How I Wrote My Book

Caro Giles lives in Northumberland with her tribe of daughters: The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One. She is at once alone and yet surrounded. Bound by circumstance, financial constraints, illness and the challenges of single motherhood, she has nowhere to go but the fierce landscape that surrounds her. Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones – and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides. TWELVE MOONS follows the lunar calendar, each chapter sharing a month and a moon, and shows the simmering power that lies in our often hidden daily lives. A dazzlingly honest memoir that while never turning away from the awkward truths of life, also shows how love will flourish if we can only find a space for ourselves. Set against windswept beaches and ancient hills, this is a story steeped in nature and landscape. Since our earliest days, mankind has looked up at the moon and seen a story reflected back. Twelve Moons is one of those stories – a book about finding yourself, your voice and a sense that even in the dark of the night, we are never truly alone. In this podcast, Caro talks about how she created her debut memoir, her creative process and how to find to write as a single parent of four daughters. 

Caroline shares her secrets about how to create a successful multi-genre writing career in an honest, refreshing way with lots of practical tips.  Writing as Cass Green, Caroline’s debut adult novel The Woman Next Door was a Number 1 e-book bestseller and her second, In A Cottage, In A Wood was a Sunday Times top ten and USA Today bestseller. Sleep Tight, the first of three genre-bending police procedurals, was published by HarperCollins in 2021, followed by The Whisper House, in July 2022. 

How to start writing, how to keep going when the doubt hits, how to earn money as an author, how to get an agent and a publishing deal with Caroline Roberts.  Caroline is the Kindle-bestselling author of eleven contemporary fiction novels. She lives in the beautiful Northumberland countryside with her husband and their cocker spaniel, Jarvis. The sandy beaches, castles and rolling hills around her inspire her books. She writes about relationships; stories of romance, friendship, love and loss, family and community. Stories that explore how beautiful and at times complex love can be. Her books are also filled with fabulous food. In fact, she’s recently been described as the ‘Queen of foodie fiction’. Facebook: www.facebook.com/CarolineRobertsAuthor Instagram: @carolinerobertsauthor Twitter: @_caroroberts

78% of readers would like to be writers. Only 5% do. During this fun, upbeat podcast, Sunday Times No. 1 Best Selling Author and Writing Coach Michael Heppell talks about this creative process and how to successfully write, publish and sell your own book. Michael will be appearing at the Alnwick Story Fest at 25th February 1pm at the Alnwick Playhouse. Book your tickets at www.alnwickstoryfest.com 

In her new book Living Together, Mim Skinner sets out to explore communities that have rejected individualism and nuclear family life in order to embrace a more collective way of living. In this interview, Mim shares her writing process and how she knitted together her own personal journey together with the stories of others around the UK’s communes, eco-villages and co-living spaces to explore about a more compassionate, connected and sustainable ways to live. Mim Skinner is a writer and social entrepreneur living in County Durham. She is the co-founder of REfUSE, an organisation which intercepts and redistributes food that would go to landfill. Her debut non-fiction book Jailbirds won her a place on The Elle List’s 2019’s ‘game changers of now’ and the paperback edition was listed by Stylist as one of their most anticipated backs of 2020. She and her husband recently bought two retired train carriages which they hope to convert into a tiny home on a community farm.

Michael Chaplin is a playwright, television and non-fiction writer, as well as a former producer and executive at ITV and the BBC. In this episode Michael shares his creative process as he wrote his memoir and how he deals with creative doubt and pessimism. 

In this episode, Tricia Cresswell, a retired doctor talks about how she changed career by studying a Creative Writing MA at Newcastle University and won the Mslexia Debut Novel Award in 2020. Her debut novel The Midwife was published in 2022. The Midwife is Alnwick Story Fest’s chosen town-wide read - buy a ticket to the event and claim a FREE paperback from The Accidental bookshop while stocks last (available now!)

Lisette Auton, author of The Secret of Haven Point, is a disabled writer, activist, and creative practitioner based in Darlington in North-East England. In this episode she talks about inspiration, creativity and her process of writing a children's book.

In our first episode Ann Cleeves, best selling crime writer chats to us about her daily writing process, where she gets her ideas and how her books became the inspiration for blockbusting TV series Vera.