Carter Wilson's Making It Up

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...

Araminta Hall began her career in journalism as a staff writer on teen magazine Bliss, becoming Health and Beauty editor of New Woman. On her way, she wrote regular features for the Mirror's Saturday supplement and ghost wrote the supermodel Caprice's column. She has a MA in creative writing and authorship from the University of Sussex, and teaches creative writing at New Writing South i...

Joe Lansdale has written novels in many genres, including Western, horror, science fiction, and mystery, and has written for comics such as "Batman: The Animated Series." As of 2020, he had written 50 novels and published more than 30 short-story collections. He has won ten Bram Stoker Awards, a British Fantasy Award, an Edgar Award, and more, and has been inducted into The Texas Literar...

L.R. Jones, or Lisa Renee Jones, is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her dark, edgy fiction includes the novels You Look Beautiful Tonight, The Poet, A Perfect Lie, and the Lilah Love series. Prior to publishing, Lisa owned a multistate staffing agency recognized by the Austin Business Journal and was #7 in Entrepreneur magazine’s list of growing women-owned businesses. Among oth...

Matt Coyle is the author of the best-selling Rick Cahill crime novels. He graduated with a degree in English from University of California at Santa Barbara. His foray into crime fiction was delayed for thirty years as he spent time managing a restaurant, selling golf clubs for various golf companies, and in national sales for a sports licensing company. Yesterday’s Echo was published in 2013 and w...

Audrey Gale is the author of the new release, The Human Trial . After twenty-plus years in the banking industry, Audrey pursued her master’s in fiction writing at the University of Southern California. Her first novel, a legal thriller entitled The Sausage Maker’s Daughters , was published under the name A.G.S. Johnson. Her second, The Human Trial , is the first book in a medical-thriller trilogy...

Katherine Howe, author of A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself, is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian and novelist. She is the author of several novels for adults and young adults, has edited two volumes of primary sources for Penguin Classics, and is the co-author with Anderson Cooper of the #1 New York Times bestselling books Vande...

Boyd Morrison is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twelve thrillers, including six collaborations with Clive Cussler in the Oregon Files series. His first novel, The Ark , was an Indie Next Notable pick. He has a PhD in industrial engineering from Virginia Tech. His latest thriller The Last True Templar is the second book in the Tales of the Lawless Land series co-written with his sister...

Sara DiVello is a true crime writer and the founder and host of the popular author interview series, Mystery and Thriller Mavens. Her latest book, Broadway Butterfly: A Thriller , received starred reviews from Library Journal and Book List , was a CBS New York Book Club pick, an Entertainment Weekly Best Book of Summer, was featured in Vanity Fair,  and much more. Among other things, Sara and Cart...

Hailey Piper is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Cruel Angels Past Sundown, Queen of Teeth , A Light Most Hateful , The Worm and His Kings series, and other books of dark fiction. She is also the author of over 100 short stories, and her non-fiction appears in Writer’s Digest , Library Journal , CrimeReads , and others.  Among other things, Hailey and Carter discuss how to navigate conversa...

Abbott Kahler (formerly Karen Abbott) is the author of four New York Times bestselling works of narrative nonfiction, including The Ghosts of Eden Park and Then Came the Devil . Her debut novel, Where You End , is inspired by a true story of identical twins and amnesia. USA Today once named her “a pioneer of sizzle history.”  Among other things, Abbott and Carter discuss Abbott’s early commitment...