Dear Rach & Soph

Thanks to lovely reader Elaine in New Zealand, whom Rach and Soph both met at the RJ Book Club Readers Retreat on the Gold Coast this year, for this question that Rach and I answer in this week’s episode:

‘Which has been the book you've written that you've most enjoyed writing, and did reader feedback reflect your own feelings?’

There’s a bit in there about the one time Soph drew heavily on her own near-death experience to for a chapter in THE SHELLY BAY LADIES SWIMMING CIRCLE and then subsequently forgets details about a character in that novel (hey, it happens!) so please enjoy her correcting herself …

At the start of the episode Rach talks about attending the recent Festival of Fiction in Perth, organised by @tesswoods. As the Perth Writers Festival is not taking place next year, perhaps this festival can return! Do let us know if you went to it and, if so, what you thought - and if you agree with the attendee who thought there should be ‘more memoir’ in a fiction festival …!

Writers - do you have a challenge or conundrum, or a question about process, how to get started, or anything at all to do with writing? We’d love to be your writing agony aunts.

Readers - we would love to hear from you too! You can ask us questions about our books … and we’d also be happy to be YOUR agony aunts. We may not have professional qualifications but we sort out problems for our characters all the time, so if you’d like to get something off your chest/ask for some input/just see what we think about something, let us know.

If you have a question for us, please email [email protected] and put ‘Dear Rach & Soph’ in the subject line.

And if you’d like to actually be in the podcast with us while we answer your question, please let us know in the email.

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

Rachael's latest book is Outback Reunion (2024)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (2024)

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

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

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Sometimes Rachael Johns and I wonder if we have any listeners/viewers (well, not really - I can see the stats so I know you're out there, and thank you for listening/watching!). Then a question or two comes in and, lo, we are reassured that there are, indeed, listeners/viewers. Such is the case with this week's episode, in which Rach answers a question from Nina Kenwood about community building and we both answer a question from a listener who wished to remain anonymous. That question is about lack of support from a spouse for writing, and we are blunt in our answers but hopeful that, with that, the writer who contacted us can find something helpful in it. Rach and I are probably both too long in the tooth to not be blunt these days, and I've personally found that addressing hard things head-on is better than trying to dance around them.

***

Writers - do you have a challenge or conundrum, or a question about process, how to get started, or anything at all to do with writing? We’d love to be your writing agony aunts.

Readers - we would love to hear from you too! You can ask us questions about our books … and we’d also be happy to be YOUR agony aunts. We may not have professional qualifications but we sort out problems for our characters all the time, so if you’d like to get something off your chest/ask for some input/just see what we think about something, let us know.

If you have a question for us, please email [email protected] and put ‘Dear Rach & Soph’ in the subject line.

And if you’d like to actually be in the podcast with us while we answer your question, please let us know in the email.

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget (2024)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (2024)

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

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

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This week we talk about writing craft books. Rach loves them - indeed, she collects them, and if you watch this episode on video you’ll see the collection. She’s also read a lot of them. Soph have not read too many but likes what she's read thus far. 

Possibly the most important information we could convey in this post is the list of books mentioned in the episode, and this is it in the order of mentioning:

Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder

Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody

Pride and Prejudice: The Story Grid Edition by Jane Austen, Shawn Coyne

Into the Woods by John Yorke

Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels by Gwen Hayes

The Complete Writers Guide to Heroes and Heroines: 16 Master Archetypes by Tami D Cowden, Carolyn LaFever, Sue Viders

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt

Ten Things About Writing by Joanne Harris

Bestseller by Celia Bradfield

Story Trumps Structure by Steven James

The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith

The Pocket Guide to Pantsing by M.L. Ronn

The Bestseller Code by Jodie Archer and Matthew L Jockers

Should we start a ‘craft book’ club? Rach already has her online book club which is for reading fiction, mainly, but if you’re a writer and you’d be interested in a craft book club, let one of us know in the comments or by DM or whatever means works for you. 

***

Writers - do you have a challenge or conundrum, or a question about process, how to get started, or anything at all to do with writing? We’d love to be your writing agony aunts.

Readers - we would love to hear from you too! You can ask us questions about our books … and we’d also be happy to be YOUR agony aunts. We may not have professional qualifications but we sort out problems for our characters all the time, so if you’d like to get something off your chest/ask for some input/just see what we think about something, let us know.

If you have a question for us, please email [email protected] and put ‘Dear Rach & Soph’ in the subject line.

And if you’d like to actually be in the podcast with us while we answer your question, please let us know in the email.

