Write Now! Workshop Podcast: Write A Book, Change The World

EPISODE 133I Today’s guest is Samuel Parker, a suspense/thriller writer talking to us today about his latest book, Border Son. I really enjoyed this story, possibly because it wasn’t the “usual” type of suspense book I’m used to. Samuel says it’s not the usual build-up-and-crescendo-three-times kind of structure. He sees the scenes and writes to…

EPISODE 132I Suzanne Woods Fisher is back with us again! In October 2018, she spoke about strong Quaker women, and today we’re talking about the Amish. Suzanne’s interest in the Amish comes partly through her grandfather, who was raised Plain. There is an appeal to simplifying your life, but there’s more to our fascination than…

Elizabeth Goddard is the award-winning author of over 40 novels of adventure, romance, and suspense. Today we talk about her latest book, Never Let Go, book one in her new series, Uncommon Justice. The main character in Never Let Go is a forensic genealogist trying to find a missing person. Elizabeth first heard of this…

It’s the first Sunday of the month, so it’s time for another Encouraging Words episode! Today I share about a message I heard at church last week from a guest speaker, Paster Steve Warren of C3 Church Amsterdam. His message was on vision – having a vision for the year, and for your life. He…

New author Erin Bartels joins us today to talk about her novel, We Hope For Better Things. While this is her first published book, Erin has been involved in the publishing industry for over fifteen years. She shares her story of how the book came about, how long she researched it before she started writing,…

Today’s fabulous guest is my own audiobook narrator, Catherine Gaffney! Catherine is a stage and screen actress, and a voice over artist and audiobook narrator. Catherine joins us from her new studio to talk about how you can find the best audiobook narrator for your book. We covered a lot of areas, but some of…

Today’s guest is the fun and multi-talented writer, Sean Gaffney. He has written professionally for theater, film, television, and the web. He has also taught most of these forms of writing for universities and arts organizations. In our interview, Sean and I cover a wide range of topics, but it all comes back to one…

Forensic specialist Jennifer Dornbush is back on the show! You may remember her talking to us about how to turn a movie into a novel back in September. This time she’s helping us understand how to plot out a mystery, thriller, suspense, or crime story. Jennifer has a couple of acronyms that will help us…

Although I find it embarrassing to share such painful and embarrassing and deeply personal parts of my life, I have not found much truly helpful information about how to recover from burnout on the Internet. So I’m sharing with you anything that I’ve found to be useful as I recover. I had a real hit-bottom…

A friend of mine asked me to help her understand a little about publishing because her father had written a novel and she wanted to make sure he didn’t get taken advantage of. This is some of the information I shared with her. There are two main ways to publish a book – traditional publishing,…

Two weeks ago, we talked about how to create and prioritize a short list of your most important goals for the year. Today, we’ll discuss how to break down big goals into small pieces you can work on every day or week or month. There are two main ways to do this – plan toward…

Will Dages joins us today from Findaway Voices, part of the larger company, Findaway. Will is Head of Product there, which is perfect for him since he’s an avid audiobook listener and the kind of guy you can tell really wants to help you, the author, succeed. After a quick background into how they started…

The beginning of a new season – be it a week or month or year or whatever – is quite often a good time to stop and think about what you’ve accomplished recently, what worked, what didn’t, and what you want to accomplish in the next season. In this episode, I suggest several ways to…

I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. Amanda is a popular musician, and her indie approach to her music and her fans reminds me a lot of the indie approach to self-publishing books. The thing is…Amanda isn’t afraid to ask her fans for what she needs.…

Today’s episode is taken from a live writing workshop I taught at my church in Malmö, Sweden, in November 2018. In this first portion of the talk, I discuss the “why” of your writing and how that “why” will help you choose topics and stories that will impact your audience to a greater degree. (See…

Today’s author, Nancy Naigle, is a delight to talk to! She’s got such great stories about how she started writing, how she got involved with Hallmark Publishing, the excitement of seeing Hallmark movies adapted from two of her books (Christmas Joy and Hope at Christmas, published by St. Martin’s Griffin), and how fun it is…

New author Alys Murray joins us today to talk about her first book, The Christmas Company, released by Hallmark Publishing in October 2018. Alys shares her journey from finding Hallmark’s call for unagented writers to submitting her manuscript to finding an agent to selling two more books – all in short order. Quite the exciting…

Stacey Donovan is back as today’s guest – but this time as an author! Stacey wrote the first original novel published by Hallmark Publishing, Sunrise Cabin. She also writes under the name Bryn Donovan. Last time we talked to Stacey, she told us about her job as Director of Hallmark Publishing and what kinds of…

Today, we’re back again with Shawn Smucker, but this time we’re talking about nonfiction and his new memoir, Once We Were Strangers. It’s the story of how Shawn came to have a friendship with a Syrian refugee in Shawn’s hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and how their friendship changed both men. This book moved me like…

Advent is here, and many people around the world are preparing for Christmas! Others are preparing for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve. Families are making plans to get together, to bake a lot, cook a lot, shop a lot. There’s a lot going on this month! In addition to the holiday planning, many…