Dear Rach & Soph

‘So I just get this tiny snapshot of extreme humanity at its most tempestuous or its most vulnerable almost … I obviously have had a lifetime of influence of what humans can do when they're pushed to the edge in whatever way. And that obviously has to kind of influence how I see humanity and therefore how I write characters in a way.’

Michelle Johnston is the author of THE REVISIONISTS and she is also an emergency physician, so in this me-alone episode (Rachael had lost her voice!) I had questions to ask her about the relationship between those two disciplines and also about the new novel (bio and blurb below). She had many interesting things to say, as I’m sure you’ll agree once you listen/watch!

- Sophie

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ABOUT MICHELLE JOHNSTON

Michelle Johnston is an author and an emergency physician. She is a Staff Specialist at the Royal Perth Hospital Emergency Department, a busy inner-city trauma centre where she works as both clinician and teacher. Michelle's first novel, Dustfall, was published by UWA Publishing in February 2018 and shortlisted for the MUD Literary Prize for a debut novel in 2019. Her second novel, Tiny Uncertain Miracles, was published by HarperCollins in 2022. Her latest novel is The Revisionists, which is an absorbing, unputdownable novel about ambition – and how we curate our own stories and rescript our memories in order to survive.

ABOUT THE REVISIONISTS

Upper East Side, Manhattan, 2023: Christine Campbell, former journalist, turns on the television to watch a documentary paying homage to her Pulitzer Prize–shortlisted coverage of the unrest in 1999 in the North Caucasus. She is newly widowed, wealthy and attempting to write a memoir celebrating her bold life and significant achievements in writing about the silencing of women during conflict.

But truth has a way of resurfacing, even when buried deep beneath money, memory and reinvention. When Dr Frankie Pearson, Christine’s oldest – and estranged – friend, knocks on her door, the pair must reconcile their memories and come to terms with the far-reaching and disastrous decisions they both made over twenty years ago. The Revisionists examines the malleability of memory and the slippery nature of the truth – and the lengths that people will go to avoid facing both.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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This year Holly Brunnbauer released her first novel, What Did I Miss? - but it is far from her first attempt at writing (and not even her first fiction manuscript). Holly began writing in earnest when she created a blog about motherhood in Melbourne and turned it into an enterprise. That taught her about writing to an audience, and she now assists other authors in understanding how to communicate with their readers (to the point that I asked if she would consider creating a course for it). This part of her story alone would have been enough for a conversation but we got into so much more … and then Holly had questions for us.

So it’s a long episode and we cover a lot (A LOT) of ground about writing, publishing and creativity. It was wonderful to meet Holly and have the chance the chat to her.

Full episode out now on all podcast platforms, my YouTube and our Dear Rach & Soph Substack (links in bio). 

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ABOUT HOLLY BRUNNBAUER

Holly Brunnbauer is a multi-award-winning emerging fiction author with numerous accolades in writing competitions across Australia, New Zealand and the US. Holly writes stories filled with heart, humour and hijinks. Her signature style includes a strong commercial voice, quirky cast and putting the 'com' in rom-com. She first caught the writing bug via blogging and later transitioned into copywriting. Holly’s now a sought-after virtual assistant for published and aspiring authors. 

ABOUT WHAT DID I MISS?

Married young. Finally divorced. Turning thirty ...

Makayla has many regrets: a Chiko Roll impulse buy, not visiting the Big Pineapple and marrying her high-school dud.

Now, newly divorced, determined to hold on to her independence and facing the Big Three-O, Makayla makes a list of all the things she missed out on while her friends were single and running amok in their twenties.

But when her one-night stand turns up again, and a revenge plot on her ex spirals out of control, she has to decide if some things are worth missing. And if Makayla can’t sort herself out before her birthday, she might face the biggest regret of her life.

A fresh and feisty romantic comedy about what happens when you meet someone special before truly knowing yourself.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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Renae Black (bio below) was a guest on the first season of Dear Rach & Soph, and at that time we talked about whether or not she needed a literary agent. This time around, we wanted to talk to Renae about how her work in child protection has influenced the stories she writes, including her latest, Second Chance Station. What followed was a discussion in which Renae not only talked about the sorts of stories she wants to tell but also of how writing fiction helped her manage postnatal anxiety after the birth of her second child. While her world felt so out of control, she told us, she could control the worlds she was creating in the novels. We so appreciated Renae’s honesty in discussing this and no doubt someone else will resonate with it or may indeed find it helpful in their own life.

