The 7am Novelist

Today, we’ve got one of our star Novel Incubator alums, Emily Ross, who has just published her second novel, SWALLOWTAIL, a book that combines mythology, teenage longing, and small-town murder. It’s one of the first books out from the new Galiot Press. We’ll be talking about how Emily, normally an intuitive writer, had to sink her teeth into the more intentional plotting and structure of a mystery thriller, while not leaving her characters behind.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Ross’s latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Emily Ross is the author of the mystery thriller, Swallowtail, which Publishers Weekly says maintains plenty of “nerve-shredding tension” and of the International Thriller Writers Awards finalist, Half in Love with Death. She won the Al Blanchard best story award for her short story, “Let the Chips Fall”, which appeared in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime Stories 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today we have another of our roundtables and we’re focusing on voice: What really is voice? How does a writer create it? Change it? How do we differentiate between the writer’s voice and that of the narrator or character? When is voice too writerly or too uninspired? And how is it different from style? We’ll talk about these questions and a whole lot more with our four authors: Juliet Faithfull, Stacy Mattingly, Andrea Meyer, and Emily Ross.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Juliet Faithfull is a Spanish-British-American writer who grew up in Brazil. Liar’s Dice, her first novel which will be released in April, was a winner of the 2024 Irish Writers Centre’s Novel Fair and a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.Stacy Mattingly is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Unlikely Angel, an Atlanta hostage story now a feature film, Captive. She was a 2024-25 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she has collaborated with writers for more than a decade. She teaches at Boston University, where she earned an MFA in fiction, and is an associate professor at Berklee College of Music. She has led workshops for the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Her recently completed first novel is set in present-day Sarajevo.Andrea Meyer is an author, editor, writing instructor, and book coach who has written three novels, a screenplay for MGM, numerous essays and film articles, and teaches fiction and nonfiction writing at GrubStreet.Emily Ross is the author of the mystery thriller SWALLOWTAIL (coming from Galiot Press in November 2025) and the International Thriller Writers Thriller Awards finalist, HALF IN LOVE WITH DEATH. She won the Al Blanchard best story award for her short story, “Let the Chips Fall”, which appeared in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime stories 2024. She is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator and lives in Quincy, MA, with her husband and Obi-Wan Kenobi, their very playful cat.Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Good morning everyone. Today’s short episode is dedicated to Charles Coe, who passed away suddenly this weekend. His death is a shock to a lot of us. He was a beloved poet, educator, arts advocate, and friend to many many writers and creatives across New England and beyond. Charles helped our group Writers for Democrat Action raise funds for Kamala Harris the fall before last. As part of the event, he read a really thoughtful piece about how he approaches political writing, including two poems of his own that he shared. His words aren’t only a testament to his work, but also helpful in considering our roles as writers in the political sphere. Rest of peace, Charles. We’ll miss you. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

We’ve got one of Boston’s best literary citizens with us, Jessica Kent. She’s the founder of Literary Boston, a website that covers the local literary community, marketing advice for authors, and a chance to take your own literary history tour. Today, she’ll be sharing with us a list of ways for you to connect to your literary community and be a stronger literary citizen. We’ll also talk her efforts to put literary Boston on the map, as well as how she started her work with Literary Boston in the first place.Read Kent’s post: “How is Building Content Strategy Like Plotting a Novel?”Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Jessica A. Kent is a freelance marketing writer by day and creative writer by night. She’s the founder of Literary Boston, a website that covers the local literary community. Other past literary roles include library assistant, bookseller, and book festival director. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson and a Master’s in Literature from Harvard, where her thesis on Moby-Dick and Calvinism won the Director’s Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in the North American Review, the Emerson Review, and others, and has received the Leah Lovenheim Award for Short Fiction. She recently graduated from GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, where she’s working on a novel about paramedics in 1970s Boston.Photo by Tiffany Chan on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m thrilled to be speaking to Janet Rich Edwards, whose debut novel, Canticle, will be released in December. I’ll be interviewing her for that release on the stage at Porter Square Books in the Seaport on December 3. Today we’ll be talking about how she handled four points of view and how language conveys class and gender as well as her characters’ assumptions about how the world works.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Edwards’ book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Janet Rich Edwards is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. A professor of epidemiology at Harvard, Janet had written more than 300 papers for scientific journals, but was left wondering if she could convey more truth, or at least different truths, through story. When she’s not sneaking hours to write fiction, Janet’s researching facts about women’s health. Canticle is her first novel. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and never more than two cats.Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m talking to author Nicole Graev Lipson about where fiction ends and truth begins and how she searched for answers about being a mother among her literary forebears, without being too heavy-handed with her allusions or assuming too much from the reader.Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. —Simone WeilWatch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Lipson’s book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Nicole Graev Lipson is the author of the memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, a USA Today national bestseller. Her writing has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, selected for The Best American Essays anthology, and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, The Millions, Nylon, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other publications. Nicole holds a BA from Cornell University and an MFA from Emerson College. Originally from New York City, she lives outside of Boston with her family.Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today we have another of our roundtables and we’re focusing on one of the hardest things for an author to get right: world building. Because this issue is so complex, I’m doing two world building roundtables, one for writers working on historical fiction and today for writers who are trying to establish place in a location that the reader might not know about, either in the real world or in the speculative one. In this case, how complicated does that speculative world need to be to be truly convincing? Or is simplicity the key, working through implication instead of information? And if the book is released in U.S., what is the writers responsibility for providing context for non-U.S. locales? Any at all? Maybe the reader should do the work. We’ll talk about these questions and a whole lot more with our four authors: Julie Carrick Dalton, Juliet Faithful, Shalene Gupta, and Desmond Hall.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for only a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find our roundtable authors’ latest book as well as many other books by our guests, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.A former organic farmer and beekeeper, Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of The Last Beekeeper, currently a nominee for the NH People’s Choice Award for Best Novel, as well as Waiting for the Night Song, and a forthcoming third novel, The Forest Becomes Her. She’s part of the core faculty at Drexel University’s MFA program.Shalene Gupta is the author of The Cycle: Confronting the Pain of Periods and PMDD (Flatiron, 2024) and the co-author of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It (Public Affairs, 2021). She’s the staff editor at Fast Company and is currently revising her first novel with her agent.Juliet Faithfull is a Spanish-British-American writer who grew up in Brazil. Liar’s Dice, her first novel which will be released in April, was a winner of the 2024 Irish Writers Centre’s Novel Fair and a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.Desmond Hall is the author of two award-winning YA novels, including most recently Better Must Come, which was a top ten In the Margins book pick, CariCon Award for best Caribbean YA novel, and won honors for the Massachusetts Book Award.Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, we’ve got a very special guest, the person I cofounded the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program with and who is a beloved teacher and writer in the Boston area, Lisa Borders. Lisa’s latest novel, Last Night at the Disco, was released on October 7. We’re talking about using an unreliable narrator, character liability, and how our dear late agent, Esmond Harmsworth, helped her with the novel’s structure. You can catch Lisa at Brooklyn’s Lofty Pigeon Books with Patricia Park tonight, October 21st, as well as Harvard Bookstore on October 27. Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Borders’ latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Lisa Borders is the author of the novels Cloud Cuckoo Land, chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing’s Fred Bonnie Award and a Massachusetts Book Awards honoree, and The Fifty-First State. A frequent humor contributor at McSweeney’s, her essays and short fiction have appeared in Past Ten, The Rumpus, Cognoscenti, Black Warrior Review and other journals. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and residencies at the Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center and St. Nell’s. Lisa taught for many years at Boston’s GrubStreet, where she founded the Novel Generator program and co-founded the Novel Incubator program. She currently teaches her own Novel Reactor workshops and does private manuscript consulting. After growing up largely in Central Jersey – a part of New Jersey whose very existence is the topic of much debate – Lisa moved to the Boston area and now lives in Central Massachusetts with her partner and two rescue cats. Lisa’s new novel, Last Night at the Disco, will be published by Regal House on October 7, 2025. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m talking to writers Whitney Scharer and Sonya Larson about an exciting new writing conference they’re starting up in the Boston area, the TBR conference which will be held this coming January 17th.For more info about the conference and to register, click here.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.Whitney Scharer’s first novel, The Age of Light, was a Boston Globe and IndieNext bestseller, People Pick, Amazon Book of the Month selection, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Internationally, The Age of Light won Le prix Rive Gauche à Paris, was a coups de couer selection from the American Library in Paris, and has been published in over a dozen other countries. Whitney has been awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship, Ragdale and VCCA residencies, a St. Botolph Emerging Artists Grant, and a Somerville Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications including Vogue, The Telegraph, and The Tatler. She lives with her husband and daughter in Arlington, MA, where she is at work on her second novel.Sonya Larson’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, American Literary Review, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Chronicle, Amazon Originals, Audible.com, West Branch, Salamander, Memorious, The Harvard Advocate, Pangyrus, Solstice Magazine, Del Sol Review, Red Mountain Review, The Hub, and more. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts 2020, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and more. For 17 years she served as Director of GrubStreet‘s Muse and the Marketplace writing conference and other roles, and as an organizer for the Boston Writers of Color Group. She received her MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in New York City and is writing a novel. