Carter Wilson's Making It Up

Rebecca Kelley is a fiction writer from Portland, Oregon; her first novel, Broken Homes & Gardens, was published in 2015. She also co-authored The Eco-nomical Baby Guide with Joy Hatch and her most recent novel, No One Knows Us Here, launched in early 2023.   Among other things, Carter and Rebecca discuss how a teacher provided early courage in Rebecca’s writing abilities, how she used a blog...

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is the author of Winter Counts, which has won multiple awards and was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Weiden received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, his law degree from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and his Ph. D. from the University of Texas at Austin.   Among othe...

Lexie Elliott has been writing for as long as she can remember, but she began to focus on it more seriously after she lost her banking job in 2009 due to the Global Financial Crisis. After some success in short story competitions, she began planning a novel. The result was The French Girl, which was published by Berkley in February 2018. This was followed by The Missing Years in 2019 and How To Ki...

Before launching his career as a novelist, Chad Boudreaux served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He has also served in several high-ranking positions at the U.S. Justice Department, where he was hired the night before the September 11, 2001 attacks. During his time at the Justice Department, Boudreaux focused most of his time on matters relating to terrorism...

Mark Stevens returns to Making It Up to talk about his fantastic new novel, The Fireballer. Mark has worked as a reporter, television news producer, and in public relations. He's also the author of The Allison Coil Mystery Series and has had multiple books be finalists as well as his, Trapline, won the Colorado Book Award. In September of 2016, Stevens was named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers...

Nuzo Onoh is a Nigerian-British writer of Igbo descent, a pioneer of the African horror literary subgenre, and hailed as the "Queen of African Horror.” Nuzo holds both a Law degree and a Masters in Writing from Warwick University. Nuzo’s works have featured in numerous magazines, podcasts, and anthologies, as well as in several academic studies and publications, and her latest novel was relea...

Ronald Kelly has been writing and publishing horror tales set in the American South for 36 years. A former Zebra Books author, his published works include Fear , Undertaker’s Moon , Blood Kin , Hell Hollow , and many more. His audio collection of Southern-fried short stories, Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror, was included on the nominating ballot of the 1992 Grammy Awards for Best Non-Musical...

Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellow, is a Mexican American writer, activist, and the author of four full-length poetry collections: Landscape with Headless Mama , Protection Spell , Girl with Death Mask , and Rosa’s Einstein . Her novels include Trinity Sight, Jubilee, and most recently, River Woman, River Demon .   Among other things, Carter...

Carla Damron is a fiction writer and social worker. In addition to The Stone Necklace , she authored the Caleb Knowles mystery novels, in which she explores the social issues of addiction, homelessness, and mental illness. Her latest novel, The Orchid Tattoo , takes on the dark horrors of human trafficking.  Among other things, Carter and Carla discuss using writing as a therapeutic outlet, how Ca...

Katie Sise is a bestselling author, TV host, and jewelry designer featured in major fashion magazines and television shows. Jewelry and television work inspired her first novel, Creative Girl , which was when she realized the thing she most wanted to do in the world was write books. After ghost writing bestselling NYT suspense books, she published three of her own novels with HarperCollins and has...

Barbara Nickless is the #1 Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Sydney Parnell police procedural series. She promised her mother she’d be a novelist when she grew up, because what could be safer than sitting at a desk all day? Now she is an award-winning author and creative-writing instructor, and she spends her free time snowshoeing, caving and hiking in the Colorado Ro...

Jeffrey Wilson has at one time worked as an actor, a firefighter, a paramedic, a jet pilot, a diving instructor, a Naval Officer, and a Vascular and Trauma Surgeon. He is also the co-author, with Brian Andrews, of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon #1 Bestselling TIER ONE series of thrillers from Thomas & Mercer. He still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense when not hard at wor...

Samuel Octavius spent 24 years in the Marine Corps, being rewarded with tons of stories to share. He has pursued his passions for writing, technology, and the intersection of futurism and society. He retired at the rank of Master Gunnery Sergeant, completed a B.S. and an M.S. and continues to pursue graduate studies while working on his first novel, The Echo Chamber .  Among other things, Carter a...

