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The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Bestselling author Ellen O'Clover spoke with us about her career as a copywriter, her writing process, making the transition from YA to adult romance, and her latest novel IF NOT YOU. Ellen O'Clover is the acclaimed author of The Heartbreak Hotel—a BOTM selection, instant indie bestseller, and one of NPR's 2025 “Books We Love.” She studied creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. Her latest novel, If Not You, is described as an “...honest and heartfelt love story [with] the witty, down-to-earth, timeless vibes of the classic 90s and 2000s rom-coms.” Rachel Lynn Solomon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Extracurricular, said of the author, “Ellen O'Clover is one of my favorite writers — her books leave me in perpetual awe….The romance genre is radically lucky to have Ellen's voice in it.” [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Ellen O'Clover, Milena, and I discussed: Getting a blurb from our friend Jodi Picoult Why she made the shift from pantser to plotter How she crafts her emotionally driven fiction What she mined from her copywriting career for the latest Meeting your readers where they are And a lot more! Show Notes: ellenoclover.com If Not You By Ellen O'Clover (Amazon) Ellen O'Clover Amazon Author Page Ellen O'Clover on Substack Ellen O'Clover on TikTok Ellen O'Clover on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What if our fear of AI is helping create the AI we fear?What stories are we telling about the future — and could those stories help create the very future we expect? Professor Simon Bell has spent a career crossing the boundaries between systems thinking, sustainability, technology and human behaviour. Now he is turning those same questions towards artificial intelligence, exploring how fear, cultural narratives and our assumptions about technology may shape not only how we respond to AI, but how we build it.Simon challenges the familiar picture of AI as either humanity's saviour or its inevitable destroyer. Instead, he asks us to look at what humans bring to the relationship: our extraordinary collective resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt to chaos, and qualities such as compassion, presence and self-sacrifice that may prove far harder for machines to replicate. From the “ecology” of competing AIs to the mystery of consciousness, his work sits at the boundary between technology and some much older questions about what it actually means to be human.At the heart of the conversation is storytelling. Science fiction gives us a laboratory for possible futures, but the narratives writers create can also influence the fears, expectations and assumptions we carry into the real world. Rather than endlessly retelling stories of technological catastrophe, Simon asks whether we can imagine something different — and whether crafting better stories about tomorrow might be one of the ways we begin to build a better future.Yes there are still the Big Questions.Books of his we discuss: The AI Aftermath pentologyhttps://sgbell.org/alternatefutures.substack.comalternatefutures.co.uk
This is a rerun of an episode that originally went live March 4, 2020. "Vince Meat" (February 22, 2020) Have you seen that one Golden Girls where Blanche accidentally sexes a man to death and the girls have to hide the body? Well, your answer should be no, because that episode didn't air back in the day. It's a script written by our own Glen Lakin and then, for the purposes of this episode, read by a host of our actor friends. It's fucked-up and funny, and we couldn't think of a better way to celebrate our fiftieth episode. Cast: Dorothy: Meghan Parks; Rose: Tony Rodriguez; Blanche: Sam Pancake; Sophia: Ted Biaselli; Violet: Janie Haddad Tompkins This episode was produced by Meika Grimm
Today's guest did something unexpected when she chose to leave her judgeship and follow a new direction in poetry. Her name is Jacqueline St. Joan. Jackie is a retired lawyer, judge, and law professor, as well as an early feminist activist, community organizer, memoirist and novelist whose path to the bench was anything but planned. She started her career as a secretary, went to law school at 28 as a divorced mother of two, and ended up representing domestic violence survivors before becoming the first judge in Denver's centralized protection order court. Her outspoken feminism brought public scrutiny though her rulings were consistently upheld and she was voted back into office. Her shift away from law began after her father's death, when she started writing about their complicated relationship. A trip to a writers' conference in Aspen turned that project into a lifelong pull toward poetry, then fiction. Jackie stepped down from the bench gradually, working part-time as a mediator and law professor to stay financially stable while building a writing career. Her memoir, Your Verdict: A Judge's Reckoning with Lawand Loss, (Golden Antelope Press) was recently published. Jackie is also the author of two novels, My Sisters Made of Light and The Shawl of Midnight. Jackie served as a Denver County Judge from 1987-1994. Jackie was also recently inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame. Please enjoy this fascinating interview here!
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
#1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult returns to speak with us about her research process, writing habits, book bans, recurring characters, and her 30th novel, HOLLOW BONES. Jodi Picoult is the award-winning and bestselling author of 30 novels, including most recently the #1 bestseller By Any Other Name. Her landmark novel 19 MINUTES was recently named the most banned book in the United States in a report by PEN America. Her 30th novel is Hollow Bones, also a #1 bestseller, and a book that “explores mothers and daughters, gender bias in healthcare, and catastrophe and consequence.” In a starred review, Kirkus called the book, “An intricate, twisty family drama spanning decades . . . Fans of My Sister's Keeper will . . . be glad to hear a character from that book is back. . . . The queen of social activist novels has done it again.” With over 60 million books in print, Jodi's books have been translated into forty languages. Her co-adaptation of the musical Austenland is currently in development. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Jodi Picoult, Milena, and I discussed: Why she took and failed a lie detector test researching her latest book The never-ending book tour and surviving on one meal a day How she defends free speech while maintaining 1.5M social media followers Why there's no silver bullet after finishing a book and signing with an agent And a lot more! Show Notes: jodipicoult.com Hollow Bones: A Novel By Jodi Picoult (Amazon) Jodi Picoult Amazon Author Page Jodi Picoult on Facebook Jodi Picoult on Twitter Jodi Picoult on Instagram Jodi Picoult on TikTok Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode of the Reading With Your Kids Podcast, Jed welcomes the wildly inventive Gareth P. Jones, author of the Solve Your Own Mystery series. Gareth shares how he writes his twisty, choice-filled mysteries without a strict plan, often discovering the solution right alongside his readers. He talks about the joy and chaos of letting kids help shape the story—both on the page and in his live "Mystery Makers" shows, where the audience becomes the cast, the co-writers, and sometimes the comedians. Gareth also dives into his work turning picture books into "mini musicals", including Rabunsel (Rapunzel as a rabbit) and Cinderavilla. Armed with a ukulele, trumpet, loop pedal, and a healthy respect for mistakes, he explains how slip-ups on stage often spark his best ideas. He previews his new project, the diary of Ugg, a cave boy whose different way of thinking may just nudge his whole community forward. In the second part of the episode, intern host Madison Lucchesi sits down with Kieonna Risher, author of the tender debut picture book Nana's Garden. Kieonna shares how the book honors her grandmother, Sandra Risher, and helps children—especially her son Micah, who is autistic—navigate grief using memories, ritual, and tangible keepsakes like a treasured pendant. She describes family traditions that keep Nana's love alive and teases an upcoming second book about helping kids manage "big feelings." Together, these conversations celebrate interactive storytelling, emotional honesty, and the many ways books can help kids feel, choose, and grow.
Kate Sidley is a WGA Award and Peabody Award-winning, Emmy-nominated comedy writer and performer who wrote for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Her first book, How to Be a Saint, is out now. Beyond television, her work can be found in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Reductress, and Someecards. She also wrote for the 69th Emmy Awards.She holds a M.A. in Theatre History and Criticism from Brooklyn College and a third of a Ph.D. (so just the P) in Theatre from CUNY Graduate Center. She is also an alum of the NBC Late Night Writers Workshop, Baldwin Wallace University, a co-founder of Sea Tea Improv in Hartford, CT, and a proud returned Peace Corps volunteer.We discussed our favorite saints, why Northeast Ohio is a gem of an area and the importance of learning from failure. Don't miss this one!This episode, like all episodes of If This Is True, brings forth what drives creatives to do what they do. For more of this content and interaction, you can also go to my substack, coolmite25.substack.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The hottest take on LinkedIn right now is that coding was never the bottleneck. Josh and Bob have hired hundreds of developers, sat through the "why is this taking so long" meetings, and lived through waterfall, so they're calling it: coding was slow, expensive, and scary, and pretending otherwise rewrites history.But that's just the opening argument. The real conversation is about what happens after the bottleneck moves. Bob walks through the waterfall phases most of the audience never lived through (the 3-inch binder on the shelf, the Gantt charts, the near-infinite bug triage loop) and admits there's something from that era worth keeping. Josh shares a debate he's having with himself about whether code readability still matters when neither he nor his cofounder will ever read the code again, and traces it back to the day he argued his boss out of Hungarian notation because IntelliSense had made it pointless.From there: the "ilities" and which one AI still struggles with most (Josh's answer is usability, by a wide margin), Bob's claim that the industry has been producing less skilled engineers for 25 years and AI just turned up the volume, a CTO who replaced a 9-year-old website in 3 months instead of a year, and why "AI plus HI" only works if the human intelligence part is still growing.If you're an engineering leader deciding which standards to enforce on AI-generated code and which ones to retire, this is the episode. Stay Connected and Informed with Our NewslettersJosh Anderson's "Leadership Lighthouse"Dive deeper into the world of Agile leadership and management with Josh Anderson's "Leadership Lighthouse." This bi-weekly newsletter offers insights, tips, and personal stories to help you navigate the complexities of leadership in today's fast-paced tech environment. Whether you're a new manager or a seasoned leader, you'll find valuable guidance and practical advice to enhance your leadership skills. Subscribe to "Leadership Lighthouse" for the latest articles and exclusive content right to your inbox.Subscribe hereBob Galen's "Agile Moose"Bob Galen's "Agile Moose" is a must-read for anyone interested in Agile practices, team dynamics, and personal growth within the tech industry. The newsletter features in-depth analysis, case studies, and actionable tips to help you excel in your Agile journey. Bob brings his extensive experience and thoughtful perspectives directly to you, covering everything from foundational Agile concepts to advanced techniques. Join a community of Agile enthusiasts and practitioners by subscribing to "Agile Moose."Subscribe hereDo More Than Listen:We publish video versions of every episode and post them on our YouTube page.Help Us Spread The Word: Love our content? Help us out by sharing on social media, rating our podcast/episodes on iTunes, or by giving to our Patreon campaign. Every time you give, in any way, you empower our mission of helping as many agilists as possible. Thanks for sharing!
Shekhinah International is an Apostolic gathering that features Christian leaders from multiple gatherings who are passionate about seeing Christians equipped to move in purity and power. God wants to do great exploits through you! Visit www.shekhinahonline.com for more information.