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget

Her next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

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

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

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Dear Rach & Soph - podcast

Hosted by bestselling Australian novelists Rachael Johns and Sophie Green

Rach is currently writing a book about twins who are adopted. As can happen for an author, she needed to do some research. Which is where Soph comes in … she's adopted. It’s not something you’ll find in her author bio because for her it’s a mundane fact. She's always known. But it is out of the ordinary, and it is complex, and there is often heartbreak on at least one side of it, and there can be confusion and problems on the other. 

So here’s almost an hour of Rach asking Soph questions about adoption, and what makes this an episode that is still about writing is that you’re watching Rach at work, essentially. This is her work as a writer doing research. This is Soph not being a writer but, rather, an adoptee. She doesn't get the chance to talk about it often because the people who know she's adopted are past the point of asking me questions about it! 

And in this episode we refer to the fact that we are both the products of affairs - something we covered in our second episode of season 1, in case you’re inclined to go back and listen.

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget

Her next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

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

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

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This week on the podcast Rachael Johns and Sophie Green talk about points of view in novels: first, third - and the little-seen second (and Sophie cites Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney as an example of this point of view). We also discuss use of past and present tense within these points of view, and whether the point of view (and tense) choose us or we choose them. 

So this is a 'craft' episode, and we do get feedback from listeners that you like us talking about craft, so here you go! If there's anything related to writing craft that you'd like us to cover on the pod, please drop us a line at [email protected]

Other books/writers mentioned:

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Elin Hildebrand

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Nora Roberts

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

Rachael's latest book is Outback Reunion (2024)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (2024)

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

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

Subscribe on Spotify 

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This week Rachael Johns and Sophie Green talk to author Christine Wells, and the theme is 'staying published' - that is, what it has taken for Christine to stay published over the course of her career. She's published 16 books with four different publishers in the United States and Australia, so she has quite a lot of experience to draw on! 

There's more about Christine and her latest novel, THE PARIS GOWN, below. 

*** 

Christine Wells writes historical fiction featuring strong, fascinating women. 

After graduating from university with a law degree, Christine worked in a large city firm, specialising in corporate mergers and acquisitions. She might still be a lawyer if she hadn’t accepted a challenge from her friend to try her hand at a novel.

Christine has gone on to publish sixteen novels set in periods ranging from Georgian England to post World War II France. Her next novel is The Paris Gown and it will be published in August this year.

Passionate about helping other writers learn the craft and business of writing fiction, Christine enjoys mentoring and teaching workshops whenever her schedule permits.

https://christine-wells.com 

About THE PARIS GOWN 

Paris, 1956

Three friends—Claire, Gina, and Margot—who parted as very young women with their whole lives ahead of them, reunite in Paris years later, determined to start life anew.

Parisian Claire has been working hard to become a Michelin-starred chef one day, but ever since the heady time she spent in the company of socialites Gina and Margot, her dream has been to own a Dior gown. This seemed like a far-off fantasy, until the eccentric and wealthy Madame Vaughn, who lives above Claire’s family brasserie, abruptly leaves Paris, asking Claire to mind her apartment. More bafflingly, Madame Vaughn also makes Claire a very special gift: a stunning Dior gown.

Meanwhile Gina, a cool American blue blood, lands on Claire’s doorstep nursing a broken heart and a broken engagement after her father lost all of the family money in a risky business venture. A journalist aspiring to be a novelist, Gina has returned to Paris in the hopes of pursuing her dream. But when her father begs her to attend the United States Embassy ball in the hopes of persuading Hal Sanders, her former fiancé, to invest in her father’s new business venture, she is torn. She wants to help her father, but seeing Hal again will be exquisitely painful. And what on earth is she going to wear?

Warm-hearted Claire insists Gina wear the Dior gown to the ball, and after some hesitation, Gina accepts. At Dior for Gina’s fitting, who should assist them but Margot, the friend they thought had gone back to Australia to be married. But Margot is living in Paris and working at Dior under an assumed name, and clearly, she is not happy to have been found.

Is their close friendship at an end? Or will the wonder and delight of the Dior gown bring these young women back together?

Gorgeous, perfectly fitted, lustrous and luxurious, the Dior gown has the power to change lives—as these three remarkable women are about to discover…

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

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

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Even if you don’t read spicy books, as they’ve come to be known, you’ve no doubt read spicy scenes in other books (and we're using the term ‘spicy’ instead of the other because we’d have to use an asterisk in that to avoid internet-consequences, plus we're sure you understand what we mean when we say ‘spicy’). If you are a writer of spicy books, you’ve definitely written them, and even if you don’t write spicy books you may have written spicy scenes anyway.

