Carter Wilson's Making It Up

J.D. Barker (Jonathan Dylan Barker) is an international bestselling American author whose work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction, and the supernatural. He has collaborated several times with James Patterson. His books have been translated into two dozen languages, sold in more than 150 countries, and optioned f...

Lauren Thoman writes speculative fiction for teens and adults. Her debut novel, I'll Stop the World , was selected for publication in 2023 by six-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling through her eponymous imprint, Mindy's Book Studio. Lauren's pop culture writing has also appeared in numerous online outlets including Parade and Vulture . Her second novel, You Shouldn’t Be Here , was relea...

Elka Ray is a Canadian/UK author, and a former journalist and travel writer, who writes fiction for adults and children. She is the author of the romantic mysteries Divorce is Murder , Killer Coin , and Hanoi Jane , and is also the author of her newest Women’s Noir, A Friend Indeed . She has also written a collection of short crime and ghost stories set in Southeast Asia, What You Don’t Know .   ...

Award-winning novelist, writing coach, and manuscript editor John DeDakis is a former editor on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." DeDakis is the author of six mystery-suspense-thriller novels. John is a former White House correspondent and regularly leads writing workshops at literary centers and writers’ conferences. He is also the host of the video podcast “One-to-One...

Lori Roy is an award-winning novelist. Her debut novel, Bent Road , was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Until She Comes Home was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. Let Me Die in His Footsteps was named one of the best fifteen mystery novels of 2015 by Oline Cogdill and received the 2016 Edgar A...

Mary Bly, writing under the pen name Eloisa James, is a tenured Shakespeare professor at Fordham University who also writes best-selling Regency and Georgian romance novels. Her novels are published in 30 countries and have sold approximately 7 million copies worldwide. She also wrote a bestselling memoir about the year her family spent in France, Paris in Love . Among other things, Mary and Carte...

Kendra Elliot has landed on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list multiple times and is the award-winning author of the Bone Secrets and Callahan & McLane series, the Mercy Kilpatrick novels, and the Columbia River novels. She's a three-time winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award, an International Thriller Writers Award finalist, and an RT Award finalist.  Melinda Leigh is a #1 Wall Stre...

Erica Wright is the author of eight novels, including her newest novel Hollow Bones , a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure . Her essay collection Snake was released as part of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series. Her mystery Famous in Cedarville received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. She is the author of five other books, including a couple poetry colle...

Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling author. He has served two terms as president of Mystery Writers of America, and was recently named a Grand Master of MWA. He is the author of more than forty novels, three collections of short stories and a nonfiction law book, and a lyricist of a country-western album. Isabella Maldonado is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and a g...

Marc Guggenheim is an Emmy-award winning screenwriter, television producer, comic book writer, and novelist. He is best known as the creator of the television series Eli Stone (2008–2009), Arr o w (2012–2020), and Legends of Tomorrow (2016–2022), executive producer of the animated series Tales of Arcadia (2016–2021), as well as the writer of the films Green Lantern and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monste...

Mary Adkins is the author of the novels When You Read This (Indie Next Pick, “Best Book of 2019” by Good Housekeeping and Real Simple ), Privilege (Today.com “Best Summer Read”), and Palm Beach ( New York Post “Best Book of 2021”). Her books have been published in 13 countries, and her essays and reporting have appeared in the New York Times , The Atlantic , Slate , and more. A graduate of Yale La...

Dean Monti has worked creatively in a variety of mediums including short stories, plays, novels, journalism, and screenwriting. His latest novel, The Monosexual, will be published July 2024. He is also the author of several one-act plays and has had his works premiered in Chicago, and was a finalist in a national playwriting competition. He taught creative writing and novel writing classes at Colu...

Victoria Helen Stone, author of the runaway best seller Jane Doe , writes critically acclaimed novels of dark intrigue and emotional suspense. Aside from Follow Her Down , At The Quiet Edge , The Last One Home, Problem Child, and other chart-topping novels, she also published twenty-nine books as USA Today bestselling author Victoria Dahl and won the prestigious American Library Association Readin...

