The Story Craft Cafe Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

HI! I’M PENN COLE I’M AN HYBRID FANTASY ROMANCE AUTHOR IN THE MIDST OF PUBLISHING MY DEBUT SERIES, THE KINDRED’S CURSE SAGA

While my life has taken me through a lot of ups and downs, my love for reading and writing has forever been my true north. I’ve been writing stories since my childhood, filling mountains of notebooks with wild worlds and angsty romances. I received my undergraduate degree in Creative Writing, hoping to write the Next Great American Novel, but... well… we plan, Fate laughs. After a detour as an attorney and small business owner, I am thrilled to finally be pursuing my lifelong dream of becoming an author.

I’m a regular participant in NaNoWriMo, and I love meeting and supporting other new authors, especially female authors and BIPOC/LGBTQ+ authors. When I’m not writing, I love reading fantasy, rom coms, and humorous non-fiction.

While I’m a Texas girl born and bred, I currently live in France with my husband, where I can usually be found drinking way too much wine and eating far too many pastries.

We're kicking off the 60-Day Novel Challenge by looking at the big picture of your novel! That means understanding your genre, nailing down the high-level plot points of your story, and getting started on worldbuilding (if you need to).

Each week we will be: Discussing our own work for week's activities and exercises Talking about the wins and struggles of the week - ours and yours! Sharing personal insights from our own author journeys Answering questions from viewers and participants

This week’s focus: Crafting a high-level outline of your story, identifying key plot beats, and getting clarity on your genre.

We’ll cover the exercises from the template, discuss common pitfalls, and share tips to help you start strong!

Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you don’t miss any of these streams. We’re all in this together—let’s get writing!

🔗 Template Download: https://bit.ly/3XBxdVh 🔗 Join the Challenge: https://www.storycraft.cafe/c/join-th...

Nick Cole is a former soldier and working actor living in Southern California. When he is not auditioning for commercials, going out for sitcoms or being shot, kicked, stabbed or beaten by the students of various film schools for their projects, he can be found writing books. Nick's Book The Old Man and the Wasteland was an Amazon Bestseller and #1 in Science Fiction. In 2016 Nick's book CTRL ALT Revolt won the Dragon Award for Best Apocalyptic novel. Currently he is writing the bestselling Science Fiction series Galaxy’s Edge with co-author Jason Anspach.

In a small-town Montana school at age 12, Brent Weeks met the two great loves of his life. Edgar Allan Poe introduced him to the power of literature to transcend time and death and loneliness. Fate introduced him to The Girl, Kristi Barnes. He began his pursuit of each immediately.

The novel was a failure. The Girl shot him down.

Since then–skipping the boring parts–Brent has written eight best-selling novels with the Night Angel Trilogy and the Lightbringer Series, won several industry awards, and sold a few million books.

Brent and his wife Kristi live in Oregon with their two daughters. (Yeah, he married The Girl.)

You can contact Brent at brent(at)brentweeks(dot)com or fill out the comment form under the contact tab.

He does read all of his emails (the good ones, he’ll read two or three times, the little narcissist), and he does reply… sometimes. (If you have questions other people MAY have asked, maybe even frequently, you can live dangerously and check out the FAQ.)

https://youtube.com/live/z_ICXu4g5Sc

On today's show we have a special treat for you, a double header of interviews with two of the most creative thriller writers in publishing, Don Winslow and Taylor Adams. Be sure to join us at storycraft.cafe to stay informed about all upcoming shows!

You've finished your manuscript and now what? In 2023 writers have more options than ever to get their stories out to the world. Trad pub, indie, hybrid... they're all legitimate ways to publish, and our panel is going to talk about those, and attempt to shed some light on the realities of publishing in 2023.

When editing your book, how do you know when It's "finished"? In the writer's eyes, is a story ever truly finished? How do you lovingly close this project and how do you start thinking about what you'll follow it up with? We'll talk about all of it this week.

DON WINSLOW is the author of twenty-three acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including six New York Times bestsellers (Savages, The Kings of Cool, The Cartel, The Force, The Border and City on Fire). Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar- winning writer-director Oliver Stone and a screenplay by Shane Salerno, Winslow and Stone. Winslow's epic Cartel trilogy has been adapted for TV and will appear as a weekly series on FX in 2023. The Force is soon to be a major motion picture from 20th Century Studios starring Matt Damon with James Mangold directing from a Scott Frank screenplay. Additional Winslow books are currently in development at Netflix, Warner Brothers, Sony and Working Title and he has recently written a series of acclaimed short stories for Audible narrated by four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris.

Read any how-to book on writing and you'll get that author's ideas about what makes the perfect story. Pick up another guide and you might find information that contradicts what the first author told you. Who's right? Aren't the rules of storytelling set in stone? The answer is a firm "sometimes". On this week's episode we're going to talk about the rules of story telling and knowing when and how to break them if necessary.

Amazon All Star Author Tonya Kappes has written more than 175 southern cozy mysteries, all of which have graced numerous bestseller lists, including USA Today and Woman's World Book Club pick twice . Best known for stories charged with southern charm, emotion and humor and filled with flawed characters, her novels have garnered reader praise and glowing critical reviews. She lives with her husband in northern Kentucky. Now that her four boys have flown out of the nest, Tonya writes full-time in her camper!

You can find her all over social media and at Tonyakappes.com.