On the quadranscentennial episode of the podcast, the debut crime writer and children's story-telling hero MJ Ford brings us his Writer's Routine!

Michael has just published his first thriller for adults, 'Hold My Hand'. It starts with a boy snatched by a clown, and picks up the story 30 years later as the police find what may be the kid's body in the woods. The last few years have seen something of a zeitgeist for 'killer clowns', what with Stephen King's IT being remade into a movie, and kids in America thinking it's funny to terrorise neighbours dressed as them, so we chat about whether it's ever good to tag your story onto a zeitgeist in the hope it sells.

He's be around words for most of his career, working as an editor, in a collaborative writers room, and as a children's novelist - both being commissioned to write to spec for a publishing house, and as a ghostwriter for celebrities on their kids books.

We talk about the mystical 5 act structure, what it's like to toss around story ideas with other authors, and how much say a writer has in the process of publication.

You can get one tip that may change the way you write forever from the YA author Cass Green, and she'll reveal the long-running controversial comedy that has helped the way she plots!

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