Bad Lit Friends

We PROMISED this was the last one, and we meant it. This week, we wrap up our series on politics, publishing, and petulance with the story of the Romance Writers of America: an organization that imploded so spectacularly it ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and maybe not for the reasons you’d expect from an organization called the Romance Writers of America. It starts with Courtney Milan, an atto...

We’re back with another part of our election season series, and like the US midterm campaign, it’s been going on for what feels like YEARS. This week, we get into the sordid story of the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies: the conservative campaigns to save the Hugo Awards from the horrible blue-haired woke types. Spoiler: it didn’t work. Featuring “no award” sweeps, even MORE questions about who gets...

It's election season, and your Bad Lit Friends are getting political! (As if we weren't already, every day, and twice on Tuesdays.) This week, we kick off what was supposed to be a two-part series about politics in Booklandia, but you know us: why do two episodes when you could do three? First up: Erica Choinka, author of the new political romance Open Seat , who says her conservative beli...

In this episode, we finally--FINALLY--wrap up our epic journey through hypocrisy in Booklandia. We swear this is the last one. Probably. This time we’re talking about the contradiction at the heart of being a writer: everyone wants you to write the book only you can write, but they would also very much like that book to be marketable, easily categorized, comparable to three recent bestsellers, and...

BLF went to the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference, and we’re baaaaack! We discuss how best to get your butt to a conference — planes, trains, and automobiles — and why writers might want to do such a strange thing in the first place. It’s not all hobnobing with the bigwigs, after all, and conferences are expensive. So we talk budgeting, volunteering, scholarship opportunities...

There was simply too much bookish hypocrisy to contain in two episodes, so here’s Part Three. Of Four. (sorrynotsorry) This week: It’s all things transparency. Specifically, the kind you're required to have as a querying author versus the kind publishing extends to you, which is ummmmm approximately none. We also dig into deadlines. Authors are professionals, which means you need to meet them....

We’re back for part two of our series on hypocrisy in Booklandia, and this week we're asking why readers get to be messy while authors are expected to be saints. If you're a writer, you're supposed to accept criticism gracefully, never respond to reviews, maintain an impeccable social media history, and somehow remain above reproach at all times. Sounds reasonable! We talk about review...

Booklandia is a vibes-based economy, and this week the vibe is: one rule for me, one rule for thee, and absolutely zero self-awareness about the difference. Zero, zilch, nada. We're kicking off a multi-parter on hypocrisy in publishing, specifically the kind where authors are expected to document their entire creative process like they're preparing for a witch trial, while publishers hire...

We are FINALLY wrapping up our accidental trilogy on author blacklists, book bans, and the dangers of missing context, and we will do this by providing context, so there's that! We talk about what it means to designate a writer as dangerous, problematic, or even culturally "forbidden." From the fatwa against Salman Rushdie to N*zi book burnings, McCarthyism, and today’s organized sch...

Just one Bad Lit Friend this week, and she's on just long enough to say: we're really sorry, we're super hot (in more ways than one!), and we'll be back next week. We swear! If you want to point fingers, well: SoCal's heat dome took out Meagan's AC on August 23rd, then came for her precious interwebs, because apparently one act of God wasn't enough to delay the BLF. Bac...

We're back with more of another accidental miniseries (whoops), and this week we are getting into the alleged receipts behind the Sleepy Readers Club's Authors to Boycott list. Like, who decided who goes on it? What did these writers actually DO? And what happens to the authors who can't weather a pile-on the way Stephen King can? We also talk associational guilt, reading in narrow hal...

In this episode, we take a look at the internet’s latest REALLY GOOD IDEA™: a writing group that circulated a list of authors you’re supposed to boycott, with zero context explaining what anyone on the list actually did. In Hot Goss: Pangram strikes again! Substack is building the AI detector into its platform, and at least one literary agent has admitted to using it while simultaneously admitting...

Part two of our ragefest and a content warning: extreme capitalism is afoot. Yes, we're back in the AI detection mines, and things have gotten WORSE since last we blew a gasket about Pangram, the Atlantic, structural racism, and the dumpster fire formerly known as traditional publishing. We have some good news about Daggermouth, a legal update about Jerry Falade, and Meagan reads a law review...