Pellerin Books founders Laura Palmer and Jessie Sullivan on how readers discover books now, where to put your marketing money, and why the quality of the book still decides everything.You'll learnThe rule that quietly decides which authors get a publisher's time, budget and attention.Why the first question about marketing a book is never “how?”How to research your readers and your market without paying for a single tool.The metric that makes an ad campaign look like it is working when nothing is.What a cover and a developmental edit should cost, and the one place never to skimp.Why raising your ad budget too fast makes it perform worse, not better.How subscription reading changed what a sagging middle chapter costs a writer.Whether a publisher actually cares how many followers you have.Three books on writing that between them cover almost everything, and the two-word rule that keeps readers turning pages.Why you cannot keyword your way into a reader's life in the age of AI search.Resources & Links
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
#1 New York Times bestselling author, Jodi Picoult, spoke with me about writing for Wonder Woman, adapting books for musical theater, and the question of Shakespeare's true authorship in her upcoming novel BY ANY OTHER NAME. Jodi Picoult is the bestselling author of 30 novels, including landmark titles such as Mad Honey – her most recent 1 million-copy bestseller – Wish You Were Here, A Spark of Light, and Small Great Things. 40 million copies of her books are in print worldwide and have been translated into 34 languages. Her forthcoming novel is BY ANY OTHER NAME (on sale 8/20; Ballantine), described as a novel about two women, centuries apart – one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare's plays – who are both forced to hide behind another name. #1 New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah said of the book, “You'll fall in love with Emilia Bassano, the unforgettable heroine based on a real woman that Picoult brings vividly to life in her brilliantly researched new novel.” Elle called it, “[An] inspiring work of feminist literature inspired by real historical accounts.” Jodi was also co-librettist for the stage musical adaptation of her young adult novel Between the Lines (which premiered Off-Broadway in Summer 2022), the co-librettist of the musical BREATHE, the co-librettist of the musical adaptation of The Book Thief, and she is currently at work on an adaptation of Austenland. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Jodi Picoult and I discussed: What's changed and what hasn't for women (in theater) over 400+ years? The best time to break an arm for an author How she works in cycles for her books Why her kids made her write for Wonder Woman The conundrum of a famous playwright who didn't own a single book And a lot more! Show Notes: jodipicoult.com By Any Other Name: A Novel By Jodi Picoult (Amazon) Jodi Picoult Amazon Author Page WAS SHAKESPEARE A WOMAN? – Elizabeth Winkler for The Atlantic Jodi Picoult on Facebook Jodi Picoult on Twitter Jodi Picoult on Instagram Jodi Picoult on TikTok Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Critically acclaimed debut novelist Jessica Goldstein spoke with us about her career path from teen mag intern to freelance culture writer, time travel, and her nostalgic debut, RETRO. Jessica M. Goldstein is a journalist, humorist, and longtime contributor to Vulture, where she has recapped ‘Emily in Paris,' ‘Hacks,' ‘Wednesday,' and ‘The White Lotus.' Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Marie Claire, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and more. Her highly anticipated debut, Retro, is described as “Party Down meets one of those great George Saunders short stories about how weird and dystopian work is. A little White Lotus, a little Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” In a starred review, Kirkus declared the book “a nuanced, biting cautionary tale about how not staying present can erase our very selves.” Jessica also publishes a weekly Substack newsletter, The Retro Report, where she shares vintage mood-based recommendations for what to read, watch, listen to, meditate on, and obsess over. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Jessica Goldstein, Milena, and I discussed: The origins of her debut novel and how she snagged an agent Getting long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Her intense nostalgia for the "Before" times Why you need to opt out of the imagined timeline of becoming an author And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web jessicamgoldstein.com retrotheagency.com Retro: A Novel By Jessica Goldstein (Amazon) The Retro Report on Substack Jessica Goldstein on Twitter Jessica Goldstein on Facebook Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Listen to the full episode over on the Beyond the Screenplay Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beyondthescreenplay/posts/beyond-writes-168200117With this video we're trying a different format, and we'd really love to hear your feedback!In this episode, the BTS team attempts to write an original movie pitch in 80 minutes. But we aren't starting from scratch—we get starting constraints chosen at random (directory, genre, etc.), and every twenty minutes "the studio" shows up and throws us a curveball.The goal with this format is to demonstrate how writers can use the techniques we so often talk about on the podcast...while also having fun and going a little crazy.We're thinking of this episode as a kind of pilot, and we'd love to hear your honest feedback about it. What worked? What could be more improved upon? And what crazy ideas for curveballs would you like to see in the future?
God is an amazing God. A loving God. But there's a side to Him that we don't like to think too much about. It's the angry God. The God of judgement and wrath. But if we don't get our mind around that side of Him, then the good news of Jesus – well there's nothing good about the news. Why Sin is a Four Letter Word Now, something that strikes me as I look around the world in which we live, is that we live in a world where just about anything goes. Even in my short life time – just on half a century, which, in the overall scheme of history, is like a drop in the ocean – things have changed radically. Let me give you just one example. When I was a young man, a woman falling pregnant outside marriage was a great matter of shame. Today it's a life style choice that many women make. Many, many couples choose to live together without making the commitment of marriage. And just in case you think I am plucking that out of the air, the statistics tells us that, in Australia at least, co-habitation before marriage has increased – wait for this – from eighteen percent of couples in 1975 to almost sixty percent today. It's gone from being the exception, to being more the norm. Just the way things are these days. You know, sometimes you hear people thumping the table, telling us how bad things are these days, "Now like the good old days when I was young." The implication is that this younger generation is, well, you know, they have no discipline or standards and if only things were like they were back in the "good old days". The problem is, the "good old days" weren't really that good. Husbands still beat their wives back in the "good old days". Children were still abused back in the "good old days". Bad things still happened back in the "good old days" too – let's be honest. So the last thing under the sun that I want to be doing is suggesting that we somehow turn the clock back, so that things will be fine again – just like they were in the "good old days" - because we can't turn the clock back and even if we could, things weren't necessarily so grand back in the "good old days". And there is a reason for that because from the moment that Adam and Eve took their first bite of that "apple" from that one tree … the "one" tree in that beautiful, abundant, peaceful garden, of which God said, "Don't eat the fruit of that tree," from that moment there has been this thing in the world called "sin". Let's go to the story – Genesis chapter 3, beginning at verse 1 – if you have a Bible: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.' But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." God said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate." Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent tricked me, and I ate." Now, you see things have changed in this world. We live in a world where anything goes, right? Well, just about anything! Many a moral standard of yesteryear seems old fashioned and irrelevant and, to many, downright offensive. We are a whole bunch more relaxed about things these days, compared with the rigid old rules of the past century. So this notion of sin; this rebelling against God; this Adam and Eve thing, well, it seems like an outdated throwback from the 1950s. It feels, well, completely irrelevant in the enlightened age in which we live, doesn't it? And there are some things from the past, the way women were treated like chattels almost, for instance, that were terrible. Still happens in places around the world today. Or treating people differently because of their skin colour or their nationality. So many flaws and faults in these rigid rules from the past, to be sure and that … that's why the short, three letter word, "sin" is something of a four letter word these days – a dirty word, a nasty word, a word that implies moral judgement against the standards of the rigid and flawed rules of our childhood. But I'm not so much talking about that; about man-made rules. The thing … the thing that ushered pain and suffering into this world was our rebellion against God, starting with Adam and Eve in the garden. Read on to chapter 3 of that Book of Genesis and we find that there were some serious consequences to their actions, beyond what we just read. So whilst "sin" is a word that seems to carry, well, a lot of baggage around with it, it speaks of our rebellion against God and that word 'sin' as it's used in the Bible, means literally "to miss the mark; to miss the whole point; to miss out on your share". And that's the consequence of our rebellion against God. It's not this thing that there are a whole bunch of rigid religious rules that you and I have to follow in order to make it into heaven. That's not it at all. The point is that God is a God who loves us. He loves you, He loves me beyond anything we can imagine love to be. Writes the Apostle Paul to his friends, in Ephesians chapter 3, beginning at verse 18: I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. He loves you so much, more than words can ever say – beyond understanding – and when we turn our backs on Him; when you and I decide to live our lives our way; when we adopt this "anything goes" attitude; when we decide we can eat the fruit off any tree, there are consequences. I mean these: eat too much of the wrong thing and it will ruin your health; work too hard for too long, without rest and it will ruin your life; play too hard; drink too hard, it will ruin your health and your relationships. Cause and effect! Come on! It's not rocket science – it's as plain as the nose on your face and mine. And with Adam and Eve, there was cause and effect – there are consequences. As much as we try and kid ourselves; as much as we try to tell ourselves that we can have anything and be anything and do anything – "It'll be okay" – we know it's a lie and we know there are always consequences. You and I, we've been duped into thinking that "sin" is some old fashioned, irrelevant, religious word from the past, when all along it's the greatest malady of our lives. When all along that rebellion is robbing us of the fruit of a good and healthy relationship with God; a God who loves us so much that He sent us His only Son that whoever believes in Him wouldn't perish but instead, would have eternal life. Sowing and Reaping Now, this word "righteousness", well, it's not a word that we use so much these days, in common, day to day language. Self-righteousness maybe, is the only time that we really hear the word. So what is it, why does it matter and why does it produce a harvest? Well, it turns out that this whole "righteousness" thing is a matter of cause and effect. I guess we pretty much understand the word "right", telling right from wrong. At least, we think we do. If it's right, it's right; if it's wrong, it's wrong. Not so much black and white these days; lots of shades of grey there between what people consider to be right and wrong, particularly the wealthier nations and their peoples become, the more focused we become on ourselves rather than on other people around us, that line between right and wrong, well, it's a bit like the shifting sands. Nevertheless, I guess we all have a sense of right and wrong. But the word "righteousness" is something of a legal term – it has to do with the law and in the sense of God's righteousness, it has to do with God's law, which we find in the Old Testament. Best way I have found to understand it is in terms of our law today. Let's say someone does something wrong, whether it's a minor traffic infringement or a murder. Once we have done that and it's proven, we stand condemned by the law. By and large, so long as justice is done, we don't have a problem with that – we understand that we have to stop people from speeding their cars, right through to murdering other people. So, we do something wrong and as the saying goes, we find ourselves on "the wrong side of the law". And then there is a debt to be paid – whether it's a hundred dollar speeding fine or twenty five years in prison for murdering. The law demands justice. That justice acts both as a penalty and, hopefully, as a deterrent but it also gives society justice. If a loved one of ours is killed by a drunk driver, let's say, and that drunk driver is tried and convicted and given a fifty dollar fine, then we don't experience a sense of justice. On the other hand, if that drunk driver is locked up for some number of years - whilst that doesn't bring our loved one back - our sense of justice is satisfied. But here's the thing: once the penalty or the debt has been paid by the transgressor, whatever you and I may think of them, they are free because they now have a right standing according to the law. A murderer, after serving that term in prison, walks out of that gate a free man or a free woman with precisely the same standing according to the law that you and I have. They have served their time; they have paid their debt to society and they are now back on the right side of the