The episode starts with a discussion of Rachael’s ‘Diet Coke top’ - it’s quite something, and you’ll have to watch the video version of the episode to see it! You can find that on my YouTube channel or our Substack, dearrachandsoph.substack.com

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ABOUT RENAE BLACK

Renae Black lives in Queensland with her husband and two young bookworms. By day she works as a social worker within the child protection industry. By night, she escapes to the romantic fictional realms of rural Australia that transport her back to her childhood home, a large property that bred cattle and hosted the odd ostrich sale. Her latest novel is Second Chance Station.

ABOUT SECOND CHANCE STATION

A gritty, flirty and uplifting rural romance about taking risks, overcoming the past and standing up for the people you love.

Relationships on the station are forbidden ... but are some rules made to be broken?

At Windale Mountain Sheep Station there's only one rule: don't sleep with the guests.

In her ten years living on the mountain, Indigo Mills has never once thought about breaking the rules. After a childhood of neglect and an adolescence that still haunts her, the opportunity to live and work on the sheep station was a lifesaver - literally - and Indy won't do anything to jeopardise her mountain family and home.

That is until Carter Hendrix, the best half-back in the game of professional rugby league, turns up.

The Scorpions have come to Windale for a pre-season training camp, fresh off the loss of last year's grand final - a loss Carter's teammates blame him for. Carter's plan is to keep his head down and his sponsors happy so he can continue playing the game he loves.

Until he meets Indy. Now is not the time for distractions and Indy is full of reasons why they shouldn't explore their attraction: their vastly different backgrounds, their age gap, the rules. But their chemistry is impossible to ignore. Can Carter prove to Indy that he's worth the risk, or will it all be left on the mountain?

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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These are the Australian books being released in September 2025 that we know about. There is no one central place to find out about book releases so we rely on authors reporting to us and also on the publishers who have added us to their mailing lists for advance notice of releases (as opposed to newsletters). We hope these episodes help you find a great new book!

**NB: This is a Soph-alone episode** 

Contemporary YA

Title: Summer, in Between

Author: Holly Cardamone

Publisher: Hawkeye Publishing

‘Looking for Alibrandi meets Puberty Blues'

Thriller/crime

Title: The Vanishing Place

Author: Zoe Rankin

Publisher: Moa Press/Hachette ANZ and Berkley US

A twisty and daring thriller about how those close to you can be even more dangerous than the deadliest wilderness.

Title: The Stolen

Author: Vikki Petraitis

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

An unputdownable crime thriller featuring Detective Antigone Pollard from the bestselling author of The Unbelieved.

Title: The Farm

Author: Jessica Mansour-Nahra

Publisher: Hachette

An eerie psychological thriller, rippling with the Gothic undertones of Rebecca, from a startling new Australian talent. The Farm enthrals from the very first page.

Romantasy

Title: A King's Fate

Author: Anneka-Rose Burrell

Genre: Epic romantasy 

Self-pubbed

Dual POV with a strong FMC and reluctant hero MMC

Romance 

Title: The Swiss Chocolatier: European Tycoons

Author: Leanne Lovegrove

Publisher: Indie

A chance of a lifetime that could make her career. Or break her heart …

General fiction

Title: Very Impressive For Your Age

Author: Eleanor Kirk

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

A profoundly relatable debut novel about chasing your dreams and losing your ambition from a stunning new Australian voice.

Title: Tenderfoot

Author: Toni Jordan

Publisher: Hachette

By the bestselling, award-winning author of Addition, an exhilarating novel about coming of age in 1970s Australia.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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When we started doing this podcast it was mainly us talking to each other. Then we started bringing guests onto the podcast and that has taken on its own life. And we certainly love talking to other writers! However, every now and again we go back to talking to each other, thanks to listener/viewer (aka ‘liewer’) Lucinda Ellen, who sent us several great questions. The questions ranged from to write opening chapters to crafting a pitch to developing characters, and some other things too. 

As this was recorded a little while ago, in the introduction we talk about Rachael writing her serial Meanwhile in Mount Merry-Glen, which she’s now put on pause as she has two - two! - books to write at once. We also talk about the ergonomics of typing and how trying obey SEO rules into Sophie's country music writing made things less fun and she's abandoned it.

