Dear Rach & Soph

We never know where a conversation will go on this podcast, whether it’s us talking to each other or talking to a guest. While questions are prepared, a script is never followed to the letter - we both tend to let conversations go where they go.  This conversation with Jess Kitching, author of new novel THE LIFE EXPERIMENT (published by Simon & Schuster - blurb below), went to several ext...

Here’s the latest instalment of our ‘writer therapy’ and this time our guest is Ky Garvey (bio below), who volunteered herself for some of the tough love we seem to dish out. Please note we are not therapists! But we are writers (who may need therapy) and as Sophie is also a publisher (who often gives advice to writers) we feel somewhat qualified to talk other writers through any issues they may b...

It’s a double episode today! That’s because we're late posting the July new releases. As it happens, Rachael recorded that one on her own, and as Sophie made the Emma Clancey episode (posted earlier) on her own, it has lined up nicely that we post both episodes today. So instead of one episode with us together, you have one from Soph and one from Rach. Lots of great new reading in this episode!&nb...

‘Writing and healthcare aren’t that different. At their core it’s an interest in people and it’s an interest in telling and understanding stories.’ Sydney-based medical student and author Emma Clancey says this deep in Sophie's recent interview about her outstanding YA fantasy  This Dream Will Devour Us (blurb below), which is out now from Allen & Unwin and which will be published in the...

Some people will make a change from a ‘conventional’ career path to a creative career; some will move from one form of creative practice to another. Melburnian Miranda Nation has done both. After commencing studies in medicine at university, Miranda instead decided to pursue a creative life, training as an actor at at Jacques Lecoq in Paris from 2003 to 2005, then becoming a director and scre...

Léonie Kelsall is the bestselling author of seven rural romance novels. Her eighth is  The Path Through the Coojong Trees , has just been released. Léonie keeps a fast pace as a writer, currently producing two books a year while also running a counselling practice and running a farm that is home to many animals.  We wanted to talk to Léonie about the relationship between her counsel...

This episode is long and all of it worth your attention, mostly because Allison Tait - who writes as A.L. Tait - is one of the most dynamic people working in Australian writing and publishing, and you can find her bio below. Also because it’s an unusual conversation we have for some of it - and that’s because Allison talks about her contemporary women’s fiction book being rejected by its publisher...

Dear listeners-slash-viewers - or ‘liewers’, as Soph has taken to calling you - this episode was recorded in April and because Soph mentioned her upcoming appearance at the Festival of Fiction in it, we had to hold it until the festival was announced, which has just happened! And the reason we mention the festival is that our guest, Mona Farrokhi, is involved with the festival. Mona volunteered a...

Kimberley Freeman is an award-winning writer in children’s, historical and speculative fiction under her birth name Kim Wilkins. She has written several bestselling novels, including Wildflower Hill , Evergreen Falls and Stars Across the Ocean . Her latest novel is The Secret Year of Zara Holt , published by Hachette Australia (read more about the novel below).  Kim has an Honours degree, a M...

Welcome to our atypical episode in which co-hosts Rachael Johns and Sophie Green do not chat amongst ourselves or with guests but, instead, tell you all about some wonderful new books to put on your TBR list or in the TBR pile. They’re organised by genre, as Soph learnt her lesson the first time we did this and shall never again attempt to present them haphazardly. All these books are by Australia...

Karly Lane is the bestselling author of 25 rural romance novels - the latest of which is NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK (blurb below) - which have sold over 600 000 copies. When Sophie was a literary agent Karly was her client, but they never actually met, as Karly lives on the mid north coast of New South Wales and at the time she had young children and was fitting in writing books around all the demands o...

It was Rach who suggested we invite award-winning children’s author, literary agent and writing teacher Danielle Binks onto the podcast. I know Danielle, as we’ve both worked in the publishing industry for years - and we are both industry professionals who have published multiple books - plus I’ve spoken to her RMIT class.  The reason Rach wanted to invite her on the pod, though, was to talk...

