Summoning Chuck Tingle: A pink sack, a bottle of chocolate milk, and a fossil.

Some authors are auto-buys. This author is one of mine.

I’ve spent thirteen years inside this trilogy. Jenna has questions. For this episode, producer Jenna takes the reins. Jenna is the closest thing I have to a sister, my bestie, and the person who has been watching me make these books for a very long time. So, naturally, she has some questions. With Victorious arriving the day before this episode does, we dive into the strange, sprawling business of writing a trilogy, from knowing when a story is actually a trilogy to figuring out what the middle book is supposed to do. We get into the little things too, like what happens when I get stuck, whether I actually get stuck, and how you carry an entire world around in your head when you’ve been living with it for thirteen years. We talk about the strange experience of watching a story change as you move through it, how characters and worlds accumulate history, and what it means to finally write the last book in a series that has been part of your life for more than a decade. It’s a very Jenna-and-me conversation, which means we wander into the weeds, get extremely specific about the writing process, and laugh a lot along the way. Links: Follow No Write Way on Instagram

This week, I’m joined by Jasmine Guillory, bestselling author of The Wedding Date and her latest novel, It’s Only Dancing, for a deep dive into the nitty-gritty of how she actually makes a book. Jasmine walks me through her “messy first draft,” where she lets herself put every idea on the page, knowing she’ll come back later to chip away at it, reshape it, and figure out what the story actually needs. During the pandemic, that process even led her to handwrite an entire novel because, at the time, that was the way of writing that felt least scary. We talk about how she learned to write dialogue, which, spoiler alert, was not simply a magical gift she was born with. We dig into what happens when you give yourself permission to write badly, how finishing a first draft is also a way of getting to know your characters, and why sometimes you have to write your way into understanding what a story is really about.

Some conversations have a destination. Others are more fun when you just see where they take you. This week, I’m joined by Ali Hazelwood, bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis, and this episode is a bit of a romp. We wander from Star Trek and fan fiction to hyperfixations, the small obsessions that somehow become little anchors of joy, and the realization that what we want to write and what we want to read can sometimes be two completely different things. And maybe they should stay that way. We talk about what happens when one of your books suddenly steps into the spotlight, and what it feels like to watch that happen while your other books are standing quietly backstage. I also spill a little tea about my own complicated feelings about finishing a trilogy, and we compare notes on the strange afterlife of a book once it leaves your hands. Ali is, as it turns out, an absolute ray of sunshine. But even rays of sunshine have bad days, and we talk about that too. About the pressure to always be fine, the things that bring us back to ourselves, and why sometimes the best thing you can do is let yourself stare into the eyes of an alpaca.

Confession: it’s fan-girl time. Scott Hawkins, author of The Library at Mount Char and Blacktail, is one of those writers whose books make me want to corner him and ask, “How did you DO that?” He writes in the evenings after his day job and on weekends, and somehow the stories he’s made in those stolen hours are some of my absolute favorites. I’ve read both of his books, and I have a lot of questions. A lot of questions. This conversation is essentially me asking Scott how he makes the magic, while he calmly explains things that seem completely extraordinary to me as though they are perfectly normal. We also learn that Scott has had enough dogs over the years to make it sound like there has been an entire pack living in his house at various points, which perhaps explains why he was destined to write a book from the point of view of a four-legged friend in the wild. Mostly, this is a conversation about process, instinct, and what happens when someone’s imagination works in a way that makes you want to keep asking, “But how?” Scott is wonderfully matter-of-fact about his methods. I am perhaps a little less so.