Secrets from the Green Room

Irma and Craig talk about writing groups and getting quality feedback on your work. Then Irma talks with Sofie Laguna, on finding the essence of your characters, the fraught space of awards, how kids have made her writing practice better, the cruel world of publishing, how she struggles with success, navigating good and bad reviews, why writing a screenplay can sharpen the book edit, and how readi...

Craig and Irma talk about the fraught experience of getting book endorsements. Then Craig chats with Eugen Bacon about issues around black writing, the joys and difficulties of life that trigger inspiration, the complexities of defining genre, the art of the short story, and why reading Toni Morrison is like eating the richest truffles. About Eugen Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author of se...

Craig and Irma talk about writing guides, in particular the new book by Georgia Richter and Deborah Hunn, How to be an Author . Then Craig chats with Valerie Parv about how she went from an advertising copywriter to sales of over 34 million books, whether genre elitism and genre prejudice exist, the crazy debacle that was dubbed Parvgate, the impact of COVID on reading and publishing, moving from...

Craig and Irma talk all things book launches. Then Irma chats with her publicist Brendan Fredericks about how to best work with your publicist,  his friendship with Liz Gilbert and getting drunk with Germaine Greer, what not to do as an author on social media, his faux pas with Richard Ford, and his green room adventures with dogs. About Brendan Brendan Fredericks has worked in the book industry f...

Craig and Irma talk about rejection and how to cope with it. Then Craig talks to James Bradley about his path to becoming an award-winning author, how to write about important and urgent issues without becoming preachy, his love/hate relationship with social media and how to protect yourself as an author in the public arena, why genre shouldn’t define a book but can usefully shape it, hanging out...

Irma and Craig talk about the challenges of public speaking and how to be Wonder Woman on stage. Then they chat with Karen Viggers about the painful process of editing her latest novel and trying to find its heart, how escaping a party of screaming girls led to discovering she was a bestseller in France, the reality behind the ‘glamorous’ whirlwind of an international publicity tour, the complexit...

Craig and Irma talk about the ins and outs of writing gigs on cruise ships. Then they both chat with Chris Hammer about the unexpected international success of his debut crime novel, Scrublands, how the publisher you are with effects sales (and it’s not just big versus small), the value of awards (those that sell books and those that launch careers), forgetting your own character’s name during pub...

Irma and Craig chat about the manuscripts that never make it to publication. Then Holden Sheppard chats with Irma about writing failures and the drive to succeed, the publicity whirlwind and inevitable comedown, self-doubt and second-novel syndrome, being snubbed by literary big shots in the green room and world domination goals! About Holden Holden Sheppard’s debut novel, Invisible Boys , won the...

Craig and Irma chat about why they’ve launched the podcast, the history of the green room and their own green room experiences. Then Anna Spargo-Ryan chats with Irma about how she grew up with her own publishing house (sort of!), the manuscripts that never made it to publication, how she accidentally pitched a book on Twitter that led to a heated auction, what said heated auction involved (hint: a...