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A book about the Treaty of Waitangi was the big winner at Wednesday night's Children's Book Awards. Author Ross Calman spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.

Meet Tricia Copeland. She is an award-winning author of books for youth and young adults. Mostly she writes fantasy books, but as we learn during this episode, she also does write some romance books.   Tricia says that as a child she hated writing. Even so, she went to school and eventually she went to college where she received a degree in Microbiology. She also attained a Master's degree. She then went to work for a chemical company. After four years she found herself beginning a journey of technical writing and writing patterns and supporting materials.   After a few years Tricia became a stay-at-home-mom for a time. She tells us how she loved to tell stories and entertain her children.   We learn how she wrote her first fiction book series in 2015-16 about her time facing anorexia. In real life, she faced this and overcame it. She then began writing fantasy youth books and realized not only that she could write, but that she did not hate writing at all. She has written several series and has plans for more.     About the Guest:   Tricia Copeland is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of Kingdom of Embers, To be Fae Queen, Lovelock Ones, and Azreya, Aztec Priestess, and dozens of other titles. She is the host of the Finding the Magic Book Podcast who weaves magical stories about love, courage, and finding your passion.   Tricia began her author journey with a women's fiction series, the Being Me series, which is an adaptation of her experience with anorexia. Afterwards she quickly pivoted to her favorite genre, fantasy. Her young adult fantasy series highlight themes including resilience, perseverance, faith, loyalty, trust, friendship, family, and love. They include the Kingdom Journals and Realm Chronicles series that find witches, vampires, and fae fighting an evil spirit determined to end them all. She tempers the high stakes drama in these books with her fun rom coms in the Perfect romance series.   Tricia Copeland believes in finding magic. She thinks magic infuses every aspect of our lives, whether it is the magic of falling in love, discovering a new passion, seeing a beautiful sunset, or reading a book that transports us to another world. An avid runner and Georgia native, Tricia now lives with her family and four-legged friends in Colorado. Find all her titles including contemporary romance, now penned under Maria Jane, young adult fantasy, and dystopian fiction at www.triciacopeland.com.   Ways to connect with Tricia:   https://triciacopeland.com https://www.facebook.com/TriciaCopelandAuthor/ https://www.instagram.com/authortriciacopeland/ https://twitter.com/tcbrzostowicz https://www.tiktok.com/@triciacopelandauthor https://www.youtube.com/@triciacopelandauthor https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tricia-Copeland/author/B00YHN5Q4G https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14055439.Tricia_Copeland https://www.bookbub.com/authors/tricia-copeland     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson ** 01:17 Well, hello everyone. We're really glad to have you here, wherever you may happen to be listening in from. We're really glad that you're listening to unstoppable mindset. I'm your host, Michael hingson, and our guest today is Tricia Copeland. Tricia is a prolific author. I use that word absolutely without any any concern, a prolific author of children's books, especially in the fantasy world. So she has been doing this a while and and also has an interesting story just of her life to tell. So we're going to go into all of that and delve in and see where we go. So Tricia, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Tricia Copeland ** 02:05 Thank you, Michael, I appreciate you having me, and I do want to make a little edit to that intro. Okay, go ahead. My books are young adult to New Adult books, so ages 13 plus mostly, all right,   Michael Hingson ** 02:19 so young adult to new adult. All right, that's fair. So how do you feel that your books fall into the range of things like the Harry Potter series and so on, sort of the same age groups,   Tricia Copeland ** 02:40 right? Genre adjacent, I have a series, The Kingdom Journal series, which includes three witches that have to break a curse on the witch lines. So the witches have to find each other as well as figure out how to break the curse using various forms of magic. So not really the same as Harry Potter, but definitely with with the witches, and the kind of contemporary world that Harry Potter is. But actually, I won't say that, because I haven't I think Harry Potter is mostly in the contemporary world, right? I didn't read all the books. I have to admit that he's   Michael Hingson ** 03:18 somewhat in the contemporary world, but, but I was thinking more of from a standpoint of the same type of age group.   Tricia Copeland ** 03:25 Yes, I think a younger reader. I think people started reading Harry Potter maybe around 10 or 11. And these books have older teenagers to start, age 1718, so 13 Plus is a good indicator. I think the other   Michael Hingson ** 03:42 thing I would observe about Harry Potter is that there are a lot of people who aren't necessarily teenagers or young adults, including me, who have read them and enjoyed them. I think that that Harry Potter certainly brought an interesting dimension to reading for teenagers especially, and hopefully young adults, because a lot of people did catch on to them, and they they had a great theme, and you do some of the same sorts of things by virtue of the fact of what you're writing and who you're writing it for,   Tricia Copeland ** 04:17 right? They definitely caught adult eyes and hearts and minds too   Michael Hingson ** 04:23 well, tell us somewhat about the early Trisha growing up and so on. Love to learn a little bit more about you, and then we can talk about whatever we feel is relevant to talk about the early Tricia,   Tricia Copeland ** 04:35 right? Well, I grew up in rural South Georgia, small town in south Georgia, and always loved reading and hiking and the outdoors, and very quickly, knew that maybe I didn't want to be in a small town forever. So I went to college in Atlanta, and I got a degree in microbiology, and from there, I got a master's. Degree, and I started my career in Central Research and Development at a chemical company, a large chemical company. So I was looking at making chemicals from microbes. And that was very exciting. That was my dream job that I'd always wanted. So that was very cool to be able to achieve that goal, and I actually didn't like writing until I started doing more technical writing with papers and patents.   Michael Hingson ** 05:29 Technical writing can be boring, but people could make it more exciting than oftentimes they do. I would say I've had to do some of it. I understand   Tricia Copeland ** 05:39 well, you have to like the topic, right? If you don't like the topic, you're not going to like the paper,   Michael Hingson ** 05:45 right? But also, I think that a lot of technical writers write and it's all very factual, but I think even in technical writing, it would be better if writers could do some things to draw in readers. And I've always felt that about textbooks. For example, my master's degree and bachelor's degree are in physics, and I've always maintained that the the physics people who write these books, who are oftentimes fairly substantial characters in in the genre, if you will, or in the field, could do a lot more to interest people in science and physics by rather than just doing these technical books, telling some stories along the way, and bringing people in and making people relate more to the topic. And they don't do that like I think at least that they should.   Tricia Copeland ** 06:36 I guess that can be said, maybe for every technical Yeah. Area,   Michael Hingson ** 06:43 yeah, it would be nice if technical writers spend a little bit of time, but of course, then the other side of it is that the industry doesn't want that. So what do you   Tricia Copeland ** 06:54 do? It may be a catch 22 on that one   Michael Hingson ** 06:56 might be, but that's okay. So how long did you stay working at the tech at the chemical companies and so on?   Tricia Copeland ** 07:06 I was in the lab for four years, and then I moved into the patent Legal Group. So I began my career as a Patent Agent, and now that's what I do for a living. My day job is that I help clients draft and file their patent applications.   Michael Hingson ** 07:22 So you have your own business doing that. I do, yes, oh,   Tricia Copeland ** 07:28 well, I write by day and I write by night.   Michael Hingson ** 07:32 Yeah, well, that can be pretty exciting, though. You get all sorts of interesting things to write about. I   Tricia Copeland ** 07:40 do I meet a lot of cool people that are inventing cool things.   Michael Hingson ** 07:44 So here's the question, do you ever find that what you write about during the day influences you, and you want to use some of that, or the general concepts of some of that, at night, when you're doing your your fiction writing?   Tricia Copeland ** 07:58 I haven't done that yet, I did write one dystopian fiction about a viral pandemic, and that touched on a little bit of my background in microbiology and genetics, but not anything that my clients have done   Michael Hingson ** 08:19 well. So you got into the patent field when you when you started doing that initially, were you doing it for a company, or did you just leap out on your own and start to have your own business?   Speaker 1 ** 08:30 Yes, I was doing that for a company. Okay? And how long did you do that? I was at that company   Tricia Copeland ** 08:35 about a year and a half. And at the time, we lived in Pennsylvania and outside of Philly. So then we had a job change, and we moved to Denver, so I took a little time off to be with my kids before I started my business.   Michael Hingson ** 08:53 So how long ago did you start the business?   Speaker 1 ** 08:57 In 2012 so 13 years doing it a while? Wow,   Michael Hingson ** 09:01 okay, and obviously you're having some success because you're still doing it.   Tricia Copeland ** 09:05 I am. Yes, I love helping my clients, and feel like I can definitely give them a value add   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 if you're not giving something away. What's probably the most interesting patent that you helped somebody work on attaining   Tricia Copeland ** 09:24 I will say, I worked with an inventor a year ago, and amazing man, he had had his career in education and teaching, and he developed a set of blocks to help people or Help kids. I should say, learn the parts of speech so you could put the together, the blocks, whether it was a subject, verb, pronoun, noun, adjective, adverb, and I learned parts of speech that I never knew existed from helping them with this application, and I was very excited. To help him get his patent. That's kind of cool.   Michael Hingson ** 10:04 Yeah, I am fair. I'm not sure I know all the parts of speech, but I remember being involved in high school well and in elementary school and diagramming sentences and learning a lot about the different or a number of the different parts of speech. Not sure I necessarily remember all of them extremely well, so I probably split infinitives and well, what do you do?   Tricia Copeland ** 10:28 Yes, I hated sentence structures.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 Well, so what got you started then, since you were writing patents for people and so on, and helping people in securing patents. What got you then started in dealing with fiction writing, right?   Tricia Copeland ** 10:49 Well, when my kids were very young, I was a stay at home mom, and most of my days were spent chasing them around, occupying them, entertaining them, shuttling them from one place to another. So I realized in the evenings I was bored. I did my mind didn't have enough to occupy it. And I was about, I think it was about 38 and, you know, looking at my 40 year old birthday and thinking, huh, well, and I maybe it was like my 20 year high school reunion. I don't know why it coincide coincided, but I started thinking about my early college years I developed anorexia, and thinking about that time in my life and how poignant it was that I was able to recover from that disease and really gain some life skills from that experience. So I started a story that was a fictionalized account of my experience with anorexia and recovering for anorexia. So my first series, called the being me series, is a four book series about a character named Amanda who develops anorexia and then is able to recover.   Michael Hingson ** 12:01 So what caused if you understand, or, man, I don't know a lot about anorexia, Anorexia, and probably have some misconceptions about what I'm about to ask, but what, what caused it? Why did you develop that condition?   Tricia Copeland ** 12:16 Well, there's a lot of I mean, it happens differently for a lot of people, I think anorexia is a lot about control and having control over your environment. And I got there was a number of factors that I was depressed and not happy about not feeling like I was achieving, maybe what I should be achieving, and instead of someone might have turned to alcohol or drugs to alleviate those stressful feelings. I channeled all that into Okay? Well, if I'm just thin and if I just look good enough, then everything will be fine. And obviously, once your brain starts to get in that cycle, it just compounds on itself. You can't stop yourself from thinking that way. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 13:05 and what helped you get out of doing that? Was it writing or what? What really caused you to realize that ain't the way to go?   Tricia Copeland ** 13:16 Yeah, I almost died. That was it very it was a low point. And really, you know, if I didn't do something different, if I didn't let people help me do something different, I would not have made it. So really, you know, a lot of that is like educating people how serious eating disorders are, as well as how helpless sometimes the person that is experiencing them is in being able to help themselves.   Michael Hingson ** 13:48 And you said that this happened somewhat in your your college years.   Tricia Copeland ** 13:53 Yes, I was 20.   Michael Hingson ** 13:56 Were there a lot of pressures were, were people criticizing you in any way that helped contribute to it, or was it sort of really   Tricia Copeland ** 14:04 internally? Part of it was internally. Part of it was, you know, what I thought people's expectations I was in. I was at a engineering school and I was a biology major, so maybe that wasn't the best place for me. Everybody was very high in performing. Yeah, yeah. There are many, many factors, I think, and just my my brain that was not processing things, maybe as realistically as they could have been processed.   Michael Hingson ** 14:33 But what you eventually did about it was to write a series about it, so clearly you were able to move beyond it, and then, if you will, talk about it,   Tricia Copeland ** 14:45 right, right? So I went into inpatient recovery, and then was able to get the help that I needed with therapist and psycho psychiatrist and support groups, and that was a big help. And then, yes, 20 years later, I. Wrote a series about it.   Michael Hingson ** 15:02 Well, that's pretty cool. And again, it's I'm always one who admires people who are able to and willing to talk about things. I went to an event last year was the Marshfield, Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival, and the Cherry Blossom Festival, which happens every April, is a celebration of American history, and they'll bring people in who have some relationship to an historic event, or who have relatives who were so for example, the great grandson of President Grant was at this event, but one of the people who was there was a former secret service agent who rode in the car behind John Kennedy when he was in Dallas and assassinated, and it took him 45 years to get to the point where he could come out of his experiences enough to start to talk about it, and I just have always admired people who do that. For me, being in the World Trade Center on September 11 and getting out, I never really viewed it as all that traumatic, but I guess it was, but my way to deal with it was, and I realized it much later, but we had so many newspaper reporters who wanted to know about the blind guy who got out of the World Trade Center. I talked about it, I mean, answered everyone's questions. And that was ironically, I love to pick on the media, but ironically, it was the media that really probably helped me move forward from September 11 the most.   Tricia Copeland ** 16:41 Yeah, I can imagine that was a lot of processing that you were able to do, as you talked about it.   Michael Hingson ** 16:48 People asked all sorts of questions, some really good questions, some not so good questions. And we got to observe all sorts of different types of press people. We had one Italian film crew who came to our house, there were 13 people, most of whom didn't really seem to do a whole lot, but they were there. And then there was a Japanese crew that came. And I think there were two people. It's just amazing what you see and what you learn. And for me and my wife, both now my late wife, but both, both of us love to observe and study and really think about what all these people are doing and how they do it, and we use it as ways to help us learn more about things, if you will, studying and being a student. I think of life as always an important thing,   Tricia Copeland ** 17:39 right, yeah, and I guess everybody reacts different to trauma and how you can process that everybody needs a little bit different. But yes, if you could look at things through a learning lens, that can definitely help too.   Michael Hingson ** 17:52 So you wrote the being me series. How many books are in that series? Four books, four books. Okay, and so, how long ago did you write those?   Tricia Copeland ** 18:03 I published them between 2015 and 2016   Michael Hingson ** 18:07 Okay, did you self publish or I do? Yes, you still do. Okay, great. Well, all right, and then what? What made you decide to then continue and start going into sort of teenage and so on, fiction and fantasy and so on, right?   Tricia Copeland ** 18:31 I realized that I just loved writing, and it was something that I didn't want to stop doing. So when I looked around for my next genre to write in, it was very obviously fantasy. For me. I read fantasy from a very young age. I loved Merlin and King authors legends and the Lord of the Rings and all of those books as a young person and a young adult, and that's just what I wanted to write. So my first book, interestingly enough, my editor sent it back to me and said, This is not fantastical enough. You need to make it more paranormal. So it took a minute to make that switch. What   Michael Hingson ** 19:15 book was that   Tricia Copeland ** 19:16 that is drops of sunshine and it is mirrored off an experience I had. I was a camp counselor at a camp for the blind when I was in I guess after my freshman year of college, and the campers in my story have these extra sensory skills where they can read people's minds. That was the paranormal aspect of my book, and that's not known in the beginning the story to our main character, and then she discovers that these kids have this special talent, and that was how my fantasy books started out. Mm, hmm.   