The Story Craft Cafe Podcast

Turning your hobby into a career with Nisha J. Tuli | SCC 85

Heart of Night and Fire: An absolutely addictive slow burn fantasy romance (The Nightfire Quartet Book 1)
Nisha J. Tuli is a Canadian fantasy romance author, whose books feature kick ass heroines, swoony love interests, and slow burns with plenty of heat. Fans of The Princess Bride and A Court of Thorns and Roses will find themselves at home in her worlds.
She loves to draw upon her Indian heritage to bring her stories to life, weaving together vibrant and compelling characters, settings, and plotlines. Her first novella Wicked is the Reaper became a BookTok hit, which she followed up with two more novels, including her latest, Trial of the Sun Queen, the first in a new series.
Nisha wants to leave her readers breathless and begging for more and enjoys making her characters suffer before giving them a much-deserved happily ever after. When she's not writing or exploring, Nisha can be found enjoying travel, food, and camping with her partner, two kids, and their fluffy Samoyed.
When you click a link on our site, it might just be a magical portal (aka an affiliate link). We're passionate about only sharing the treasures we truly believe in. Every purchase made from our links not only supports Dabble but also the marvelous authors and creators we showcase, at no additional cost to you.

Perfect Storm Psychological Suspense With Liv Constantine

The Senator's Wife: A Novel
Liv Constantine is the pen name of sisters Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine. Lynne and Valerie are Wall St. Journal and USA Today international bestselling authors with over one million copies sold worldwide. They are Library Reads Hall of Fame authors. Their books have been translated into 28 languages, are available in 33 countries, and are in development for both television and film. Their books have been praised by USA Today, The Sunday Times, People Magazine, and Good Morning America, among many others. Their debut novel, THE LAST MRS. PARRISH, is a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection.
When you click a link on our site, it might just be a magical portal (aka an affiliate link). We're passionate about only sharing the treasures we truly believe in. Every purchase made from our links not only supports Dabble but also the marvelous authors and creators we showcase, at no additional cost to you.

Fast Paced Cozy Mysteries With Alicia Bessette | SCC 83

Before authoring the Outer Banks Bookshop Mysteries, Alicia Bessette worked as a reporter in her home state of Massachusetts, where her writing won a first-place award from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. A pianist, published poet, and enthusiastic bird-watcher, she now loves living in coastal North Carolina with her husband, novelist Matthew Quick. Learn more at aliciabessette.com.

Writing And Publishing Sci Fi Thrillers And Fantasy With Christopher Paolini | SCC 82

Christopher Paolini drops by the Story Craft Cafe again to talk about his new releases this year, a sci fi thriller follow up called Fractal Noise, as well as his return this fall to the world of Eragon. 
Christopher was homeschooled by his parents. As a child, he often wrote short stories and poems, made frequent trips to the library, and read widely. Some of his favorite books were Bruce Coville’s Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Raymond E. Feist’s Magician (now available in volumes one and two), as well as books by Anne McCaffrey, Jane Yolen, Brian Jacques, E.R. Eddison, David Eddings, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
The idea of Eragon began as the daydreams of a teen. Christopher’s love for the magic of stories led him to craft a novel that he would enjoy reading. The project began as a hobby, a personal challenge; he never intended it to be published. Before he began writing Eragon, he plotted out the entire adventure. He found that doing some of the same things as his characters allowed him to better understand their world, as well as to think of descriptions that otherwise would not have occured to him. To this end he forged his own knives and swords, made chain mail, spun wool, camped in the Beartooth Mountains, made his own bow, built survival shelters, learned to track game, fletched arrows, felled trees, hiked, and camped. In short, the books embody a great deal of his experience of living in Montana.
His work also combined elements gathered from research and from his imagination. He read a huge amount of folklore while growing up, ranging from the Brothers Grimm to Beowulf, Nordic sagas, and the Aeneid, along with contemporary fantasy and science fiction. In addition, he learned about weaponry, food, clothing, and customs from the Middle Ages, which is roughly the era he envisioned Eragon living in. Armed with that information, he daydreamed the scenes with his characters. Then he took pen to paper and tried to recreate those images with words.
Christopher was fifteen when he wrote the first draft of Eragon. He took a second year to revise the book, and then gave it to his parents to read. The family decided to self-publish the book and spent a third year preparing the manuscript for publication: copyediting, proofreading, designing a cover, typesetting the manuscript, and creating marketing materials. During this time Christopher drew the map for Eragon, as well as the dragon eye for the book cover (which now appears inside the Knopf hardcover edition). The manuscript was sent to press and the first books arrived in November 2001. The Paolini family spent the next year promoting the book at libraries, bookstores, and schools in 2002 and early 2003.
In summer 2002, author Carl Hiaasen, whose stepson had read a copy of the self-published book while on vacation in Montana, brought Eragon to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf Books For Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books. Michelle Frey, executive editor at Knopf, contacted Christopher and his family to ask if they might be interested in having Knopf publish Eragon. The answer was yes, and after another round of editing, Knopf published Eragon in August 2003. The book immediately became a New York Times Best Seller.
https://youtube.com/live/qzyaqkPntK0
 

