Show Notes
Our guest on the Writing Worlds Podcast today is the bestselling and award winning novelist, poet and academic C.J. Cooke. C.J.'s novels including the acclaimed 'The Lighthouse Witches'
'The Nesting' and 'The Ghost Woods' lean on the gothic tradition. Carolyn has built a huge and devoted international following and it is often the sense of world and place in her books that immerse readers so deeply. Carolyn's most recent novel 'The Last Witch' was published by Harper Collins in autumn 2025.
You can find out more about C.J. Cooke and her work by visiting her website here https://carolynjesscooke.com/
Visit C.J's substack to read her blog 'The Gothic Cabinet' here https://cjcooke.substack.com/
You can follow C.J. on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/cjcooke_author/
You can hear bonus content from many of our Writing Worlds guests by joining our Patreon at the Gold Tier or above. There we have exclusive bonus content from many of our Writing Worlds Season One episodes with many more from season two coming soon. Click the link to find out more. https://www.patreon.com/AltStories
Writing Worlds is created and presented by Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory of the audio production company Alternative Stories
Find out more about Emily and her work by visiting her website here https://www.emilyinkpen.com/
Listen to The Dex Legacy and Wasteland, Emily’s award-winning audio drama series here https://www.emilyinkpen.com/thedexlegacy-home/
And follow Emily on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emilyinkpen/
And Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/emilyinkpen.bsky.social
You can purchase a copy of Emily Inkpen's book "The Dex Legacy: Season Two Scripts and Commentary" by searching for Emily Inkpen in your local Amazon store
Find out more about Chris Gregory and Alternative Stories here https://linktr.ee/AlternativeStories
Follow them on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/stories.alt/
And Bluesky here https://bsky.app/profile/storiesalt.bsky.social
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More from Writing Worlds: Conversations About World Building
Welcome to our end-of-season 2 review episode. Join Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory for a look back at our guests and world building topics for the season and the announcement of our overall winners in our stoically fun games The Name Game and Would You Rather?
Our guest on Writing Worlds today is the brilliant and acclaimed science fiction author Claire North. An incredibly prolific and imaginative writer Claire's novel 'The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August' was nominated for the Arthur C Clarke award and won the John W Campbell memorial award for best science fiction. Topically, given the recent release of a certain movie, Claire has based a number of their novels in the world of Ancient Greece and specifically based on the work of Homer. They have also written space opera and have a other writing lives as Catherine Webb and as Kate Griffin under which name they write fantasy.
Our guest on Writing Worlds today is the award winning fantasy author Stephen Aryan. With two trilogies: the Age of Darkness, and the Age of Dread set in his world of Mordana to his name , alongside his Persian inspired The Nightingale and The Falcon trilogy. Stephen is not only a prolific author but he has also been prolific in supporting and offering advice to other writers.
On the writing worlds podcast today we are chatting with a speculative fiction author, editor, writing mentor and a dedicated fan of science fiction and fantasy literature. Last year Ren Hutchings released 2 books in an indecently short period of time, The Legend Liminal and An Unbreakable World, a sequel to their 2022 time travelling space opera, Under Fortunate Stars. Ren also writes short fiction and amongst their likes listed on their website are using too many different fonts, enjoy never ending board games and rambling podcasts where the people laugh a lot.
Our guest on writing worlds this week is one of the biggest names in science fiction. Peter F. Hamilton is the author of many bestselling novels and series , including the Greg Mandel series, the Night’s Dawn trilogy, the Commonwealth Saga, the Void trilogy, the Chronicle of the Fallers and the Salvation Sequence, as well as short-story collections and several standalone titles.