law. In a legal sense, they stand justified and here it is; here's the word "righteousness" – they are back in a right standing with the law that makes them "righteousness". That's what righteousness means – to be in the right standing with the law. So, if we do something wrong, it causes us pain, let alone the pain it causes other people because we find ourselves on the wrong side of the law. Once we take our punishment and serve our dues, we are then righteous again in the eyes of the law. Cause and effect. And it's like that with our relationship with God and in life generally. And it's something that the Apostle Paul talks about with his friends at the church in Galatia, back in the First Century AD. Have a look with me at Galatians chapter 6, beginning at verse 7. He says this: Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you will reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. In other words, stop kidding yourself; stop trying to get around God. Whatever you sow, you are going to reap. Cause and effect! Sow rubbish, you will reap rubbish; sow goodness, you will reap goodness. So even though things can be tough; even though sometimes if feels as though the world is against us; even though it feels sometimes that nothing … absolutely nothing is going our way – sow goodness; don't grow tired in doing that – sow goodness. Sow in God's direction; sow in God's way and just at the right time, you will reap a harvest; the harvest of righteousness. Sowing and reaping. Now there is more to this whole "righteousness" thing than what we do. There is some bad news about righteousness and some good news; great news; fantastic news and we are going to be checking those out next week on the programme. But right now I guess, in a world where the maxim of our day is that pretty much anything goes, I just felt today that we need to debunk that lie; it's a patent lie. "Do what feels good! Anything goes, it'll be fine!" No it won't, because there's cause and effect. Get drunk, hop in your car, knock over a pedestrian – there are consequences – cause and effect. "And as you sow, so shall you reap". Sow goodness and will reap the harvest; the abundant blessing of righteousness; the right standing with God – a God who loves us beyond anything that we can say in words – a God who wants to bless our socks off. The thing that I want to encourage you with today is this: that doing "good" doesn't always feel good. Let me say that again, it's important: doing "good" doesn't always feel good; loving the unlovable, turning the other cheek, putting others before ourselves. In fact, often it's tough and it hurts and we want to give up – it's all too hard. But we reap what we sow: that the universal, godly principle. As you sow, so shall you reap. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right for we will reap at harvest-time if we do not give up. And that harvest is the abundant harvest of righteousness – a blessing from God that is absolutely, beyond anything we can imagine right now. The Wrath of God Now, in the coming weeks we are going to be talking quite a bit about the harvest that Paul is talking about and we have been talking about today – the harvest of righteousness. But today there is something else that we need to chat about first: it's the alternative to this wonderful harvest of righteousness. It's one hell of a subject, but if I didn't talk about it, then I wouldn't be doing my job. The word "wrath" appears through the Bible some 266 times and most of the times it is used, it's talking about the wrath of God. Now, I know that pretty much, we don't want to hear about God's anger and God's wrath towards those who have rebelled against Him. I know that and I know that first instincts are to reach for the dial and turn this guy off or change stations – I know that too. But I want to encourage you not to do that because this short bit about the wrath of God may be the most important thing that you will ever, ever hear. So stick with me, even though it feels a little bit uncomfortable right now. God is really, really clear about His impending wrath and that word "wrath" means this: anger which will manifest itself in the form of punishment. And He is also really clear about what things kindle His wrath. Come with me to Colossians chapter 3, beginning a verse 5: Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, vengeance, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. Here's the amazing thing: I used to think that God was just one big long list of religious rules – do this, don't do that. And to be sure, I grew up in a religious tradition that was very much rule based. But the more I read of what God has to say in His Word; the more I go to the source and find exactly what He has to say, the thing I discover is that there are actually very, very few things that God says to us, "Don't do." Very few! Look at the list that Paul gives us here: You must get rid of such things - anger, vengeance, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another … There are a few others too but actually not many and they are all things that are blatantly wrong. And they are all things that obviously have painful consequences in our lives – right? Why is it we kid ourselves and say, "Well, you know, being a Christian is hard – all these things I'm not allowed to do and I'm not allowed to have any fun?" That's not what it says! The only things about which God says, "Don't do them", are the ones that are going to hurt us and hurt others. And – listen to this – if you and I persist in doing them, then eventually - even though God is slow to anger; even though He is merciful; even though He is a God of grace - eventually His wrath is going to fall on us. It's a simple message and it's a message I feel God wants us to hear today. Galatians chapter 5, beginning at verse 19: Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. These are blindingly, glimpsingly obvious! Hello!! Do you get it? Keep doing these things in stiff necked opposition to what I am telling you and you will not inherit the Kingdom of God. It's that simple! And this alternative to the harvest of righteousness; this not inheriting the Kingdom of God is a frightening prospect because the alternative is living the rest of eternity in the wrath of God – God's anger and God's punishment. Listen to the contrast … the sharp, stark contrast between the eternities reserved for those who worship - in effect – the devil, or the beast, as he is called in this passage I am about to read to you, through their rebellion against God, verses those who worship God, through His Son, Jesus Christ. It's written in kind of picture language, so let God's Word paint for you the picture. Revelation chapter 14, verses 9 to 13: Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, "Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name." Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this: Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord." "Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labours, for their deeds will follow them." John Lennon in his famous song "Imagine" sang these words: Imagine there's no Heaven, It's easy if you try, No hell below us, above us only sky, Imagine all the people, living for today … Well, there are many people imagining that. There are many people living just for today. But one day … one day they will be greatly disappointed – Jesus made that abundantly clear: Matthew chapter 10, verse 28: Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Friend, God is a wonderful God, He has a fantastic plan for your life. It's a plan for us to live in His blessing from this point on and for all eternity. That's why He sent Jesus, His Son, to pay for our sin so that when we put our trust in Him, we can be forgiven and have this new life; this eternal life. But listen to me; please listen carefully: if we reject Jesus; if we reject God; if we reject the One whom He sent to suffer for you and me, that our sin would be paid for in full – if we reject Him, there is an alternative. That alternative is an eternal separation from God; it is an eternal torment. It goes on for ever and ever. I can't state it anymore plainly than that. I implore you, don't reject Jesus. God sent Him in His great love to save you and to save me.
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The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
#1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard spoke with us about her journey from USC screenwriting to publishing, her writing process, and her upcoming adult fantasy debut, TEMPEST. Victoria Aveyard is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the RED QUEEN series and the REALM BREAKER trilogy. Her books have sold over eight million copies and been published in more than 40 languages. Her highly anticipated adult fantasy debut, Tempest, is the first book in The Lyrian Sea duology. Set against the fall of the Golden Age of Piracy, the book follows a former noblewoman facing execution for treason unless she helps the Empire hunt down its greatest enemy. #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros said of the book, “Victoria Aveyard's first foray into adult fantasy is a triumphant, epic adventure on the high seas. What an exciting, captivating read to spend your weekend with!” [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Victoria Aveyard, Milena, and I discussed: Her deliberate pivot in both creative growth and reader demand How she sold her debut novel within two weeks of going on submission The distinct differences between YA and Adult fiction What her screenwriting background taught her about fast-paced storytelling Why fanfiction provides writers an early anonymous feedback loop And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web victoriaaveyard.com PLOT TWIST podcast Tempest : A Novel By Victoria Aveyard (Amazon) Victoria Aveyard Amazon Author Page Victoria Aveyard on TikTok Victoria Aveyard on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Acclaimed debut author Kevin C. Morris spoke with us about exploring the Alaskan coastline in search of a mysterious island, his query and publishing journey, and the resultant novel UNTAMED COAST. Kevin C. Morris is an engineer, and journalist (with 20 years of long-form writing under his belt), as well as a recreational pilot, boat captain, and entrepreneur based in Portland, Oregon. His genre-bending debut novel, Untamed Coast, spans three timelines: 1938, the 1980s and 2017, all set along the rugged Alaskan coast, and described as “an atmospheric novel perfect for fans of McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore, Moore's God of the Woods, Lawhon's Frozen River, and Heller's The Guide. New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn said of the book, “Untamed Coast is a bold, intricately plotted debut unfolding against the beauty and danger of the Alaskan wilderness. . . . The timelines coil, the intrigue mounts, but it's Kevin C. Morris's vivid evocation of Alaska's savage beauty that truly shines…” Kevin spends his summers navigating the Inside Passage to Southeast Alaska—a rugged landscape that fuels both his adventures and his fiction. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Kevin C. Morris, Milena, and I discussed: The story behind the Radioville mystery that inspired the book How the novel was won at auction after multiple rewrites Why his agent found his original query “kind of awful” and how he recovered Where Morse code became a part of the plot and the structure of the novel The wildness and beauty of the Alaskan coast as a character And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web kevincmorris.com Untamed Coast: A Novel by Kevin C. Morris (Amazon) Kevin C. Morris on YouTube Kevin C. Morris on Facebook Kevin C. Morris on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writerhttps://www.instagram.com/kevincmorrisauthor | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Date with a Debut is a podcast hosted by writer Nick Wasiliev: shining a light on debut authors, their incredible books, and their journeys to publication. In our 12th episode of series four, Nick chats with Jane R. Miles about her incredible thriller, Stay Buried. Enjoy the show? Drop us a review, it really helps the show out! You can also subscribe to our new monthly newsletter, and get access to exclusive show Second Date: https://nickwasiliev.substack.com/ Sign up to the free Instagram Date with a Debut Writing/Reading Crew: https://bit.ly/4pyCx9u Check out our brand new podcast website: https://dwad.podpixels.com/ Check out the 2026 sponsor of the podcast, Pod Pixels: https://bit.ly/4cbG1Zt Subscribe on Podbean to never miss an episode: https://www.podbean.com/site/podcatcher/index/blog/3mRME5IMoSJx Date with a Debut is featured as part of the Australian literary platform Words & Nerds. Check out all shows on the platform here: https://danivee.com.au/podcasts/ BOOKS: Debut: Stay Buried / Jane R. Miles: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/MK26qq Additional books mentioned: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life / Ruth Franklin: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/L0rmVM Year of Wonders / Geraldine Brooks: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/rEbDZv Frankenstein / Mary Shelley: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/PzkVXe Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volumes 1 & 2 / Julia Child: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/L0rmba Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit / Jeanette Winterson: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/9VQz5e The Killer Inside Me / Jim Thompson: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/PzkV36 Your Favorite Scary Movie / Ashley Cullins: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/enBEVg Save the Cat! Writes a Novel / Jessica Brody: https://booktopia.kh4ffx.net/GbqVzE PRODUCTION NOTES: Host: Nick Wasiliev Guest: Jane R. Miles Editing & Production: Nick Wasiliev Podcast Theme: ‘Chill' by Sakura Hz Production Code: 4.12 Episode Number: #70 Additional Credits: Dani Vee (Words & Nerds), HQ/HarperCollins Australia FOLLOW NICK WASILIEV (+ DATE WITH A DEBUT): A LITTLE IDEA PODCAST: Feed NEWSLETTER: nickwasiliev.substack.com WEBSITE: www.nicholaswasiliev.com YOUTUBE: @NickWasiliev_Official INSTAGRAM: @nickwasiliev TWITTER/X: @Nick_Wasiliev FACEBOOK: Nick Wasiliev TIKTOK: @nickwasiliev © 2026 Nick Wasiliev and Breathe Art Holdings ‘Date With A Debut' is a Words and Nerds and Breathe Art Podcasts co-production recorded and edited on Awabakal Country, and we pay our respects to all elders past and present.
