In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, I speak with Charlotte Donlon.

Charlotte spent years training as a spiritual director — the kind of one-on-one guidance usually reserved for matters of faith — and somewhere along the way, her clients turned out to be writers. Lots of them. Enough that she started noticing the same conversations kept happening, whether the person across from her believed in God, doubted everything, or hadn't thought about any of it in years.

That's the premise behind her book, Spiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing Life and it's the premise behind this conversation.

We get into why she thinks all of life is the writing life, grief and naps included. We talk about a two-minute ritual you can steal today. And we talk about burnout, and the permission so many writers won't give themselves to just be where they are.

If you've ever felt like your writing life and the rest of your life are two separate ledgers, this episode is going to mess with that idea. Because it's all the writing life.

Check out the episode now.

What happens when an AI doesn't just assist you but lives inside your head?

In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, I sit down with my client, science fiction author J.E. Sheasby, to discuss his debut novel, Shared Sentience, and the first book in an ambitious seven-book series he has spent nearly a decade developing.

Jim takes us behind the scenes of a future set thousands of years from now, where humanity has spread across 132 solar systems, AI is embedded directly into the human mind, wormholes make interstellar travel possible, and detectives have some very unusual tools at their disposal.

During the conversation, we discuss:

• Building a believable science fiction universe
• Combining murder mystery and science fiction
• Writing from the POV of an artificial intelligence
• Creating the psychedelic landscape inside a character's mind
• Writing a seven-book series while making each novel stand on its own
• Jim's prolific daily writing practice
• And much more!

If you love science fiction, artificial intelligence, ambitious worldbuilding, or conversations about the craft and process of writing novels, this episode is for you.

Check it out now.

Welcome back to the Ready Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Johns, and today I'm sitting down with Rob Cole — a writer, an animal sanctuary founder in Hawai'i, and now, after thirty years, a published biographer.

Rob's new book, For Once in My Life, opens with Arlinda Willis's birth in 1951 in Toxey, Alabama — the granddaughter of sharecroppers, raised by her grandparents in the shadow of Jim Crow while her mother built a new life north in Cleveland. When Arlinda finally made that journey herself, she believed love was something you had to earn, and she spent the rest of her life earning it: dancing as a teenager on Upbeat, Cleveland's nationally syndicated music show, alongside Stevie Wonder and James Brown; competing in the city's first Miss Black Cleveland pageant; and building a distinguished career at one of San Francisco's most prestigious law firms. It was there, in 1994, that she met Rob — a white British immigrant who would become her closest friend, caregiver, and biographer for the next eighteen years.

When esophageal cancer took hold, Arlinda ran into a healthcare system that dismissed her pain and told her one story while writing another in her medical chart — a pattern that, as Rob learned, has a name. For Once in My Life follows Arlinda from the sharecropping communities of the Alabama Black Belt, through the Great Migration and the stages of Cleveland's Black entertainment scene, into the halls of San Francisco law, and finally to a chapter defined by medical racism, unconditional love, and the hardest lesson of her life: that she was enough exactly as she was.

The book releases August 27 — what would have been Arlinda's 75th birthday, and the 63rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. In this conversation, Rob and I talk about what it took to write an authorized biography over three decades: turning eighteen years of stolen lunchtime anecdotes into a narrative, and what it means to write across racial and generational lines as a white author telling a Black woman's story. We get into how Rob's own research into Arlinda's medical records after her death uncovered the pattern of medical racism that reshaped the book, the emotional toll of revisiting the hardest chapters of her life on the page, and why — after querying more than a hundred literary agents — he chose to self-publish something this personal. We also talk about the work that comes after the writing: designing the cover himself, courting a Kirkus review, and the library and search-strategy playbook behind getting Arlinda's story into as many hands as possible. Let's get into it.

Check it out now.

This week I'm joined by Nathan Lang, a longtime friend, Barbados resident, hospitality professional, and co-host of the Barbados Writing Retreat.

