Podcast Episodes

[Panel] Creating And Developing Characters With Karen Heuler

Season 2

For our latest community panel, we had the pleasure of welcoming award-winning literary fantasy author Karen Healuer as our special guest.
The topic centred all on characters—creating them, getting to…

Published on 2 years, 3 months ago

Essential Advice On Editing

Season 2

Editing is tough. There's so much to think about, so much to keep an eye out for, the whole process can just be exhausting. 

As a writer, it's probably the most important part of the writing process,…

Published on 2 years, 4 months ago

Religion And Belief Systems With Norse Shaman, Mark Weisman

Season 2

Religion, belief systems and spirituality are huge topics in the fantasy genre. When we create our fictional worlds, so often they feature gods and goddesses or some kind of faith system. 
And in many…

Published on 2 years, 4 months ago

The Writing Process With Daniel Polansky

Daniel Polansky is a Hugo-nominated author and writer of scores of acclaimed books, including his most recent: March's End (Angry Robot).

In this jovial interview, Daniel tells us how he wrote March…

Published on 2 years, 5 months ago

[Panel] Query Letters, Writing A Synopsis, And Finding A Literary Agent

Season 2 Episode 38

We're thrilled to welcome Laura Bennett as a special guest for our latest community panel discussion on working with literary agents and navigating the world of traditional publishing. With scores of…

Published on 2 years, 5 months ago

Writing Literary Fantasy And Pantsing With Karen Heuler

Award-winning literary fantasy author Karen Heuler stops by the Toolshed to talk about pantsing and writing in the literary style.

Karen's new book, The Splendid City, published by Angry Robot, offer…

Published on 2 years, 6 months ago

Worldbuilding 101 With Stephen Aryan

Over in our Discord community, we were thrilled to host our very first panel discussion with the brilliant bestselling author, Stephen Aryan.

Also joining me on the panel were three great writers from…

Published on 2 years, 6 months ago

The Power Of Writing Groups

In this episode, I welcome three members from our writing community, Isa, Josh and Jonny, for a chat about our community writing groups.

Not so long ago, Josh approached me about setting up some wri…

Published on 2 years, 7 months ago

How To Create Your Own Magic System

In the second episode of our mini-series on magic systems, Janina and Lucy from The Fey Fellows Podcast rejoin me for a deeper look at two big examples of magic systems: witchcraft and the systems fo…

Published on 2 years, 7 months ago

Hard And Soft Magic Systems

One thing that I haven't covered an awful lot of, both in blogging form and on the podcast, is magic systems.

I'll admit, I'm not a massive user of magic in stories (my current work in progress aside)…

Published on 2 years, 8 months ago