In this episode, we celebrate 50 episodes (!!!!!) of Bad Lit Friends by doing what we do best: yelling at the internet. First, Kirk has actual writing-career news, and Meagan's book remains perpetually one chapter away from being finished, but this time she means it, seriously, no joke, fingers crossed. Then we return to one of our favorite recurring nightmares: AI detection, literary witch hu...

Hi. We're Bad Lit Friends and we messed up. Again. Because Kirk is on vacation not last week, but THIS week, and because calendars are hard!!! So the special guests we promised you aren't here. We're sorry. Kirk is sorrier. (Or he should be.) But! Next Friday, August 7th, we're back with a real episode: we're diving into the H.M. Wolfe / Daggermouth AI allegations from The Atlantic , why this keep...

Choo choo! BLF boards the express train this week, destination: Writing Your Damn Ending Already Station. In this ep, we reckon with endings: the part of your book where your promises come due and your readers find out whether you've been paying as close attention to plot and character as they have. (They will let you know if you haven’t!) We cover Chekhov's guns, Chekhov's motifs, random rifles,...

In this episode, we're celebrating "Hot Goss Summer" with our biggest haul of book-world nonsense yet. We wade into the polluted Oceans of PDF, and break down (loudly) why your arguments in favor of piracy sucks. We also cover the "Honey, I Slopped the Book" saga, where a small press's anthology pick turned out to have some very suspicious AI fingerprints, and a fanfic-...

This week, Bad Lit Friends gets all practical-like as we whack our way through the writing tools jungle: the good, the bad, and the ones that should absolutely come with a content warning. Up for dissection are the big hits and some notable misses across the full writing ecosystem: platforms, organizational tools, and book formatting software. Google Docs, Scrivener, and Vellum all get their momen...

In this episode, we wade into one of the filthiest pools in the bookish world: whether you can separate the art from the artist—and what supporting a problematic creator says about you, your values, and where your money goes. We wrestle with the complicated legacies of J.K. Rowling, Orson Scott Card, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, and several other writers whose work has meant a great deal to readers de...

We're back from our unplanned hiatus with most of our brains intact! This week we're diving into dialogue: how to make your characters sound like real live humans talking to each other as opposed to two robots exchanging plot information in a robot factory (beep boop). It’s not an easy nut to crack, and we’re not promising to hand out any nutcrackers, but we have a few clues. It is also, w...

We're not dead! Well, Kirk is only mostly dead, nursing the dreaded lurgy (mostly upright and occasionally coherent!) and Meagan is back from getting hitched in the Bay Area, so this week you get almost three minutes of us instead of a real episode. Meagan goes on a tangent about nasal swab Covid tests that gets very weird and very gross. No refunds on listening, sorry. The real episode — on d...

ATTENTION S'IL VOUS PLAÎT Bad Lit Friends is on a brief and extremely glamorous hiatus this week: Meagan got MARRIED and Madame Covid has captured Kirk in her warm, virulent embrace. Between a wedding and a plague, we decided the responsible thing to do was nothing. Hey, we're Gen X; slackerdom is our cultural inheritance. We should be back next week (fingers crossed) with all our usual nonsense....

Part Three of the Author Industrial Complex—we promise this is the last one! This week: the passion v. the grind (and what happens when your deeply beloved creative pursuit starts feeling like a second job you definitely didn’t apply for), performing positivity online when you’re dying inside, and introverts who want the world to read their deeply personal work but please don’t look at them direct...

We're back with Part 2 of The Author Industrial Complex, a series that was totally planned and not just us having too many feelings and very little discipline! This week, we discuss how to balance serving your readers without losing your mind or your voice (you can only choose one, so choose wisely); pen names for fun and profit*; why romance writing is for everyone; ARC reviewer entitlement;...

This week, Meagan is away, and Kirk is joined by fantasy author Anne Wells for an in-depth conversation about the emotional craft of fiction writing: how to bring all the feels instead of just pelting readers with plot points and explosions for 300 pages. We talked about interiority, emotional layering, flawed characters, trauma done well versus trauma...um...not done well, and why you should give...