So, liewers, it’s a mixed bag and that is the way we like it! 

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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Two guests join me and Rachael Johns in this episode, and they are both fabulous (you can read their bios below). Emma Pei Yin has just released her first novel, When Sleeping Women Wake, and is working on her second. Saman Shad released her second novel, The Sex Lives of Married Women, earlier this year. Something Emma said to me when we first met - about what it was like working on her second novel - sparked the idea for this episode, then Rachael saw something Saman had written on the same subject, so we decided to bring these writers together to talk about it. 

A note: we recorded this episode on July the 6th, which is a day that has special significance for me - and you’re going to have to watch or listen to our intro to find out why.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Hong Kong Chinese writer and editor. Her work has been featured in several publications. In 2023, she was nominated as Bookseller of the Year. That same year, her manuscript, Chasing Echoes in the Rain, was shortlisted for the Allen & Unwin Voices from the Intersection Mentorship Programme. She lives and works on Ngunnawal Country with her partner and their extremely barky dachshund, Lady. When Sleeping Women Wake is her first novel.

Saman Shad is a writer, journalist, and playwright whose storytelling spans stage, screen, and page. In the UK, she was a scriptwriter for BBC Radio, and after relocating to Australia she created programs for the ABC and became a sought-after voice in journalism. Her plays have been commissioned by theatres in both London and Sydney. Her debut novel, The Matchmaker, was published by Penguin Australia in 2023. The Sex Lives of Married Women is her latest novel.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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Patrick Lenton is the author of the book of short stories A Man Made Entirely of Bats (2015), the book of comedic essays Uncle Hercules and Other Lies (2019), and the full length short story collection Sexy Tales of Paleontology (2021). His debut novel, a rom-com called In Spite of You is out now from Pantera Press. And his actual bio is a lot longer than this because he’s a very accomplished individual!

Sophie first met Patrick when he was working in marketing at Momentum, which was the digital-only arm of Pan Macmillan books, publishing a lot of romance novels about a decade too early for BookTok. He has always been smart and funny, and his novel is that AND SO MUCH MORE. It is warm and sweet and, yes, spiteful in parts but in a very charming way. 

We wanted to talk to Patrick about how he used to promote romance novels to the world and now he’s writing them, and we did talk about that, plus a lot more. We recorded this episode a while ago, so there’s mention of launch events that have now past, but we have left them in because everything future becomes the past, so someone watching/listening to this episode next year would have had them in the past anyway.

In the intro we discuss the fact that we both read multiple books at the same time - do you?

And we also talk about the Rachael Johns Online Book Club, which I encourage you to join if you’re not already a member.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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Each time one of us releases a book (separately) we devote an episode of Dear Rach & Soph to discussing the book - Sophie will interview Rachael about hers, and vice versa.

This latest episode, which we’re releasing as a bonus episode, is about Sophie's new novel, Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon. There’s a short description below and you can hear Rach read the longer blurb in the episode.

We recorded this ep after we’d already recorded another episode so we were possibly a little tired and emotional - certainly Soph goes off on tangents - but, hey, that’s the way things go! You’re not getting our polished selves, you’re getting our real selves, and if you’re a regular ‘liewer’ (listen/viewer) you’ll be used to that. 

Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon is out now through Hachette Australia.

ABOUT LESSONS IN LOVE AT THE SEASIDE SALON

Four women. Four loves. Four life-changing stories. At a little salon by the sea - on the windblown coast of 1980s Australia - four different women with intertwined lives will find themselves through love, heartbreak and learning to love again.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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As the Romance Writers of Australia conference is taking place this weekend, we thought it was a good time to publish the episode we recorded with Amy Barry. Rachael is an expert romance writer; Amy is a romance writer and also an academic expert in romance fiction (her bio appears below).

Note from Sophie: I was passenger for most of this episode - to the point that my internet cut out, I dropped out of the Zoom and the conversation continued seamlessly! - but that wasn’t because I was being left out of the chat: it was because I was so fascinated listening to Rachael and Amy discuss romance writing that I felt lucky to be there. Being able to watch experts at work is a privilege, and whether you’re a romance writer or a romance reader - or both - you will, I’m sure, be as interested as I was in what they have to say.