Aimie Runyan is a multi-published and bestselling author of historical and contemporary fiction. She has been nominated for a Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Writer of the Year Award, a Historical Novel Society’s Editor’s Choice selection, and a four-time finalist for the Colorado Book Awards. She is an adjunct instructor for the Drexel University MFA in Creative Writing program. Among other things...

Kimberly Giarratano is an author of mysteries for teens and adults. Her debut novel, Grunge Gods and Graveyards , won the 2015 Silver Falchion Award for Best YA at Killer Nashville. In May 2024 she released the second novel in her Billie Levine series, Devil in Profile , which follows the novel Death of a Dancing Queen . A former librarian, she is currently an instructor at SUNY Orange County Comm...

Matt Scott is the author of the Surviving the Lion’s Den thriller trilogy which debuted in 2021. Matt earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Hampden-Sydney College. During his subsequent studies, Matt became fascinated by the CIA and read dozens of books related to Middle East politics, spy craft, the CIA’s war against terrorism, and double agents. Matt’s latest action-...

Louise Doughty is the author of ten novels, most recently A Bird in Winter . Her previous books include Platform Seven , filmed for ITVX; Black Water , a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; the bestseller Apple Tree Yard , adapted for BBC One; and Whatever You Love , nominated for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for fiction. She has been nominated for many other prizes and has hel...

This week's Making It Up is extra-special as it features Tim Booth, lead singer and lyricist of James, a British band who has been performing for over 40 years and has sold more than 25 million albums globally (James is also Carter’s absolute favorite band, making Tim one of his personal heroes). You may have seen quotes from James songs as epigraphs in many of Carter’s novels, which is how h...

Christopher Reich is the New York Times bestselling author of The Take , Numbered Account , Rules of Deception , Rules of Vengeance , Rules of Betrayal , and many other thrillers. His novel The Patriots Club won the International Thriller Writers award for Best Novel in 2006. He is also the author of the Simon Riske series, an international spy thriller series, and his newest novel Matterhorn was...

Danny Cherry Jr., a Customer Service Representative with an MBA, and he writes political and personal essays; novels; narrative nonfiction; and short stories. He has written for Buzzfeed News, Politico, The Daily Beast, and more; and fiction for Apex Magazine, Fiyah Lit Mag, amongst others. His first novel, The Pike Boys, came out in January 2024 and is a 1920s organized crime drama set in New Orl...

Peter Blauner is the author of nine novels, including Slow Motion Riot , winner of an Edgar Allan Poe award for best first novel from Mystery Writers of America, and The Intruder , a New York Times bestseller and a bestseller overseas. He began his career as a journalist for New York magazine in the 1980s and segued into writing fiction in the 1990s. He has been a staff writer for several televisi...

Caroline Cleveland credits growing up in the rural South and its quieter way of life for her lifelong passion for books and storytelling. Her dedication to the written word led her to law school at the University of South Carolina, where she earned her degree in 1991. She is certified by the South Carolina Supreme Court as a specialist in labor and employment law and is the founding partner of Cle...

Diego Báez is a writer and educator. He is the author of Yaguareté White , a finalist for the Georgia Poetry Prize and a semifinalist for the Berkshire Prize for Poetry. A fellow at CantoMundo, the Surge Institute, and the Poetry Foundation’s Incubator for Community-Engaged Poets, Báez has served on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle, the International David Foster Wallace Society, and...

Jeff quit his job at the age of 47 to return to college for his MFA, and his first novel, Other People’s Children , emerged from that decision. His second novel, Like It Never Happened , was just released in March 2024. In addition to his two novels, Jeff’s writing has been published in The Sun, Booth, Harpur Palate, and Publishers Weekly . He was the winner of the Madison Review ’s Chris O’Malley...

Peg Tyre is director of strategy at the Edwin Gould Foundation in New York City. In addition to her two creative fiction novels that have recently been republished, Tyre has written about education for The New York Times, Politico, The Atlantic, and more. She has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and is the author of two critically acclaimed books on education, one of which is a New...