies worldwide. And in 2020, Muncaster also published Bad and Glittering, the first part of her middle-grade series Victoria Stitch. And now she’s here with the latest Victoria Stitch book Dark & Sparkling. Harriet reveals how she develops her incredible characters, shares how she divides her time between writing and illustration, and how she was driven to create her own worlds. ...
Sarah Moorhead returns to the podcast with The Treatment, her extraordinary new novel that tackles issues of justice and revenge with compassion and heart. She reveals how she got back into writing after being dropped by her publisher and agent, and how being an idealist fuels her desire to keep telling great stories whatever it takes.
In this very special episode, international bestselling author Linwood Barclay returns to the podcast to tease us with details of his new thriller The Lie Maker. He gives us tips aplenty for writers, reveals how a correspondence with Ross Macdonald changed his career, why he loves collaborating with editors, and if he’ll ever co-write with some up-and-coming author called Stephen King… Oh, and stay tuned to the very end for a little bonus...
Teresa Driscoll is a former BBC TV news presenter whose psychological thrillers have sold over two million copies across the world. Her first thriller I Am Watching You hit Kindle Number 1 in the UK, USA and Australia and has sold more than a million copies in English alone. For decades, Teresa was a journalist working across newspapers, magazines and television.
Damian Dibben is an acclaimed British author whose novels have been translated into twenty-seven languages and published in over forty countries. His series The History Keepers was an international publishing phenomenon. Dibben originally trained as an artist and scenic designer before becoming an actor and screenwriter. The Colour Storm is his second novel to explore seismic events of the past and is a feast for the senses.
AJ Pearce’s debut novel Dear Mrs Bird was a Sunday Times Bestseller and she returns with the third in the Emmy Lake series, Mrs Porter Calling. AJ tells us how writing started as a hobby, how it all very nearly went wrong with a plotless romcom, and how the Emmy Lake books were inspired by a chance find on eBay.
Jeremy Szal is the author of the Common trilogy from Gollancz, which includes Stormblood, Blindspace, and Wolfskin and he’s the author of over fifty science-fiction short stories, translated into six languages. He has a new novella, SCREAM IN BLUE, set in the same world of The Common, and he’s also one of a number of authors who are speaking out about their mental health and how it can be affected by the rollercoaster of being published...
Antony Johnston is a New York Times bestselling author and the creator of Atomic Blonde, the comic book originally published as The Coldest City that was adapted into the movie starring Charlize Theron. For over twenty years he’s written books, graphic novels, video games, film, and more... And now he’s back with something a bit different: The Dog Sitter Detective is the first of a cosy crime series featuring Gwinny Tuffel, a retired actress who takes up dog-sitting to make ends meet, but discov...
Freya Berry’s writing career began as a journalist at Reuters. After a stint in New York reporting on the 2016 US election she left to write her acclaimed first novel, The Dictator’s Wife. With her new novel, The Birdcage Library, Freya has ended up creating a love story and a detective mystery, two things she never planned to write. Freya tells about the challenges of writing two timelines, the importance of a finding a state of half-focus, and digging deeper to make your writing truthful....
Heide Goody and Iain Grant have been writing together since 2011 and are best known for their Clovenhoof series, where Satan is made redundant from Hell and sent to live in Birmingham. They tell us how their collaborative process has evolved and how they took everything they’ve learned over the years to launch their new Cozy Craft Mysteries series under the pen name Millie Ravensworth
Paul Austin Ardoin is the USA TODAY Bestselling Author of The Fenway Stevenson Mysteries and the Woodhead & Becker Mysteries. And now Paul has a new non-fiction book: From Zero to Four Figures: Making $1000 a Month Self-Publishing Fiction, which brilliantly demystifies the process of making money as an indie author. If you've published one or more books but are struggling to get sales then this is the book for you. We discuss setting goals, financial realities, meeting reader expectations, u...
Katherine Faulkner’s second thriller The Other Mothers takes us into the school playground and makes it a terrifying place with dark cliques and murderous secrets. Katherine tells us how finding structure and accountability helped her write her debut and how she discovered that the most important person in any novel is the reader.
Sunday Times bestselling author Katie Fforde brings us her latest novel One Enchanted Evening, which was inspired by a cookery course. Katie has sold over 4.5 million copies in the UK alone and credits the Romantic Novelists’ Association with launching her career and she received their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023. Katie tells us how she started reading Mills & Boon books on the sly, finding time to write with a busy life, and her secret desire to write in another genre...
JD Kirk is the pen name multi-award-winning author, screenwriter, and writer of comics, Barry Hutchison. When he was nine, a kindly librarian wrote his name on the spine of a notebook in which he’d written a terrible short story, and put it on the shelf changing his life. Barry talks about writing over 200 books in 10 years, ignoring the naysayers, and how discovering how a condition called aphantasia may have affected his writing. Mr D reveals his secret superpower, and Mr Stay rants about comi...
Tim Lott is the multi award winning author of ten novels and a memoir, The Scent of Dried Roses, and has been teaching writing for the last ten years, as a lecturer, teacher and mentor. With his new book, Yes! No! But Wait...!: The One Thing You Need to Know To Write a Novel , Tim has produced a book on writing that is honest, practical and genuinely useful.
Andrea Dunlop began her career in publishing as a publicist for the likes of Doubleday before becoming an author and consultant based in Seattle. Her latest novel, Women Are The Fiercest Creatures, is the story of three women written out of a successful tech startup’s history. Andrea worked for over 15 years in publishing and talks honestly about being on both sides of the publishing experience.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is what search engines like Google use to pair questions with answers. If you want to be found online, then understanding how SEO works is essential. In this deep dive, SEO expert Kelsey E Meyers offers simple and effective tips for authors to help them and their books appear at the top of search results.
James Naughtie’s voice as presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme will be familiar to listeners all over the world. As well as writing non-fiction, he’s the author of the Will Flemyng thrillers the latest of which, The Spy Across the Water, takes readers from Washington DC to Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. James talks us through his unique approach to spy fiction, and the importance of a sense of place in his writing.
Scarlett Brade was born in London, but as a child she spent her summers in Toronto where she fell in love with reading. She self-published her first novel aged twenty-three, but then decided to experience life a little more before returning with her amazi
