The Bestseller Experiment

With his new novel Brazilian Psycho, author Joe Thomas completes the São Paulo Quartet, a series that evolved from his ten years living in the city. Joe tells us how living in the setting of his books gave him an insight into a tangled web of crime and corruption to create vivid and engaging fiction. He tells us how an unpublished novel with multiple strands and characters helped give him focus for the series. The two Marks also discuss narrative voice and how an author’s voice develops over time, and Mr. D has some top tips for bullet journals.

A narrative non-fiction treat this week as bestselling historian Damien Lewis tell us about the extraordinary heroes of his new book SAS Great Escapes. We also discuss research methods, using primary and secondary sources, how to earn the trust of interviewees, adapting history for the screen and why history is not static.

Nadine Matheson’s debut thriller The Jigsaw Man has been hailed as one of the event debuts of the year. But this was far from an overnight success. Nadine’s writing journey is one from competition wins, to NanoWriMo, to self-publishing, to a six-publisher auction and the publication of her bestselling debut The Jigsaw Man and a TV option. Nadine tells us the lessons she learned along the way, and how she worked around her career as a Criminal Solicitor.

Do you have a favourite teacher? One who encouraged you to write, maybe? This special episode is for all the teachers and students out there who have inspired one another over the years, and we have two of them on the show. Sarah Moorhead is the author of Witness X and started out as a teacher. One of her students was young Stuart Turton, author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water. They tell us how they reunited over Twitter and how discussing big ideas in the class can change the course of a life.

Sex scenes in fiction can be difficult to get right, so much so that there’s even an award for writers who get it horribly wrong. We speak to Jacqueline Silvester and NJ Simmonds, who write together as Caedis Knight, about how they make the sex scenes in their Blood Web Chronicles work effectively. They answer listener questions on language, character, story and sex… and yes, the language in this podcast can get a bit saucy, so be warned if that’s not your thing.

Dean Wesley Smith is one of the most prolific writers working today, with over 200 novels, and countless short stories published. He reveals how he has learned how to stop listening to his critical voice, and to stop thinking of the story as a “product”, and how that has unleashed his creativity.

Josie Lloyd tells us why The Cancer Ladies Running Club is the most important and personal book she’s written, and how she balanced a story that is brutally honest about cancer and is still brimming with hope and positivity. She also takes us through her extraordinary career, including co-writing with her husband Emlyn Rees, and how she’s coped with writing in lockdown.

When Andrew Hunter Murray decided to end the world with his novel The Last Day he had no idea how hard it would be. His research involved astrophysics, climate migration, geopolitics, sleep cycles and much more. Andrew tells us how he achieved a balance of storytelling and worldbuilding to write what became one of the top ten bestsellers of 2020.

The dream for many authors is to see their novel made into a big-budget Hollywood movie. Debut author D. Eric Maikranz decided that he would make his dream a reality. His novel, The Reincarnationist Papers, has been adapted into a Paramount movie starring Mark Wahlberg, and directed by Antoine Fuqua. Taking a tip from his day job in IT, he was able to get the attention of Hollywood in the most extraordinary way...

Ellie Barker had always dreamed of becoming an author, and her debut novel The Pink Coffee Shop was ten years in the making. Ellie talks honestly about rejection, dusting herself off, finding the right editor, rolling with the punches, and discovering that dreams do come true… but might look a little different to how you imagined them.