Two years ago, Katie Parrott was laid off from a crypto firm and couldn't afford a career coach—so she turned to a $20-a-month ChatGPT subscription instead.The Every staff writer's habit of feeding AI good context eventually became compound writing, a codified system for brainstorming, drafting, and editing with AI. Today, that system is a plugin any writer can use.On this week's AI & I, Natalia Quintero talks with Katie about turning good ingredients into good writing, borrowing the taste of writers she admires, and why AI helped her fall back in love with the page.If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!To hear more from Natalia Quintero:Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribeFollow her on X: @NataliaZarinaTimestamps for YouTube:0:00 Start0:49 Introduction1:21 How Katie went from being laid off to using ChatGPT as a career coach8:06 Turning AI into a “content agency of one”10:59 Building the context files and style guides that make AI outputs useful14:15 What makes a Claude project actually work21:18 How AI helped with a mental health crisis and “computer errands”27:03 Katie's career coach, now a fully autonomous Codex project32:27 What compounding means, and building the Compound Writing plugin38:00 Borrowing Vonnegut, Hitchcock, and Sorkin as AI editing skills44:49 Katie's thesis: education and access will matter more than everLinks to resources mentioned in the episode:Katie Parrott on X: @kplikethebirdCompound writing plugin: https://github.com/EveryInc/compound-writingCompound engineering plugin (Kieran Klassen): github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-pluginParrott's companion piece on compound writing: https://every.to/guides/compound-writingParrott, “I Hired ChatGPT as My Career Coach”: every.to/working-overtime/i-hired-chatgpt-as-my-career-coachParrott, “AI Turned Me Into a Content Agency of One”: every.to/working-overtime/ai-turned-me-into-a-content-agency-of-one
Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani are urging the Trump Administration to give 40% of New York's counterterrorism funding back to the state. WFUV's Anne Jackson has more. Social Media platform, TikTok, has been accused of withholding safety features from a portion of its young users. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn are demanding answers from the platform. WFUV's Tahlia Pearson spoke with experts about the situation. WFUV's Sonia Weliwitigoda spoke with Brian Saville, a Fordham University PhD student researching bees at public gardens in Manhattan and the Bronx. Host/Producer: Nathan Ray Editor: Nathan Ray Reporter: Anne Jackson Reporter: Tahlia Pearson Reporter: Sonia Weliwitigoda Theme Music: Joe Bergsieker
Adam Lampe believes there's still plenty of upside potential in markets even as the macro front faces a new test in renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran. In the tech space, he says Alphabet (GOOGL) remains a key AI play "even as the market writes its own obituary" for some aspects of the company. Adam names Broadcom (AVGO) as another key stock to watch. He then turns to the broader energy trade and the need for more power as the AI buildout accelerates. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pinborough spoke with us about her approach to plotting twists, the stark difference between writing novels and screenplays, and her latest THEY SAY A GIRL DIED HERE. Sarah Pinborough is the New York Times and Sunday Times #1 bestselling author of international hit Behind Her Eyes, published in over 25 territories worldwide. Her latest novel, They Say a Girl Died Here, is describe as “a thrilling, genre-bending mystery about two murdered girls, a town with dark secrets, and a race to break a deadly cycle.” Publishers Weekly called the book, “An addictive tale of Midwestern macabre. . . Pinborough's fierce yet flawed characters are easy to root for, and she doles out the story's shocking secrets at a tantalizing pace. Thriller fans who like it dark will devour this.” Sarah Pinborough was the 2009 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story and also the 2010 and 2014 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella, and she has four times been short-listed for Best Novel. She is also a screenwriter who has written for the BBC with multiple adaptations in the works. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Sarah Pinborough, Milena, and I discussed: Her former life running a strip club The chance encounter at FantasyCon that led to a three-book deal How she changes gears while shifting mediums Why horror is her favorite genre Hot takes on recent horror films And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web sarahpinborough.com They Say a Girl Died Here: A Novel by Sarah Pinborough (Amazon) Sarah Pinborough Amazon Author Page Sarah Pinborough on Twitter Sarah Pinborough on Facebook Sarah Pinborough on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Most enterprise AI today is a conversation — it summarizes, suggests, recommends. Harman unpacks what changes when AI actually executes across endpoints, and the governance problem that creates. Where does the human stay in the loop, and where do they get out of the way? This segment is sponsored by Tanium. Visit https://securityweekly.com/tanium to learn more about them! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-611
Most enterprise AI today is a conversation — it summarizes, suggests, recommends. Harman unpacks what changes when AI actually executes across endpoints, and the governance problem that creates. Where does the human stay in the loop, and where do they get out of the way? This segment is sponsored by Tanium. Visit https://securityweekly.com/tanium to learn more about them! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-611
Most enterprise AI today is a conversation — it summarizes, suggests, recommends. Harman unpacks what changes when AI actually executes across endpoints, and the governance problem that creates. Where does the human stay in the loop, and where do they get out of the way? This segment is sponsored by Tanium. Visit https://securityweekly.com/tanium to learn more about them! Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/swn for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-611
Most enterprise AI today is a conversation — it summarizes, suggests, recommends. Harman unpacks what changes when AI actually executes across endpoints, and the governance problem that creates. Where does the human stay in the loop, and where do they get out of the way? This segment is sponsored by Tanium. Visit https://securityweekly.com/tanium to learn more about them! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/swn-611
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
New York Times bestselling author Nina Simon spoke with us about her unconventional career path, low-overhead creative lifestyle, and her sophomore novel MY SISTER IS GOING TO KILL ME. Nina Simon is the bestselling author of the hit novel Mother-Daughter Murder Night. A Reese's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller, Simon's debut was an Anthony Award winner, an Indie Next pick, and a Best of 2023 selection for Barnes & Noble, Library Journal, and Amazon. Her follow-up, My Sister Is Going to Kill Me, is described as a “family-centric, women-led whodunnit about two sisters who work together to find a killer as they raft down the rapids of the Grand Canyon.” Nita Prose, #1 bestselling author of The Maid series, called the book "A high-octane thriller about two sisters who have to solve a murder ... or die trying. Propulsive and page-turning, this is armchair adventure at its best." Before turning to fiction, Nina wore many hats: NASA engineer, slam poet, game designer, museum director, and nonprofit CEO. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Nina Simon, Milena, and I discussed: Her pivot from “museum visionary” to crime fiction The cancer diagnosis in her family that prompted her to write her debut novel How she turned the natural splendor of the Grand Canyon into a locked-room mystery Her writing process and living off the grid Engineering a low-expense lifestyle to buy creative freedom And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web NinaKSimon.com My Sister Is Going to Kill Me: A Novel (Signed) by Nina Simon - Bookshop Santa Cruz My Sister Is Going to Kill Me: A Novel by Nina Simon (Amazon) Nina Simon Amazon Author Page Nina Simon on Substack Nina Simon on Facebook Nina Simon on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How can the Fast Drafting method help you finally finish your novel? And how do you make progress when you only have 30 minutes a day to write? Jessica Brody shares her tips for finishing first drafts after 20 years as an author. In the intro, Clive Barker's Kickstarter, The Amazon Tax [Seth Godin]; Trad publisher announces “human-originated, AI-facilitated” book, The Everything Code [PanMacmillan; AI policy; CHAPTR]; Holy relics, churches, and memento mori in Bruges and Brussels. This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors. This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Jessica Brody is the best-selling author of over 20 novels across different genres and age groups, as well as writing for Disney Publishing. She's also the author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and other books and courses for writers at the Writing Mastery Academy. Her latest book is Page One to Done: Finish Your Novel in 30 Days with the Fast Drafting Method. You can pre-order with bonus extras at JessicaBrody.com/preorder You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. Show Notes Why a small advance can set you up for long-term success Why 97% of first drafts are never finished How to finish a novel writing 30 minutes a day Why drafting and revising are two different jobs How a pre-writing ritual primes your brain for flow Writing a meta murder mystery after 20 years of teaching plot You can find Jessica at JessicaBrody.com and WritingMastery.com. Transcript of the interview with Jessica Brody Jo: Jessica Brody is the best-selling author of over 20 novels across different genres and age groups, as well as writing for Disney Publishing. She's also the author of Save the Cat! Writes a Novel and other books and courses for writers at the Writing Mastery Academy. Her latest book is Page One to Done: Finish Your Novel in 30 Days with the Fast Drafting Method. So welcome to the show, Jessica. Jessica: Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so honoured to be here. My writing community speaks so highly of this podcast, so I'm excited. Jo: Oh, well, thank you, and you were requested, so this is going to be a good one. First up— Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Jessica: Well, I started writing when I was seven. I like to put in air quotes, I wrote my first, quote, “novel” when I was seven. It was about three pages long. I got the bug very early. I didn't realise it was an actual career choice that you could take seriously until way later in life, after I'd already graduated college with a degree in economics and I was working as a financial analyst, and I was just writing on the side for fun. Then, as luck would have it, I got laid off from my job, and I ended up trying to take writing a little bit more seriously in that time. That's when I found the Save the Cat method, which absolutely changed everything for me. Before that, I had loads of rejection letters, and I eventually sold my first novel to St. Martin's Press, and I've been writing and publishing ever since. That was 20 years ago now. Jo: 20 years, wow. It's so interesting. So you were in economics, you were a financial analyst, and you got into writing. Did you have any pushback from either your own brain that was like, “I cannot make money this way,” or your family? Or how did you make that leap? Because we just hear that it's not a career, financially, really. Jessica: I know, and I think I went into it very blindly, using television as my resource of this is how much money I can make writing. Like Sex and the City, she was selling books for lots of money. So I was like, oh, I just have to sell one book, and then I'll be set. That was not the case. My first advance was so much lower than I expected, and what happened, though, was kind of interesting. I sold my first book, way lower advance than I was hoping for. I wasn't making any money anywhere else, so I was taking on all these odd jobs that I could do in my own time. I was doing transcription work, and I was working at a school half the time. I mean, I just had so many really weird jobs. I think what happened was, because I didn't have another financial net to help me, it just pushed me really hard. So once I sold one book, I was like, well, I need to sell another one and another one, and I ended up in this 20-year cycle, which I've slowed down thankfully, since, but of writing so obsessively, I should say. I just kept selling books and selling books. My advances got higher and higher, and eventually I was able to support myself with my writing, but it was not instant at all. Jo: Actually, that's a really good note there, because we often hear so much of these debuts that get paid a ton of money, and then they disappear, and they almost spiral down. Whereas what you've done is spiral up. Which is almost a better way to do it perhaps, with your reputation with traditional publishing. Jessica: It's funny, I tell this story a lot to writers who are looking to get published, that the big advance is not necessarily the end-all be-all. Because I have heard that story before, someone gets a very big advance, and then it doesn't earn out, and they can't sell another book because the publisher's lost money. I had the opposite experience. My advance was so low, and my publisher got worldwide rights. They bought worldwide rights. So they started selling foreign rights of my first book really early on, and I earned out before the book even came out, with just a few foreign sales. That ended up setting me up for success, because I was making money for the publisher from day one, and I was able to sell more books, and so I sort of worked my way up. I really do credit a lot of that to how long I've been able to stay in this game. Jo: No, it's a good way of thinking about it, because people forget the publisher isn't a charity. The publisher has to make money from your book. So it's nice that you make money, but they have to make money, or they're not going to bother, right? Jessica: Yes, exactly. Jo: So let's come back to Save the Cat, because you mentioned that the original method really changed how you write, and then of course you did Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. So I've got that. I imagine a lot of people listening have got that. Tell us a bit about why that methodology made such a difference to you, and why you think it's so useful. Jessica: Well, you'll sense a theme here. I went into this business, like I said, without knowing a lot, and I went into it the way I think a lot of writers do, which is, I had an idea, I sat down, and I tried to write it. I had no guidance, no map, no structure, and I just wrote. I actually finished something, which is surprising, but then I started to get all these rejection letters that basically said similar things, which was, “You're a good writer, you have a good voice, but there's no story here.” I just didn't understand that feedback, because I had finished