What happens when Hollywood tells you your stories aren't marketable?

For Kay A. Oliver, it became the beginning of a whole new career.

After more than three decades producing, writing, and directing in Hollywood, Kay was repeatedly told that female-driven stories wouldn't sell. Instead of giving up, she turned to novels, and built an award-winning writing career that now spans fifteen books.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Kay shares her journey from Hollywood creative to bestselling novelist, the success of Disturbed Tombs, overcoming breast cancer, writing resilient female characters, and why rejection is often redirection in disguise.

This is a conversation about courage, perseverance, reinvention, and refusing to let others decide the value of your story.

In this episode:

• Life inside Hollywood's creative machine

• Turning rejection into opportunity

• The story behind Disturbed Tombs

• Writing strong women

• Surviving breast cancer

• Building a fifteen-book career

• Why resilience matters more than talent

🌐 Website: Kayaoliver.com

#BeyondTheDraft #KayAOliver #AuthorInterview #WritingPodcast #WritersLife #Hollywood #BookWriting #CreativeJourney #WomenWriters #Resilience

Can a cybersecurity executive become one of the world's most prolific ghostwriters?

Richard Lowe did exactly that.

After spending thirty-three years in enterprise technology, cybersecurity, logistics, and leadership, including two decades helping run operations behind the scenes at Trader Joe's, Richard walked away from corporate life and reinvented himself as a full-time writer.

Today, he has written or ghostwritten more than 160 books and is known by many as "The Writing King."

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Richard reveals what he's learned from helping executives, entrepreneurs, and experts turn ideas into books, how ghostwriters capture another person's voice, what AI means for authors, and why it's never too late to begin a second career.

This is a fascinating conversation about storytelling, technology, authorship, creativity, and the courage to start over.

In this episode, we went deep into:

• Leaving a successful corporate career

• Writing and ghostwriting 160+ books

• The art of capturing someone else's voice

• Why most people never write their book

• AI and the future of authorship

• Technology lessons that improve writing

• Reinvention after decades in one career.

🌐 Website: Masterofworlds.com

#BeyondTheDraft #RichardLowe #Ghostwriting #WritingKing #AuthorInterview #WritingPodcast #BookWriting #AIWriting #Storytelling #Creativity #Authors #WritingLife

Some books are planned.

Others are written because survival demands it.

In this deeply moving episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma welcomes award-winning author and speaker Richard Ballo, whose memoir Life Without Lisa began as a private journal after the devastating loss of his wife to cancer.

A published writer for more than five decades, Richard never intended to write a book about grief.

But when tragedy changed everything, writing became his lifeline.

In this conversation, Richard shares:

❤️ The healing power of writing through loss

❤️ Life as a widowed father raising two young sons

❤️ Why grief isn't something we "get over"

❤️ Turning heartbreak into hope

❤️ The difference between surviving and healing

❤️ Finding purpose in life's darkest moments

❤️ How writing can become a path toward resilience

This episode is for anyone who has experienced loss, loved someone through grief, or wondered how people find the strength to keep moving forward after unimaginable heartbreak.

Because sometimes the story that changes lives is the one we never intended to write.

🎙 Guest: Richard Ballo

📖 Book: Life Without Lisa

🎧 Listen now and discover how grief, hope, and healing can coexist.

#BeyondTheDraft #RichardBallo #LifeWithoutLisa #GriefHealing #Resilience #Memoir #WritingThroughGrief #AuthorInterview #Hope #Podcast

What if the life you're searching for begins the moment you stop chasing who you think you're supposed to be?

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma sits down with actress, coach, Reiki practitioner, retreat leader, and co-author of Landing on Your North Star, Brigitta Dau.

After leaving Canada at 21 to pursue acting in Hollywood, Brigitta discovered that true transformation isn't about changing your circumstances, it's about changing your relationship with yourself.

Together, they explore:

✨ The courage to reinvent yourself

✨ Why self-worth should never be tied to achievement

✨ Healing from old identities and limiting beliefs

✨ Creativity as a tool for transformation

✨ Intuition, mindfulness, and personal growth

✨ Finding purpose in life's unexpected chapters

✨ What it really means to follow your North Star

This is a powerful conversation for anyone feeling stuck, searching for direction, or standing on the edge of a new chapter.

Because sometimes finding yourself isn't about becoming someone new, it's about remembering who you've been all along.

🎙 Guest: Brigitta Dau

📖 Book: Landing on Your North Star

🎧 Listen now and discover why reinvention is truly an inside job.

#BeyondTheDraft #BrigittaDau #PersonalGrowth #Purpose #SelfDiscovery #Mindfulness #Creativity #Reinvention #AuthorInterview #Podcast

He did not research his characters. He watched them for eighteen years.

