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Our guest this week was the Most Interesting Accountant in the World! He also goes by Chris Morris. Chris is a CPA who caters to artists and authors, using easy to understand terms.

In Episode 53:

Chris Morris, CPA

• Laughter immediately ensues when we get into a discussion about colors.
• Authors and other artists all need help with accounting and tax services. Chris’ goal is to build his business to serve the author-entrepreneur community.
• Discussion on the special challenges that authors face.
• Rabbit trails on the most expensive pens!
• How to determine if expenses are business-related.
• How to treat your writing like a business.
• ID 10T errors
• Deductions that people miss
• Crazy things people have asked if they can deduct.
• Ben Wolf’s marketing practices (Ep. 10 & Ep. 11)
• We get into a lot of the nitty-gritty of setting up businesses and funding your business when you’re not making money yet.
• Should you hire a bookkeeper?
• Google & Taxes are not a good combination. 😉
• Oh $@!*# I’m Making Money, Now What?

Links:

Chris Morris
Chris’s book (as above)
Cam Scanner app
Lindsay Franklin & Wombatman
Failbook

This episode brought us the joy of interviewing co-host and producer Liberty in regards to her latest book, Omission (Now available in e-format!)

In Episode 49:

• Who makes the better Liberty?
• What it’s like to be a series writer.
• Who would make the best cast for a TV or movie version of the Darby Shaw Chronicles?

In Episode 50:

• We hear what the perfect music for writing mysteries is.
• Gluten-free snacks are discussed.
• We get profound as Liberty tells us how writing has changed her!

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Links:
Liberty Speidel
Omission

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Jill Williamson, Nadine Brandes, Lauren Brandenburg, and Katie Grace to discuss writing from a young author point of view.

You’ll notice that we have fewer laugh tracks because we all had our microphones muted!
Also, we had 7 people on a chat, so some of us had some technical issues. 🙁 Sorry about that!)

Some of the topics we discussed were:

• Challenges that young writers face, from their own perspective.
• Challenges for mentors to young writers.
• Who mentors the mentors?
• Creative people versus non-creative people.
• Making time for writing and editing.
• Different writing software–and tools and apps!
• Character arcs of favorite superheroes.

There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting. — Robert Graves

Listen to the Roundtable HERE!

Books you have to read (besides our own):
The Lunar Chronicles

On this episode we spoke with Patrick Carr, author of the Staff and Sword Series, about his venture into the Darkwater Saga and the Shock of Night.

A trilogy of trilogies awaits!

In these episodes, Patrick keeps us laughing. Also, you’ll never believe how accident prone Patrick is!

All of us wax nostalgic at some point…you’d think we’re old or something!

In Episode 29

• Odd character traits with Patrick’s main character. (How does sleep walking and murders correlate?)
• Writing with an unreliable protagonist.
• Hating your writing while you’re writing.
• Juggling. Emergency room visits! We manage to gross Aaron out. How Patrick uses his own accidents to inform his books.
• How to recast your books from one setting to another when your editor and agent tell you to.
• Fencing stories! Some engineering talk, which is totally fascinating.
• Googling has some interesting answers…including how dogs see.
• We get off into old time radio and radio broadcasts in general because of Patrick’s answer to the superhero question.
• You will NEVER guess Patrick’s answer to his Captain. Never, never, never!
• Patrick’s looking forward to teaching a class at Realm Makers!

In Episode 30

• Character-driven fantasy, and how he accomplishes this in his plotting process.
• Patrick and his disagreeable muse.
• Planning for a series long-term + happy circumstance
• Re-doing books from scratch…under deadline
• Carrying around your books and your characters in your head all the time.
• Patrick’s advice: be a merciless critic where your writing is concerned.
• Patrick’s methods for attacking writer’s block
• Candy bar in a cup drinks at Starbucks at Christmas
• Patrick shares some of his techniques for making perfect fudge (yes, seriously)
• Patrick and Liberty discuss rigor mortis…and gross Aaron out
• Traditional marketing advice from Patrick’s agent, Steve Laube. The phrase “literary Amway guy” comes into play.
• Patrick’s funny experiences of being an author

Links:

Patrick Carr
The Darkwater Saga
The Shock of Night
Home Improvement
Steve Laube (Patrick’s agent!)
David Eddings (The Belgariad)
Steven R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)
Robert Ludlum
Brandon Sanderson
C. S. Lewis (Screwtape Letters; The Space Trilogy)
Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series
The Magician by Raymond Feist

Supernatural gifts, demons, and martial arts – oh my!