something. I could print it out and stack it on my desk. Wasn't that a story? Apparently it was not. Then a screenwriter friend of mine that I was talking to about how I was getting all of these rejection letters with the same note said, “You should read this book that recently came out. It's called Save the Cat, and it's for screenwriters, but I think it could work for novels because it just seems to be all about structure and storytelling.” So I read the book cover to cover so quickly, because if anyone's read the original, it's just so readable, and everything started clicking in my mind. I realised, wow, I really don't know how to tell a story. I could plot out everything I had done wrong, and I went back to my book and I started rewriting it from page one with this new structure in mind. When I finished that, I ended up getting an agent for that book, and the agent sold that book. I've been using the method ever since. It just made so much sense to my brain. What I tell writers is, “Use the method that makes sense to your brain.” All storytelling structure methods are basically telling the same story, just with different words, sliced and diced a little bit differently, but structure is structure, and a story is a story. It has to have a beginning, middle, and end. It has to have conflict, it has to have a middle twist, and things like that. So this one worked for my brain, and I started to teach it to other novelists, because at the time there was still just the screenwriting guide. So I started to teach how I was using it to other novelists, and that turned into the book, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Then I wrote a young adult version of it as well. And I still use it to this day. It's just something that's always made sense to me. Jo: So were you hired by the estate? Blake Snyder died, right? So were you hired to write that, or is that something you arranged? Jessica: It was kind of something that was arranged. I think Blake Snyder Enterprises is the name of the company. Blake Snyder died in 2009, sadly. When I started using the method, I was blogging about it on my blog, and I would share some of my beat sheets of the novels I was writing. The people who had taken over his estate reached out to me and said, “Hey, can you blog for us? Because we don't have a lot of novel content on our blog. We just do screenplay stuff.” And I said, “Of course.” I had a fangirl moment. Oh my gosh, they've reached out to me and this is so exciting. So I started blogging for them, and then that turned into the workshops that I started doing with them. Then we partnered up on the book. I think it was one of those things that felt inevitable, like we were just working toward it. I was living in LA at the time. They're based in LA. And I remember having breakfast with them, and we all just looked at each other and said, “So we need to write a book, right? There has to be a book.” So we ended up sharing the copyright, and, as you see from the title, it says based on the books by Blake Snyder. It's very much his method. Then I brought some of my novel flair and some of my own little tips and tricks that I had picked up over the years and applied it to his method. Jo: I love that. We are going to come to your other book for writers in a minute, but just on that intellectual property sharing, writing in other markets, you also write for Disney Publishing. This is so fascinating to me. Now, there are lots of people who do write for other properties. So how did that come about writing for other properties, and how does that fit into your portfolio of the things that you do? Jessica: Yes, writing for other properties is really fun. It's probably not for everyone. You have to know what you're getting into before you pursue it, because it's very much not your IP. You're writing under someone else's brand, you're in their canon, and there are certain rules you have to follow. So you have guidelines. I found it to be really fun and kind of a break from some of my own stuff, because I didn't have to come up with everything. I didn't have to invent all the new worlds and all the new characters. A lot of them were just given to me, and I could play within the boundaries of that sandbox, and I really found that inspiring. So what happened actually is I was on a writing retreat with a bunch of other writers, and there was a writer at the retreat who already wrote for Disney Press and was supposed to write this new series for them, based on their Descendants series. She said to me, “I really can't do it, but I'd love to recommend someone else to them.” I think we had been talking about how big of a fan I was of Disney or something, and she said, “Do you want me to recommend you?” And I said, “Yes, absolutely.” Another big fangirl moment. So the editor of that series reached out to my agent. They talked to me. They got writing samples from me through my agent, and then before I knew it, I was hired to write, I think the first contract was maybe for two or three of the books, and then we renewed for a few more. It was just really fun. Then I formed a relationship with that editor. We ended up working on another series for younger kids, based on the Disney Princess LEGO series, which was much younger and new for me. It had illustrations. That was a whole new challenge, but I found it really fun. As I said, it was a nice break from writing my own things, because I could write them fairly quickly. They did have very fast turnarounds at the publisher too, but I could use my skills for structure and storytelling and apply it to a world that already existed, and it was a nice pairing. Jo: I love this. So much of what you've done seems to have come from relationships or just putting yourself out there in the world. Jessica: Yes, good observation. I hadn't thought of that. Jo: Whereas I think a lot of people think that it's all about cold pitching. It's not so much, from what you're saying. Jessica: Yes, and I did another IP project with Simon & Schuster called Boys of Summer, which was a young adult novel. That one specifically came from my agent. So a lot of times publishers will reach out to agents and say, “Here's what we're doing. Do you have authors who would fit?” And my agent will often reach out to me and say, “Here's the pitch I got from a publisher. Are you interested in submitting yourself for this?” That's what happened with Boys of Summer. They actually sent out an outline to a bunch of writers who were interested, and I had to write sample chapters to the outline, or I think it was the first couple of chapters or something. I was very gratefully selected to write it. That came about from having an agent, and a lot of times having an agent is a way into IP work. And then those connections can help too. Jo: Fascinating. Right. Well, let's get into your book Page One to Done, which as I said, one of my listeners actually requested to have you on the show to talk about this book, because she said it was absolutely fantastic and helped her finish her book. So why finishing? What is the problem? Why write a book on actually finishing? What are some of the common issues that people have? Jessica: Well, thank you to that listener. I really appreciate it, and here I am because of you. Connections once again. So Page One to Done came out of my own struggle with finishing, and not just finishing, but finishing efficiently and maintaining joy throughout the process of writing a novel. As I said, I was writing very fast and furiously, and my deadlines were piling up, and I started to feel like writing a novel stopped being fun. It started to become a very frustrating process, and I realised that was a lot about how I was approaching the first draft, which, as most writers know, the first draft is very hard. When I started to look further into it, I found this statistic online that's widely accepted in the writing community, which is that 97% of first drafts are not finished. Which is, wow, mind-blowing, but also not that hard to believe once you think about the challenges of writing a first draft. Taking an idea from a seed, developing it into a full plot with character development and arcs and subplots and side characters and themes and all the things that you think a story should have, getting that all onto the page and actually reaching the end. It's very, very difficult, and I never lie about how difficult it is. So I was struggling to finish things quickly, to enjoy the process, and I noticed that other writers were too. I felt like, well, I have this plotting guide that I love, this structure guide, Save the Cat! Shouldn't this be easier once I have an outline? And it wasn't. And that, I think, is because we forget that there's another part of the process. It's not just about developing a compelling character. It's not just about having a well-paced plot. You have to be able to get ideas out of your head and onto the page in a way that doesn't make you want to quit. I think one of the problems with the first draft is most of us write something down, it does not match what's in our head, and we start to get more and more frustrated. The process becomes overwhelming. We're holding too much of the story in our head. We're going back to page one to revise with every new idea we have, so it starts to slow down. The farther we get into the book, the longer that back to page one process takes, and things start to spiral out of control. I think that's essentially what happens to this 97% of first drafts. The writer quits because it's not good enough. It doesn't match what's in their mind, and there's too much to hold, and it starts to become overwhelming. So this is what was happening to me. Even though I was finishing things, the process was still very overwhelming, and I started to experiment with different things. Different mindset shifts that I could make, different ways I could change my writing routine to really enhance the process, to get into flow faster, to stay in flow for longer, things like that. It took me about five years, and I developed this collection of mindset shifts and strategies and routines that I could not only apply to myself, but I turned it into a system that was repeatable, and I started teaching it in my Writing Mastery Academy. I called it the Fast Drafting method, and it's all about letting go of this idea that our first draft has to be perfect or even that good, and just focusing on getting ideas down as quickly as possible, even if that creates a big mess. It's this freeing process of doing that in a way that we don't get in our own way. So I started teaching it to other writers. People were finishing things who had never finished things before. Writers who had taken two years to write a first draft were writing first drafts in weeks. The biggest comment I was getting was, “This is so freeing. This is so liberating. This is so fun.” And it gave people the motivation that they needed to actually sit down and revise the book. Before, either they never finished, so they never got to the revision process, or they were so overwhelmed and bogged down by the two years it took for them to write one draft, they didn't have the energy to revise and get it to the next level. So anyway, all of this is to say it was working for me, it was working for other writers. I turned it into a book called Page One to Done, and it's my three-phase process, mindset, preparation, and drafting, which I equate to running a marathon. You wouldn't run a marathon without proper training and proper nutrition and the right mindset, just like you wouldn't write a novel without the right mindset, the right preparation, and the right skills you need to get to the end. Jo: That's fantastic. You mentioned training there and some of the routine changes. So I hear new writers say, “Oh, I can't write unless I maybe have two hours or three hours to write down stuff, and I never have three hours at a time, so I never have time to write.” I hear that a lot. So what would you say to those people? What is a routine and a mindset shift that might help those people? Jessica: That's great, and I hear that all the time too. I interviewed a handful of authors for this book who had gone through the fast drafting method with me, and I would say the majority of them wrote for 30 minutes to one hour a day and were able to finish their books in a matter of weeks to maybe two months. That's because what I teach in the book is not about the amount of time you have. It's about how you use that time. When you really structure your day and your writing time with intentionality, you do whatever you can to block out distractions, get into flow, stay in flow. I'll give you one amazing tip that basically solves all of these things in a second. But when you really bring intentionality to those 30 minutes, you can write more in 30 minutes than you can in three hours without bringing these kinds of intentional choices. So that's one of the things I teach. You don't need more time. You actually just need to approach the time you have with the right mindsets and the right intentions. So one of the biggest shifts I tell people is just don't write and revise at the same time. For one, it pulls your brain in two different directions and creates the requirement of context switching, because essentially drafting and revising are two different jobs. Drafting is getting ideas out of your head and onto the page. Revising is polishing those ideas. They require very different headspaces and very different skills. So when we try to do both of them at once, we're pulled in two different directions. We're essentially trying to polish something we haven't even figured out yet, so we're polishing in the dark, if you will. It causes our brain to snap back and forth so many times. The term context switching is very big in the zeitgeist today, and that's because it's eating up our brain capacity. So if you spend 30 minutes just getting ideas down without judging them as they're coming out, without trying to revise them as they're coming out, you will get a lot of words down. A lot of that has to do with just what do you expect out of those 30 minutes? If you expect to write a chapter of absolutely brilliant polished prose, you're probably not going to do it, and you're going to feel like you wasted three hours. Then the next time you have three hours, you're like, “Well, no, I'm not going to do that. It's too frustrating, and I don't have three hours to begin with.” But if you sit down with the idea of, “I'm going to get all my ideas down. I'm going to just enjoy this process and live in my story for these 30 minutes,” you will be amazed at how much will come out onto the page. And you can absolutely finish a book that way. So intentionality is how you set up your workspace. Making sure that your phone is on do not disturb, making sure there are no pop-ups on your screen, making sure there are not even windows open behind your document. Every time your mind thinks about something else, you have to bring it back, and that eats brain power. So it's things like that. I have a whole chapter on how to set up a writing routine. One of the biggest tips I give people is to do what I call a pre-writing ritual. This is based in neuroscience, and there are all of these studies that back this up, that our brain does something where it associates an activity with another activity. So let's say right before we sit down to write, every time we do that, we do 10 jumping jacks, just as an example. But we only do 10 jumping