Page One - The Writer's Podcast

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Chiara Bullen is a Scottish writer and academic living in Glasgow. She spends most of her days researching literature and her evenings writing novels. When she isn’t exploring hills across Scotland, she can be found wandering the fictional mountains of D&D with her party. The Inn At The Foot Of Mount Vengeance is her debut novel. We had a great time c...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Bob Bookman is a Hollywood manager and producer who has worked with some of the biggest authors in the world and helped turn their novels into award-winning movies. He has represented Michael Crichton, Tom Stoppard, Bill Broyles, John Irving, Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls and Peter Moffat along with many others and has been responsible for bringing movies su...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Matthew Capodicasa is an award-winning playwright whose work has been developed and presented at the Kennedy Center, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the National New Play Network, among many others. A recipient of the Woodward/Newman Drama Award and the Judith Champion Launch Commission, his plays are published by Samuel French. In addition to his exte...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube On this week's episode, we ask if the publishing industry is "blowing the bloody doors off" author rights. From Michael Caine's voice getting cloned for an epic audiobook to Hachette and Studiocanal's book to film deal, plus 250 UK publishers signing a massive AI licensing deal, we ask if any of this is good for authors. 00:00 Intro 01:04 Hachette/Studiocan...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Benedict Anning is a Surrey-born author and short fiction writer living just outside of Edinburgh with his wonderful cat, Penny. An artist at heart and fan of all things eerie, Ben has a special love for twisty horror fiction where the setting is a principal character and things just aren't quite right . Atomic Coffin is his first published novel. We had a...

Watch as full video interviews on YouTube This past weekend, we travelled to London for Capital Crime, London's premier crime and thriller festival and while we were there, we took the opportunity to record some bite-sized interviews with a few authors! We started off speaking with previous guest T.M. Logan, then chatted with Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb, before catching up with Adam Simcox to he...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Anna Smith Spark loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. She has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org.uk. Anna's favourite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ur...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Craig Robertson had a twenty-year career as a journalist with a Scottish Sunday newspaper before becoming a full-time author. His books such as Murderabilia , The Photographer and Watch Him Die have been nominated for numerous awards. Alexandra Sokoloff is the bestselling, Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker and Anthony Award-nominated author of thirte...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube This week, we discuss why the publishing industry is pointing fingers at libraries for declining author incomes, but we wonder about the reasons they aren't talking about. Plus, have you heard of Elias Thorne? We talk about AI's repetition problem and why that may be good news for authors. And we revisit the thorny issue of book lists - after we criticised...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube J.D. Pennington is an award-winning creative director and copywriter with over 20 years of experience in film and television advertising, creating campaigns for major studios and leading independents. The Othello Club is his first novel. It has been developed for television by Paramount+ as The Revenge Club. We had a great time chatting with J.D., hearing a...

On this week's Drafting Notes, we tackle one of the great writing mantras: "Show, Don't Tell." What does it actually mean? And should you always follow the rule? We discuss where the mantra came from, and what we think it is trying to emphasise, while also discussing why it isn't always a rule that needs to (or should) be followed! Drafting Notes is a series in which one award-winning writer (Tari...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Kieron Gillen is a British comic book writer and former video game journalist. He is best known for his work on high-profile titles such as Star Wars, X-Men, and The Eternals, as well as his acclaimed creator-owned series The Wicked + The Divine and Die. He is currently working on new projects like Power Fantasy. We had a great time chatting with Kieron,...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube David Goodman is an award-winning, multi-genre author. His debut novel A RELUCTANT SPY won the McDermid Debut Award and Bloody Scotland Debut Prize in 2025 and was optioned for television by Carnival Films. The sequel SOLITARY AGENTS is out this month, June 2026. His SF debut, SHARDS OF STARLIGHT, written as David W. Goodman, is coming from Solaris Books in...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Callum McSorley is a writer based in Glasgow. His debut novel, Squeaky Clean , was published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2023 and won the prestigious McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year. Its sequel, Paperboy , was released in 2025 and was a finalist for the same award. His short fiction has been featured in Gutter Magazine , New Writing Scotland...

On this week's Drafting Notes, we are talking about... talking! Writing dialogue convincingly is something a lot of writers find tricky, and we discuss things to watch out for, what makes dialogue sound convincing (not necessarily realistic), and talk about some examples of what to do and what not to do. Drafting Notes is a series in which one award-winning writer (Tariq) and one hopefully soon-to...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube This week, we're expanding on our discussion from the last episode about the depressing HarperCollins report on children's reading habits. Author and teacher Cailean Steed joins us to break down the underlying data and explain exactly how hyper-fixating on rigid literacy metrics is actively destroying the sheer joy of reading for kids. Plus, we talk about -...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Andrea Mara is a Number One Sunday Times , Irish Times , and Kindle bestselling author whose books have sold over one million copies across all formats. She has been shortlisted for six An Post Book Awards and won Irish Crime Novel of the Year for It Should Have Been You in 2025. Her 2021 novel, All Her Fault , was adapted into a critically acclaimed TV s...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube RJ Barker is an award-winning fantasy author from Leeds, West Yorkshire. He is best known for his critically acclaimed trilogies, The Wounded Kingdom and The Tide Child, the latter of which won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel. His work often subverts traditional fantasy tropes by blending elements of epic world-building, ecological science fiction,...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube Leigh Radford trained as a broadcast journalist. She produced and presented arts and entertainment content for commercial radio, Time Out, The Times and The Sun, along with documentaries for the BBC, including Rilke’s Women for Radio 4. A former book publicist, she is a 2023 graduate of Faber Academy. She is currently developing content for film and televis...

Watch this episode as a full video interview on YouTube Stephen Fishbach is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and former television executive who served as a Vice President at MTV. A graduate of Yale with an MFA from NYU, he is widely recognised as a two-time contestant and runner-up on the reality show Survivor . His diverse writing background includes serving as a speechwriter for Stevie Wonder an...

Watch as a full video episode on YouTube On today's episode of Adventures in Publishing-land, we congratulate Tariq on not one but two new Longlistings, and struggle to understand a story about new research that suggests a heavy focus on literacy skills in schools is actively undermining the motivation to read for fun. Plus, the TikTok books charts have launched! What effect will they have on the...

Watch as a full video interview on YouTube Alessandra Ranelli is an American writer living in Vienna, Austria.  Murder at the Hotel   Orient  is her first crime novel. She has the full support of the real Hotel Orient, and has been allowed access to all its rooms, even the secret ones. As part of her extensive book research, she left her career as a pastry chef and became a hot...

Watch as a full video episode on our YouTube channel Charlotte Robinson is a writer and television producer. After graduating from Exeter University with a degree in English, Charlotte started working as a runner in the television industry, where she perfected the art of making teas and coffees on a wide variety of programmes before moving into drama production and becoming a script editor and sto...

Watch as a video episode on YouTube You've been querying for months, or even years, and then it happens - you get that email from an agent asking for a call! It's exciting, but also nerve-wracking. What should you ask, what green flags - or red flags - should you be looking out for? We break down the dos and don'ts of 'The Call' so that you can go into it well-prepared and hopefully land the best...

Watch as a full video episode here Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan is a writer and game designer. Originally qualified as a computer programmer, he took a three month break to see how “this writing thing” would go. More than fifteen years later, he’s still on that break. The writing thing seems to be going. Gareth has published more role-playing games and supplements than he can even recall, including the a...