Amy Brock McNew

In our two segments with Amy Brock McNew, Aaron manages to break Amy before we barely even get started. Which is totally epic.

Amy, for those of you not in the know, is the author of REBIRTH, which debuts May 24th. She is an interesting character (and one you may be hearing more from in the near future!)

In Episode 22:

• Why Amy wrote REBIRTH, which sounds a lot like many other authors’ reasons for writing their books.
• The cathartic background of REBIRTH for Amy.
• Amy teases the sequel, RECONCILIATION, in her description of her favorite character in the book. (There’s popcorn involved!) And it makes all of us want to read Rebirth.
• Crazy looks from the neighbors (this story is totally worth the entire interview)
• Some of the freaky things that Amy ran across in the course of research, and how off so much of it was.

Isn’t this an amazing book cover?

In Episode 23:

• We are Josh-less in this part!
• The myriad of places that Amy’s notes end up during her plotsing process.
• Her unbelievable production rate during NaNoWriMo
• Her crazy Scrivener/note card hybrid organizing process.
• Paydays, yellow Starbursts, Jelly Bellies, and all the other goodies in Amy’s desk.
• Vampiric blood (you have to listen to hear how this figures in).
• How Pinterest figures in to her relating to her readers.
• How her background in journalism led to her being surprised by the author culture.
• Where her heart is and what she wants to do in the future where that is concerned.

Links!

Amy Brock McNew
Rebirth (on preorder until May 24, 2016)
Tosca Lee (Demon)
Ronie Kendig.
Michele Israel Harper
Scrivener
J.R.R. Tolkien
Firefly
Gilbert Morris HOUSE OF WINSLOW series
The Rigs
Red

Listen to Episode 22
Listen to Episode 23

Dead bodies – and their viewing – were liberally sprinkled through our time with Morgan Busse. Morgan is a writer of epic fantasy. She’s recently branched out into Steampunk with the soon-to-be-released Tainted. The idea for Tainted? A discussion on necromancy!

When we weren’t discussing the history behind morgues and what rain did to Victorian-era graveyards (you won’t want to miss the answer!), we had fun talking about tea. Though Morgan did admit that she’d like nothing more than to enjoy a Raktijino.

Her path to becoming an author is actually a bit unique, and Morgan didn’t always want to be a writer. You’ll have to tune in to find out how she came to be an author!

Her odd Google searches are truly odd, even for this crowd. You’ll want to tune in for that.

How Morgan writes with four kids and as a pastor’s wife. If you have a crazy house, you’ll want to hear how she deals with writing in that environment.

And her marketing practices are very helpful…but you’ll  have to listen to hear what those consist of. One tip she has is that she sees an uptick in her sales when she finishes writing a series. (So maybe that’s a hint to all of us authors to produce more books more quickly!)

Enter to win TAINTED through a Rafflecopter giveaway

Links:
Morgan Busse
Tainted
Enclave Publishing
Star Trek: DS9
Captain America
Enclave Publishing 
Evangeline Denmark
Terry Brooks (Shannara series & Sometimes the Magic Works)

Listen to Episode 17
Listen to Episode 18

Also known as the one with the Tartan!

This week we had Robert Treskillard as our guest. He’s a swordsmithing writer of Merlinean and Arthurian fantasy. His latest book is Merlin’s Nightmare.

When we weren’t fighting with squeals, snarls, and bad connections we discussed how to give characters authentic names. The mythology of Merlin was discussed and theories about Stonehenge flew! (And on the bad connections issue, you will not notice it as our guest graciously re-recorded all of our bad patches–and trust me, if you’d heard the raw file, it was BAD. We wouldn’t have been comfortable putting that out for public consumption, so thank you so much, Robert!)

Robert’s answer to our superhero question broke a trend, and drew some oohs and aahs from your dedicated hosts.

Due to the above mentioned snarls, we were only able to record one half of our normal podcast. We hope to catch up with Robert again in the near future to discuss his writing process. So stay tuned for that!

Links:

Robert Treskillard
Merlin’s Nightmare
Stephen Lawhead
Andrew Peterson
L.B. Graham
Douglass Bond
Starship Troopers

Episode 14 Audio