Jonathan Woods holds multiple degrees and for many years he practiced law for a multi-national high-tech company. But writing is his real passion. His stories have appeared in 3:AM Magazine , Dogmatika , Plots with Guns , Pulp Pusher , Thuglit and other web-based literary magazines. His latest novel, Wild Hogs , released late August this year.  Among other things, Carter and Jonathan discuss child...

Kelly J. Ford is the author of Real Bad Things , and Cottonmouths,  named one of 2017’s best books of the year by the Los Angeles Review and featured in the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” from the Los Angeles Times. An Arkansas native, Kelly writes crime fiction set in the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley. Kelly is also an occasional co-host with Daniel Ford on the Writer’s Bone podcast. She lives in Verm...

Sam McAlister was the first in her family to go to university, before training to be a criminal barrister. As a single mum, she decided her real passion was in news. Now BAFTA-nominated for her work with BBC Newsnight , Sam’s hard-won exclusives have shaped the public conversation. Most notably, she is the woman who clinched the 2019 interview with Prince Andrew, described as ‘a plane crashing int...

Wendy Walker’s psychological suspense novels have been translated into 23 foreign languages, topped bestseller lists both nationally and abroad, and have been optioned for television and film. Prior to her writing career, Wendy practiced both corporate and family law and worked as a financial analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co. Her latest novel, What Remains , will be released in June, 2023.  Amon...

After a short career in law, Leanne Kale Sparks has returned to her first love—writing about murder, mayhem, and crime. Currently, she is an author with Crooked Lane Books and her current release is The Wrong Woman . Leanne is also working on a new series featuring an FBI agent hunting down her best friend’s murderer. She currently resides in Texas with her husband and German Shepherd, Zoe.  Among...

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories ( The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was chosen as one of the “20th Century’s Best Crime Novels” by the IMBA.) She has won the Agatha, Anthony, Creasey, Edgar, Lambda, Macavity, Wolfe, and Romantic Times Career Achievement awards, has an honorary doctorate in theology, a...

David Ellis is a judge and an Edgar-award-winning author of ten novels of crime fiction, as well as eight bestselling books co-authored with James Patterson. His novels have been translated into more than ten languages worldwide. In December 2014, Dave was sworn in as the youngest-serving Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court for the First District.  Among other things, Carter and David discuss...

After flying helicopters with the U.S. Army and a career as a technical writer, Russell James now spins twisted tales best read in daylight. Russell has penned over twenty horror novels including Dark Inspiration, Q Island , and The Playing Card Killer . He also authored the Grant Coleman Adventures series starting with Cavern of the Damned and the Ranger Kathy West series starting with Claws .  A...

James Byrne is the author of the recent thriller The Gatekeeper. He writes under various names and has published nine other novels in the realm of thrillers and mysteries. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Portland Tribune.  Among other things, Carter and James discuss publishing highs and lows, how the gender of an action-adventure protagonist greatly impacts sales, and writing in longhand. At th...

Pip Drysdale is a writer, musician, and actor who grew up in Africa and Australia. Her debut novel, The Sunday Girl , was a bestseller and has been published in the United States, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. The Strangers We Know was also a bestseller and is being developed for television and her most recent novel, The Next Girl, was published this year.  Among other things, C...

Faye Snowden is the author of three standalone mysteries and a four-part series of which the first two, A Killing Fire and A Killing Rain, have been released. She also has published short stories and poems in various literary journals including The African American Review, Calliope, Red Ochre Lit, Bay Area Poets, and more. At eighteen, she left Louisiana to join the Navy and afterward worked as an...

Clare Mackintosh has sold more than two million copies of her books worldwide and is the multi-award-winning author of the thriller I Let You Go , a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and the fastest-selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. Together, her books have spent more than sixty weeks in The Sunday Times bestseller lists and have been translated into at least forty languages. H...