jacks before we write. We don't do 10 jumping jacks before we sit down to do our taxes or answer emails. It's just before we write. Your brain starts to create this associative link with jumping jacks and writing. These are ways that we can prime our brain to get into the writing mode, and after doing that a handful of times, you do your jumping jacks, and your brain is literally already in your story before you sit down. It starts to soften that resistance that happens when we think, “Oh, I have to go write now,” or, “I've got to go write a certain amount of words,” or, “I have to work with my story.” It softens that, where it just becomes, “Oh, this is what I'm doing now.” Setting up these pre-writing rituals, which could include jumping jacks, could include something else, a lot of examples we can explore if you want, creates that associative link and allows us to get into the writing zone even faster. So by the time we sit down, we're already primed to go. We're not wasting a lot of that time going, “Oh, should I do it now? Should I do it later? I've got to open my document. Oh, my coffee's a little low.” All the things that we do to delay writing. They start to fall away. Jo: Yes, I mean, I always tell people, you and I turned up on time. We arranged this. We respect each other. We turn up, and we're doing this within a time slot. So I always say to people, “Look, make a calendar entry for your writing,” and do you respect your writing enough to turn up on time and do the work? We had a few minutes of saying hi or whatever, and then we got on with our work, which was this interview. So if you've arranged to start writing for that half an hour, then it is work still, right? You need to turn up and honour that. Jessica: Yes, and actually I have the same tip in the book. I say put it on your calendar, block it off. For the reasons you said, it creates in your brain the idea that this is a serious thing. It's not just a, “Oh, I'll get to it when I get to it,” like folding the laundry. It's like, no, this is what I've decided to do, I'm serious about it, I respect it. Just like any other appointment that you would respect, like lunch with a friend or an important business meeting, you show up for it. You don't go, “I think I'll show up to that business meeting in a few hours when I feel like it.” Also it keeps the routine consistent, because one of the tips I give is to always write at the same time every day if you can, because again, that associative link created in your brain, that habitual routine. So if you put it in your calendar for the days that you're going to write, you won't schedule over it by accident, which is just another logistical thing. I say something similar to what you just said, Joanna, in the book, which is basically, if you booked a massage for an hour, you would stay for the hour, right? Because you paid for this massage. Jo: Hell yes. Jessica: It's important to you. You're not going to get up in the middle and start texting your friends. You want your massage. If you treat your writing like any other thing that's important to you and show up for it consistently, it will show up for you, too. Jo: Yes, and I think the other misconception is that, okay, so that person has made it, and they're at the desk. I listen to rain and thunderstorms in my headphones. That's kind of, I guess, my routine. But that doesn't mean that I can just stream something wonderful. You talked about separating the writing and the editing, but sometimes it really is pretty basic, right? Morgan walked into the room. That will often be my thing, and then I'll be like, “Okay, well, why?” And what was the room like? Or was it even a room? So sometimes you just have to start writing something rather than wait for a perfect sentence. Jessica: Oh, yes, absolutely. Waiting for the perfect sentence, you'll be waiting for a long time. I say waiting for inspiration, you'll be waiting for a long time. My joke is, if I waited to write only when I felt inspired, I'd finish a book about every 20 years, if that. I think that's very important, and I teach a lot of tips and tricks in the book on how to get past that resistance, because of course, we don't want to just sit down and write something that we don't like. We don't want to just write down, “Oh, she stared at her computer for 10 minutes.” But sometimes we have to write that down to get to the next sentence or the next plot point or whatever barrier is in our mind. So one tip I'll tell people is put things you don't like in brackets, the square brackets. It's a really simple tip, and it's one of the tips I share in the book. Just put it in brackets and move on. What the brackets do, at least for people who use it, is it's like scaffolding. It's a reminder to your brain, this isn't permanent. This isn't going to stay. I'm going to come back to this later and fix it once I figure out what the story is and what she's actually doing in the room at this moment. For now, it's there. It's on the page. I can move past it. For me at least, the brackets are just this really nice reminder of the scaffolding. Nope, nope, nope, not perfect, not permanent, moving on. Then you can come back later and flesh it all out. I share a lot of anecdotes from my 20 years of writing novels, and one that I particularly like is I was working on a novel, and I had this scene that was just so awful, where all of my characters were sitting in a room. I had no idea what room it was or what it looked like, and they were talking about their feelings. It was just so awful and boring, but I had to get through this scene because I had to establish certain things that came later. I was complaining and complaining about this scene. I was on a writing retreat at the time, and my writer friends were like, “Let's just do a writing sprint, and we'll all write really fast, and we'll all get through our bad scenes, and we'll move on.” So I did that. I moved past the boring scene. It was still boring all the way to the end, but here's the thing, I couldn't figure out what happened in that scene until I'd figured out the whole story. So I wrote the bad version, and then in the next draft I came back and I was like, “Oh, this scene should take place on this bridge that I wrote in the finale that I didn't even know I needed, and it's this very symbolic bridge, and they can be standing on the bridge, and then they should be talking about this because that's going to pay off in the third act,” and I hadn't even thought of that yet. So all the things were coming together, but I could never have come up with that at the time. If I had just sat there and tried and tried, I probably would have gotten stuck at that scene and quit. So I had to just write the bad version, move past it, and come back later. Jo: Yes, and I think maybe because you're famous for structure, people think that maybe you wouldn't have to do that, because you already came up with that in the plotting. It sounds like you're also putting in those elements and foreshadowing and deepening things in the edit. So that's quite comforting for me as a discovery writer, because I end up doing so much more of that kind of thing in the edits. Jessica: Well, something I like to say is that we're all discovery writers, just different degrees. Because the writing process, no matter how much you plot in advance, is always going to be a discovery process. There are always going to be things you didn't think of. There's always going to be a way to tie things together that you never could have thought of before you started writing. So much of the story evolves and gets processed on the page and in your mind as it's coming out onto the page, and it's delusional to think you can think of all that before you start engaging with the characters. You can come close. I've known writers who have come very close, but almost all writers will discover something that they didn't know in the outline. I would argue that that's actually the fun part of writing. It's not the days when writing goes exactly to plan. They're nice, but they're not necessarily the fun parts. The fun parts are when you sit down to write the scene you thought was going to be the scene, and suddenly this new detail appears, and you go, “Oh my gosh, this totally unlocks everything, and I never even thought of it.” It could be in a text message. It could be on a billboard. It could be something the character just blurts out that you weren't expecting, and suddenly your whole story comes together in that moment, or maybe just the scene comes together. It's those moments, I think, that we write for. So even just expecting the book to come out exactly as you plotted is one of those mindset shifts. If you shift it and think, “This is really fun. I get to discover new things about my story that I wasn't expecting,” that, again, just makes the process a little more fun. So instead of, “Oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be,” or, “This isn't what I outlined,” which is focusing on what's wrong with the book, it becomes, “Oh, wow, this is teaching me something I never expected about my story, and that's pretty cool.” Jo: Yes, I think that moment, Carl Jung called it, I guess, synchronicity, the moment when these things come together and it feels just incredible, that's the moment we all look for. It does seem to happen on every book. Everything clicks into place, and I look forward to that moment with every book. I did want to ask you about a novel that you have coming out soon as we record this, called How to Write a Murder. Now, this is a new genre for you, and it's quite meta because it's about writers as well. So talk about writing a brand new genre now at this point in your career. What are the challenges of trying to reach a new audience? Why do this book now? Jessica: Wow, great question. I love challenging myself to do something new. I wrote contemporary for many years and then thought, “I'm going to try a sci-fi.” Or, “I'm going to try middle grade now.” I think I go where the story wants, where I'm inspired to go when it comes to story ideas. However, with mystery, it's been one of those things that's always been on the back of my mind, like a wish list, a bucket list. I want to write a murder mystery. I just never had the right idea. Or I never had the time, or I never had the space. Then I finished my last novel contract, and I took a break, because I had been writing on deadlines for years. I took a very, very much needed break from deadlines. For the first time in I think 15 years, I did not have a book deadline. I just asked myself, “Jessica, what do you want to write?” As opposed to, what's the next book that's due? And the answer was very clear. I want to write that murder mystery. I toyed with a few ideas, and then I started to think about, okay, so I wrote this book on plot that a lot of people know and use. What if someone used that book to plot a literal murder? What would that look like? This meta explosion came to mind, which is that I wanted to write a murder mystery that's structured like a plotting guide for murder mysteries. The characters in the book are all writers who are familiar with this plotting guide, and the events of the story are unfolding like the plot of a murder mystery according to this book. You have no idea which one of them is actually using the book to plot the murder, because they all know the book. So one of the taglines is, “One dead body, seven mystery writers, and they all know how to get away with murder.” It was sort of my culmination of everything I'd done in my career. All the plotting workshops I'd taught, all the revision courses I'd taught, and of course this plotting structure method I'd been teaching for years, and I put it into this book. It's a fictional version of Save the Cat! It's called The Bestseller Formula. The premise of this book is that someone is using a murder mystery plotting guide to plot a literal murder. So the reader is learning how to write a murder as they're reading about the murder on the page. Jo: I love it. I know lots of people are going to want that. It does bring the business side of things into more difficulty, because of course you have readers, like you mentioned middle grade, you've got YA books, and obviously, I guess, the writers that you teach will be interested. How is this going to work for your book marketing and your business? Because it also sounds like this might be a standalone. Jessica: It is a standalone as of now. I have some sequel ideas, but we're not pursuing them yet. It is a different market for me, for sure, and that's become a challenge as I'm marketing, because I'm not in the thriller mystery space yet. I haven't written a novel for adults since the very, very beginning of my career. I've been mostly writing for teens and middle grade. The good news is most of my teen readers are now adults, because it's been so long since I wrote for teens. So there's that. I think the book will appeal to mystery readers just because it's a fun mystery, and there's a fun meta element to it. I think it's going to appeal to writers as well. So I'm very much leaning on that, at least for the launch. I hope my writer community will get behind this book, because it's very much an ode to storytelling. It's an ode to writers. I dedicated it to writers. As a writer, you will understand this book on a level that a reader never will. You will get so many of the little inside jokes that a reader might just skim past. So I did very much write it for writers, with the hope that readers will also enjoy it. I had the most fun writing it I've had, I think, of writing any book. Partly I think that was because I wasn't writing it under deadline. I was just writing it for me, but also just because it felt like the book I'd been destined to write for so long. Jo: Fantastic. So we're out of time. So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online? Jessica: How is that possible? I feel like we just started. JessicaBrody.com is the best place to find everything. If you're interested in my writing courses, you can check out WritingMastery.com as well. Jo: Well, thanks so much for your time, Jessica. That was brilliant. Jessica: Thank you, Joanna. I had so much fun.The post From Page One To Done: Fast Drafting Your Novel With Jessica Brody first appeared on The Creative Penn.
Sam Roberts says when people find out what he does for work, they tend to shrink away. Roberts is a veteran obituarist for The New York Times. But the writer says he writes about life – not death. His new memoir Are They Dead Yet? is a behind-the-scenes look at the craft of writing obituaries. In today's episode, he tells NPR's Eyder Peralta about how the Times determines who gets an obituary, how Roberts weighs the unsavory parts of his subjects' pasts and why he decided to publish an obituary for Jesus.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show's perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy
St. Louis native and composer Julia Riew went viral on TikTok in 2022 with a Korean Disney-style princess she created to fill a representation void in musical theater. This spring, she published her second book, "Shim Jung Takes the Dive," a middle-grades novel inspired by a beloved Korean folktale. Riew discusses the development of the book and its connection to her 2022 TikTok video. She also describes how growing up in St. Louis, being Asian in different spaces including the arts, and taking risks have shaped her journey to becoming a professional artist.