Soph reads spicy books. Both Rach and Soph have both written spicy books - although Soph's are no longer available and were under a completely different name - and Rach writes spicy scenes in other books. So when Rach suggested we talk about writing spicy scenes, of course Soph agreed.

What follows in this podcast episode is Soph doing a lot of laughing and Rach essentially giving a masterclass in how to write spicy scenes. [Note from Soph: writers, I thoroughly suggest you take notes because she has so many good tips!]

Writers - do you have a challenge or conundrum, or a question about process, how to get started, or anything at all to do with writing? We’d love to be your writing agony aunts.

Readers - we would love to hear from you too! You can ask us questions about our books … and we’d also be happy to be YOUR agony aunts. We may not have professional qualifications but we sort out problems for our characters all the time, so if you’d like to get something off your chest/ask for some input/just see what we think about something, let us know.

If you have a question for us, please email [email protected] and put ‘Dear Rach & Soph’ in the subject line.

And if you’d like to actually be in the podcast with us while we answer your question, please let us know in the email.

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget

Her next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

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

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

Subscribe on Spotify 

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we talk to Lainie Anderson, author of the new novel The Death of Dora Black: A Petticoat Police Mystery. We had a lovely time, as Lainie was warm and engaging and very, very interesting. If you'd like to see Sophie's review of the book, it's here. 

If you'd like to read more about the book and Lainie, you're in luck! That information appears below. 

ABOUT THE DEATH OF DORA BLACK 

A charming, uplifting cosy murder mystery inspired by the true story of Australia's pioneering policewoman Kate Cocks Summer, Adelaide, 1917. 

The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. 

When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister, and determine to take matters into their own hands. After all, who knows Adelaide better than the indomitable Miss Cocks? 

*In 1915, Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary as men. This novel is a rich exploration of that little-known chapter of Australian history.* 

ABOUT LAINIE ANDERSON

Lainie Anderson is a writer whose 35-year career in journalism and public relations includes 17 years as a columnist with Adelaide's Sunday Mail, as well as stints at Melbourne's Herald Sun, London's The Times and the South Australian Tourism Commission. After being awarded a Churchill Fellowship, Lainie published her debut novel Long Flight Home in 2019. In 2024, Lainie completed a PhD with the University of South Australia, researching the life of Kate Cocks, the inspiration behind The Death of Dora Black. In 2023 she was announced as the Emerging Historian of the Year by the History Council of South Australia. The Death of Dora Black is her second book. 

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget

Her next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

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

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

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ambition is a tricky subject for Australians - our Tall Poppy Syndrome is alive and well, and when you combine that with lingering Cultural Cringe, for an Australian writer to say they have ambitions/that they are ambitious can be seen as cringey in and of itself.

Well, we decided that it’s too bad if anyone sees us as cringey - or, rather, we don’t care, because we do have ambition and we wanted to talk about it. Partly because we hope that by naming it, by talking about it, other writers (especially female writers, since girls and women tend to be socialised to not have or own up to ambition) may feel that they can claim their own ambition. And also consider what they’re ambitious for.

So in this, the first episode of the second season of Dear Rach & Soph - a podcast that exists partly because we have ambitions: to make interesting stuff, to communicate with other writers, to be useful - we discuss our ambitions, what forms ambition can take and how it can affect writing.

As with last season, this season’s episodes are released out of recording order, so don’t attach too much to the timing of what’s in the intro for each …

We hope you enjoy this episode, and this season, and while we’ve already had some listener questions to cover, we welcome more. Either send one of us a DM or email [email protected]

Thanks in advance for listening! And for another take on 'grand ambition', go here.

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget

Her next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

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

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

Subscribe on Spotify 

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When we recorded our first episode of our podcast, Dear Rach & Soph, earlier this year, we talked about her then-new novel The Other Bridget. So even though we've wrapped the first season, Rachael suggested we do an episode devoted to Sophie's new novel, Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel. So this is a bonus episode of the podcast - or a bridging episode, if you will, since we have already started recording season two! 

We have so appreciated the feedback from listeners, including telling us that you miss the pod, so we hope you enjoy this episode and we'll be back soon. 

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

Rachael's latest book is The Other Bridget

Her next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)

For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.com

Sophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

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

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

Subscribe on Spotify 

Subscribe on Apple

Subscribe on YouTube

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.