R.L. Carpentier spent nearly two decades in law enforcement, watching human beings at their most vulnerable, most desperate, and most revealing. He watched the ones who did the right thing and the ones who did not. He watched the ones who surprised him and the ones who broke his heart. And the voices of all of them stayed with him long after the cases closed.

Then he went to the mountains.

Not as an escape. As a homecoming. The Catskill Mountains of New York, small towns, rural communities, landscapes where everybody knows everybody and the land itself becomes a character in every story told inside it. He completed the Catskill 3500s, climbing all thirty-five peaks over three thousand five hundred feet. He and his wife traversed the twenty-four mile escarpment trail in a single day.

This is not a writer who imagines his settings. This is a writer who has walked every inch of them.

His debut novel, Our Lady of the Overlook, is the first book in a trilogy of small town mysteries and crime procedural fiction set in the Catskill Mountains. And it is built on one of the most honest creative commitments a novelist can make.

The plot is made up. But the people living inside it are completely real.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Rodney opens up about what eighteen years of watching real human beings under pressure taught him about fiction. About how he takes real people and transforms them into characters without losing the truth of who they are. About what a small mountain town gives a crime story that a city never can. About why he committed to a trilogy before the first book was even out. And about the creative code he refuses to break, only writing from what he has truly lived, truly seen, and truly walked.

This conversation is for every writer who has a life full of real experience they have not yet trusted themselves to put on the page.

R.L. Carpentier just gave them permission.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: R.L. Carpentier / Law Enforcement Veteran /Catskill Hiker /Debut Crime Fiction Author

📖 Our Lady of the Overlook: R.L.Carpentierwriter.com

Beyond the Draft/ Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

He has spent decades in book publishing. He has worked with hundreds of authors. He has watched books succeed, watched books fail, and spent his career trying to close the gap between what writers dream will happen when their book comes out, and what actually does.

Terry Whalin is one of the top 27 content producers in the entire world, with over 1,700 entries on his blog, The Writing Life. Six hundred million blogs exist on this planet. He is in the top 27.

He wrote a book called 10 Publishing Myths, not to discourage writers, but to arm them with the honest picture nobody else was willing to draw.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Terry gets brutally honest about the biggest lie the publishing world tells writers before they sign their first deal. About the myth that destroys not just authors' careers, but their confidence. About what separates the writers who make it from the ones who disappear after their first book. About how to keep the dream alive without setting yourself up for heartbreak. And about what he would tell his younger self before signing his very first publishing contract.

This is not a polished, careful conversation about publishing. This is the real, unfiltered, I-have-seen-it-all truth from someone who has spent his entire career trying to save writers from the mistakes that cost them months or years of heartbreak.

If you are a writer standing at the edge of your publishing journey wondering what nobody is telling you, this episode was made for you.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: Terry Whalin/Author of 10 Publishing Myths/Editor /Top 27 Content Producer Worldwide

📝 The Writing Life Blog: Terrywhalin.com

Beyond the Draft/Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

What if becoming a number one bestselling author changed absolutely nothing?

In this eye-opening episode of Beyond the Draft, Imma sits down with author, book launch strategist, and Biz Book Pub Hub founder Robbie Samuels to challenge one of publishing's biggest myths.

After achieving #1 bestseller status in 37 categories across four countries and collecting more than 900 Amazon reviews across four books, Robbie discovered a hard truth: bestseller badges don't automatically create revenue, clients, opportunities, or business growth.

Together, We explore:

• Why authors chase the wrong success metrics

• The difference between vanity metrics and business impact

• How reviews become revenue-generating assets

• What every author should do in the first 30 days after launch

• Why a book should be treated as a business tool, not a product

• How podcast appearances can transform an author's reach

• The biggest mistake authors make after publication

If you're a writer, entrepreneur, speaker, coach, or aspiring author, this conversation may completely change how you think about book success.

Because the real work doesn't end when the book is published.

It begins.

She spent more than twenty years studying what happens inside the human body. Then she started imagining what happens when everything goes wrong.

Deven Greene is a pathologist with a PhD in biochemistry who spent decades solving medical mysteries inside one of the most intellectually demanding professions on the planet. She examined disease. She found answers nobody else could find. She lived inside the quiet, precise, endlessly complex world of medical science.

And then she became a thriller writer.

Not because medicine stopped mattering. But because there were stories inside her that needed a different kind of telling. Stories where science becomes suspense. Where expertise becomes imagination. Where the same mind trained to find answers starts following questions instead.