Michael Hingson ** 20:00 Then where did it go from   Tricia Copeland ** 20:01 there? Then I jumped into the witches with the kingdom Journal series. I developed a character that was a vampire or is a vampire witch hybrid, and so she has a vampire mother and a witch father, but she doesn't know who her father is. She's never met him. And to make things a little bit harder, vampire witch Hyderabad are not allowed, but either the witch lines or the vampires, so both the vampires and the witches got together and said, these beings are too dangerous. We're not going to allow them in our society. And if she's discovered, then she'll be killed. That was the first character, Alina, and she's and to give her just a little more stress, I put her in a human High School, so now she pretends, you know, can't pretend to be a witch. Can't pretend to be a vampire. She needs to be human too. And, yeah, so that was a really fun book to write, and that's the series where the trinity of witches has to come together, so she has to find the other two witches of the Trinity, and they each get to tell their story in the books too. So that's why it's called the kingdom journals. It's a little bit of a journal format, so each character gets to tell their own story as well as telling the overall plot line of the series. How   Michael Hingson ** 21:19 do you come up with these characters and create these stories? I mean, it's very imaginative. I wouldn't have thought of it. How do you, and I'm sure other people say that, but how do you create the characters? How does all that   Tricia Copeland ** 21:32 work? Yeah, I set out, funny enough, I set out to write a vampire series that was my vampire is my favorite fantasy characters. And I thought, Okay, I'm gonna write a vampire series. It's not you don't want to do it too far out from what most people write or most people think of vampires. But I wanted my vampires to be a little bit different from the other vampires and other series. So I had this idea of making the vampire witch hybrid and her set in a human High School, and what would that look like? And then the challenge? I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the challenge, but somehow I came up with this curse, and the curse was on the witch line, so it very quickly morphed into more of a witch book and the magical side of things, but the vampire characters are still there, and I explore them a little bit, although not as much as the witches.   Michael Hingson ** 22:27 Do you find that the characters essentially tell you what they want to be and who they are and why they do what they do. How much are the characters involved in your writing process? I've heard other authors say that that in some of the fiction things, the characters really create the story   Tricia Copeland ** 22:47 they do. I feel like my books are very character driven. So how I usually start with the idea for a character and think of their personality, their challenges, what I want, what themes I want to show with that character and then build the world sort of around that character. So it shows those themes and those character traits and what they're overcoming, either in their personal life or in their their physical life, right? But I do have characters that go off script. In the second book, kingdom of darkness. I have a character who we're not sure if he's a good guy or a bad guy. The main character thinks that he may be trying to delude her into thinking he's good when he's not really good. But I wrote him so well, like he was so nice that I couldn't make him a villain. So he became, I rewrote the story a little bit. I'd written it in my mind, I guess, but I rewrote it a little bit. So he did end up being a villain. And then somehow he got his whole own book, so he gets to star in his whole book after that.   Michael Hingson ** 23:54 And does he stay a villain? No, he   Tricia Copeland ** 23:57 didn't stay. He didn't was never, I mean, I kind of wrote it so the main character thought he was a villain, but in the end, I didn't make him a villain.   Michael Hingson ** 24:06 Well, I like books like that. I yeah, I think that most creatures are generally pretty nice.   Tricia Copeland ** 24:14 We would hope so,   Michael Hingson ** 24:16 although I don't know that that bears necessarily are overly generally nice to people, but, you know, who knows? Yeah, that doesn't mean they're evil either. Well, no, yeah.   Tricia Copeland ** 24:27 I mean, they're just living their life, right? That's they need their food sources. Is just like we need our food sources. So   Michael Hingson ** 24:35 I'd rather not be their food source, though, but that's okay, right?   Tricia Copeland ** 24:39 Yeah, and I don't know. I do struggle with, like, evil or antagonistic characters, because I'm, I don't like the idea that there's a character that is purely evil for no reason. So that is, that's always a grapple in an author's mind. I think,   Michael Hingson ** 24:56 well, and you know, I'll go back to Harry Potter. Modern Of course, we have Lord waldemart, who was definitely evil. But even so, the way she created the characters and the way she crafted the books, which probably in some ways, are similar, just in a process of what you do, it's not necessarily overly graphically evil. Even if there's evil, it isn't so graphic that you you you become totally adverse or against it. Evil or bad things are there, but it's all on how you present it. That's why I like books that are essentially puzzles, if you will, because they leave a lot of things to your imagination, and they give you the ability to as a reader, think about it, but as a writer, you also are essentially drawing the reader in to where you want the reader to go, but, but they're puzzles, rather than just some graphic thing, talking about all these horrible, mean, nasty things that a character may do.   Tricia Copeland ** 26:08 That's true, and it's all perspective, right? So the quote, unquote villain in my series is out to destroy all the vampires. But then you meet vampires that are good vampires, right? And you think, Huh, well, maybe this one vampire shouldn't be destroyed, because this vampire is not acting in a mean or hurtful way. So many sides to those questions,   Michael Hingson ** 26:33 yeah. Well, so the Kingdom series. How many books are in that one?   Tricia Copeland ** 26:38 There are four books in the main series, and there's a prequel to that series, okay?   Michael Hingson ** 26:45 And then what happened? What happened after that series?   Tricia Copeland ** 26:48 So in the finale, kingdom of war, my witches were going to have this huge battle against a vampire army that the evil witch created to, you know, battle the good witches. Yeah, she put which souls in the vampires. So that made them sort of like super vampires. But anyway, my witches needed an army, and I thought who would be a good character to be, to have an army that can come help the witches. So, yeah, the beings I thought of were fairies, and I created a queen Titania, is her name, who had an army who would come help the witches battle these vampire witch soul hybrid be. And when I created her, she just kind of took on her own character, and I quickly morphed that into what was her backstory, what were struggles? Where was she living? Where would the spay army come from? And that is what kind of launched my realm chronicle series, that the finale is coming out next month. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 28:10 that's that's pretty cool, and that that answers, again, the question we talked about earlier. The character actually took over, if you will, the writing, which is always cool, because that really shows how deeply you're invested in the characters and you let them have their voices, right?   Tricia Copeland ** 28:26 And I couldn't really give up the characters from my kingdom Journal series. They not, you know, not to give too much away, but they do complete their first quest and but this evil witch who's trying to destroy the vampires is still out there somewhere, so I couldn't completely let them go. So the witches from my kingdom Journal series come into the round Chronicles series, and the fairies and the witches are continuing to help each other.   Michael Hingson ** 28:56 Well, that's cool. Well, it's kind of neat to even though it's a new series, and I assume you can read one without reading the other, but still, it's neat that you, you follow on and help to craft and expand the world.   Tricia Copeland ** 29:11 It's been a lot of fun. And I, you know, selfishly, I didn't want to let go the characters. I felt like they had a little bit of story left in them, and I was able to do that through the round chronicle series. And yeah, it it was a lot of fun for me to   Michael Hingson ** 29:26 write. And now, of course, the question is, will there be a lot more story with them, which is part of the adventure that will come next? Right?   Tricia Copeland ** 29:33 Yes, I'm, I'm thinking of that. I put my characters through a lot. So after I finished the finale, I felt like I just had to let them rest. I'm not really sure if I will continue with those same characters or or either pull out some different characters from that book to have their own stories. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 29:54 well, it's, it's going to be an adventure. No question about. It   30:00 definitely so   Michael Hingson ** 30:04 with your books. Do you have themes in your books? That is, are you? Are you trying to convey messages? Do you have themes and things that you want people to think about as they go through reading your books?   Tricia Copeland ** 30:16 I do. I feel like I like that in the book, and so I kind of embed that in my books too, but it's really more about what is the character grappling with. Not only, like I said in their physical world, maybe Queen Titania is the first female queen in her realm, and some of the old guard, other monarchs are not sure that a female should be able to rule, So that's sort of an out, outside challenge. But she also has inner conflict and challenges where she's not really trusting that she really can do it and she's really supposed to do it, and should she, you know, hand the crown to someone else who may be older or wiser or and so it does she have faith in herself. You know, would sort of be that theme there. And so each of the books have, I mean, it's not like I say, hey, the theme of this book is you need to believe in yourself, yeah, but just showing that the character arcs and how they overcome their challenges.   Michael Hingson ** 31:22 How do you again create those? How do you work those in what? What's the process that allows you to to put those themes in and and add them to the book and bring that value out? Right?   Tricia Copeland ** 31:37 I guess it's just how, the way I the challenges I choose to put in front of my characters and showing them fail at times, and showing them I do write first person, so you're getting a very up close view of what the character is thinking and feeling at all times. So I think that helps with a little bit of that, knowing that the character is struggling with whatever their um, XYZ, inner, inner turmoil that they're struggling with. And then, you know, just having other characters bounce things off of them, because the character themselves might not realize, hey, I I get anxious when I'm not in control of situations. So, you know, somebody might say, Hey, you're doing this again, stop.   Michael Hingson ** 32:29 That's why we have editors,   32:30 right,   Michael Hingson ** 32:33 and other people to help well, so you are you, but you clearly talk with your characters and you let them have a voice, which is, I think, something that adds a really great dimension to the writing that you do. And I think it's very important to do that.   Tricia Copeland ** 32:51 I hope so. I have very detailed character sheets for each of my characters. I create much bigger back stories than, probably, than really makes it into the books, just to be able to know, like, how my characters will react in situations, what their growth needs to be, where areas that I want to show that growth, and what's most important in their values, And how would they react to all the different challenges?   Michael Hingson ** 33:24 What caused you to bring fairies into it again? I think that's pretty imaginative. You were writing about witches of vampire. Fairies are are different. How did that come about?   Tricia Copeland ** 33:34 Honestly, I was at a book event, and a person was walking around with these postcards, and they were trying to get authors to write a short story for an anthology, and it had to be a fantasy genre, and it had to be a character with a mental health challenge. But the image on the postcard was of a fairy, and she was hunched in a meadow in these grasses, and she looked kind of anxious or scared, maybe even a little timid or worried. And I thought, Oh, that's a cool image. It was very striking with the green grass and her fairy wings and just her eyes were like had just a lot of feeling behind them. So it caught my eye. I never thought I'd write about fairies. I was looking for the Army for my witches, and I thought, well, you know, the fairies could be like the characters the witches go to. So it was just kind of happenstance that I happened to see this fairy character on a postcard and think, Huh, I could, you know, the fairies could be the answer.   Michael Hingson ** 34:44 And turns out, they were, they were Yes. So are all fairies girls? No, okay.   Tricia Copeland ** 34:51 I mean, fairies are much like humans in my world, except that my fairies have wings. They in. Middle Earth, which is just below earth. So they share our same bedrock. It kind of mirrors our Earth in my world. And they have rings where they can come back and forth between the fae and the human realm, and they live in our contemporary times. I like those themes of there might be witches, there might be vampires, there might be fairies that walk alongside us every day, and we don't know it.   Michael Hingson ** 35:24 And do they know Bill Bo Baggins, since we're talking about Middle Earth, just   Tricia Copeland ** 35:29 they do, well, they might have read the book. I don't know that they met him personally.   Michael Hingson ** 35:35 Yeah. Well, that's, you know, another, another story, but it's but it's cool. What other kinds of characters are you thinking of for maybe future books, outside of witches, vampires and fairies,   Tricia Copeland ** 35:49 right? So I won't give too much away, but no, in order to perform some of the spells that they need to perform in, I guess in two of my books in this series, to be a Fae legend, which is the third book of the series, and to be a Fae which is the finale, The last book of the series. My witches and fairies need to perform these spells. So they need a great amount of power or energy, and they have to assemble different kinds of beings. And in the finale, they have to assemble 12 different kinds of beings. If you try to make a list of different kinds of being, you actually in ones that the witches and the fairies could find in the human realm, like so I had an elf and the werewolves and nicks and selkies like so the Nicks are shape shifters that shift into fish, and then the selkies are shape shifters that shift into now I'm blanking not walruses seals, sorry. So yeah, I had to go find all these different characters. So all of those characters are in this final book, and I I'm thinking of maybe some of those characters that can form a new series.   Michael Hingson ** 37:11 So are all trolls, mean, nasty creatures, or, do you know yet,   Tricia Copeland ** 37:16 in my series, they are depicted as that? Yes,   Michael Hingson ** 37:21 how about gnomes? I don't have any gnomes. Well, there's another one for you to look at down the line. Might be. It might be interesting to see where that goes. Of course. Yep, so you but you have a variety of characters, and I think it's it's great when you have a rich culture of a lot of different characters. And of course, there are all sorts of potentials for conflict or for different creatures to work learn to work together too,   Tricia Copeland ** 37:56 right? The Fay historically have not worked with other beings or creatures. They very much kept to themselves and had primary purpose. They think their primary purpose is to protect the humans from all the evil spirits. So that has been their focus historically, and they've shunned other groups of beings based on whether they thought they were descended from the Creator, who's sort of like their god or the creator or the evil one, right? So the Fae believed that the vampires and werewolves, for instance, were created by the evil ones, so they shouldn't associate with those types of beings, and there's a lot of learning in there. I guess you could say it, are we going to partner with these beings, and how? What does that look like? And is that really okay? And can we choose a different path than what our predecessors have chosen?   Michael Hingson ** 38:59 And I guess it's sort of pretty clearly, is that they somewhat do that.   Tricia Copeland ** 39:06 Yes, they do. And Titania, our main character, is very much the Herald for that type of behavior and that type of community and that type of acceptance   Michael Hingson ** 39:23 well. So your next year, your book will be out in July, and then where do you go from there?   Tricia Copeland ** 39:31 Yes, so like I said, I'm tossing around ideas for fantasy characters. I also write in the romance genre, so generally, I'll write a fantasy, and then I'll write a romance. I'll switch back and forth between writing those. The past year and a half, I guess I've been focusing on finishing this fantasy series, so I have two romances now queued up that I'm excited about writing, and we'll get to those first. I   Michael Hingson ** 39:58 think, hmm. What romances Have you written already?   Tricia Copeland ** 40:03 So after the being me series, I started the perfect romance series, which the first book was a little bit different from a typical romance. It has five parts, and it's the same main character, but based on decisions at different times in her life, her life goes off in a different way. So you see her go to France and fall in love with the French man, or you see her take a job in New York City and fall in love with a investment banker. And so you see her in different stages of her life, having made different decisions, but still finding happily ever after. So that kind of kicked off that. And somebody, somebody called it speculative romance at one time, and it's more like make your own story or choose your own ending type of book. But from there, I initially thought I would write like a full book showing each of the happily ever afters with that same character, but I wrote one book showing one happily ever after scenario, but then decided that I would look at all of her friends lives so they all met in college, and they were in this one sorority together. And so I write different books showing the different friends love stories. So I've written perfect. Was the first one perfect, always with Chloe. And then Brie book is a close as close to perfect. And this is still set in Lexington, Kentucky. And then the last one is perfect office pack, which is a enemies to lovers, office romance.   