Technological advances are incredible. Just think, the phone in your pocket is infinitely more powerful than the computers that sent the first spaceships to the moon! Technology has given us basic things we take for granted like running water and electricity, to more modern inventions such as the internet, surgical robots, and automated vacuum cleaners. […]

Love can raise us up. Love can tear us down. It can be our strength, our weakness, and everything in between. And inevitably, love makes fools of us all. While we all enjoy reading a good romance, a love story is rarely just a love story. It has so many other uses within a narrative. […]

95 years after it was first published, the copyright on The Great Gatsby has expired. This great American novel has sold over 25 million copies since it was first published, despite initially disappointing sales. It is hard to believe now, with its cultural pervasiveness, that F Scott Fitzgerald died thinking he was a failure, that his works […]

We actually recorded this episode WAY back in January, just after Biden’s inauguration in the US. So, naturally, there is a bit of politics in this one given how wrapped up we all were in what was going on… you’ve been warned! An eye for an eye. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you right back. Not […]

The frontier. The edge of civilisation. So far from the central government that laws are more like ‘guidelines’. Where the sheriffs are crooked and the criminals ruthless; trains rarely go un-sacked and the cattle drive never goes to plan. Oh, and don’t forget the drought. Life on the frontier is never easy. But what about […]

Our identity is who we are. But for such a seemingly simple concept, our identities are extremely complex. We aren’t the only ones who decide our identities. Society places labels on us that we often don’t feel represents who we are, or worse, forces us into very narrow roles from which we feel we are […]

The basic principles of writing a book are simple – come up with an idea, write it. Of course, it isn’t really that simple, it is a lot of hard work, but that’s about the size of it, right? Well, not always. What happens if you are asked to write for a hugely popular franchise? […]

Why do we need monsters in our fiction? Why do we want to be frightened? When they pick up a book, do readers enter into a pact with a writer, as Catriona Ward describes: a pact that says I share your fear, let’s face it together? We asked Catriona about the nature of fear, whether […]

When you look, communities are everywhere. They can be the people where you live, the people who share the same interest as you, the people you volunteer with. They can be as small as a household or as big as a city. Communities, societies, political and religious beliefs all intertwine so that sometimes it’s impossible […]

Spirituality exists in every work of fiction in some form or other, but most often manifests as divinity. Gods and goddesses never seem to go out of fashion. Why do authors turn to a god or pantheon of gods to articulate this spiritual urge? And out of all the pantheons, the Norse gods in particular […]