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, we’ve got the wonderful Lauren Aliza Green, author of The World AfterAlice, and she’ll be talking to us about practicing rewriting over revision and how to do it while the world seems to be falling apart. Lauren will also be talking about how she continues her writing community even after a big move abroad.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Green’s latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Lauren Aliza Green is the author of The World After Alice (Viking, 2024) and the chapbook A Great Dark House, which won the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. She is currently based in Rome.Photo by fotoweedio on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today we have another of our roundtables and we’re focusing on one of the hardest things for an author to get right: world building. Because this issue is complex, I’m going to hold two world building roundtables, one for writers trying to establish place in either a speculative work or a work that takes place in a non-U.S. location, and this one today about world building for historical fiction. What is world building? How do you it without boring the reader to death or brazenly showing all of your research? And how do you work it into your story line? We’ve got four incredible writers joining us for the discussion: Allison Amend, Rachel Barenbaum, Janet Rich Edwards, and Hesse Phillips.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for only a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find our roundtable authors’ latest book as well as many other books by our guests, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Allison Amend is a professor of creative writing at Lehman College, CUNY in New York City and is the author of a short story collection and three novels.Rachel Barenbaum is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars and the creator and host of the literary show Check This Out that airs on NHPR and focuses on emerging and diverse authors.Janet Rich Edwards is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. She is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.Hesse Phillips‘s debut novel Lightborne was a finalist in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair and a London Times’ Top Historical Fiction Book of 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m talking to author and book-seller Josh Cook about book bans, the beloved community space of bookstores, and what he thinks authors should know about book selling.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Cook’s latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has worked since 2004. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel An Exaggerated Murder as well as the 2023 book: The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century, which was one of Lit Hub’s most anticipated books of 2023 and Esquire’s August 2023 Book Club pick. His fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.Photo by Maxence Pira on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, we’re talking to the wonderful Jyoti Chand who will be discussing the inspiration behind her YA graphic novel, Fitting Indian, why the story needed to be told, and how she built a vibrant online community where she is known as Mamajotes through authenticity and vulnerability.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Chand’s book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Jyoti Chand, known as Mamajotes online, is a writer, comedian, and advocate for mental health, using humor and honesty to connect with audiences about the realities of motherhood. With a background in stand-up and improv, she brings an engaging and unfiltered perspective to conversations about self-care, identity, and the challenges of balancing family and creativity. She has an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing and MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults. In addition to her digital content, Jyoti is the author of Fitting Indian, a teen graphic novel that explores mental health and identity within a South Asian family. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m lucky to get a chance to talk to Zee Carlstrom about their debut: Make Sure You Die Screaming. Zee practices a special kind of brainstorming for their projects, bringing together disparate styles, genres, ideas in a way they learned from the advertising world in order to make something fresh and new and avoid the regurgitating effects of AI on all of our creative pursuits.Interested in the PageBreak reading retreats Carlstrom talks about? Click here.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Carlstrom’s latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Zee Carlstrom is a writer from Illinois. MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING is their first novel. It was named one of the "hottest debut novels of 2025" by Goodreads, a Barnes & Noble pick for their 2025 Yearly Reading Challenge, one of Them's Most Anticipated Books of 2025, one of Debutiful's Most Anticipated Debut Novels of 2025, and The Mary Sue pick for its 15 Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of 2025. The book was also just listed as one of the 20 Best Queer Novels of 2025 so far by Elle Magazine.Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

In our roundtable today, we’re focusing on the question: How does your book invite a reader’s interest, both intellectually and emotionally? What might that look like? What methods might an author use? And we’ve got four incredible writers joining us for the discussion: Nancy Crochiere, Janet Rich Edwards, Christine Murphy, and Hesse Phillips.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for only a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find our roundtable authors’ latest book as well as many other books by our guests, visit our Bookshop page.Want to join our July write-a-thon? Click here for more information.