Michael Hingson ** 41:51 Now, do you put a lot of sex in your books? I   Tricia Copeland ** 41:54 don't know. My books are what's called closed door or fade to black, so you'll see some kissing, but not much more than that,   Michael Hingson ** 42:03 and that's fine. And the reason I asked that question was to get to the whole issue of so many people when they're writing, just have to make everything so graphic. There's got to be all this sex and all this other stuff that they put in them. And my view has always been, is that really necessary? And I gather you, you're essentially saying the same thing. And again, it's like detective stories. I love to read a lot of detective stories, but I like the detective stories most that are puzzles. That is, I want to figure out who done it. I don't need all the graphics of how somebody got murdered, or what happened. It happens. You don't need to put all that graphic stuff in to get to dealing with the puzzle. And it's the same thing with sex. You really need all that. Like a lot of comedians, it's all the shock stuff. They got to have all these horrible words, swear words, and everything else but the best comedians, I think most people, if they really study it, will agree, are the ones that tell stories without all that dirty and sex stuff in it.   Tricia Copeland ** 43:12 And that's what I like to read and what I like to watch, too. But there are definitely people that enjoy different types of books. Yeah, there are, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 43:21 yeah, I hear you, but I, I would prefer to be able to use my imagination in various things. So one of my favorite detective stories or Characters of All Times is Nero Wolfe, written by Rex Stout, because he he writes in a way where you don't see all the graphic and don't need to see any of the graphic to get the entire picture. He describes enough so you know what's going on, but he doesn't deal with it in a way that would How do I put it? Offend anyone?   Tricia Copeland ** 43:59 Right? And I would probably argue that mystery books are would be the hardest to write, I think, because you have to give enough clues throughout so that the reader doesn't think, Oh, I would have never thought that was the villain, but you don't want to put too much in. So it's so obvious who the villain is, right? So I think it's the ways those authors weave those stories are very intricate and thought out and multi layered and impressive to me   Michael Hingson ** 44:34 well. And the reality is that sometimes, and again, I'll use Rex Stout as an example, when you find out who did it, or who the bad person was, and Wolf explains it clearly, all the clues were there, but it would be really hard for you to put it together. Now, there have been a few times where there were things that he didn't tell you, that if you if he had said those. Because during the book, you might have figured it out, but mostly the clues are somewhat there, but it is so subtle that I doubt very many people would figure it out, which   Tricia Copeland ** 45:14 is, yeah, definitely.   Michael Hingson ** 45:17 It makes it so much fun. When that happens, it is. So you're, you're still deciding what you want to do for your next series of books, or what, what the next realm will be, if you will,   Tricia Copeland ** 45:31 in the fantasy genre, yes, I'm still deciding which way to go with my next characters.   Michael Hingson ** 45:38 Yes, right, but you're going to probably do some romances before you go into those. I   Tricia Copeland ** 45:43 am, yes, I was just writing a newsletter to my subscribers. In the last book, I had subscribers pick names for my characters. And so in this book, I thought, You know what? I don't like this character has has only been introduced and very briefly in one of the books, and so she doesn't have a lot of backstory. And I thought, You know what, I can just ask my readers, where do you think she should live? What are her hobbies? What does she like to do? What's her favorite book genre? I thought that would be a lot of fun for my readers to direct some of that.   Michael Hingson ** 46:18 And what kind of answers did you get? Did you get a lot of feedback?   Tricia Copeland ** 46:22 Like I said, I Well, with the names one when? So I'm just sent out the poll today, new one, but for the name ones, yeah, I would. I got like 100 answers. And then I thought, you know, next time, I won't do the names, because sometimes names are so personal and can vote like a lot of emotion that people get very heated about people's names.   Michael Hingson ** 46:47 Now, do mostly women answer? Do you get both sexes answering your questions? It is   Tricia Copeland ** 46:52 mostly women, but definitely, maybe 10% male, I would think. And actually, I feel like I have more interaction, and that's mostly on the fantasy side, but I feel like I actually have sometimes more interaction. Maybe, I don't know, maybe this get more passionate about fantasy?   Michael Hingson ** 47:13 Yeah, probably so. But you know, there's, there's something to be said for reading a good romance book. I like cozy mysteries as well, and a lot of those are really combinations of mysteries and romance, and the mystery part is oftentimes more straightforward, but it's just the whole book and the putting the entire book together that makes it so much fun.   Tricia Copeland ** 47:41 Yeah, those can be a quick, you know, kind of feel good read. I yeah for that genre, yeah, and   Michael Hingson ** 47:49 there's nothing wrong with that. It's good to have feel good books occasionally,   Tricia Copeland ** 47:54 too. I am all for feel good everything, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 47:58 Well, when I travel, I like to read on airplanes, and I like not to work and do reading that's really related to work, because going and coming from events is really the time that I get to have the most down time once I get somewhere I am on until I am on the airplane coming home. And so it is the way to relax. So I enjoy reading things that will allow me to relax when I'm going and coming from trips or from events, which is so important, I think, to be able to do and I think people should do more of that. It's always worth slowing down some and really letting your mind just wander.   Tricia Copeland ** 48:38 Yeah, plane trips are my favorite, because that's I do the same thing. I read on the plane, and I listen to audio books mostly if I'm home, when I'm exercising or when I'm doing chores. But to be able to sit down and read doesn't happen that often.   Michael Hingson ** 48:56 What do you like to read most from audio books? What? What genre?   Tricia Copeland ** 48:59 Um, exactly what I write, fantasy and romance.   Michael Hingson ** 49:03 What's your favorite fantasy books   Tricia Copeland ** 49:06 I just finished, and I'm so behind because I don't read fantasy when I'm writing fantasy. So I just finished Holly Black's, the folk of the air series, the cruel prince, I think the cool prince, the wicked king and the queen of nothing. I think they're the three books in that series. So that was really good series. And I'm writing Emily's wild encyclopedia fairies right now. So I just started that get   Michael Hingson ** 49:33 a little bit more information on those fairies for a future book. Right? That's that's kind of important to do. So do you produce with I've asked a number of people this, and I'll ask you, do you arrange for audio books to be produced from your series?   Tricia Copeland ** 49:53 I do both my fantasy series, The Kingdom journals, as well as the realm Chronicles. I have audio books. Four. I'm a little bit behind in the realm Chronicles. My Narrator had some health problems, so I'm switching narrators. But my new narrator, Tina walls, wolsen craft, yes, I think that's how you pronounce her last name, she will be working on the fourth book in the realm Chronicles series in September. So I'm hoping that will come out in October, and that will be my, my eighth audio book.   Michael Hingson ** 50:23 And where can people get the audio books?   Tricia Copeland ** 50:26 So the kingdom Journal series is on all platforms, and then the realm chronicle series, the newest series, is on Audible. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 50:37 so and again under your name for the author?   Tricia Copeland ** 50:42 Yep. Tricia Copeland, author, the Kingdom Journal series. The first two books are female character, so and now I'm blank. I can't believe I'm blanking on her name. It'll come to me in a minute. Yeah. So I had a female narrator for the first two books, and then the second two books are male Lee main characters. So Dan Delgado did the narration on those and then Jillian Yetter, who was the most amazing narrator for Titania. She even had pink hair, just just like Titania does, a hold of the the cover of the book has Titania is pink hair. So that was really fun to work with her, and we won an award for the second book in that series, to be a fake guardian   Michael Hingson ** 51:26 in audio book. Oh, cool. What was the award? It   Tricia Copeland ** 51:29 was independent book publisher Association, young adult fantasy, Silver Award.   Michael Hingson ** 51:35 Oh, cool. That's exciting. It's always good to have awards. Have you run other awards along the way?   Tricia Copeland ** 51:40 I have several Colorado independent book Publishers Association for the first book, kingdom of embers, in the kingdom Journal series, as well as several the global Book Awards for to remember it to be, to be a fake queen, which is the first book in the kingdom journals and as Ray at my Aztec mythology.   Michael Hingson ** 52:06 So how many books have you written all together?   Speaker 1 ** 52:08 Next month's book will be 23 Wow.   Michael Hingson ** 52:13 That is really exciting. Well, I know we're putting in the show notes, the picture of the book cover for the next book. And as I mentioned earlier, if you want to send us other books that you think people ought to read, we'll put those pictures in the the notes as well. I'm glad to have all the pictures you want to share.   Tricia Copeland ** 52:31 I will definitely share them. Thank you. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 52:34 so is there anything else you'd like all of our listeners and viewers to know or to think about going forward,   Tricia Copeland ** 52:42 right? Well, if you go to my website, which is triciacopeland.com,   Michael Hingson ** 52:47 and Tricia is T, R, i, c, I A, Copeland, C, O, P, E, L,   52:53 a n, d, l, a n, d.com.com,   Tricia Copeland ** 52:56 yes, if you go there, and if you just want to get a trial of my books. If you subscribe to my newsletter, then you can read a free short story fantasy as well as a free short story romance.   Michael Hingson ** 53:07 Oh, okay. If people want to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that,   Tricia Copeland ** 53:13 they can reach out on direct message, on social media, or my email is Tricia T, R, i, c, I a@triciacopeland.com   53:21 too. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 53:24 then people can, can reach out and and they'll, I'm sure, have all sorts of ideas for you.   Tricia Copeland ** 53:31 I love ideas, and I love talking to readers about my books.   Michael Hingson ** 53:36 Yeah, I I've written three, and I love getting comments and feedback from people, because I get new ideas and new thoughts. And mine are really all about helping to inspire people and so on. So it's it's always good when people have their their observations, whatever they are.   54:01 I agree.   Michael Hingson ** 54:03 Well, anyway, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun, and I really value your time being here, and I hope people will reach out and and also, more important, get your books and read your books and review them. One of the most important things that all of us who are authors will tell anyone is, please review the books. Please go to places like Amazon and Reddit and so on and review the books, because those reviews are are viewed and paid attention to by so many people. So giving an author, a great review is always a wonderful thing to do.   Tricia Copeland ** 54:44 We do appreciate those and thank you so much, Michael for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 54:48 Well, it was my pleasure, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching today. We really appreciate it. If you've got any thoughts, I'd love to hear from you, please email me at Michael H i. M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, at access, A, B, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, but also go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hinkson.com/podcast, you can see all of our podcasts there, but they're also available wherever you're listening to podcasts and and you can find the most anywhere podcasts are available. If you know anyone who ought to be a guest that you think would make a wonderful guest, and you'd like to have them tell their stories and Tricia you as well, I would really appreciate you introducing us, because we're always looking for more people to have on the podcast, and so please don't hesitate to reach out and don't hesitate to provide introductions, but again, give us a five star review here on unstoppable mindset. We value your reviews greatly, and we really appreciate you doing it. So I want to thank you, Tricia again, for being here. This has been fun, and I think it's really important that people do get a great sense of what you're doing, and I think we've done that, and we're really anxious to see where you go from here.   Tricia Copeland ** 56:08 Thank you so much, Michael, I so appreciate it.   Michael Hingson ** 56:15 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Carole O'Neill's guest today on the Online for Authors podcast is Jen Sinclair, author of the book There's Always a Price. Jen Sinclair pens personal essays and contemporary fiction that explore complicated relationships, love, loss, and all the messiness of life. Jen lives in Saint Augustine, Florida, with her husband, kids, and spoiled pups. When she isn't working out story elements, belting out songs from one of her Spotify playlists, or having conversations with imaginary friends, she enjoys spending time outside walking beaches and trails, paddling waterways, or driving around with the top off her Jeep. She's published two women's fiction books, There's Always a Price and According to My Science and collaborated on the dark friendship fiction novel, The Accidental Death of MF Ascher.   In my book review, Carole O'Neill stated: There's Always a Price is a contemporary novel. I enjoyed this book from page one. Thirty-six-year-old Cassie has stopped painting because of some neurological damage to her hand and her once-held dream has been shattered. Her husband Jason has kept their money problems from her and is about to lose everything, including Cassie's trust fund.   Enter investor Lucas Dalton who offers to save Jason's business and allow him to put the money he stole from Cassie back before she discovers it missing. Problem solved. Or is it? There's always a price. Jen Sinclair's story takes us into a world where billionaires can have almost everything.   This novel has been named a finalist in the Women's Fiction Category by the Feathered Quill 2025 Book Awards. Once you begin reading, you'll feel it should be the winner.   Subscribe to Online for Authors to learn about more great books! https://www.youtube.com/@onlineforauthors?sub_confirmation=1   Join the Novels N Latte Book Club community to discuss this and other books with like-minded readers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3576519880426290   You can follow Author Jen Sinclair: Website: https://jensinclairwrites.com/ IG: @jensinclairwrites FB: @Jen-Sinclair-Author   Purchase There's Always a Price on Amazon: Paperback: https://amzn.to/3T926i3 Ebook: https://amzn.to/3HSfPrn   Teri M Brown, Author and Podcast Host: https://www.terimbrown.com FB: @TeriMBrownAuthor IG: @terimbrown_author X: @terimbrown1   Want to be a guest on Online for Authors? Send Teri M Brown a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/member/onlineforauthors   #jensinclair #theresalwaysaprice #contemporaryfiction #terimbrownauthor #authorpodcast #onlineforauthors #characterdriven #researchjunkie #awardwinningauthor #podcasthost #podcast #readerpodcast #bookpodcast #writerpodcast #author #books #goodreads #bookclub #fiction #writer #bookreview *As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer with over five hundred stories published in fifteen countries, in seven languages. He has published several science fiction novels including two trilogies, six monster books, a dark military fantasy and a thriller. His short fiction is collected in Thin Air (2023), Pale Reflection (2020), Off the Beaten Path (2019), Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places (2010) and Virtuoso and Other Stories (2011).In 2019, Gustavo was awarded second place in the Jim Baen Memorial Contest and in 2018 he received a Judges Commendation (and second place) in The James White Award. He was also a 2019 finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest.His website is at www.gustavobondoni.comThis story is original to StarShipSofa.Narrated by: Alethea KontisAlethea Kontis is an actress, storm chaser, and New York Times bestselling author. She has received the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award. She was twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and Dragon Award. Alethea narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and does freelance work for Writing the Other. Born in Vermont, Alethea currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida where she watches K-dramas with her teddy bear, Charlie. Together they are ARMY, VVS, and Black Roses. Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H SturgisSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/starshipsofa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Struggling to sell your book beyond launch day? You're not alone. Today's guest has cracked the code. In this power-packed episode, I sit down with Susan Neal, author of How to Sell a Thousand Books a Month, to uncover the exact strategies, mindset shifts, and marketing systems she used to sell thousands of books consistently. She is also the CEO of Christian Authors Network, Christian Indie Publishing Association, Christian Indie Awards, and the Blue Lake Christian Writers Conference. Whether you're a first-time author, a ministry-driven writer, Or a multi-passionate creator, this episode will show you: • Why most books stop selling after 30 days, and how to fix it • Susan's repeatable strategy for turning one book into a long-term revenue stream • The secret to leveraging email, keywords, and platform, even if yours is small • Why writing a great book is only half the job, and what the other half looks like • Faith-led encouragement for authors who feel called but discouraged Ready to finally move your message from shelf to sold? Grab a notebook, you're going to want to take notes. Get Susan U. Neal's Book, How To Sell A Thousand Books In A Month HERE Join some amazing and supportive writing communities! https://christianauthorsnetwork.com https://www.facebook.com/ChristianAuthorsNetwork PS>  Join me on my new Substack Newsletter by subscribing here, and learn more strategies, connect me for business advice and get access to special offers! SUBSCRIBE HERE Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Kingdom Writing and Publishing 02:46 The Importance of Marketing for Authors 05:15 Building an Email List and Engaging Readers 07:23 Creating Community Through Email and Social Media 10:13 Transforming Personal Stories into Growth Opportunities 13:06 Developing Multiple Offers from Your Experience 14:46 Establishing Authority and Credibility as an Author 17:31 Preparing for Writing and Platform Building 20:10 Utilizing Social Media and Contests for Visibility 22:57 The Role of Reviews in Building Trust 25:52 The Power of Podcasts and Community Engagement 27:17 Building Authority Through Podcasting 29:32 Leveraging Other Platforms for Marketing 31:10 The Power of Podcast Tours 34:51 Effective Marketing Strategies for Authors 38:25 The Importance of a Press Kit 43:10 Positioning for Media Interviews 44:59 The Value of Book Contests 46:37 Creating a Marketing Plan 54:20 Outro VIDEO podcast (1).mp4    