This week’s episode wasn’t planned, in that the list of subjects Rachael Johns and I want to cover on the podcast did not include talking to a new literary agent with a background in book marketing - simply because not many new agents come along. Until recently Chloe Berry worked at HQ/HarperCollins, where she masterminded their digital marketing and appeared in quite a bit of it - if you follow t...

This week we have a wonderful guest, Dinuka McKenzie , who was willing to talk about perfectionism and procrastination, paired subjects that have been on our list for a while … not that we were procrastinating about discussing them (or were we??).  Dinuka was honest about her perfectionism and how it affects her writing, for good and bad, and the good includes the Detective Kate Miles crime s...

New books mentioned in this episode: General fiction The Remarkable Truth of Alfie Bains by Sarah Clutton (Allen & Unwin) Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley (HarperCollins) Everything Lost, Everything Found by Matthew Hooton (HarperCollins) The Good Mistress by Anne Tiernan (Hachette) – NZ author Boom Town Snap by Jay Martin (Fremantle Press) Romance Salty, Spiced and a Little Bit Nice...

There have been several well-known books written about creativity. The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a classic. Rachael and I talked about Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic in an episode last year. Both of them deserve the hype and longevity, and there are others too of course.  None of the books I’ve read about creativity or writing, even a book that might be classified as inspirational self-...

‘It’s solving overwhelm’.  Our guest this week, novelist Karina May , is an experienced user of writing software Scrivener and the above is one of the reasons why she uses it. Rachael has tried using it; I never have. Will I be convinced to try by the end of this episode? Listen and find out! We cover this subject because we like to have a theme to these episodes, and mainly because we though...

Not that long ago I put a message on social media basically saying that Rachael Johns says she gets ‘writing therapy’ from me and asking if anyone else would like some. We had responses! Thus, this will be the first of several episodes of such ‘therapy’ [NB: neither Rach nor I is a therapist, although teaching yoga can feel like it sometimes]. Our guest for this episode is Emily Paull , whose debu...

This is our first episode dedicated to books that are being released, as we’d like you to know what’s coming out so you can find your next favourite read! As it’s the first one, and organised quickly, there’s no order to how we present the books, other than sequestering April titles from titles released between January and March (as we decided to do those too). Please note that these are the title...

We like to have a subject on Dear Rach & Soph, so when we learnt about Sydney author (originally from Canada) Catherine Greer and her novel The Bittersweet Bakery Cafe (Allen & Unwin, March 2025), and saw her website Love Our Age , we asked if she’d be interested in talking about stories for women in later life. What followed was a wide-ranging conversation about Catherine’s life, her...

When we started Dear Rach & Soph last year, we named it that because we hoped readers (and writers) would send us questions. For this first episode of season 3, we have mainly reader questions to answer and one writer question. Plus we generally have a chat, per usual. Coming up this season we have some fabulous guests to talk about a range of subjects and we’ve had some writers volunteer for...

Rachael Johns has a brand new book! And it is called THE BAD BRIDESMAID. Those who read and loved Rachael’s novel THE OTHER BRIDGET, which was released last year, will recognise the character Fred, who is Bridget/Bee’s best friend. In THE BAD BRIDESMAID (TBB for short) Fred has the starring role. TBB is a delightful rom com that you will not want to finish, and has a quite lovely hero in the form...

We had such a great time chatting to Rachael Treasure on episode 10 of this season that we thought, heyyyyy - let’s ask her back! And we also wanted to have her back because in that first chat we barely scratched the surface of the richness of Rachael T’s life and endeavours. In this episode we catch up on Rachael T’s latest daring adventures, as well as talk about what we’ll be reading over the C...

This week Rach and Soph discuss the Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey and also delve into whether or not we usually read award-winning books and why/why not. We’d love to know if you read them or do not, and why, so please let us know in the comments! Also for the comments: an answer to a question Sophie poses near the start … about the title of her 2025 novel. It was to be cal...

From time to time on this pod and elsewhere Rachael Johns mentions her virtual assistant, Annie Bucknall. Through her business Well Creative Annie helps Rach with her social media, website and newsletter, and recently moved that newsletter to Substack. Rach and Soph have been talking about Substack, especially about the fact that there’s a lot of book coverage on there at a time when book coverage...