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Nancy Crochiere’s comic-roadtrip novel, Graceland, about a single mom forced to chase her Elvis-obsessed mother and pink-haired teenage daughter to Memphis, was an Amazon Kindle bestseller and named a top summer read by Parade, Woman’s World, and Deep South Magazines.Janet Rich Edwards' debut novel, Canticle, features a mystic who joins a defiant community of women to fight the medieval Church for their faith and independence, will launch on December 2 from Spiegel & Grau.Christine Murphy is the author of Notes on Surviving The Fire, considered one of the best crime novels of the year so far by NYT, “brilliant” by the Financial Times, and praised by the New Yorker for its layered narrative and spirit of anarchy.Hesse Phillips's debut Novel Lightborne was a finalist in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair and was chosen as both a Book of the Month and a Best Historical Fiction Novel for 2024 by The Times (UK), who said "there has never been a fictional retelling [of Christopher Marlowe's mysterious death] as vivid and original as this one."Photo by Kir Simakov on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I enjoy talking to Beth Castrodale about her latest: The Inhabitants, an award-winning novel that brings new twists to one of my favorite sub-genre settings—a haunted house. And we discuss her efforts to bring Small Press Books and their authors more attention through her longtime project, the review website known as Small Press Picks. Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Castrodale’s latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Beth Castrodale was a senior editor at Bedford/St. Martin’s and is the founding editor of the book-review website Small Press Picks. Her most recent novel, The Inhabitants, won the Horror categories of the Independent Publisher Book Awards, the National Indie Excellence Awards, and the Best Book Awards. It was a finalist in the Horror category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. An excerpt from her second novel, In This Ground, was a shortlist finalist for a William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Award. Her début novel, Marion Hatley, was a finalist for a Nilsen Prize for a First Novel from Southeast Missouri State University Press. Castrodale has been awarded for her work with an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and her stories and essays have appeared in multiple publications, including CrimeReads, Ars Medica, The Writing Disorder, and Writing and Wellness. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m talking to author and art historian Libby Buck, whose first novel Port Anna, was released in July from Simon & Schuster. Libby is going to tell us how her art historian background helped her write her novel… and how it might help you. We’re also going to talk about the importance of museums as a vital source of community building and how they allow us to join together “in awe.”Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Buck’s book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Libby Buck earned her BA in English from the University of Virginia, her MA in art history from Columbia University, and PhD. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While her general area of expertise is Nineteenth Century France, her dissertation focused upon the Gustave Moreau museum and its challenge to traditional museology. She taught as a visiting lecturer for over a decade at various institutions, including Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She and her husband raised three daughters in North Carolina, where she still lives with her husband when she is not beside the sea in Downeast Maine.Photo by Simi Iluyomade on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, we’ve got an incredible community organizer joining us, the co-founder of the London Writers' Salon, Matt Trinetti, and he’s going to tell us all about it.Want more from LWS, check out Writers' Hour Magazine.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find my favorite craft books and the latest from our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Matt Trinetti is a writer, publisher, TEDx speaker, and cofounder of London Writers' Salon. Prior to LWS, Matt spent a decade helping thousands of individuals around the world navigate career changes, start businesses, and build purposeful careers a places like Google, Red Bull, Airbus, Unilever, Escape The City, London Business School, General Assembly, Education First, and Creative Mornings.Photo by Celine Ylmz on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today we have the first of our roundtables and we’re focusing on the mysterious (or not so mysterious) REVERSE OUTLINE. What is it? Why might you want to do it (or not?) And what methods are the most helpful. And we’ve got four incredible writers joining us to round out our discussion: Desmond Hall, Christine Murphy, Patricia Park, and Hesse PhillipsWatch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for only a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find our roundtable authors’ latest book as well as many other books by our guests, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Desmond Hall is the author of two award-winning YA novels, including most recently Better Must Come, which was a top ten In the Margins book pick, and long listed for Massachusetts Book Award.Christine Murphy is the author of Notes on Surviving The Fire (out this year from Knopf), considered one of the best crime novels of the year so far by NYT, “brilliant” by the Financial Times, and praised by the New Yorker for its layered narrative and anarchic spirit.Patricia Park is the author of The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Re Jane, a Jane Eyre retelling; Imposter Syndrome, a Gotham Book Prize finalist; and most recently, What’s Eating Jackie Oh?Hesse Phillips's debut novel Lightborne was a finalist in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair and a London Times' Top Historical Fiction Book of 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com

Today, I’m talking to Karen Dukess fresh off of hearing that her latest novel, Welcome to Murder Week, has hit the USA Today bestseller list. We discuss how writing groups and writing retreats, including DIY ones, got her there and why the best advice is sometimes: “Just Keep Going.” Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for one week. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find Dukess’ latest book as well as many other books by our authors, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Karen Dukess is the author of The Last Book Party and Welcome to Murder Week, which was an instant USAToday bestseller. She lives outside New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod, where she interviews some of today's most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks for the Truro Center for the Arts.Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com