Margs & Manuscripts

What if your writing software actually got out of your way? This week’s Lime Light is our first ever non-book episode. We’re joined by Ria Caldwell and Chris Pridemore, the writers behind Kalliope, a brand new writing app built by writers, for writers. Chris is a software engineer who got tired of jumping between Word, Scrivener, and a pile of other apps just to draft and build his world, so he bu...

“Henry just wanted to bang the next girl.” That’s A. L. Sinclair’s summary of the Boleyn downfall, and honestly, she’s not wrong. This week, we finally sit down with A. L. Sinclair, author of The Witch Queen’s Gambit , a dark historical fantasy that asks what would happen if Anne Boleyn were a witch whose rise to power changed the world. A. L. isn’t here to promote a book that’s already out. She’s...

Orin Steele joins us to talk about By Blood, Shadow, and Fire, the first book in her dark romantasy trilogy, and the choices that got it (and her) here. We’re fresh off the book and we cannot stop thinking about that ending. Orin spent nearly a decade running her own branding agency, and it shows. We dig into how she brought a fully formed cover vision to Emrae Publishing, how a Friday night spot...

When something hungry wakes in the pines, Aunna must protect the woman she loves before it devours them both. Beth Carlberg joins us to talk Firewatcher, her dark fantasy folk horror where magic doesn’t sparkle. It costs you. Aunna is the first woman Firewatcher in generations. She can hear the dead speak through flame, and every bit of that power leaves a mark. When the Temnylf crawl out of the w...

What if Death Becomes Her ditched the man and let the two women kiss? That’s the pitch for Vengefully Matched , Audrey Goldberg’s sapphic, witchy rom-com about a runaway bride, a prim council president, a prank war gone too far, and a fake relationship that gets very real. Audrey, a high school English teacher by day, joins Jenna and Cait to talk about the cover inspo board (Taste, Wicked, Agatha...

This week on the Lime Light, debut author Lizzete S. Tupas joins Jenna and Cait to talk about her novel, Always on a Tuesday . Loren Thomas has built a life on competence. At work she is the one everyone trusts, and at home she is the one everyone depends on. Then Tuesdays start cracking it all open. First comes an unexplained mistake, then a phone call she can't forget, then quiet fractures...

Ten finished manuscripts. One titanium ankle. One perfectly timed book deal. This week, Amanda Gayle joins us to talk about her debut romance, Once, Again, Always (Avon/HarperCollins), and the long, honest road that got her there. She shares what it was like to quit her job to write, query, land an agent, and go on submission twice. She also explains why a shelved manuscript isn't dead, just...

Spicy romance meets CSI. Allison Bettes joins Jenna and Cait to celebrate the release of Rogue Wave , book three in her Cupid Meets Crime Scene series. A sunshiny marine biologist, a grumpy sheriff next door who writes her tickets for everything, and a beach that washes up a lot more than sand dollars. We talk about writing women in STEM whose expertise actually cracks the case, the very random re...

We hit almost 500 downloads in a single week, and we're marking the milestone with an episode that turned into a full-circle moment for our own indie publishing journeys. Dakoda Mazzii, author of the dark fantasy trilogy The Fate of Astoran , joins us to talk about querying, signing with a literary agent, and ultimately walking away to self-publish on her own terms. Since then she's rele...

This week on the Limelight, debut author Elizabeth Gillman joins Jenna and Cait to talk about her novel, Maybe, Maybe Not . Annie has learned to live well with her OCD, but travel has always been off the table, and she has never left her little Gulf Coast community. When her boss offers to sell her the boutique she has worked in since she was a teenager, Annie finally decides to face travel with h...

Katie Jung joins us to talk about her debut romance, You're the One That I Haunt , and the surprisingly hard rules of writing a love interest who can't be touched. We dig into how Trip became a ghost in the first place, the logic she had to build so the "rules" of a paranormal romance actually hold up (turns out you don't need to explain everything, sometimes a ghost is ju...

What happens when the story you need to tell won't let you write it until you're ready? This week Jenna and Cait sit down with Kathy Sherbrooke (Katherine A. Sherbrooke), author of the new novel This Much Is True, out September 17th. It's a conversation about elapsed time, trusting your subconscious, and making the case for protagonists who have some real life experience behind them...

Episode Summary What happens when a sous vide nerd falls hard for a war college full of dragons? You get a cookbook. This week we sit down with Chelsea Cole, the mind behind A Guide to the Kitchen Quadrant , the (unofficial) Fourth Wing cookbook that is embossed, spot glossed, and frankly prettier than most things in our houses. We get into how you build a recipe out of four passing food mentions,...

What happens when your book dies on submission? For author Elizabeth Richardson, the answer turned into one of the best decisions she's ever made. This week we dig into her viral serialization of Trad , the novel she serialized on Substack after it didn't sell, and how she built an audience of 800+ subscribers in a single summer. We get into the highs and lows of querying and going on su...

This week on the Limelight, debut author Emily joins Jenna and Cait to talk about her first novel, The Care and Feeding of Dead Mothers . A disgraced author named Margot Hale flees Manhattan for the Wisconsin Northwoods after fraudulent accusations blow up her career, and five years later she is a recluse trying to piece her writing life back together when her estranged, shapeshifting sister comes...

This week we're joined by travel rom-com author Kat Mackenzie to talk about her latest release, Experiments in Offline Dating (Avon), out today. Set in County Clare, Ireland, the book is built around a real-life Irish matchmaking festival, and Kat did the research the only way she knows how: she went. She lived in Galway, traveled all over Ireland, went to the actual festival in Lisdoonvarna,...

Some people dream of writing a book their whole lives. Marissa Malson wrote her first three chapters in her phone's Notes app after a yoga class and never looked back. This week we sit down with the author behind the cozy-adjacent Average Jane PI series to talk about writing on instinct, building an author business from scratch, and why indie publishing is so much more than finishing the manu...

Cait has been trying to get Cara Alwill in a room with us for ages, and she finally said yes. This one is a masterclass in building your own universe instead of waiting for one of the Big Five to hand you a key. Cara is the 10-book author behind Girl Code, the founder of Pink Ink Press, and the host of Cara Says It All. She started blogging into the void in 2008, wrote for MTV News for free at 5am...

Featured Guest: Jasmine Smith Jasmine Smith is the author of Death Card, a witchy YA fantasy set in New Orleans. A former English major with a love of women's and gender studies, Jasmine writes stories that put teen readers first while quietly threading in tarot, generational family bonds, and the politics of the world her characters actually live in. What does it take to sell a debut on just...

Welcome to The Extra Shot, our bonus episodes where it's just Cait and Jenna, no guest, and the inside thoughts fully become outside thoughts. This one started with an Amy Poehler Good Hang clip about TV writing and spiraled into our whole theory of everything: talent is a dime a dozen, so the thing that actually sets you apart is being someone people want in the room. Easy to work with. Cool...

What if the happy ending is where the real story begins? This week, we sit down with debut author Lavanya Lakshmi to talk about Leave and Come Back, the rom-com that had us wanting to book a flight to an Indian wedding. Lavanya joins Jenna and Cait to talk about the book's central hook: instead of a will-they-won't-they, this is a how-do-they, opening on a couple who's already toget...

This bonus episode's Lime Light shines on Rebecca Gould Baeurle, author of The Secrets Trilogy — a love-story-with-a-criminal-twist series following two sisters through hardship, betrayal, and danger in Philadelphia. We talk about writing a full first draft in two months, why she almost didn't publish at all, and the real-life roots behind her very fictional sisters. About Rebecca Rebecc...

What if the retirement home wasn't the end of the story, but the beginning? This week, we sit down with #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy — of Dumplin fame — to talk about Vera Stein Is Fine , her first "adult, adult" solo romance. The idea started with a random fact about David Attenborough starting a retirement home for actors, spiraled into a synopsis Julie sent h...

What do you do when the book you're supposed to publish next is one you can't stand behind? This week, on release day for Yes Chef , romance author Grace Reilly tells us about the book she almost had to publish instead — 80,000 words she wrote, hated, and walked away from — and the restaurant-world romance that came out of starting over. From Kitchen Confidential and The Bear as research...

Season 2 is officially here. After 30 episodes of interviewing authors, learning the publishing industry alongside our listeners, and accidentally building an incredible community, we're kicking off a brand new season with a behind-the-scenes conversation about everything that's changing. From bigger author interviews to new ways to spotlight indie books, we're sharing where the pod...