Table of (Mal)Contents

"Some books should be blog posts, some blog posts should be tweets, some tweets should remain thoughts."—Devin Maddox

What happens when you’re reading a book and you think, there’s just not a whole lot here?

A little while ago, Dave Schroeder, my co-host on Reading Writers, and I were talking about what we wanted to do with the podcast going forward. We had a great first season together and really started to have some fun with it… But the fact is that along the way, we had a bit of mission creep.

A little while ago, Dave and I recorded a couple of special episodes of Reading Writers. They were, in fact, the final two episodes of season 3 of the show. But rather than doing this whole “releasing them on time” thing, I went and had a big project get in the way. 

So, we’re releasing the second of these two episodes today. In this episode, Dave and I discuss the ol’ bait-and-switch: what happens when a book promises on

A little while ago, Dave and I recorded a couple of special episodes of Reading Writers. They were, in fact, the final two episodes of season 3 of the show. But rather than doing this whole “releasing them on time” thing, I went and had a big project get in the way. 

So, we’re releasing the first of these two episodes today. In this episode, Dave and I discuss something incredibly important, especially for folks living a busy l

A few episodes ago, Dave and I had a discussion: What happens when great books (and not so great books) get turned into movies? Well, sometimes they turn into something amazing. Other times… well… You get The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

And then the feedback came in. Specifically from our friends Barnabas and Whit, both of whom have joined us on the show before, and soon we realized that we need

A long time ago when Nashville was experiencing something that resembled winter, Dave and I recorded an interview. And it was good. Sadly, it’s one that you will never hear because something terrible happened—we lost one of the audio tracks!

And so, we did it again, about two months later.

Fortunately, our friend Mary Wiley, host of the excellent Questions Kids Ask

One of the incredible things about fiction is that it is true. What does that mean? And what’s the deal with authors killing dogs all the time in books? Barnabas Piper joins Dave and me to discuss this and more on today’s episode of Reading Writers.

Among the many books discussed in this episode:

* Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Sea

Before Dave joined the show as my super-talented co-host and brought up the quality of the show, I was frequently joined on the show by a number of special guests where we’d talk about books they were writing and what they were reading. Well,  today, we’ve got a special bonus episode for you because we’re sharing one of these that’s never been heard before.

Some time ago, Megan Hill and I had a great conversation via Skype to chat about her book, Praying Together. In th

What happens when you put Barnabas Piper, Dave, and me in a podcast studio? You get something incredibly special. Or bizarre.

Or both.

Either way, you’re going to have a blast listening to this episode of Reading Writers where we:

* Revisit the Audiobooks debate (and remind Brian he’s wrong)

* Talk about what we’d write if we wrote fiction

* Authors as book-mills

* The secret of compelling fiction

* When a series goes on way too long<

How does reading fiction make us better writers? That’s one of the big questions we attempted to get to in today’s episode of Reading Writers—but we didn’t quite get all the way there because we were having too much fun chatting with our friend and coworker, the oft-referenced Whit Stiles!

Whit works as a copywriter at LifeWay Christian Resources who is an excellent guitar player, my favorite coffee snob, and an all-around great guy. He’s also one of the guys Dave and