One week remains for 3 Divisions in the Chanticleer Int'l Book Awards! Your Mysteries and Thrillers all deserve the chance to be discovered! Don't miss out!

In this episode of Bad Diaries Podcast, Tracy talks with writer Annabel Smith about throwing her diary across the room, hearting Michael J. Fox, and singing SexyBack at karaoke. Annabel has taken part in three Bad Diaries Salons, including our third ever salon back in 2017, in Perth. Annabel is also the creative force behind the live spoken word series To Whom It May Concern: Complaint Letters Live, and Tracy and Annabel talk about some of the similarities and differences with Bad Diaries Salon, and the pros and cons of reading live vs writing it all down.Just a heads-up – we talk about verbal sexual harassment in this episode. Take care.Annabel Smith is a writer based in Perth, Western Australia. Her debut novel, A New Map of the Universe, was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. She's also the author of experimental speculative novel The Ark, and US bestseller Whisky Charlie Foxtrot. She was one of five inaugural recipients of an Australia Council Creative Australia Fellowship for Emerging Artists, for her interactive digital novel/app The Ark.Annabel has published essays, short stories and articles in many of Australia's prestigious literary journals, and is in demand as a teacher, reviewer, speaker and interviewer. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University.Find Annabel on her Substack, Thinks I'm Thinkin'.Find full show notes for this episode on the Bad Diaries Salon website baddiariessalon.com, or get in touch via Instagram or Facebook – we're @baddiariessalon everywhere.Thanks for joining us for Bad Diaries Podcast! Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us, wherever you get your podcasts.Bad Diaries Podcast Season 3 is recorded and produced in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the iwi lands of Taranaki Whānui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. Seasons 1 & 2 were also recorded in Naarm Melbourne, Australia, on the lands of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to Mana Whenua, and to Elders past, present and emerging, of these lands.

Top Three Reasons Camp Minnehaha is the worst –-   The spiders (wayyy too long legs)-   King Arthur (a rampaging goat intent on my destruction)-   Victoria, AKA The Diva (an evil cabinmate obsessed with French beauty products and my humiliation)Chloe McCorkle knew a summer camp where you had to learn a career was a bad idea. She tried to tell her parents, but they just had to go on vacation to Alaska and ship her off to camp for two weeks.It's not ideal, but she's going to try to make the best of it. She might even learn some skills that will help her make money for the new bike she's been eyeing. But to do that, she'll need to survive an underwear-eating goat, an invincible spider, and a camp director who's convinced Chloe is trouble...Taryn Souders novels have been named to state reading lists, including the Pennsylvania Young Readers Choice Awards, Georgia Children's Book Awards, Alaska's Battle of the Books, and many, many more awards!Her latest book, Coop Knows the Scoop, was a 2021 Edgar Award nominee for Best Juvenile mystery novel. Listen to the StoryJumpers episode featuring Coop Knows the Scoop here...Taryn lives in Sorrento, Florida with her husband, David, their three children, and two cats—an overly fuzzy Ragdoll named Mordecai and a polydactyl Hemingway named Sebastian—who like to terrorize flies.Learn more about her books and get a free ACTIVITY KIT when you visit her website at tarynsouders.comPlease share StoryJumpers with a friend if you enjoyed this episode. StoryJumpers is still growing, and your positive review and 5-star rating would help.The Bridge Podcast Network is made possible by generous support from The Boardwalk Plaza Hotel and Victoria's Restaurant on the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware - Open 7 days a week, year-round - Learn more at https://boardwalkplaza.comFeedback, or Show Ideas? Send an email to podcast@wearethebridge.orgDownload The Bridge Mobile App to get the latest podcast episodes as soon as they are published!

The first list of the 2025 Chanticleer' Int'l Book Awards is here with the Cygnus Awards! A huge thank you to all of these authors for starting us off strong in the sci-fi genre!

Matty Dalrymple talks with Hannah Jacobson about UNLOCKING THE POWER OF BOOK AWARDS, including changes within the book awards landscape, particularly the increasing acceptance of indie-published works; practical tips on selecting and submitting to the right awards; how to leverage wins for maximum benefit; the value of receiving and incorporating feedback from award entries; and how authors can share their award journey with readers to build engagement, even if it doesn't end in a win.   Interview video at https://bit.ly/TIAPYTPlaylist Show notes at https://www.theindyauthor.com/show-notes   If you find the information in this video useful, please consider supporting The Indy Author! https://www.patreon.com/theindyauthor https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattydalrymple   Hannah Jacobson is the founder of Book Award Pro, the industry-trusted platform for getting reviews and awards. The company operates the world's largest database of legitimate book accolades, serving thousands of authors globally. As a recognized authority on literary accolades and prestigious book recognition, Hannah also serves an Advisor to the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).   Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with ROCK PAPER SCISSORS; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with THE SENSE OF DEATH; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. Matty also writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage, and shares what she's learned on THE INDY AUTHOR PODCAST. She has written books on the business of short fiction and podcasting for authors; her articles have appeared in "Writer's Digest" magazine. She serves as the Campaigns Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Benji Davies is a picture book writer and artist. In his work he aims to capture how it feels to be a child. By immersing themselves in the stories he writes and illustrates, Benji hopes that children will find a quiet confidence with which to navigate the noise and bustle of the real world.Since hailed a modern classic, his first self-penned picture book, The Storm Whale, won the inaugural Oscar's Book Prize and was Dutch Picture Book Of The Year. His second, Grandad's Island, garnered similar plaudits, winning the children's book category of the AOI World Illustration Awards and being crowned Children's Book of the Year at the Sainsbury's Children's Book Awards. In 2020 he won Oscar's Book Prize for a second time with Tad, a story about a tadpole making its way in the big, wide pond. All three of these books have been adapted for the stage.