NB: We recorded quite a few episodes in a short space of time a little while ago, so our intros are out of order and now out of date, but we are disinclined to not be genuine when we’re recording them, so all we can do is hope you don’t mind! 

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ABOUT AMY BARRY

Amy Barry is the author of the romance series The McBrides of Montana. She is also Amy Matthews, an award-winning author and Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Flinders University. 

Amy’s novels have been published internationally and in translation and are available in print, audio and ebook. She has also written under the name Tess LeSue. As an academic, Amy publishes on genre fictions, specifically popular romance, historical fiction, and fictions of climate change. And she has a podcast, Amy &. 

Her latest novel is Seven Brides for Beau McBride.

ABOUT SEVEN BRIDES FOR BEAU MCBRIDE

From the beloved author of Kit McBride Gets a Wife and Marrying Off Morgan McBride comes a ‘sweet, hilarious and totally delicious’ love story (Hannah Grace). Beau McBride wants a wife, and his meddling little sister Junebug is itching to find him a mail-order bride. But why stop at just one?

Beau McBride reckons he’s ready for marriage. But his ego is bigger than his brain, and his little sister Junebug can’t trust him to find the right woman. So they make a bet, both placing ads in the Matrimonial News to find the perfect bride. Junebug is set on winning, but there’s a hitch: Beau has made his pick, and she’s beyond beautiful. Junebug knows looks ain’t everything, so to even the odds she invites six more women to meet her brother.

Ellie Neale doesn’t expect much from life. Which is good, since life hasn’t given her much, except a head full of daydreams and her beautiful best friend Diana. But after answering an ad to be a mail-order bride, Diana is leaving for Montana. Ellie is happy for her, really she is ... after all, she was the one who wrote Diana’s letters for her.

Ellie can’t bear the thought of losing Diana, so she answers an ad from a man in the same town her friend is headed for. But when they arrive, Ellie and Diana discover they’ve answered an ad for the same husband. Along with five other women.

With seven brides vying for Beau’s attention, he needs to make a decision – fast. The only problem is, his heart is pulled to the one woman who wants nothing to do with him.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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Kayte Nunn’s previous books were mostly historical fiction, and there was often an element of intrigue, so the signs were there that she was heading for crime, and it’s a genre that she has taken to like the proverbial duck to water in her latest novel, THE PALAZZO.

We loved speaking to Kayte about her decision to switch to crime, and how she came to create the intricate web of story in THE PALAZZO, as well as choose the location. This is a novel that gives you a very satisfying crime story while also completely making you want to go to Italy - so you have been warned. And there’s more about Kayte and the novel below.

This episode was filmed a few weeks ago - we banked some episodes due to upcoming commitments - and you’ll hear us talking about Rachael’s serial MEANWHILE IN MOUNT MERRY-GLEN. She has that on pause for a little while but the existing episodes are there for paid subscribers to her Substack. And it’s something of a joint project in that Sophie was her copy editor from the second episode. 

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ABOUT KAYTE NUNN

Kayte Nunn is the internationally bestselling author of seven novels, most recently 2022's The Only Child. They are available worldwide in English, and have been translated into eleven languages.

She was brought up in England, lived in the US for a number of years as a child and now calls the Northern Rivers of NSW, Australia home.

ABOUT THE PALAZZO

They're all killers, but only one will resort to murder. The stunning new novel from international bestseller Kayte Nunn, for all fans of Lucy Foley and White Lotus.

Newly widowed beauty entrepreneur Vivi Savidge's fortieth birthday is fast approaching, and she plans to celebrate it at the Palazzo Stellina, a historic former convent in the foothills of the Italian Alps run by disgraced chef Marco Bianchi and his elderly grandmother.

Vivi's little sister, Alice, is flying from Brisbane with her sixteen-year-old twins in tow. Ex-colleague Pete and his new husband, Nick, are coming from Boston, and old friend Caroline is driving from Turin. Every one of them is hiding a shameful secret.

Vivi's hopes for a relaxing holiday surrounded by those closest to her are soon overshadowed by an anonymous blackmail threat, and she begins to wonder if someone she thought she could trust might just as easily betray her.

Amid a suffocating heatwave, the holiday ignites an explosive cocktail of obsession, jealousy and greed. Before the week is over, secrets will be exposed and the gathering will turn deadly, leaving one victim, a handful of suspects, and a murderer in their midst.

For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com

For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com

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