This coming November, I'm taking a small group of writers to Barbados. Five days on the West Coast of the island. Mornings for writing, afternoons for craft, evenings that take care of themselves. Structured enough to get real pages done, and beautiful enough that you'll want to come back.

This week's episode of The Writing Coach Podcast is your introduction to that retreat and, more specifically, to the person who is making it possible: my friend Nathan Lang.

Nathan and I have known each other for about forty years.

We grew up together in Ottawa, lost touch the way people do when life goes in different directions, and then found each other again when Nathan did something most of us only talk about: he bought a condo in Barbados on pre-construction, waited out the build, and eventually traded the snowbanks of Ottawa for the West Coast of the island. Nathan is exactly the kind of person you want running the logistics and the kitchen at a writing retreat: someone who's been in hospitality his whole life, who knows the island better than most locals, and who genuinely loves taking care of people. The episode will give you a better feel for him, for the location, and for what five days there could look like for you.

Listen now!

Today on the show, I'm welcoming back book marketing strategist and veteran podcaster Susan Friedman, 10 years after her first appearance on this podcast.

Susan has hosted over 500 episodes of Book Marketing Mentors and has spent decades helping nonfiction authors turn their books into authority, speaking opportunities, and real business results.

In this conversation, we talk about why book marketing is a long game, how fiction and nonfiction are "two different animals" when it comes to promotion, and why so many authors would rather hide behind social media than have real, high-impact conversations. We also dig into the importance of niching down, embracing your expertise, and choosing marketing methods you actually enjoy so you'll stick with them.

If you've ever wondered whether it's worth marketing a low-profit book when you could be selling higher-ticket offers—or how long you really need to keep marketing your book, this episode is for you.

Check it out now:

On today's episode of The Writing Coach I'm joined by someone who has spent decades on the front lines of publishing, helping writers turn rough drafts into real, reader-ready books. Candace Johnson is a long-time editor, now a first-time novelist, with deep experience in traditional publishing and years of success as a freelance editor working primarily with indie authors.

In our conversation, Candace pulls back the curtain on how traditional publishing really works, what editors are actually looking for in a manuscript, and why it's so important for writers to remember that publishing is, at its core, a business. We talk about the realities of slush piles, the search for that "magical breakout book," and how the industry's upheaval around 2008 pushed many editors (and ultimately, the entire editor/writing-coach ecosystem) into the freelance world.

We also dig into what a copy editor really does and how that role often blurs into other kinds of editing when you're working independently with authors. Candace shares what makes for a healthy, productive author–editor relationship, why some writers resist revision, and how to know when your manuscript is truly ready to send to an editor. If you've ever worried an editor will "steal your voice" or "rewrite your book," this episode will give you a much calmer and much more accurate picture of how good editors really work.

Finally, we explore Candace's own transition from editor to novelist: the challenges of "taking off the editor hat," drafting without over-editing every sentence, and embracing revision as a vital, creative stage rather than a punishment. Along the way, you'll hear practical advice on feedback, critique partners, page counts, and why doing the best you can before you hire an editor can save you a lot of money and heartache.

If you've ever wondered what your editor is really thinking when they open your manuscript for the first time or how to become the kind of author editors love to work with, this episode is for you. Listen now!

In this episode of The Writing Coach podcast, I sit down with Emil Wilson to talk about how a former advertising and design professional who didn't grow up reading comics ended up creating The Nightingales, a genre-blurring work that feels part graphic novel, part literary memoir, and part sketchbook of memory itself. We dig into the book's bold formal choices (no panels, mixed media, pages that feel torn from a working artist's notebook) and how those decisions grew directly out of the question, "What does memory actually look like on the page?"

We also explore how Emil's background in marketing and visual communication shaped this approach to storytelling: the discipline of doing "a lot of work in a little space," the difference between illustration and true comics storytelling, and the way composition, color, and even blank space can deliver an emotional punch to readers.