In this episode of The Buzz, JJA board member Bob Blumenthal speaks with two 2025 book award winners: Jonathan Grasse and Elijah Wald.Jonathan Grasse teaches music at California State University, Dominguez Hills, focusing on world music, theory, and composition. He wrote the definitive English-language study of Brazilian regional music in Hearing Brazil: Music and Histories, and Minas Gerais and examined Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges's 1972 album in The Corner Club. His latest work, Jazz Revolutionary: The Life and Music of Eric Dolphy (Jawbone Press), won JJA's 2025 Biography of the Year.Elijah Wald is a musician and author of over a dozen books, including Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, The Dozens (about insult games in rap development), and How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll: An Alternative History of Popular Music. He also wrote Dylan Goes Electric, which inspired the film A Complete Unknown. With a PhD in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics plus a Grammy for production and liner notes, Wald's Jelly Roll Blues: Censored Songs and Hidden Histories earned JJA's 2025 Book of the Year for history, criticism, and culture.Don't miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

‘Liminal' is much more than the name of award-winning author, journalist and Ovarian cancer wrangler Jennifer Steil's Substack newsletter. In this extended episode, the winner of the Grand Prize in the international Eyelands 2020 Book Awards and Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Lesbian Fiction Award for Exile Music,talks about the kidnap experience and resulting ‘what if's that inspired her first novel, The Ambassador's Wife,and how writing has become even more important to mental health during her cancer treatment. Liminal spaces she discusses with Dr Rachel Knightley include ‘home', and how that truly means wherever her husband and daughter are – whatever country or even hospital room that is today.   Discover more about Jennifer by subscribing to Liminal: https://jennifersteil.substack.com   Sponsor this year's Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support: https://www.justgiving.com/page/somewhere-thats-green   Visit the Writers' Gym: https://www.writersgym.com/

The 2024 M&M First Place Roundup for Cozy and Not-so-Cozy Mysteries is here! Congratulations again to these winners from the 2024 CIBAs!

Trey's Table Episode 323: Book Awards, Racism, and UF Law.

Think book awards are only for big-budget authors? Think again. In this episode, I'm joined by indie author Ross Brand, who's won over 50 book awards using Book Award Pro, even on the free plan. He shares how to choose the right awards, save money, and turn wins into long-term visibility. If you've been waiting for a sign to submit your book, this is it.  Ross Brand - http://livestreamuniverse.com Ross on YouTube -  @livestreamuniverse1966 Ross on Substack - https://rossbrand.substack.com Ross's Books - https://geni.us/100v5 Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link) Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee.  Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

The 19th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards (NIEA) are proud to recognize Sol Luckman's new Amazon #1 Best Seller in Energy Healing, GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE, as a Finalist in the Body/Mind/Spirit category of this year's competition.Recognizing Excellence in all aspects of the final presentation, the NIEA champions self-publishers and independent publishers who produce the highest quality books. Established in 2005, NIEA's entrants are meticulously judged by experts from various disciplines of the industry including publishers, editors, authors and book designers.​Winning and Finalist titles are determined on the basis of superior written content coupled with the various elements that comprise all the information in a published product. Jurors analyze titles across a spectrum of standards and metrics reaching a final consensus after their review.“We are glad to see … independent authors and publishers thriving again this year, putting forth their best works in each genre, thus making the juror's work harder than ever! Ultimately there can be only one winner per category, but the competition is fierce, and we stand behind all the titles that have received NIEA awards as extraordinarily strong contributions to the field.” —Doug Fogelson, President, NIEA“GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE is eye-opening, enlightening, thought-provoking and even a bit mind-blowing.” —Steve Sarner, coauthor, BEFORE THE BESTSELLER“This is one of the most valuable books this reader has encountered —and incorporated! Learn from a Master and discover true existence.” —Grady Harp, author, EROS & ADONIS“[R]eaders are invited to step through a magical portal beyond life's apparent boundaries and embark on the ultimate hero's journey—a profound inward adventure toward self-realization and spiritual freedom.” —David Jay Brown, author, DREAMING WIDE AWAKE“Luckman's engaging prose and fearless exploration of esoteric topics provide a refreshing perspective on personal transformation. For those seeking to break free from limiting belief systems and explore the depths of human potential, this work serves as both a guide and an inspiration.” —Indie Reader“Suitable for consciousness explorers looking for a path to alchemical transformation and the power to choose what they create by going inward to master their own existence, GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE is a highly original read.” —INDIE SHAMAN Magazine“The Hero of a Thousand Red Pills, Sol Luckman has had an invaluable influence on awakening consciousness and dispelling false realities. GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE is a rewarding and useful map for the hero's journey.” —Miguel Conner, author, THE OCCULT ELVIS“If you are married to your belief system whether it be identity, religion, politics, class, culture, then this is a book that will challenge you to let go of those traps. If you are left wing or right wing, this might not be the book for you. But if you have your own wings this might help you fly higher.” —Lis Anna-Langston, author, TUPELO HONEY“This is a singularly important work ... I found it a most timely book of encouragement for these dark days.” —Gregory Figg, author, ENGINES OF ASCENDANCY“Weaving together threads of esoteric wisdom, cutting-edge science, and transformative spiritual practices, Luckman offers a revolutionary blueprint for transcending the boundaries of mortality […] This book is not merely a guide—it's a conversation with the cosmos, an invitation to unlock your highest potential, and a masterclass in the art of becoming more than human.” —Laurence Galian, author, ALIEN PARASITES“This work stands out for anyone who needs a new outlook on modern life and technology or wants a guided method for self-introspection.” —Entrada Publishing“Next level healing. This was a great book with many tools to empower yourself and have more energy to thrive in this reality.” —Janneke Hellebrekers, author, WHISPERS OF THE NEW EARTH“An excellent, mind-expanding book.” —Dawn Lester, coauthor, WHAT REALLY MAKES YOU ILL?“Rebelliously refreshing […] A generous and digestible offering of essential wisdom and practical guidance for those following the call to go inward.” —Jacqueline Rendell, POST POST MODERN“I highly recommend this book to all fellow consciousness explorers! It's excellent and will challenge and encourage you. I was encouraged and will be contemplating the wealth of information shared for a long time. I love the practicality and usefulness of the information.” —April Novoa, author, LOVE IS, FEAR IS NOT“I really enjoyed this quick read. It has great tips for detoxing from digital media and being true to oneself […] I highly recommend this, and Luckman's other books, to anyone searching for healing and clarity in our complex, modern age.” —Janet Merran, author, TOP 40 HONEYPOT“Mr. Luckman pluckily points to the exit doors from a false reality like a rock 'n' roll rebel researcher.” —Andrea Mai, author, THE CALM WAY“If you're ready to question everything you think you know about reality, energy, and human potential, this book is a wild, enlightening ride. It's both a self-help manual and a deep metaphysical journey, perfect for seekers who want to upgrade their existence and break free from limiting belief systems.” —Laura Kennedy, INTEGRATED BEINGNESSALCHEMY • SHAMANISM • LONGEVITY • IMMORTALITY • INFINITY • ETERNITY • ENERGY • LOOSH • PROTECTION • HEALING • WELLNESS • EMPOWERMENT • MASTERY • SOVEREIGNTY • TRANSCENDENCE • AUTHENTICITY • LUCIDITY • DREAMS • METAPHYSICS • MIND • SOUL • SHADOW • DUALITY • QUANTUM • MATRIX • SIMULATION • MANIFESTATION • AURA • CHAKRAS • BIOFIELD • EPIGENETICS • DNA✌️ Sol Luckman here. If the below description of my electric new manual for cheating death piques your interest and getting out of here alive sounds like your cup of tea, why not GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE today? Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Welcome to the latest episode of Book Worms! Get ready, book lovers we have a very special episode installed for you this week!It’s time to celebrate the stories and storytellers that have captured the hearts andimaginations of young readers across the UK – with The Week Junior Book Awards! First up, it’s Deborah Meaden Talks Money, in the running for Factual Book of theYear. Ever wondered where money comes from—or how to make it work for you?Deborah shares fun stories and smart advice on saving, spending, and even startinga business. Next, up for Poetry Book of the Year, it’s Tomorrow We Begin by MattGoodfellow—funny, honest poems that feel like a diary about growing up. Finally, up for Cover of the Year, it’s A Head Full of Magic by Sarah Morrell—aboutFleur, who’s dealing with bullies, family drama… and the surprise discovery that shecan talk to animals! To find out more, check out the full shortlist, and get involved, headto theweekjuniorbookawards.co.uk – because every reader deserves to be part ofthe story! That's all on this week's episode of Fun Kids Book Worms!Join Fun Kids Podcasts+: https://funkidslive.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 2024 Clue First Place Winners! Here are the Clue First Place Winners for Thriller/Suspense, just as we close the Clue Awards for 2025

Think book awards are just about luck or deep pockets? Think again. In this interview, I sit down with Steven Seril, indie author and founder of the Outstanding Creator Awards, to talk about how authors can actually win book awards—without wasting time or money. We cover the biggest do's and don'ts of submitting to contests, what judges really look for, and how to use awards to build your author brand. If you're thinking of entering a competition, watch this first. Outstanding Creator Awards - https://www.outstandingcreator.com/ Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link) Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Wanna tip me? Visit https://dalelroberts.gumroad.com/coffee. Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts

On this week's podcast Chris and Rosie discuss favourite sandwiches, kids in the pub and their night at The Book Awards! They also have a Taskmaster recap and Rosie brings some Sexy Beast themed Beef! QFTP's involve and old people's home, a tooth brushing ick and some skiving! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a week where the US and the UK agreed a new trade deal and authors and illustrators were celebrated at the British Book Awards. Plus, we're going to be discussing some of the other stories, events and people that inspired the Week Junior team this week.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Creating isn't just about what you make…it's about who you become. We're back with the brilliant Nana Brew-Hammond for her second visit to Reframe to Create, and this time, it's a full-circle moment.  In Episode 21, Nana shared “How to Stay Committed to an Imperfect Creating Journey.”  And in this episode, we see how that commitment has blossomed.  Nana walks us through the very different experiences she had while writing her two latest books: ✨ Blue– a children's picture book that dives into the rich history of a single color ✨ My Parents' Marriage – an adult novel that explores the complex dynamics of family, love, and identity.   The process of creating each of these works taught Nana different things.  And in this conversation, she shares two key lessons she learned along the way.  Lessons about transformation, flexibility, and what it really means to grow alongside your work. Honestly? This conversation lit something in me. It reminded me that no matter how smooth or bumpy the road, the journey itself is doing something deep and lasting in us.  If you want to experience the joy and power of Nana's work, you can check out both books at nanabrewhammond.com.  You'll be glad you did.   About my guest: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is an American-Ghanaian writer of novels, short stories and a poet.   In 2014 she was chosen as one of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa's most promising writers under the age of 40, showcased in the Africa39 project.  Nana has been featured on MSNBC, NY1, SaharaTV, ARISE TV, and has been published in Ebony Magazine.   Her latest novel for adult readers, My Parents' Marriage, was featured in The New York Times Book Review's July 7, 2024 “...Also Out Now” column, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Booklist, and more.  The author Melissa Rivero called it “a propulsive read that will take hold of you with its honesty, determination, and heart,” while the author Vanessa Walters described it as “an arrestingly evovative story…which dismantles immigrant clichés. Her children's picture book BLUE: A history of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Daniel Minter, was named among the best of 2022 by NPR, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, The Center for the Study of Multicultural Literature, Bank Street College of Education, and more.  BLUE is on the 2023-2024 Texas Bluebonnet Master List; it has been honored with the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award® recognizing excellence in writing of non-fiction for children; and it is an NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature for Chidlren.  It was named to the American Libary Association's 2023 Notable Children's Books and nominated for a 2025 Georgia Chidlren's Book Award.   Brew-Hammond also wrote the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut”, and she edited RELATIONS: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices.  Kirkus Reviews called the anthology “smart, generous…a true gift” in its starred review.   Nana is also co-founder of Exit 14, a made in Ghana lifestyle line that has been featured in Vogue.     About: The Reframe to Create podcast is hosted by Joy Spencer, an Executive Leadership and Storytelling Coach, Speaker, and Organizational Development Consultant working with professionals and leaders at all levels within organizations.  Joy leverages over 17 years of experience she gained while working to champion change in social justice movements, including those related to global access to essential medicines and consumer advocacy for online privacy.  This work required a dogged commitment to not merely challenging the status quo, but to reimagining and working towards creating an ideal future.  It is this commitment to creating that has shaped Joy's coaching philosophy and approach today. Using her signature C.R.E.A.T.E. framework, Joy guides her clients through a process to become incomparable in work so they can get paid to be themselves.   Follow Joy on LinkedIn  - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joy-spencer  

It seems like they were all born with a Book Award in their hands! But no. Famous authors are not born with it. They're human just like you and me.AND... they persevered through rejections along the way...AND they kept writing.In this show, we'll talk about their early days of writing in news columns and journals. What types of publishing worked best? What are the 5 top genres for book sales, as well as the Guinness world record for top book sales in a week. How much are famous authors paid? And finally, who does the public most want to know about the personal lives of famous authors? The answers may surprise you.Join Coach Debby every Thursday at 4 PM on KKNW Seattle for a new topic each week, or download the podcast on your favorite platform.Join the mailing list to get coaching and awesome deals to support your writing.Newsletter:Coach Debbyus17.list-manage.comhttps://coachdebby.us17.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=b4e0e4813c2d5d7bc3e03507b&id=5b97bac13fAnd get more free support from Coach Debby on YouTube:YouTube Channel:https://www.youtube.com/@coachdebby564See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A beautiful interview with our new author @saniya.ruqiah.ahmed talking about her poetry book: Hum Dum.“Hum Dum”, meaning “we breathe” in Farsi and Urdu, embodies the profound connection of sharing breath with someone - a bond that transcends words.This collection delves into themes of identity, exploring the complexities of existence as a first-generation Muslim Indian American woman.Born from tears, reflections, and words seeking healing, these poems emerge from the heart, offering a journey of turmoil, revolution, and ultimately, wholeness.“Hum Dum” is more than a collection - it's a legacy, a tribute, and a source of solace.May it bring comfort to your soul. Find your “Hum Dum” today! https://strangeincorporated.org/hum-dum/Follow the author here: https://www.instagram.com/saniya.ruqiah.ahmed/P.S Are you a Muslim author? Submit to the Book Awards 2025, now open, details: https://strangeincorporated.org/book-awards/#writing #muslimah #poetry

Chris Enss is a New York Times bestselling author who has been writing non-fiction books about women of the Old West for more than thirty years. Chris was a guest at White Stallion Ranch and she took time from her vacation and spent it with Russell and Steven for the Cowboy Up Listeners.  Chris has authored more than fifty published books on the subject of women in the old west. Chris has been honored with nine Will Rogers Medallion Awards, two Elmer Kelton Book Awards, an Oklahoma Center for the Book Award, three Foreword Review Magazine Book Awards, the Laura Downing Journalism Award, and a Willa Cather Award from Women Writing the West for scholarly nonfiction.   Enss's most recent works are The Doctor Was A Woman: Stories of the First Female Physicians on the Frontier, An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood's Most Notorious Bordellos, and Along Came a Cowgirl: Daring and Iconic Cowgirls of Rodeos and Wild West Shows.

