thewritingcoach's podcast

Welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. Today I'm talking with my friend and client Lorraine Johnston about her debut contemporary fantasy novel, The Call to Witchery . We're talking about a story that wouldn't leave her alone, a world where witches are celebrities, and how to market a debut novel one reader at a time. What do you do when a story shows up in your morning journal and refuses to...

Welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. Today I'm joined from Japan by David Deane Haskell , an indie sci-fi and nonfiction author and a former professional drummer who once played trash cans at Tokyo Disneyland. We're talking writer's block, recovery, AI, and why hope belongs in science fiction. David published four sci-fi novels between 2013 and 2019, including Emergence , a book about AI tha...

Welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. Today I'm talking with my client Sherilyn Dector , a Canadian author of historical fiction, about her new release, The Promise Trilogy . This week's guest has a book that took three years, twenty-plus drafts, and, full disclosure, some help from yours truly. The Promise Trilogy follows Lucy Santoro, a character who started as a minor role in Sherilyn's Mo...

Welcome back to The Writing Coach podcast. Today's a first for the show: two guests at once. Novelist and writing coach Ellen Baker is here with her longtime client, Terence Sullivan, whose TikTok story series became the novel Alice of Oz . We're talking about seven rounds of edits, traditional versus self-publishing, and what a great coach–writer partnership actually looks like. What happens when...

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Writing Coach Podcast. I'm Kevin Johns. Today I'm bringing back a returning guest: Steven Puri, former Hollywood visual effects producer turned founder of Sukha, the flow-state company. We're talking cinema, screenwriting, and the actual neuroscience of getting into flow. If you've ever sat down to write and felt certain that every word had to come out right the f...

My guest this week on The Writing Coach podcast is Usama Munir, the designer behind  Design Dusk , a book cover studio with more than 1,700 pre-made covers ready to go, plus custom covers, book trailers, and full interior typesetting. He designed his first book cover as a teenager, for an author who reached out to him out of nowhere, and he never really stopped. We get into the real difference bet...

My guest is Ron Black on this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, and his debut novel  Bleu: A Transgressive Tale  follows Anthony, a struggling artist in a version of Ottawa most Canadian fiction doesn't go near — squats, addiction, an art world he doesn't feel he belongs in, and a marriage where the violence runs in a direction fiction rarely lets it run. Ron's been my client for years, so thi...

If you've ever felt like promoting your book on social media is a second full-time job you never signed up for, this episode is for you. My guest is Marvin Wey, co-founder of AuthorScale, a tool that helps indie authors turn their own books into the social media posts that actually sell them. Before AuthorScale, Marvin spent years working with six- and seven-figure authors at Inkit and Galatea, wa...

In this episode of  The Writing Coach   podcast, I speak with Charlotte Donlon. Charlotte spent years training as a spiritual director — the kind of one-on-one guidance usually reserved for matters of faith — and somewhere along the way, her clients turned out to be writers. Lots of them. Enough that she started noticing the same conversations kept happening, whether the person across from her bel...

What happens when an AI doesn't just assist you but lives  inside  your head? In this episode of  The Writing Coach   podcast, I sit down with my client, science fiction author J.E. Sheasby, to discuss his debut novel,  Shared Sentience , and the first book in an ambitious seven-book series he has spent nearly a decade developing. Jim takes us behind the scenes of a future set thousands of years f...

Welcome back to the Ready Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Johns, and today I'm sitting down with Rob Cole — a writer, an animal sanctuary founder in Hawai'i, and now, after thirty years, a published biographer. Rob's new book, For Once in My Life, opens with Arlinda Willis's birth in 1951 in Toxey, Alabama — the granddaughter of sharecroppers, raised by her grandparents in the shadow of Jim Cr...

This week I'm joined by Nathan Lang, a longtime friend, Barbados resident, hospitality professional, and co-host of the  Barbados Writing Retreat . This coming November, I'm taking a small group of writers to Barbados. Five days on the West Coast of the island. Mornings for writing, afternoons for craft, evenings that take care of themselves. Structured enough to get real pages done, and beautiful...

Today on the show, I'm welcoming back book marketing strategist and veteran podcaster  Susan Friedman , 10 years after her first appearance on this podcast. Susan has hosted over  500 episodes  of  Book Marketing Mentors  and has spent decades helping nonfiction authors turn their books into authority, speaking opportunities, and real business results. In this conversation, we talk about why  book...

On today's episode of  The Writing Coach   I'm joined by someone who has spent decades on the front lines of publishing, helping writers turn rough drafts into real, reader-ready books.  Candace Johnson  is a long-time editor, now a first-time novelist, with deep experience in traditional publishing and years of success as a freelance editor working primarily with indie authors. In our conversatio...

In this episode of  The Writing Coach   podcast, I sit down with Emil Wilson to talk about how a former advertising and design professional who didn't grow up reading comics ended up creating  The Nightingales ,  a genre-blurring work that feels part graphic novel, part literary memoir, and part sketchbook of memory itself. We dig into the book's bold formal choices (no panels, mixed media, pages...

Welcome to  The Writing Coach Podcast,  the show where I talk to the people whose job it is to help writers actually get the work done, including coaches, editors, marketing experts, and the folks building the tools behind the craft. I'm your host, Kevin Johns. Today's guest, Steven Puri, spent years as a studio executive at Fox and DreamWorks, producing digital effects on around fourteen films, w...

Today on  The Writing Coach  podcast, I'm joined by author Susan Leon to discuss her debut novel,  If They'd Only Known . Susan's book is a dark, emotionally layered crime novel set in Northern Ontario, exploring the ripple effects of a child abduction and murder across a family, a community, and the decades that follow. But while the book uses the shape of a crime story, our conversation goes muc...

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back one of my favorite returning guests, author Sandy Day. The last time Sandy was on the show, we talked about her novel  Odd Mom Out  and the re‑release of  Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand . This time, she's here to dive deep into her brand‑new book,  Where the Night Winds Wail —a haunting Ontario noir inspired by the classic song...

In this episode of The Writing Coach Podcast, I sit down with my client, author Linda Garnett to celebrate the release of her debut Gothic vampire novel, Red Falls. Linda's journey is a fantastic reminder that writing a book is rarely a straight line from "idea" to "finished manuscript." Her novel evolved through outlining, drafting, revising, group feedback, one-on-one coaching, and a whole lot o...

In this episode of  The Writing Coach  podcast, I'm joined by Gabrielle Dolan, a leadership communication expert, keynote speaker, and the author of eight books on storytelling, including her latest,  Story Intelligence: The Craft of Authentic Storytelling Made Smarter with AI . Gabrielle shares how nearly two decades in senior leadership and change management at one of Australia's largest banks l...

In this episode of The Writing Coach Podcast , I'm joined by Patty McGee, a nationally recognized literacy consultant, speaker, and educator who is passionate about transforming classrooms into spaces where language and learning come alive. With decades of experience as a teacher, coach, and advocate for joyful, practical literacy instruction, Patty has worked alongside educators across the countr...

Every writer has a moment when a story that was meant to stay private begins to ask for a wider audience. Sometimes it starts with a notebook. Sometimes it starts with a question from your children. And sometimes it begins with a simple realization:  If I don't write this down, these stories might disappear. In this episode of  The Writing Coach Podcast , I sit down with my client  Margot Stornell...

Most writers don't burn out because they hate writing. They burn out because writing quietly becomes  everything else . Marketing. Tech. Algorithms. Platforms. Tools that promise leverage but demand constant attention. Somewhere along the way, the actual work—the slow, human, soul-driven act of storytelling—gets crowded out. In this episode of  The Writing Coach Podcast , I'm joined by author and...

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the visual side of book marketing—cover mockups, social media graphics, reels, and everything in between—this episode will feel like a breath of fresh air. In this conversation, I'm joined by  Kathleen Sweeney , co-founder of  Book Brush , a visual marketing platform built specifically for authors. We talk about how Book Brush evolved by listening to writers, why...

What if writing didn't have to mean struggling, waiting for permission, or giving away your best work to gatekeepers? In this episode of  The Writing Coach Podcast , I sit down with writer, freelancer, novelist, and creator of multiple six-figure writing businesses, Amy Suto, to talk honestly about what it means to  write for money and power  in today's creator economy. Amy's career started in Hol...