Show Notes
At the time of recording this episode Rachael was preparing her day-long workshop for the RWA Conference, which is happening this weekend. Sophie was meant to attend but, due to personal circumstances, had to cancel, so we aren’t seeing each other in person as planned. Yet we are together on screen and in audio in this episode, which we recorded about three weeks ago.
We meant for this episode to be the follow-up to the 9th episode of the season, which was answering questions from aspiring and emerging writers who attended a workshop Sophie ran at Rachael’s readers retreat in Geelong in June, and which I didn’t have time to answer fully there.
Instead of getting to the questions, though, we started talking about Rachael’s workshop, which is about writing romance novels, and that led to us talking about a whole host of things, including the rural romance genre - which is what Rachael was writing when she was first published - and the difficulties of discoverability for Australian authors.
We talked for so long that there wasn’t time to address the questions, but we have done that in a subsequent recording which we’ll release in a fortnight’s time. For more information about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.com
For more informationabout Sophie Green: https://sophiegreenauthor.com
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More from Dear Rach & Soph
Nina Kenwood was one of the featured authors at this year’s Rachael Johns Book Club Readers Retreat in Geelong, Victoria, a few months ago, so we met her there. At the time we had not organised to talk to Nina about her new novel, People Skills, which will be released by Text Publishing on 6 October. And we hadn’t yet read the book, but ahead of recording this episode we did (and have both read the novel before it, The Wedding Forecast). As fans of Nina's writing and her storytelling, of her sense of humour and her compassion for human foibles, we had much to discuss when she joined us on the pod for this episode.
A year ago, on the podcast, we talked to Chloe Berry, who was in the process of launching a digital marketing agency for authors and also planning to become a literary agent. Chloe is in her twenties and has worked in publishing as a marketer for romance and other genre fiction. Starting her own agency was, obviously, risky - starting any business is a risk.
Listeners-slash-viewers a.k.a. liewers, you’re going to have to watch or listen to find out why, quite early on in our latest episode, Rachael says, ‘This is not a poo podcast.’ We're not giving you any hints! What we will say is that we recorded this ahead of her going to the RWA conference in Darwin, at which she taught a day-long workshop, gave the opening keynote speech and was made a lifetime member of the RWA. In short, she was an RWA rock star!
As has become customary, each time Rachael or Sophie releases a book, we devote an episode of the podcast to discussing it. This time it’s Sophie's turn, with The Frock Shop, which was published on 21 July 2026 (blurb below).
This episode of the podcast was recorded a few weeks before Sophie's latest novel, The Frock Shop, was published and Rachael asked her some questions about it, including how she manages writing multiple points of view (there are give in this novel). Sophie also mentions some events and how at the time we recorded there weren’t booking links for everything - but there are now!