Her read on the Treasury story: the market was orderly and the interventions premature. The selloff was rational, the curve is not even steep, and surprise announcements draw attention to a controlled problem. Her phrase: the Streisand effect. She called the buyback program "a super soft form of yield curve control" and said the reaction in gold and Bitcoin is understandable, because surprise dovish anxiety from the Treasury has historically been good for hard money. On Druckenmiller's op-ed, she partially disagreed with a man she calls "the goat." The long yield as fiscal disciplinarian is the optimistic case. In practice, she argued, politics makes debasement and financial repression the realistic path. Her 1940s comparison cut both ways. Yield curve control once pinned yields at 2.5% while inflation hit 19%, and it worked because society was young and productive. Today's version arrives with peaking demographics and inflation-linked liabilities. On the bull question, she answered with structure instead of a target. Seller exhaustion, spot-driven flows, and the chartist-to-momentum cycle: "what does it need a reason to go up, it just can't really go down anymore." The Fed, in her framework, is "a periphery actor" under fiscal dominance. Her base case is zero to one rate hikes this year, since rate hikes address lending-driven inflation and today's inflation is fiscal and geopolitical. Her stablecoin frame: they compress the overhead of an offshore bank account down to a smartphone. Powerful for payments and working capital across Africa's forty-plus currencies, while holders eat the full debasement and permission stays with the issuer. On the viral Vance reserve-currency clip, she noted it actually dates to 2023, then walked the argument: the issuer's currency stays overvalued, exports suffer, and the industrial base hollows out while benefits flow to the government. Suze's question on AI inside UK government drew the segment of the show. From aircraft-simulator systems engineering to white-hat AI: "you just have to hope that your defending bot is as good or better than the attacking bots." Her novel, The Stolguard Incident, closed the hour. Surveillance piles up until a civilization-scale breach forces partial rollback, with a sequel in progress. Fiction, she said, lets people learn lessons without living them.
Solid Rock Family Church Podcast
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
#1 international bestselling author Raphael Montes spoke with us about his dual career in TV and fiction, finding commercial success while maintaining authenticity, and the US publication of his hit book THE SECRET DINNER. Raphael Montes is the internationally acclaimed, #1 bestselling Brazilian thriller writer best known for The Secret Dinner, a dark and provocative novel set in Rio de Janeiro described as "a mixture of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense with Quentin Tarantino's black comedy.” He is published in over 25 countries with over 8 million copies sold. Set in Copacabana, The Secret Dinner—a biting, dark satire of foodie culture, wealth excess, and youth desperation—is landing in the US for the first time and has been named a summer most-anticipated by Crimereads, in addition to two mentions in The New York Times. #1 New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager said of the book, "The Secret Dinner is a potent combination of gallows humor, Hitchcockian suspense, and trenchant social commentary. Bold and bloody, it's a thriller with real bite." Also a screenwriter, Raphael is the showrunner of Scars of Beauty—the most-watched original show on HBO Max in Latin America—and Netflix's award-winning series Good Morning, Verônica. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Raphael Montes, Milena, and I discussed: How he leveraged early Bookstagram and BookTok to great success The themes of power, ambition, food, and class behind The Secret Dinner Switching between screenwriting and fiction to beat writer's block Why he believes literature should provoke moral questions and self-reflection in readers How he broke into TV after producers noticed the filmic quality of his second novel Drinking dry gin martinis with Patricia Highsmith And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web RaphaelMontes.com The Secret Dinner: A Novel by Raphael Montes (Amazon) Raphael Montes Amazon Author Page Raphael Montes on TikTok Raphael Montes on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Long Island native Nicole Matarese is on My Little Underground to discuss her time with many creative mediums including podcasting, creative writing, filmmaking and acting. Nicole discusses how she landed the role of Sam O'Brien in Curse of the Weredeer and show she supports the independent film community. Lately, Nicole has been sharing clever short stories on her substack Nicole Writes Words and we uncover some relatable themes from her work! Follow Nicole Matarese on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_gabagoolghoul/Read her Nicole Writes Words Substack:https://nicolewriteswords.substack.com/Watch Curse Of The Weredeer: https://watch.troma.com/videos/curse-of-the-weredeerConnect with My Little Underground: https://linktr.ee/mlupod
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
#1 New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter spoke with us about her writing origins, cabin-based creative process, TV adaptations, and her new novel THE SECRETS WE HIDE, a follow-up to #1 hit WE ARE ALL GUILTY HERE. Karin Slaughter is one of the world's most popular crime thriller writers, a fixture on bestseller lists who has written more than 25 novels. Her work consistently tops the charts and We Are All Guilty Here was her first #1 on the New York Times list. The follow up is to that hit novel is her latest thriller in the North Falls series, The Secrets We Hide. Publishers Weekly wrote of the author, "Slaughter remains as skilled as ever at probing the darker side of life in Georgia." Karin is published in 120 countries with over 40 million copies sold. The TV series based on her novel PIECES OF HER debuted at #1 worldwide on Netflix, and her beloved Will Trent series is now in its fourth season with ABC. She also wrote the limited series adaptation of The Good Daughter for Peacock, and is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a nonprofit that supports libraries. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Karin Slaughter, Milena, and I discussed: How she was incentivized to write about dark subjects at a young age The core advice that helps her keep the words flowing Why she writes in sprints that break her brain Where the kernel of her idea for the sequel to We Are All Guilty Here began How to stay prolific by challenging yourself as a writer And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web (00:00) [THE SECRETS WE HIDE] karinslaughter.com The Secrets We Hide : A Novel By Karin Slaughter (Amazon) Karin Slaughter Amazon Author Page Karin Slaughter on Facebook Karin Slaughter on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What if the person you call the love of your life entered carrying the key to the place where you still believe you are incomplete? Human beings begin life dependent. That dependence is innocent. A child requires regulation, protection, recognition, touch, presence, and care. When those needs remain unfinished, adulthood can inherit more than pain. It can inherit an assignment. Find somebody who will finally make the old absence stop hurting. Then attraction can feel like destiny because conditioning recognizes a familiar role before consciousness recognizes the script. The divine mirrored intimate play places another free, changing human being close enough to activate what solitude can keep hidden. Their distance can uncover abandonment. Independence can expose control. A boundary can reveal entitlement. Desire can expose the hunger to be chosen. Change can uncover the fear beneath your demand for permanence. The mirror shows something devastating. You have been asking an impermanent person to provide permanent evidence that you are truly whole. Bodies age, feelings move, circumstances turn, identities evolve, and relationships change form. Impermanence keeps its promise. The false self fights that fact because psychological need requires continuity of supply. Here need becomes the original sin when innocent childhood dependence survives as the adult belief that completion exists somewhere outside the self. Perhaps the fine tuning serves one ruthless purpose. Whatever you keep demanding from another person returns as a question about what remains uncultivated, disowned, or unclaimed within you. Can you become internally what you keep hiring romantic love to provide externally? Psychological freedom begins when another person can matter enormously without carrying responsibility for your wholeness. Then love loses its job as rescue. The mirror has done its work for you. You finally meet the person across from you after you stop trying to find yourself inside them.
What if the person you call the love of your life entered carrying the key to the place where you still believe you are incomplete? Human beings begin life dependent. That dependence is innocent. A child requires regulation, protection, recognition, touch, presence, and care. When those needs remain unfinished, adulthood can inherit more than pain. It can inherit an assignment. Find somebody who will finally make the old absence stop hurting. Then attraction can feel like destiny because conditioning recognizes a familiar role before consciousness recognizes the script. The divine mirrored intimate play places another free, changing human being close enough to activate what solitude can keep hidden. Their distance can uncover abandonment. Independence can expose control. A boundary can reveal entitlement. Desire can expose the hunger to be chosen. Change can uncover the fear beneath your demand for permanence. The mirror shows something devastating. You have been asking an impermanent person to provide permanent evidence that you are truly whole. Bodies age, feelings move, circumstances turn, identities evolve, and relationships change form. Impermanence keeps its promise. The false self fights that fact because psychological need requires continuity of supply. Here need becomes the original sin when innocent childhood dependence survives as the adult belief that completion exists somewhere outside the self. Perhaps the fine tuning serves one ruthless purpose. Whatever you keep demanding from another person returns as a question about what remains uncultivated, disowned, or unclaimed within you. Can you become internally what you keep hiring romantic love to provide externally? Psychological freedom begins when another person can matter enormously without carrying responsibility for your wholeness. Then love loses its job as rescue. The mirror has done its work for you. You finally meet the person across from you after you stop trying to find yourself inside them.
If you're using the Save the Cat! beat sheet to outline your novel but your story still feels flat, disconnected, or hard to draft, one of these five common mistakes may be the reason why.The Save the Cat! beat sheet is a popular story structure framework because it gives fiction writers fifteen clear landmarks to plot toward. But filling in all fifteen beats doesn't automatically give you a story that works.In this episode, I'm breaking down five mistakes writers make when using the Save the Cat! beat sheet—and what to think about instead so you can build a stronger, more connected novel outline.You'll hear me talk about things like:[03:10] Why jumping straight into the Save the Cat! beat sheet can leave you with plot points that technically fit the framework but don't feel rooted in your story.[05:35] Why having the “right” story beats in the “right” places isn't enough—and what keeps a novel from feeling like a series of disconnected events.[10:00] Why fifteen beats do not equal fifteen scenes, and how misunderstanding the difference between a beat sheet and a scene-by-scene outline can distort your story.[12:50] The Fun and Games mistake that can leave you stuck in the middle, scrambling to figure out what should happen next.[16:30] The often-missed internal side of Bad Guys Close In (and how it can give your All Is Lost moment much more emotional weight).If you use Save the Cat! Writes a Novel for plotting or outlining, this episode will help you understand what the framework is actually designed to do—so you can use it to support your story instead of forcing your story into fifteen boxes.