In this episode, host Nicola Newman interviews Amber Byers, a former attorney who transformed her life by following her creative calling. As an award-winning author and founder of Tadpole Press, Amber shares her journey from the legal world to building a thriving creative business centered around writing and community.Discover Amber's three powerful tenets for authentic creative living:Listen to your authentic voice and trust your body's wisdomHave fun with your creativity without taking yourself too seriouslyBuild a supportive community that champions your unique visionAmber opens up about winning gold at the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards for her book "Sophie and Spot," and how she created the popular Tadpole Press 100-word writing contest that now attracts entries from nearly 60 countries worldwide.This heartfelt conversation explores how embracing creativity as a safe playground can lead to personal fulfillment beyond traditional measures of success. Whether you're considering a creative career change or simply looking to reconnect with your authentic self, Amber's story will inspire you to listen to your inner wisdom and follow your heart.Visit www.tadpolepress.com to learn more about Amber's work and the Tadpole Press writing contest.

In this episode, we'll talk about what authors should look for in an editor, when it makes sense to work with a ghostwriter, and how the matchmaking process works behind the scenes at a publisher. Today we're joined by Rose Friel, a publishing consultant at Foreword Literary Consulting. With a background working with literary agencies and hybrid publishing, Rose has helped countless authors refine their publishing strategies and bring their stories to life with tailored introductions to ghostwriters, editors, publishers, and more. She knows exactly what goes into a great publishing partnership and how publishers match writers with the right professionals to shape their work. 

With over three decades of experience, John O'Brien is a seasoned expert in guiding individuals through significant life transitions by offering practical and ac­tionable strategies to navigate change with ease. He is a licensed psychologist in private practice specializing in grief, trauma, and addiction. He has offered numerous trainings to professional associations and businesses throughout...

  D.R. Berlin is an award-winning author, U.S. Army veteran, and General Surgeon with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Writing minor from MIT. A graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, her career in high-pressure environments fuels the pulse-pounding suspense and authentic detail in The Third Estate: Secrets of the Manor....

The awards honor outstanding local work in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry and children's literature. The prizes are overseen by Vermont Humanities and the state Department of Libraries.

Hi. I'm Ana. I was five when my family emigrated from Cuba to the U.S. in 1967. Ever since, I've been striving to honor my family's story and Cuban American culture through storytelling. Currently, I'm at work on Radio Bemba, a full-length memoir about my family's experience. In the past, my commentary has been featured in The...

In this main session talk from the 2024 Rooted Conference in Dallas, TX, Anna Meade Harris unpacks the story of Daniel 4. Anna shares about the gracious pursuit of the Hound of Heaven. Anna Meade Harris is the is the Senior Director of Content at Rooted, co-host of the Rooted Parent podcast, and the author of God's Grace for Every Family: Biblical Encouragement for Single Parent Families and the Churches That Seek to Love Them Well (Zondervan, 2024), winner of Christianity Today's 2024 Book Award in the Marriage, Family, and Singleness category.Follow @therootedministry on Instagram for more updates and Subscribe to Youth Ministry Unscripted wherever you listen to podcasts

The New Zealand Book Awards Trust says the competition for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards will be fierce - with a strong line-up of finalists vying for the top prizes. Chairperson Nicola Legat spoke to Corin Dann.

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author's original notes. Blanche Bendahan was born in Oran, Algeria on November 26, 1893, to a Jewish family of Moroccan-Spanish origin. Bendahan published her first collection of poetry, La voile sur l'eau, in 1926 and then her first novel, Mazaltob, in 1930. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Barnard College, and Lecturer in Discipline in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. Her current project is titled Teaching Freedom: Jewish Sisters in Muslim Lands. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministry of Education. Azagury and Malino were finalists of the 74th Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the category of Sephardic Culture. Mentioned in the podcast: • Blanche Bendahan,“Visages de Tétouan,” Les Cahiers de L'Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paix et Droit), no. 093 (November 1955): 5. • Susan Gilson Miller, “Gender and the Poetics and Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite Universelle in Northern Morocco (1890-1912).” In Franco-Arab Encounters, edited by L. Carl Brown and Matthew Gordon (1996) • Susan Gilson Miller, “Moïse Nahon and the Invention of the Modern Maghribi Jew.” In  French Mediterraneans, edited by P. Lorcin and T. Shepard (2016) • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927) • Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25th anniversary edition (1994) • Female teachers of the Alliance israélite universelle • Jewish figures in the literature of The Tharaud Brothers • Archives of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author's original notes. Blanche Bendahan was born in Oran, Algeria on November 26, 1893, to a Jewish family of Moroccan-Spanish origin. Bendahan published her first collection of poetry, La voile sur l'eau, in 1926 and then her first novel, Mazaltob, in 1930. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Barnard College, and Lecturer in Discipline in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. Her current project is titled Teaching Freedom: Jewish Sisters in Muslim Lands. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministry of Education. Azagury and Malino were finalists of the 74th Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the category of Sephardic Culture. Mentioned in the podcast: • Blanche Bendahan,“Visages de Tétouan,” Les Cahiers de L'Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paix et Droit), no. 093 (November 1955): 5. • Susan Gilson Miller, “Gender and the Poetics and Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite Universelle in Northern Morocco (1890-1912).” In Franco-Arab Encounters, edited by L. Carl Brown and Matthew Gordon (1996) • Susan Gilson Miller, “Moïse Nahon and the Invention of the Modern Maghribi Jew.” In  French Mediterraneans, edited by P. Lorcin and T. Shepard (2016) • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927) • Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25th anniversary edition (1994) • Female teachers of the Alliance israélite universelle • Jewish figures in the literature of The Tharaud Brothers • Archives of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author's original notes. Blanche Bendahan was born in Oran, Algeria on November 26, 1893, to a Jewish family of Moroccan-Spanish origin. Bendahan published her first collection of poetry, La voile sur l'eau, in 1926 and then her first novel, Mazaltob, in 1930. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Barnard College, and Lecturer in Discipline in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. Her current project is titled Teaching Freedom: Jewish Sisters in Muslim Lands. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministry of Education. Azagury and Malino were finalists of the 74th Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the category of Sephardic Culture. Mentioned in the podcast: • Blanche Bendahan,“Visages de Tétouan,” Les Cahiers de L'Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paix et Droit), no. 093 (November 1955): 5. • Susan Gilson Miller, “Gender and the Poetics and Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite Universelle in Northern Morocco (1890-1912).” In Franco-Arab Encounters, edited by L. Carl Brown and Matthew Gordon (1996) • Susan Gilson Miller, “Moïse Nahon and the Invention of the Modern Maghribi Jew.” In  French Mediterraneans, edited by P. Lorcin and T. Shepard (2016) • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927) • Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25th anniversary edition (1994) • Female teachers of the Alliance israélite universelle • Jewish figures in the literature of The Tharaud Brothers • Archives of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author's original notes. Blanche Bendahan was born in Oran, Algeria on November 26, 1893, to a Jewish family of Moroccan-Spanish origin. Bendahan published her first collection of poetry, La voile sur l'eau, in 1926 and then her first novel, Mazaltob, in 1930. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Barnard College, and Lecturer in Discipline in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. Her current project is titled Teaching Freedom: Jewish Sisters in Muslim Lands. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministry of Education. Azagury and Malino were finalists of the 74th Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the category of Sephardic Culture. Mentioned in the podcast: • Blanche Bendahan,“Visages de Tétouan,” Les Cahiers de L'Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paix et Droit), no. 093 (November 1955): 5. • Susan Gilson Miller, “Gender and the Poetics and Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite Universelle in Northern Morocco (1890-1912).” In Franco-Arab Encounters, edited by L. Carl Brown and Matthew Gordon (1996) • Susan Gilson Miller, “Moïse Nahon and the Invention of the Modern Maghribi Jew.” In  French Mediterraneans, edited by P. Lorcin and T. Shepard (2016) • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927) • Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25th anniversary edition (1994) • Female teachers of the Alliance israélite universelle • Jewish figures in the literature of The Tharaud Brothers • Archives of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century, sixteen-year-old Mazaltob finds herself betrothed to José, an uncouth man from her own community who has returned from Argentina to take a wife. Mazaltob, however, is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and a free spirit. In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes the two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart in her body and soul: her loyalty to the Judería and her powerful desire to follow her own voice and find true love. Bendahan's nuanced and moving novel is a masterly exploration of the language, religion, and quotidian customs constraining North African Jewish women on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization. Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino provide the first English translation of this modern coming-of-age tale, awarded a prize by the Académie Française in 1930, and analyze the ways in which Mazaltob, with its disconcerting blend of ethnographic details and modernist experimentation, is the first of its genre—that of the feminist Sephardi novel. A historical introduction, a literary analysis, and annotations elucidate historical and cultural terms for readers, supplementing the author's original notes. Blanche Bendahan was born in Oran, Algeria on November 26, 1893, to a Jewish family of Moroccan-Spanish origin. Bendahan published her first collection of poetry, La voile sur l'eau, in 1926 and then her first novel, Mazaltob, in 1930. Yaëlle Azagury is a writer, literary scholar, and critic. She was Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Barnard College, and Lecturer in Discipline in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Columbia University. She is a native of Tangier, Morocco. Frances Malino is the Sophia Moses Robison Professor of Jewish Studies and History Emerita at Wellesley College. Her current project is titled Teaching Freedom: Jewish Sisters in Muslim Lands. In 2012 she was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Ministry of Education. Azagury and Malino were finalists of the 74th Nation­al Jew­ish Book Awards in the category of Sephardic Culture. Mentioned in the podcast: • Blanche Bendahan,“Visages de Tétouan,” Les Cahiers de L'Alliance Israélite Universelle (Paix et Droit), no. 093 (November 1955): 5. • Susan Gilson Miller, “Gender and the Poetics and Emancipation: The Alliance Israélite Universelle in Northern Morocco (1890-1912).” In Franco-Arab Encounters, edited by L. Carl Brown and Matthew Gordon (1996) • Susan Gilson Miller, “Moïse Nahon and the Invention of the Modern Maghribi Jew.” In  French Mediterraneans, edited by P. Lorcin and T. Shepard (2016) • Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu published in seven volumes, previously translated as Remembrance of Things Past) (1913–1927) • Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 25th anniversary edition (1994) • Female teachers of the Alliance israélite universelle • Jewish figures in the literature of The Tharaud Brothers • Archives of the Alliance israélite universelle (AIU) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Notes and Links to Lamya H's Work        Lamya H (she/they) is a queer Muslim writer and organizer living in New York City. Their memoir HIJAB BUTCH BLUES (February, 2023 from Dial Press/Penguin Randomhouse) won the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and a Stonewall Non-fiction Book Award, and was a finalist for Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards. Lamya's work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Autostraddle, Vice, and others. She has received fellowships from Lambda Literary and Queer|Arts.      Lamya's organizing work centers around creating spaces for LGBTQ+ Muslims, fighting Islamophobia, Palestine and prison abolition. In her free time, she eats lots of desserts baked by her partner, plays board games with whoever she can corral, and works on her goal of traveling to every subway stop in the city. She has never run a marathon.    Find her on Twitter and IG: @lamyaisangry Buy Hijab Butch Blues   Lamya H's Website   Book Review for Hijab Butch Blues from NPR   At about 2:20: Lamya shouts out Dominion as a top-tier board game and talks about flickering hopes of running a marathon  At about 5:35, Lamya talks about reading and writing and speaking in multiple languages growing up, as well as reading a lot of colonial texts from the British Empire At about 7:30, Lamya talks about beijing “flabbergasted” by the great White Teeth at age 15  At about 9:30, Lamya uses the evocative image of “fish not understanding that they're in water” in responding to Pete's questions about how she recognized representation and colonial tropes in lit At about 11:10, Lamya cites formative and transformative texts and authors in her adolescent year  At about 13:55, Lamya discusses early sparks for activism through a friend's introduction of Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, and more At about 15:15, Lamya responds to Pete's questions about her current reading, including her love for Huda F's work At about 18:45, Lamya responds to Pete's questions about her usage of “queer” and the titular “butch” At about 22:30, The two discuss a meaningful Quranic verse that starts off the book-Lamya explains ideas of “faith in flux” At about 25:00, Lamya gives background on surahs and a significant part of her book discussing Maryam's life and trials At about 26:45, Lamya discusses boredom in the high school years and how she felt connections to Maryam At about 29:45, Lamya responds to Pete's questions about feeling like life “is out of your control” as a teenager/high schooler At about 30:45, Lamya explains feelings of internalizing queerness upon experiencing a crush at age 14 At about 34:50, Lamya describes the importance of Quranic verses involving Maryam and “intentionality” and taqwa At about 38:00, Lamya responds to Pete's questions about the “Arab hierarchy” that she experienced as a kid, and the ways in which she and her family were targets of racism At about 41:40, Lamya details many meanings of “jinn” and describes its usage in her memoir At about 43:40, Lamya describes a friend “jumpstarting” a repudiation of internalized racism  At about 45:15, Lamya gives background on Allah and ideas of “transcending” gender  At about 49:00, The two discuss “rigid gender roles” as featured in the memoir, as well as connections to the Biblical Adam At about 50:00, Lamya outlines a offbeat “outing” experience  At about 51:30, Pete describe Musa's connections to Lamya's “coming out slowly process” and asks Lamya to comment-she talks about “reframing the negative” At about 53:45, Lamya cites “inviting in” as a way of reframing the “coming out” trope At about 55:35, Pete shouts out Christina Cooke's quote of queerness as “divine” At about 56:25, The two discuss empathetic and sensitive friends  At about 57:10, The Prophet Muhammed and connections to fealty and openness of fath and individuality are discussed At about 59:50, The two discuss “being “comfortable” in one's own skin and finding community At about 1:00:45, Lamya responds to Pete's questions about Asiya and those who encourage and perpetuate victimizers, including about ideas of citizenship in a country that has so often victimized  At about 1:03:40, Pete shouts out great “plot” in the book and a dizzying scene painted so well by Lamya At about 1:05:30: Lamya talks about hopes that her book and story can be universal while it is quite specific   At about 1:07:00, Lamya encourages people to “buy local”          You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.       I am very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, my conversation with Episode 265 guest Carvell Wallace is up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran.    I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 273 with Raúl Perez. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at University of La Verne and the author of The Souls of White Jokes: How Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy. His work has been published in American Behavioral Scientist, Discourse and Society, Ethnicities, and Sociological Perspectives, and featured in Time, The Grio, Latino Rebels, and Zócalo Public Square.    The episode airs on February 25.

