The Stories Between Us

Today we talk with cozy mystery author Andi Cumbo-Floyd about the major twists and turns her writing life has taken in the last few years, the difference between cozy mysteries and regular old mysteries, and who some of her favorite mystery writers are. Attention indie authors! Andi is a good guide.

Mentioned in the podcast:

- Louise Penny - Fiona Grace - The book, Finlay Donovan is Killing It, by Elle Cosimano

If you wanted to catch our first chat with Tsh from nearly two years ago, you can find that HERE.

How Creative Geniuses Come Up With Good Ideas (the article we mention about Zusak writing 200 beginnings).

And don't forget to check out our upcoming novel-writing class, The Nine Month Novel!

Today we talk Madeleine L'Engle, Anthony Doerr, and George Saunders. Madeleine says we should take care, not to be living the life we "ought" to live, but to live our own lives, looking in our own mirrors. To that end, Saunders encourages us to be Defiantly and Joyfully ourselves.

What does that look like for you?

Today we're talking with author Beka McDowell about how working with children who have been sexually abused contributes to her writing life, where she finds the energy to write after long, difficult days, and the three words that have given her more hope in writing than any others.

Beka is a graduate of our Nine Month Novel course. If you'd like to find out more, head to TheStoriesBetweenUs.com and click on "Courses."

And keep writing!

Today we're talking with Ben Emerson, author of A Kraken for Christmas and a participant in our Nine Month Novel class. He shares the thing that changed his writing life forever, for good--this has become his rallying cry when encouraging new writers.

It's been a hard couple of years here on the planet, but we still believe that writing and creating beautiful things is one of the best ways to rediscover hope for ourselves and spread hope to those around us. So today (and for the rest of this season) we're talking about discovering hope in the writing life, what we're up to, and how these things we create are giving us hope for 2022.

We found Leo working on something in his room recently, and it inspired us creatively. How can we bring the joy back into the process of writing or painting or doing whatever creative activity we love?

We also give some previews into what we'll each be creating in the coming year.

As always, you can help this podcast continue by supporting it for only $5 / month over at our Patreon page. Thank you!

Shawn's exhausted, so he and Maile talk about how to know when to give yourself a break...and when to push through the malaise. How do you decide if you need to be harder on yourself and get the work done, or give yourself some grace and take it easy?

We reminisce about our ongoing love affair for all things Over the Rhine and remember the time we listened to their song "Born" to get Maile through labor (which almost happened at a stop light).

We also explore this idea of returning to the fun of creativity, instead of writing what we "should" or what others expect us to write.

Finally, we've got a new revision course coming up--only writers who have completed awful first draft manuscripts need apply. You can find more details at our website, thestoriesbetweenus.com