She has now written six novels. She has experienced traditional publishing and self-publishing. And she has spent years proving something the publishing world rarely says out loud that expertise and creativity are not opposites. They are partners. And the writer who truly understands how medicine works is the writer who can make a reader genuinely afraid of what happens when it fails.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Deven opens up about the moment she realized science alone was no longer enough. About what pathology taught her about writing thrillers,and what thriller writing gave her that medicine never could. About the responsibility of writing fiction rooted in real science. About why she loves research when most writers dread it. About what six novels have taught her about persistence, craft, and the difference between wanting to write and actually becoming a writer.

And about the quieter kind of reinvention not the dramatic overnight transformation, but the kind where someone spends decades mastering one life and then has the courage to become a beginner in another.

This conversation is for every professional who has spent years building one identity while quietly dreaming about another. For every scientist who wants to write. For every expert who believes it might already be too late to begin.

Deven Greene just proved it is not.

🎙️ Host: Imma

🔬 Guest: Deven Greene /Pathologist / Biochemist/Medical Thriller Author

📚 Six novels available now

🌐 devengreene.com

Beyond the Draft/Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

It started in a library. A little girl. Her mother beside her. A bag overflowing with books.

That little girl fell in love with reading before she could fully sound out the letters. She won a young author's competition in fifth grade and made a decision she never walked back. At fourteen she was published in her hometown newspaper and received her first check for something she wrote. And then Maya Angelou came to her college — and in a car ride from the airport told her it took a year to write I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

Something clicked. She could do this.

Tonya Ellis became a journalist, a wife, a mother, and then she looked at the books her children were reading and noticed something missing. Characters who looked and acted like her children and their friends. So she created Sophie Washington, read the first draft to her kids as a bedtime story, adjusted it based on their reactions, and published it herself.

That bedtime story has now sold over 175,000 copies.

The eighth book in the series was purchased by Scholastic. She has a picture book with HarperCollins. She has publishing contracts with Charlesbridge and Penguin Random House. A literary agent. And six more upcoming books on the way.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Tonya opens up about the little girl who never stopped believing she was supposed to write. About what Maya Angelou said in that car that changed everything. About why representation in children's books is not optional, and what it looks like when a child finally sees themselves in a story. About how self-publishing built a movement before traditional publishing ever called. About what Scholastic, HarperCollins, and Penguin Random House taught her about the other side of the industry. And about what she most wants to say to every writer who has a story children are still waiting to find on a library shelf.

This conversation is for every writer who has been carrying a story that does not yet exist in the world, and who needs to hear what happens when you finally sit down and write it.

Tonya Ellis kept every promise she made to herself as a little girl in that library.

And this episode is the story of exactly how she did it.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: Tonya Ellis/ Children's Book Author · Self-Publishing Pioneer · Diversity Advocate

📖 The Sophie Washington Series · They Built Me for Freedom (HarperCollins)

🌐 tonyaduncanellis.com

📱 Facebook & Instagram: Tonya Ellis Books

Beyond the Draft/Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

For fifteen years she had a front row seat to one of the most important and most broken systems in human civilization.

Tiffany Smith is a registered nurse who worked across critical care, emergency rooms, hospice, home health, and long term care. She watched patients and families become overwhelmed, financially strained, and emotionally exhausted trying to navigate a healthcare system that feels impossible to understand even from the inside. She watched healthcare workers quietly break under the pressure, especially during COVID while trying to hold everything together for everyone else.

And then she said the thing nobody inside the system dares to say.

Bedside nursing was killing her soul.

So she wrote Broken and Brave: The Fight to Heal American Healthcare. Raw frontline experiences. The emotional realities of healthcare work the public almost never sees. The human cost of a system that prioritizes productivity and profit over people's lives. The conversations that happen behind the closed door that patients and families are almost never allowed to hear.

And then she built Broken and Brave Health, a platform dedicated to helping family caregivers navigate the overwhelming realities of caring for someone they love, so they never have to feel as alone and as lost as the system makes them feel.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Tiffany pulls back the curtain on everything. The gap between what patients believe healthcare is and what it actually is when the visitors go home. The real story of what COVID did to the people caring for the sick while the world watched the sick. The difference between burnout and moral injury, and why that distinction matters enormously for how we think about healing the healers.

The conversations every family needs to have about end-of-life care that almost nobody has until it is too late. And what she most wants every exhausted caregiver to hear right now.

This is the conversation healthcare has been avoiding.

Tiffany Smith is done avoiding it.

🎙️ Host: Imma

🏥 Guest: Tiffany Smith RN/ Author/ Healthcare Advocate /Caregiver Champion

📚 Broken and Brave: The Fight to Heal American Healthcare

🌐 brokenandbrave.org

Beyond the Draft /Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.