Creating Fantastical Worlds And Characters With Brent Weeks | SCC 81

In a small-town Montana school at age 12, Brent Weeks met the two great loves of his life. Edgar Allan Poe introduced him to the power of literature to transcend time and death and loneliness. Fate introduced him to The Girl, Kristi Barnes. He began his pursuit of each immediately.
The novel was a failure. The Girl shot him down.
Since then–skipping the boring parts–Brent has written eight best-selling novels with the Night Angel Trilogy and the Lightbringer Series, won several industry awards, and sold a few million books.
Brent and his wife Kristi live in Oregon with their two daughters. (Yeah, he married The Girl.)
You can contact Brent at brent(at)brentweeks(dot)com or fill out the comment form under the contact tab.
He does read all of his emails (the good ones, he’ll read two or three times, the little narcissist), and he does reply… sometimes. (If you have questions other people MAY have asked, maybe even frequently, you can live dangerously and check out the FAQ.)
https://youtube.com/live/z_ICXu4g5Sc
 

Thriller Double Header With Don Winslow and Taylor Adams | SCC 80

On today's show we have a special treat for you, a double header of interviews with two of the most creative thriller writers in publishing, Don Winslow and Taylor Adams. Be sure to join us at storycraft.cafe to stay informed about all upcoming shows!
 

What to do with your finished book | Publishing in 2023 | SCC 79

You've finished your manuscript and now what? In 2023 writers have more options than ever to get their stories out to the world. Trad pub, indie, hybrid... they're all legitimate ways to publish, and our panel is going to talk about those, and attempt to shed some light on the realities of publishing in 2023.

Finishing your book and preparing for your follow-up | SCC 78

When editing your book, how do you know when It's "finished"? In the writer's eyes, is a story ever truly finished? How do you lovingly close this project and how do you start thinking about what you'll follow it up with? We'll talk about all of it this week.
 

Writing Morally Complicated Characters With Don Winslow | SCC 77

DON WINSLOW is the author of twenty-three acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including six New York Times bestsellers (Savages, The Kings of Cool, The Cartel, The Force, The Border and City on Fire). Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar- winning writer-director Oliver Stone and a screenplay by Shane Salerno, Winslow and Stone. Winslow's epic Cartel trilogy has been adapted for TV and will appear as a weekly series on FX in 2023. The Force is soon to be a major motion picture from 20th Century Studios starring Matt Damon with James Mangold directing from a Scott Frank screenplay. Additional Winslow books are currently in development at Netflix, Warner Brothers, Sony and Working Title and he has recently written a series of acclaimed short stories for Audible narrated by four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris.

Writing Rules And Knowing When To Break Them | SCC 76

Read any how-to book on writing and you'll get that author's ideas about what makes the perfect story. Pick up another guide and you might find information that contradicts what the first author told you. Who's right? Aren't the rules of storytelling set in stone? The answer is a firm "sometimes". On this week's episode we're going to talk about the rules of story telling and knowing when and how to break them if necessary.