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Novelist, veteran screenwriter, and longtime Blue Bloods showrunner Kevin Wade spoke with us about the challenges of transitioning across writing mediums, storytelling principles, and book two of his debut crime series, ONE GOOD EYE. Kevin Wade is the Golden Globe and the Writers Guild of America nominated screenwriter of movies including the seven-time Oscar nominated comedy Working Girl (1988), True Colors (1991) starring John Cusack and James Spader, the Tom Selleck comedy Mr. Baseball (1992), Ivan Reitman's Junior (1994), the epic romance Meet Joe Black (1998), and the rom-com Maid in Manhattan (2002). In 2010, he joined the rookie CBS drama Blue Bloods as a writer, and in 2011 he became its showrunner and executive producer for the entire 14-year run. His latest release is the follow-up to his debut crime novel Johnny Careless, a book author John Sanford called a “fast-moving classic crime novel,” and that was shortlisted for the Edgar Best First Novel Award. One Good Eye is the second in the Police Chief Jeep Mullane series and Library Journal said of the author, “Wade delivers another compelling literary mystery. His characters feel intimately real...and Jeep remains a deeply engaging protagonist...With sharp prose and a vivid sense of place on Long Island's Gold Coast, Wade's second…book will have readers eager to read more stories about Jeep and his community." [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Kevin Wade, Milena, and I discussed: What his early aspirations as an actor in NYC taught him about playwriting How he had his first screenplay turned into a hit movie by a legendary director Why he wrote his debut novel during the Writers Guild strike The biggest challenges of moving from TV writing to the novel His favorite advice from Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules for Writers How to write relatable characters Classic advice from literary lions And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web One Good Eye: A Jeep Mullane Novel (The Jeep Mullane Series, 2) by Kevin Wade (Amazon) Kevin Wade Amazon Author Page Kevin Wade on IMDb Kevin Wade on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why does compliance paperwork fall behind the systems it describes? Because the systems change faster than the documents. Travis Howerton points to cloud native technologies that spin up and down on demand, which makes describing infrastructure in paperwork something that goes out of date instantly. Add new regulation for third party risk, supply chain, zero trust, and privacy, and an approach that was already expensive and frustrating stops being fit for purpose. RegScale answers that with compliance as code. The company went to NIST and helped write the standard that became OSCAL, the Open Security Controls Assessment Language, then built the capability for machines to attest to their own state using it. Paperwork starts writing itself, and CISOs get risk and compliance outcomes as a byproduct of operational excellence rather than as a separate project. Is automating the evidence trail a shortcut? Travis Howerton argues the opposite. It prevents corner cutting, because the alternative is what he calls compliance theater. An old general he worked for described that as a mother-in-law visit, where you clean the house to a ridiculous standard, everybody goes through the dance, and the moment the visit ends the kids destroy the house again. Where should a security team start automating? Start with what hurts. He tells people to think like a surgeon, who opens by asking the patient what is wrong, then work backwards from the pain. There is no easy button, and the honest starting point is the truth about how fast teams will need to react. That pain usually maps to one of three business drivers. Cut cost, or shift the share of budget going to checklist compliance toward tools that buy down risk. Get real-time assurance. Or earn the reps and certs needed to sell into a market, whether that is FedRAMP for government work or PCI for card data. Compressing those timelines by 70 to 80 percent lets a company get to market faster and grow revenue. The results Travis Howerton cites are specific. One large government agency is touting over $100 million in labor savings, and a Department of War customer with a 52-week end-to-end cycle has compressed it by 36 weeks using RegScale technology alongside other integrated tools. Having tripled, doubled, and doubled again over the last three years, RegScale stays focused on the largest and most complex organizations, with international markets and the energy sector on the horizon. This is a Brand Briefing. A Brand Briefing is an on-location conversation recorded on site at Black Hat USA 2026, putting a spotlight on the guest and their company and pairing it with the editorial reach of ITSPmagazine. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/performance/#briefing GUEST Travis Howerton, Co-Founder and CEO at RegScale LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travishowerton/ RESOURCES Black Hat USA 2026 event coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/black-hat-usa-2026-cybersecurity-event-coverage-in-las-vegas RegScale: https://regscale.com OSCAL, the Open Security Controls Assessment Language: https://pages.nist.gov/OSCAL/ Are you interested in telling your story? ▶︎ Full Length Brand Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#full ▶︎ Brand Spotlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#spotlight ▶︎ Brand Highlight Story: https://www.studioc60.com/content-creation#highlight ▶︎ Get your own Brand Briefing at an upcoming event: https://www.studioc60.com/buy-brand-briefings KEYWORDS travis howerton, regscale, sean martin, brand briefing, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, black hat usa 2026, compliance as code, continuous controls monitoring, oscal, grc engineering, fedramp, fisma, authority to operate, ai agents, risk management, cybersecurity compliance Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
New York Times bestselling author Gillian McAllister spoke with us about how to deal with rejection, deleting full drafts, the business side of adaptations, and her latest US release, the thriller THAT NIGHT. Gillian McAllister is the internationally bestselling author of Wrong Place Wrong Time, Just Another Missing Person, Famous Last Words, and others. Her novels have been selected by both Read with Jenna and Reese's Book Club, and she has become one of today's most celebrated voices in psychological suspense. Her latest US release is That Night (already adapted into a Netflix series), a novel that follows a family's dream vacation in Italy that spirals into a nightmare. New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry said of Gillian, “McAllister is the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.” Gillian graduated with an English degree before working as a lawyer. She is also the creator and co-host of the popular Honest Authors podcast. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Gillian McAllister, Milena, and I discussed: Her law background and path to publication How she wrote close to 400K words before breaking through Why she plans novels via synopsis and keeps her early drafts private Business advice on how to talk to publishers once you've sold a book The real reason so many lawyers become crime writers And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web gillianmcallister.com The Honest Authors' Podcast That Night: A Novel by Gillian McAllister (Amazon) Gillian McAllister Amazon Author Page Gillian McAllister Facebook Gillian McAllister on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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AI agents are breaking free from their test environments, outsmarting their creators and breaching real-world networks in ways that no one predicted. Discover how these agentic models are changing the game for both cyber offense and defense. Anthropic's agentic AI also broke free and hacked others. We know much (much!) more about the OpenAI breakout. OpenAI posts that they're pausing "Astra" - even internally. What was that about AI recently cracking (or denting) cryptography. Bruce Schneier brilliantly equates AI agents to capricious genies. Apple doesn't react so well to the new deluge of security reports. Chrome 149 + 150 updates together fix 1,072 bugs. Yikes. psSense's creator is working to finish its nfSensei, its successor Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1091-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: hoxhunt.com/securitynow guardsquare.com threatlocker.com/twit box.com/AI
AI agents are breaking free from their test environments, outsmarting their creators and breaching real-world networks in ways that no one predicted. Discover how these agentic models are changing the game for both cyber offense and defense. Anthropic's agentic AI also broke free and hacked others. We know much (much!) more about the OpenAI breakout. OpenAI posts that they're pausing "Astra" - even internally. What was that about AI recently cracking (or denting) cryptography. Bruce Schneier brilliantly equates AI agents to capricious genies. Apple doesn't react so well to the new deluge of security reports. Chrome 149 + 150 updates together fix 1,072 bugs. Yikes. psSense's creator is working to finish its nfSensei, its successor Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1091-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: hoxhunt.com/securitynow guardsquare.com threatlocker.com/twit box.com/AI
AI agents are breaking free from their test environments, outsmarting their creators and breaching real-world networks in ways that no one predicted. Discover how these agentic models are changing the game for both cyber offense and defense. Anthropic's agentic AI also broke free and hacked others. We know much (much!) more about the OpenAI breakout. OpenAI posts that they're pausing "Astra" - even internally. What was that about AI recently cracking (or denting) cryptography. Bruce Schneier brilliantly equates AI agents to capricious genies. Apple doesn't react so well to the new deluge of security reports. Chrome 149 + 150 updates together fix 1,072 bugs. Yikes. psSense's creator is working to finish its nfSensei, its successor Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1091-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: hoxhunt.com/securitynow guardsquare.com threatlocker.com/twit box.com/AI
AI agents are breaking free from their test environments, outsmarting their creators and breaching real-world networks in ways that no one predicted. Discover how these agentic models are changing the game for both cyber offense and defense. Anthropic's agentic AI also broke free and hacked others. We know much (much!) more about the OpenAI breakout. OpenAI posts that they're pausing "Astra" - even internally. What was that about AI recently cracking (or denting) cryptography. Bruce Schneier brilliantly equates AI agents to capricious genies. Apple doesn't react so well to the new deluge of security reports. Chrome 149 + 150 updates together fix 1,072 bugs. Yikes. psSense's creator is working to finish its nfSensei, its successor Show Notes - https://www.grc.com/sn/SN-1091-Notes.pdf Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte Download or subscribe to Security Now at https://twit.tv/shows/security-now. You can submit a question to Security Now at the GRC Feedback Page. For 16kbps versions, transcripts, and notes (including fixes), visit Steve's site: grc.com, also the home of the best disk maintenance and recovery utility ever written Spinrite 6. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: hoxhunt.com/securitynow guardsquare.com threatlocker.com/twit box.com/AI
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
Bestselling author and storytelling expert Abbie Emmons spoke with us about topping 600K YouTube followers, helping writers craft emotionally resonant narratives, and her new writing guide MAKE YOUR STORY MATTER. Abbie Emmons is the popular YouTube creator behind the channel Make Your Story Matter. For over seven years, she has been sharing her wisdom on YouTube (@abbieemmons), where she teaches writers how to make their stories matter by harnessing the power and psychology of storytelling to transform their ideas into masterpieces Her latest book, Make Your Story Matter: An Interactive Guide to Unlocking Your Brain's Storytelling Power and Writing a Book Readers Love (releasing August 11, 2026), “... [offers a] simple but powerful 3-step framework for storytelling that's rooted in psychology called the Who, What, Why Method.” Jessica Brody, bestselling author of Save The Cat! Writes a Novel, wrote of the book, "Understanding why stories move us is one of the most powerful things a writer can learn. Make Your Story Matter brings the psychology and heart of storytelling to life in a way that will transform how you think about your characters and your craft." Her online learning platform, Abbie's Story University, has thousands of students worldwide. Through monthly live lectures and in-depth courses, Abbie offers comprehensive instruction on creative writing, editing, publishing, and more. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Abbie Emmons, Milena, and I discussed: Her three-pillar framework for crafting compelling stories How to make your characters relatable Why writers struggle with motivation and writing slumps despite having great ideas What “writing ugly” can do for your productivity How to create a conversation around your book And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web abbieemmonsauthor.com abbiesstoryuniversity.com Make Your Story Matter: An Interactive Guide to Unlocking Your Brain's Storytelling Power and Writing a Book Readers Love by Abbie Emmons (Amazon) Abbie Emmons on YouTube Author on Facebook Author on Instagram Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chris Bohjalian is prolific to say the least. With about 25 novels under his belt, he hits the bestseller list often with his unforgettable characters and twisty plots. But his newest, The Amateur, is his most personal novel to date. The narrator, Mira, was a caddy, just as Chris was for most of his high school career. And she is a writer, just like Chris, her sense of humor and feelings about writing are pure Chris. It's a page turner with some terrific writing. And we talk to Elderberry and Plum, a new bookstore in Springfield, Illinois. Join us! Find books mentioned in The Book Case: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/shop/story/book-case-podcast-reading-list-118433302 Books mentioned on this episode: The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian The Jackal's Mistress by Chris Bohjalian The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson The World According to Garp by John Irving Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience
New York Times bestselling author Laura Moriarty spoke with us about her teaching philosophy as a creative writing professor, the craft of historical fiction, and the research process behind her latest novel, SUNLIGHT FINDS YOU. Laura Moriarty is the New York Times bestselling author of The Chaperone, The Center of Everything, The Rest of Her Life, While I'm Falling, and a Creative Writing Professor at the University of Kansas. Her latest novel is Sunlight Finds You, described as a book that “explores the fervor of young love, the shock of parental betrayal, and the long-term consequences of adolescent choices.” A Kirkus starred review wrote of the work, “Moriarty has an unusual gift for voice, a spark that can turn a novel about ordinary events into something compelling…A rich, rewarding slice of history that should remind us how important it is for women to have choices of all kinds.” Laura Moriarty received her master's degree from the University of Kansas and was awarded the George Bennett Fellowship for Creative Writing at Phillips Exeter Academy. [Discover The Writer Files Extra: Get 'The Writer Files' Podcast Delivered Straight to Your Inbox at writerfiles.fm] [If you're a fan of The Writer Files, please click FOLLOW to automatically see new interviews. And drop us a rating or a review wherever you listen] In this file Laura Moriarty, Milena, and I discussed: Her early career in social work and how she almost became a doctor Why she loves working with graduate students on their WIPs The research process that went into Sunlight Finds You What changing the POV can do for your narrative How incorporating psychological authenticity over modern values can improve historical fiction And a lot more! Show Notes: ElevenReader is a new, award-winning audio app for iOS, Android, Web english.ku.edu/people/laura-moriarty Sunlight Finds You: A Novel by Laura Moriarty (Amazon) Laura Moriarty Amazon Author Page Milena Gonzalez | Writer | Reader | Book Reviewer diary_of_a_book_babe on Instagram Kelton Reid Instagram Kelton Reid on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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