We were beyond lucky to interview the Aussie ICON that​ is @holdensheppard right as INVISIBLE BOYS, the series based on his book by the same name, is dropping on Stan! We're so excited for the release of the series and so glad we got to celebrate with you Holden!Can't wait for you all to tune in, but first, here's more about Holden:Holden Sheppard is an author from Geraldton, Western Australia. His debut coming-of-age novel, Invisible Boys, won multiple accolades including the 2018 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award and the 2019 Western Australian Premier's Book Award and was adapted as a 2025 television series on Stan Australia. His second novel The Brink, a thriller, won multiple accolades, and his third novel King of Dirt, described as "a modern-day Brokeback Mountain", will be published in June 2025. Holden's writing often focuses on themes of masculinity, sexuality and mental health. He lives in Perth's north with his husband and his V8 ute. INVISIBLE BOYS is out NOW on STAN!

Notes and Links to Alejandro Heredia's Work          Alejandro Heredia is a queer Afro-Dominican writer from The Bronx. His debut novel LOCA is out today (February 11) from Simon and Schuster. He has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA, the Dominican Studies Institute, Kenyon Review, and Trinity College. In 2019, he was selected by Myriam Gurba as the winner of the Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Contest. His chapbook of short stories, You're the Only Friend I Need (2021), explores themes of queer transnationalism, friendship, and (un)belonging in the African Diaspora. Heredia's work has been featured in Teen Vogue, Lambda Literary Review, The Offing, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College.    Heredia currently serves as Black Mountain Institute's Shearing Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Buy Loca   Alejandro Heredia's Website   Book Review for Loca   At about 2:40, Alejandro shares his feelings as the book's Pub Day approaches, as well as feedback that he hasn't gotten on the novel At about 4:40, Alejandro talks about his bilingualism, growing up in The Bronx and The Dominican Republic, and what led him towards writing  At about 7:10, Alejandro talks about how being bilingual helps him to become a better writer/thinker and how his Spanglish has developed  At about 9:25, Alejandro gives some background on a specific Dominican word At about 10:25, Alejandro responds to Pete's questions about what he was reading that served as foundational for him and he expands upon “writing across difference” At about 13:10, Alejandro cites contemporary fiction that inspires and challenges, including Gina Chung's work At about 14:10, Alejandro outlines ideas of how he sees the use of the word “queer” At about 16:00, Alejandro expands upon seeds and stimulating ideas for his book, especially wth regard to the “Author's Note” At about 19:10, Alejandro expands on his Author's Note reference to fiction's “capaciousness” and how fiction's constructs helped him write about loss and grief in Loca At about 21:10, Alejandro talks about the significance of his two epigraphs and ideas of “home” and friendship  At about 23:40, Pete and Alejandro talks about the book's exposition and an early inciting incident  At about 24:30, Pete asks Alejandro about main character Charo's domesticity and her visceral negative reaction At about 26:05, The two discuss ideas of community and Y2K and the importance of the “queer space” at The Shade Room in a Dominican and Puerto Rican community At about 28:20, Alejandro talks about intersectionality and his qualms about its usage in early reviews of the novel At about 30:55, Pete and Alejandro discuss Vance and Sal's first meeting and budding relationship and ideas of “identity politics and language” At about 32:25, The two discuss important familial and friend characters  At about 33:55, Yadiel is discussed as a proud queer character and Aljandrro expands upon a moment in which Sal and Yadiel  At about 36:15, Alejandro responds to Pete's questions about a “moment in time” and a “utpian moment,” and expands upon the good and bad of life “at the margins” At about 39:35, Alejandro replies to Pete's question about the ways in which he deals wth sexual abuse and its effects and the abuse as “foundational” and “inform[ing]” Sal's adolescence and beyond At about 42:45, Vance and his likability and Ren are described  At about 43:55, Anacaona and her history are discussed in connection to an important flashback in the book At about 46:00, Alejandro expands upon ideas of “erasing Blackness” that come as unintentional (?) effects of the portrayal of the Taino peoples  At about 49:15, Robert and his sympathetic nature and his usage of a homophobic slur are discussed, as Alejandro discusses the “reclaiming” of the word in the queer Dominican community At about 50:40, Don Julio, Sal's roommate, and his emblematic background are discussed, along with the benefits and drawbacks of “normalizing” a reclaimed word At about 53:00, Alejandro talks about being a “writer of images” after Pete compliments one of many resonant scenes At about 54:55, Pete and Alejandro tiptoe around any spoilers At about 55:50, Sal and Kiko and their minor triumphs and Sal's success as a teacher are discussed  At about 57:00, Pete wonders about Lena, an eccentric character in the book, and Alejandro talks about some ambiguities  At about 59:00, Robert and Charo's relationship and ideas of repression, personal choice, and guilt throughout the book are discussed  At about 1:03:25, Pete and Alejandro discuss generational differences in the ways in which Sal and Vance interact and see progressive movements  At about 1:07:40, Alejandro discusses social media contact info and points listeners towards his upcoming tour dates      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, his conversation with previous guest Carvell Wallace will be up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran.    I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of Pete's, a DIY operation, and he'd love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.     The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 272 with Lamya H. Lamya is a queer Muslim writer and organizer living in New York City whose 2023 memoir HIJAB BUTCH BLUES won the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and a Stonewall Non-fiction Book Award, and was also a finalist for Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards. Lamya's organizing work centers around creating spaces for LGBTQ+ Muslims, fighting Islamophobia, Palestine, and prison abolition.    The episode airs on February 18.

Writer Beware discovered a new company that is so supposed to protect authors from scams, but some things are not quite right. Amazon is offering refunds on unused Kindle Vella tokens in March. KDP upgraded their virtual voice software. And, the US Copyright Office released the second part of a report on registering a copyright of a publication created by AI. All that and more in the self-publishing news! Book Award Pro - https://DaleLinks.com/BookAwardPro (affiliate link) Subscribe to The Self-Publishing Hub - https://TheSelfPublishingHub.com Subscribe to my email newsletter - https://DaleLinks.com/SignUp Join Channel Memberships - https://DaleLinks.com/Memberships Join Me on Discord - https://DaleLinks.com/Discord Check out my main YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@DaleLRoberts My Books - https://DaleLinks.com/MyBooks Source: The Ultimate Guide to 2025 Book Awards for Independent Publishers and Authors - https://publishdrive.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-2025-book-awards-for-independent-publishers-and-authors.html Writer Beware - Book Guard: “Anti-Scam Protection” That's Anything But - https://writerbeware.blog/2024/11/22/book-guard-anti-scam-protection-thats-anything-but/ Invite-Only KDP Beta for Audiobooks - https://www.kdpcommunity.com/s/article/Invite-Only-KDP-Beta-for-Audiobooks?language=en_US We are winding down Kindle Vella - https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/a/faq Apple Books for Authors - https://authors.apple.com/ U.S. Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of AI Report: What Authors Should Know - https://authorsguild.org/news/us-copyright-office-ai-report-part-2-what-authors-should-know/ Miblart (Cover Design) - https://DaleLinks.com/Miblart - code LOVECOVER14 good till Feb. 14, 2025 on romance-themed covers (Affiliate link) GetCovers (Cover Design) - https://DaleLinks.com/GetCovers - code ROMANCE20 good till Feb.14, 2025 on romance-themed covers (Affiliate link)  Get Authentic Book Reviews - https://GetAuthenticBookReviews.com Book Bounty - https://DaleLinks.com/BookBounty (Affiliate link) The Virtues of Wide Distribution with Mark Coker - https://selfpubconnect.mn.co/events/member-qa-the-virtues-of-wide-distribution-with-mark-coker (ALLi membership required) Authors Guild: AI Rights Licensing 101 with Created by Humans - https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SLdFX6VoS3OYgJSK_Gn43w#/registration  Written Word Media: Written Word Media Speaker Series with Ferol Vernon - https://streamyard.com/watch/3mry2CB5wsuU  Master Amazon Ads: Live Ad Audits for Authors - https://www.youtube.com/live/a0snbVjJEPw?si=OCn5IUJ7XgHwxem1 Get your Amazon Ads audited - https://DaleLinks.com/AuditMyAds No Writing Required: Turn Your Podcast Into a Book in 90 Days - https://www.youtube.com/live/VFNtF9K6MJ0?si=MCw9kkwKE9_6Tb8c 6 Authors vs 1 Impostor: Who Will Fool the Rest? - https://youtu.be/WzztnGi-Oj4?si=9Sf9JkKGkmqbNDDv Apply for 6 Versus 1 - https://DaleLinks.com/6v1  Credit: Authors Guild - https://authorsguild.org/  Where noted, some outbound links financially benefit the channel through affiliate programs. I only endorse programs, products, or services I use and can stand confidently behind. These links do not affect your purchase price and greatly helps to building and growing this channel. Thanks in advance for understanding! - Dale L. Roberts  

2/6/25 - Dr. Francis Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University. Among his many books are The New Mormon Challenge and Taking Rites Seriously: Law, Politics, and the Reasonableness of Faith, winner of the American Academy of Religion's 2016 Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the category of Constructive-Reflective Studies. Catholics have done very little thinking about or interaction with the theological beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons). The Catholic Church has focused virtually all of its ecumenical efforts on the ecclesial communities that arose from the Reformation, the Orthodox Churches, and Judaism. Left out of these discussions has been the Mormon Church, even though it has grown to nearly 16 million members internationally by 2016 from its modest beginnings in 1830. In A Catholic Engagement with Latter-day Saints, a collection of Catholic scholars address several theological topics over which Mormons and Catholics hold contrary beliefs: the great apostasy, the papacy, the Eucharist, the Trinity, the incarnation, the nature of God, justification, sainthood, liturgy, and deification. The contributors, some of whom are converts to Catholicism from Mormonism, offer a respectful, though critical, analysis of LDS beliefs. Get the book at https://ignatius.com/a-catholic-engagement-with-latter-day-saints-celdsp/

Minnesota has a rich literary scene and one way to find books by local authors is to check out the annual list of finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards. For the first time since 2006, anthologies are a category on that list. These are collections of stories, poems, and even visual art that are organized around a theme. The stories in one of the finalist works this year may be familiar to anyone who's stumbled into a deep conversation in a bathroom or on a bus. In fact, the idea for “Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces” came to co-editor Michelle Filkins after she witnessed one of those moments. She joins MPR News host Nina Moini along with New York Times bestselling author Alison McGhee, who is one of the writers featured in the anthology.MPR News has spoken with a number of writers on the list of 2025 Minnesota Book Award finalists, including Louise Erdrich, Mubanga Kalimamukwento, and Anne Ursu, as well as Graywolf Press, which is nominated for its 50th anniversary poetry collection.