Along the way, Emil shares candidly about caring for a sick parent, working as a buddy during the AIDS crisis, and transforming deeply personal, semi-autobiographical material into a story that still protects their own interior life.

If you're interested in graphic storytelling, blending memoir with fiction, or simply writing about family, grief, identity, and kindness in a way that feels honest rather than exploitative, this conversation is for you. Check it out now:

Welcome to The Writing Coach Podcast, the show where I talk to the people whose job it is to help writers actually get the work done, including coaches, editors, marketing experts, and the folks building the tools behind the craft. I'm your host, Kevin Johns.

Today's guest, Steven Puri, spent years as a studio executive at Fox and DreamWorks, producing digital effects on around fourteen films, working alongside James Cameron, David Fincher, and Mel Gibson, and picking up an Academy Award along the way for Independence Day. But somewhere in there, he got tired of sequels and spinoffs and walked away from film entirely to solve a different problem: why smart, talented people, including him, still can't get out of their own way when it's time to sit down and create.

That led him to build Sukha, a tool designed around flow states, to help writers and other creators beat procrastination and distraction and actually finish the thing they set out to make.

We get into what he learned in the room with some of Hollywood's best storytellers, why "hustle culture" isn't the same thing as doing great work, what flow state really is and how to get into one on command, and how any of us, whether we're writing a novel or just trying to finish that blog post, can stop waiting for inspiration and start doing the work. Check it out now!

Today on The Writing Coach podcast, I'm joined by author Susan Leon to discuss her debut novel, If They'd Only Known.

Susan's book is a dark, emotionally layered crime novel set in Northern Ontario, exploring the ripple effects of a child abduction and murder across a family, a community, and the decades that follow. But while the book uses the shape of a crime story, our conversation goes much deeper than plot.

We talk about:

• grief, trauma, forgiveness, acceptance, and what it means to write dark material from a place of wisdom rather than despair.
• Susan shares how her own life experiences shaped the emotional heart of the book,
• how real conversations with detectives, veterans, and families touched by loss informed her research,
• and why she believes forgiveness is not about excusing harm, but about freeing yourself from the weight of carrying it.

We also get into the writing journey itself:

• learning how to structure a novel after years of collecting scenes,
• discovering which character's story she was really telling,
• navigating historical research,
• working with beta readers,
• and finding community through writing programs and fellow authors.

This is a conversation about crime fiction, yes, but it's also about the power of stories to help us process pain, make meaning, and maybe even move forward. Check it out now.

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm thrilled to welcome back one of my favorite returning guests, author Sandy Day. The last time Sandy was on the show, we talked about her novel Odd Mom Out and the re‑release of Head on Backwards, Chest Full of Sand. This time, she's here to dive deep into her brand‑new book, Where the Night Winds Wail—a haunting Ontario noir inspired by the classic song "The Long Black Veil."

In our conversation, Sandy pulls back the curtain on the long and winding road this novel took to completion: from an early 30,000‑word NaNoWriMo draft to a fully realized 93,000‑word book rich with interiority, atmosphere, and character development. We talk about the dangers of writing a book in endless layers over many years, the painful process of killing your darlings, and how adding a single major character reshaped the entire story.

We also explore how music, obsession, and old wounds fuel Sandy's fiction. Sandy shares how the moody storytelling of "The Long Black Veil," her lifelong love of The Band, and films like Silver Linings Playbook influence her approach to love stories that are anything but neat "happily ever afters." From Jake, her musician protagonist struggling with buried talent and unresolved grief, to the storm at the heart of the book's setting, this is a conversation about art, pain, and learning how to live with the things that never fully heal.

Finally, Sandy and I dig into the business side of being an indie literary author—branding, cover design, Amazon categories, and the power of consistent, heartfelt communication through her weekly Substack newsletter. If you care about writing emotionally honest fiction, building a sustainable indie career, or simply love hearing a thoughtful author talk about her craft, you're going to get a lot out of this episode. Check it out now: