Today’s guest is AC Gaughen the author of the Scarlet Trilogy (Scarlet, Lady Thief and Lion Heart) and the Elementae quartet which will start with REIGN THE EARTH in January 2018. She serves on the board for the non-profit Boston GLOW, creating opportunities to encourage and engage teen girls in the Greater Boston area. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from St. Andrews University in Scotland and a Masters in Education from Harvard University. She joins host Mindy McGinnis to talk about how she began to query as a fourteen year old, and how her own love of reading historical and fantasy influenced her writing both then and now, how she knew her own skill set was better suited for traditional publishing rather than self-publishing, and how teaching writing can be inspiring.

AC's Links:

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The Medici’s Daughter by Sophie Perinot 

Host Mindy McGinnis talks with Tori Rigby, author of the dark fantasy DREAMCATCHER series, as well as the contemporary YA novel, BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. Topics covered include not letting excitement make decisions for you early on in your career, red flags to look for while searching for agents, why Tori disagrees with writing under different pen names for different genres, and knowing when to take your work to a small press.

Tori's Links:

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A Void the Size of the World by Rachele Alpine

The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence by Alyssa Palombo

Today's guest is Geoffrey Girard, Bram Stoker nominee and author of CAIN'S BLOOD, PROJECT CAIN, TRUTHERS, and MARY ROSE. Geoff joins Mindy to talk about how losing an agent doesn't end a career, learning craft through writing shorts, how small indie pubs can teach you a lot, and the art of table selling.

Geoff's Links:

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THE VIOLINIST OF VENICE by Alyssa Palombo

VIAL THINGS by Leah Clifford

Today’s guest is Elsie Chapman, whose work includes the YA Sci-Fi series DUALED and DIVIDED, as well as the upcoming ALONG THE INDIGO. Born and raised in western Canada and a graduate of UBC with a degree in English Literature, Elsie Chapman currently lives in Tokyo with her family. 

Elsie joins host Mindy McGinnis  to talk about how so much of the pain of publishing goes unspoken, the luck of hitting a trend, the downside of that trend falling out of style, writing the book of your heart even when you know it might not get published, and putting together teams for theme focused anthologies.

Elsie's Links:

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The Wood by Chelsea Bobulski

Bad Blood by Demitria Lunetta

Demitria Lunetta’s Blog

Today’s episode is being featured on Podbean’s crowd support service. If you like what we do here, please consider supporting the show by visiting https://patron.podbean.com/writerwriterpantsonfire

For a dollar a month you’ll get a thank you from me, Mindy McGinnis, on the blog or through one of my social media accounts. For five bucks you get a shoutout on a podcast episode, and for ten you can pose questions or suggest topics for the end of the month guest-free show. Twenty dollars will get you a Google chat with myself, or if you’re a writer looking to advertise your book, a freelance editor or copyeditor who would like to air your services to the aspiring writers who listen in here, checkout the patron crowd funding services offered through Podbean.

Today's guest is Tara Dairman whose debut novel All Four Stars, about an 11 y/o restaurant critic moonlighting for New York’s biggest newspaper was published in 2014, followed by The Stars of Summer and Stars So Sweet in 2015 and 2016. A new standalone middle-grade novel, The Great Hibernation, will hit the shelves on September 12.

Tara joined me to talk about how a contest helped her gain an invitation to query a closed agency, how to navigate social media when your target audience may not be there, and the question of who you write for when you write middle grade – the kids, or the gatekeepers? 

Episode Links:

TaraDairman.com

Publisher's Marketplace

Miss Snark's First Victim

Krista Van Dolzer's Blog

Author Tiffany McDaniel, an Ohio native whose writing is inspired by the rolling hills and buckeye woods of the land she knows, joins host Mindy McGinnis. She is the winner of The Guardian's 2016 "Not-the-Booker Prize" for her debut novel, The Summer that Melted Everything. The novel is a current nominee for the Lillian Smith Book Award, and a finalist for the Ohioana Literary Award and the Women's Fiction Writers Association Star Award for Outstanding Debut. Tiffany talks about eleven years of rejection, making sure that human emotion and characters trump the setting, being a female author who prefers to write dark themes, and the cons of using technology in your manuscript.

Links:

Tiffany's Site

The Summer That Melted Everything

Justina Ireland, author of Vengeance Bound and Promise of Shadows talks with host Mindy McGinnis about such topics as the real-life breakdown of big advances, writing for your audience versus writing for the gatekeepers, white as default for readers, and the question of whether authors should write outside their race. 

Links For This Episode:

Vengeance Bound

Promise of Shadows

Dread Nation

Three Sides of A Heart

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Writing In the Margins – Sensitivity Readers Database