The nominees are in!

Notes and Links to David Ebenbach's Work   David Ebenbach writes. He's been writing ever since he was a kid, when he kept his whole family awake by banging away on an enormous manual typewriter, and he's never wanted to stop.    In fact, David's now the author of ten books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and his work has picked up awards along the way: the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Patricia Bibby Award, and more.    Born and raised in the great city of Philadelphia, these days David does most of his writing in Washington, DC, where he lives with his family—because he uses a laptop now, he doesn't keep them awake with his typing—and where he works at Georgetown University, promoting inclusive, student-centered teaching at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, and teaching creative writing and literature at the Center for Jewish Civilization and creativity through the Master's in Learning, Design, and Technology Program.   Buy David's Books   David Ebenbach's Website   Book Review: LitPick about Possible Happiness     At about 2:15, David talks about the cool cover design for Possible Happiness At about 3:00, David discusses a recent reading in which his students were able to hear/see his work At about 4:00, David highlights wonderful contributions from Carol Nehez, his inspirational high school teacher  At about 5:55, David details pivotal reading and writers from his adolescence  At about 7:30, Pete and David discuss connections between his book and West Philly's own Will Smith At about 8:15, David responds to Pete's questions about Philadelphia's deep writing tradition and pivotal events in 1980s Philadelphia; he cites John Wideman and Mat Johnson At about 11:00, David cites Ted Chang, Charles Yu as a few contemporary writers he enjoys At about 12:25, David explains the webs involved with his books and genre and publishing  At about 13:55, David speaks about teaching informs his writing and vice versa-featuring shouts out to Asha Thanki and Kate Brody At about 16:15, David lists some favorite texts of his classmates, including work by Jewish writers from the Global South, like Esther David and others like Nathan Englander and Robert Levy-Samuels At about 18:40, David gives out information about buying Possible Happiness and shares how he finds joy on social media-specifically Facebook At about 21:00, David responds to Pete's questions about inhabiting the persona/headspace of the teens represented in Possible Happiness At about 23:55, David gives background on Jacob, the protagonist's, mindset and book's exposition  At about 27:00, Pete and David discuss Jacob's “inertia” and how depression and how the book's common phrase of “howling like a coyote” relate  At about 28:15, David talks about the term “depression” and both capacious and maybe “limiting” At about 29:10, David and Pete discuss Jacob's mother's living with depression and  At about 30:20, David reflects on the significance of a literal collective howl in the book At about 31:55, Pete compliments David's usage of a “moment in time,” and David cites Raymond Carver's “Cathedral” and Miranda July's work as examples of authors manipulating time At about 34:40, Pete has a bone to pick over Full House's treatment in the novel! At about 35:10, The two discuss the awesome (in the truest sense of the word) pacing in Tobas Wolff's “Bullet in the Brain” At about 36:10, the machinations of the social groups at the book's high school are discussed, as well as the “quaint” ways of home phones pre-cell phones At about 37:55, Pete thanks David for dropping info on Philadelphia's metro At about 39:00, David discusses the ways in which clubs that accepted people under 21 and the culture that brought Jacob ways to release anger/angst At about 40:00, The two discuss the pop culture references from the late 80s/early 90s featured in the book  At about 41:30, Pete details information about Jacob's happy days and days dealing with depression and connections to his social life At about 42:10, The religiosity of Jacob's family and his uncle's family are discussed, and David reflects on the ways that Jacob's Judaism is represented  At about 44:15, The two discuss the real-life parallels between identity and race and class in the book At about 47:00, Jacob's trip to Chicago to meet his father and ideas of neglecting to talk about depression are discussed  At about 49:20, David responds to Pete's question about the source(s) of Jacob's resentment towards his father At about 50:30, Pete compliments the subtle and nuanced ways in which David writes about depression and teen life  At about 51:35, David cites some benefits of writing about the pre-cell phone days At about 53:00, David gives some hints about his exciting upcoming projects You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, his conversation with Episode 264 guest Maggie Sheffer is up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content! This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran. I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of Pete's, a DIY operation, and he'd love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 270 with Lamya H. Lamya is a queer Muslim writer and organizer living in New York City whose 2023 memoir HIJAB BUTCH BLUES won the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and a Stonewall Non-fiction Book Award, and was also a finalist for Lambda Literary and Publishing Triangle Awards. Lamya's organizing work centers around creating spaces for LGBTQ+ Muslims, fighting Islamophobia, Palestine, and prison abolition.    The episode airs on February 4.

Welcome to this revisited episode of the True Fiction Project. Traci DeForge, CEO and Founder of Produce Your Podcast, interviews Lynn Moon (CEO) and Shannon Peason (CFO), Co-Founders of the publisher, Indignor House, about Reenita's new book she launched back in July of 2024! Lynn and Shannon share a bit about the type of authors they typically work with, and how they became connected to Reenita. Lynn shares a lot of the history in India from when this book was written and the impact that it can have on future generations of those who read this book. At the end, you will hear an excerpt from Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh written and read by Reenita herself about the forbidden love between an Anglo-Indian school teacher and a Muslim student activist against General Dyer's impending tragedy.  Get your copy of Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh here! IN THIS EPISODE: [2:42] How did Lynn and Shannon get started on creating Indignor House?  [4:12] What type of authors were they looking for when they started Indignor House? [5:53] How did they get connected to Reenita?  [12:21] What type of genre do they typically work with? [15:27] What is the history of the time that Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh was written about?  [21:35] What is it like to publish a non U.S. historical fiction book in the United States?  [25:06] How did the experience of publishing this book impact Shannon (editor)? [27:01] What are Lynn's expectations for this book?  [30:14] Is there a screenplay version in development?  [31:02] How can people get their hands on the book? [32:21] We hear an excerpt from Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh written and read by Reenita Hora.  Subscribe to Reenita's Storytelling Den on Substack for free or become a paid subscriber to watch the video version of the podcast and be eligible to receive other extras such as exclusive content from podcast guests, short stories, exclusive fiction and more! https://substack.com/@reenitahora KEY TAKEAWAYS: If you are an aspiring author, take your time and wait for the right publishing company and editor. The wait is worth it to ensure that you are able to send your message out to the world in a beautiful way. We need to take care of each other, we need to respect each other. Power is not everything. Disagreement is important, but being able to have a conversation without getting emotional is crucial.  The story Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh is a story that everyone needs to get their hands on. It is a tragic historical fiction story, but the lessons show why we must support others to avoid history continuing to repeat itself.   Fiction Credits: Written and read by Reenita Hora RESOURCES: Where to buy Vermilion Harvest: Playtime at the Bagh: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1953278523 Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/vermilion-harvest-reenita-m-hora/1145699636?ean=9781953278524 Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Reenita-Malhotra-Hora/author/B001KHTMSS Walmart https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vermilion-Harvest-Playtime-at-the-Bagh-Hardcover-9781953278517/5976849351?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0 Thriftbooks https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/vermilion-harvest-playtime-at-the-bagh_reenita-m-hora/53127072/#edition=71488527&idiq=64643525 Booktopia (Australia) https://www.booktopia.com.au/vermilion-harvest-reenita-m-hora/book/9781953278517.html Hatchards (UK) https://www.hatchards.co.uk/book/vermilion-harvest/reenita-m-hora/9781953278524  Indignor House Website   Indignor House Facebook Indignor House Twitter  Indignor House Instagram BIO: Bio for Lynn Moon: CEO & Co-Founder of the publisher, Indignor House Lynn is the award-winning author of the Agency Series that follows a government with unlimited power and money. She has worked for state and federal government agencies and uses her long reaching personal experiences to captivate her audience with realistic stories of political corruption. Her novels have won awards including the Moonbeam Children's Book Award, IPPY award, and the Dante Rossetti Book award. Lynn holds an MPA in Public Administration from Troy State University and an MFA in Literature from Lindenwood University. She's the CEO of Indignor House, working to change the publishing environment one book at a time. Bio for Shannon Pearson: CEO & Co-Founder of the publisher, Indignor House   Shannon comes to Indignor House with a treasure trove of over 10 years of experience in accounting and administrative services. For the last five years, Shannon has worked in the editorial fields of all genres. With her talent, she gives the numbers and letters a refined breath of fresh air. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/true-fiction-project/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Notes and Links to Dan Gutman's Work        New York Times best-selling and award-winning author Dan Gutman has written more than 190 books for readers from kindergarten through middle school. Dan's My Weird School series includes 100+ titles, and has sold more than 35 million copies globally over the past 20 years. Dan also is the author of the best-selling Genius Files series, the Baseball Card Adventure series, and many more.    Dan's books have been named Junior Library Guild Selections and Bank Street College's Best Children's Books of the Year, and have been awarded numerous state book awards, including: The California Young Reader Medal, the Massachusetts Children's Book Award, and the Iowa Children's Choice Award, among others.     When he's not writing books, Dan loves to ride his bike, play pickleball, throw Frisbees, and explore New York City where he lives with his wife Nina. To find out more, follow Dan on Facebook, BlueSky, and Instagram. Buy Dan's Books   Dan Gutman's Website   Book Review: The Genius Files   At about 0:45, Audrey nails the biographical reading of Dan Gutman's info At about 2:25, Dan responds to Pete asking if “it gets old” after writing 190+ books At about 3:15, Pete talks about the baseball bug hitting the family At about 3:40, Audrey gives background on the family's connection with Satchel Paige, and Chris gives backstory involving Shoeless Joe Jackson At about 5:45, Dan expands on the legend of Shoeless Joe and talks about the popularity of baseball with young people  At about 6:40, Dan and the Riehls discuss the famous Honus Wagner baseball card and some facts about him, the star of one of Dan's books At about 8:50, Dan responds to Audrey's question about his inspirations for the baseball series through giving background on his writing for kids and connecting to baseball At about 11:10, Dan traces his journey in initially getting his work published  At about 13:20, Chris recommends a baseball player for Dan's new book At about 13:50, Dan reflects on why he chose the baseball players he did for his books  At about 15:15, Dan replies to Audrey's question about his own baseball career, and shares a cool Easter egg At about 16:15, The  At about 16:40, Chris recounts two family card collecting stories similar to The Sandlot-the second dealing with a Michael Jordan rookie card At about 19:10, Dan discusses the research needed for his writing, and how he balances fantasy/fiction with nonfiction  At about 21:10, Pete shares his experience reading about larger cultural events and historical events through sports books like those about Jackie Robisnon  At about 22:35, Dan shares his experiences in writing about Jackie Robinson and Joe DiMaggio  At about 23:35, Dan responds to Pete's questions about books and genres that inspired his love of reading, and how reading about baseball was a huge catalyst  At about 25:50, Dan shares wonderful feedback and compliments shared by eager readers of his work and their parents and teachers  At about 27:10, Pete and Dan discuss The Genius Files series and its ethos, and Dan gives background on the series' genesis  At about 30:25, Dan talks about writing for different ages and in different genres, and his mindset in doing so At about 31:55, Dan responds to Pete asking about his “beta readers” and getting reading feedback  At about 33:00, Dan shouts out some favorite writers for young people  At about 34:30, Dan talks about the ways in which visual arts and photography are balanced with his words  At about 36:50, Dan reflects on what his books have in common and ideas of the “muse” as he mentions some exciting upcoming projects  At about 41:00, Dan gives contact and social media info, as well as book ordering information      You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow Pete on IG, where he is @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where he is @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both the YouTube Channel and the podcast while you're checking out this episode.       Pete is very excited to have one or two podcast episodes per month featured on the website of Chicago Review of Books. The audio will be posted, along with a written interview culled from the audio. This week, his conversation with Episode 255 guest Chris Knapp is up on the website. A big thanks to Rachel León and Michael Welch at Chicago Review.     Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl      Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting Pete's one-man show, his DIY podcast and his extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    This month's Patreon bonus episode will feature an exploration of the wonderful poetry of Khalil Gibran.    I have added a $1 a month tier for “Well-Wishers” and Cheerleaders of the Show.    This is a passion project of Pete's, a DIY operation, and he'd love for your help in promoting what he's convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.     Please tune in for Episode 269 with David Ebenbach. He is the author of ten books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and his work has picked up awards along the way: the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Patricia Bibby Award, and more. He works at Georgetown University, promoting inclusive, student-centered teaching at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, and he teaches creative writing and literature at the Center for Jewish Civilization and creativity through the Master's in Learning, Design, and Technology Program.    The episode airs on January 14.    Please go to ceasefiretoday.com, which features 10+ actions to help bring about Ceasefire in Gaza.

Hello Book Besties!! We are ending our fourth season with our annual book awards episode! Join us as we share and discuss some of our favorite moments, characters and books from this past year! As always, we are so grateful for each of you and we hope everyone has a wonderful New Year! See you all in 2025!! Spoilers for the following books: House of Flame and Shadow (CC3)  Spark of the Everflame Glow of the Everflame  Heat of the Everflame  When the Moon Hatched  Quicksilver  Powerless Two Twisted Crowns Songbird and the Heart of Stone  ⁠Patreon⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠Website --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/flightsoffantasypodcast/support