Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for March is Voice and Narration, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Sorboni Banerjee, Dominique Richardson, and Lori discuss:

• The draw of fairy tales, even in contemporary times.
• How important it is to build community and support fellow writers.
• Diversifying traditional tales with contemporary values and angst.

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About Sorboni Banerjee and Dominique Richardson

Dominique Richardson and Sorboni Banerjee are the coauthors of THE EVERBEACH SERIES—a young adult, romantic suspense series pitched as “Riverdale” meets fairy tale. Full of forbidden romance, deadly twists, and scandalous secrets, this series is sure to keep you turning pages into the night. It’s perfect for fans of INHERITANCE GAMES, CINDER, GOSSIP GIRL, and PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. The first book in the series, RED AS BLOOD, comes out February 28, 2023. 

You can follow both Dominique and Sorboni on Tiktok.

Dominique Richardson was raised between Jamaica and the United States, and her biracial heritage finds a home in her books. She spends her free time passing on her love of unicorns to her twin boys, running in the Florida heat, and drinking all the coffee. Dominique is the Young Adult columnist for DIY MFA. She now lives in Tampa, Florida with her family.

You can find Dominique on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, Tiktok.

Sorboni Banerjee is a Bengali-American author and Emmy Award winning television news anchor. With a dad from a small Indian village and mom from Maine, Sorboni’s experiences growing up “mixed” shape her stories. Fueled by coffee and conversation, Sorboni loves the beach, boating and traveling the world with her husband and son. Other books by Sorboni include Hide With Me.

Passionate about all things books and giving back to the community, Sorboni and Dominique co-founded YA by the Bay, a nonprofit young adult reading and leadership festival, dedicated to inspiring teens to “be the author of your own life.” The first annual conference will be held in Tampa, FL on October 13th and 14th in 2023. 

You can learn more at www.yabythebay.org, and you can follow Sorboni on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok.

Red as Blood

Riverdale meets fairytale in this edgy, seductive twist on the age-old stories you think you know.

When Penny Zale vanishes from the psychiatric hospital where she’s being held against her will, only her chopped-off braid and cryptic letters remain. If her friends Raven, Aarya, Dawn, and Elle have any chance of finding Penny, they must enter a world where money and power mean everything, and life is expendable.

The lies that built their town of Everbeach run deep, and someone is willing to do anything to keep them hidden. The girls believe Penny’s letters point to her ex, big sugar heir Logan Steele. When Raven tries to get close to Logan to gather information, she finds herself fighting a dangerous attraction to the magnetic billionaire.

Everything begins to unravel when Aarya discovers Raven has been keeping secrets. Raven’s painful past of anxiety and addiction causes her to spiral, and everyone, including Raven herself, starts to question her version of reality. As threats and attacks ramp up against the friends, they must decipher what happened to Penny before they’re the next to disappear.

Scandalous secrets, deadly twists, and forbidden love make this series perfect for fans of Inheritance Games, Thousandth Floor, and Pretty Little Liars.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 451

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 451: Collaborating on a Fairy Tale-Inspired YA Series – Interview with Sorboni Banerjee and Dominique Richardson appeared first on DIY MFA.

When it works, collaborating is brilliant fun. More minds on a project means more imaginative resources, more ideas about plot and character, more people to keep the thing going. There’s that magical sense of a new voice emerging, a creative whole that’s genuinely greater than the sum of its parts. And of course there’s the pleasure of sharing with like minds a creative process that can often otherwise be very lonely.

I’ve thought a lot about collaboration recently, as I’ve just co-written with a couple of pals Kitten on a Fatberg, a comic novel-in-emails about a very eccentric writer’s group. (They’ve all got a book in them, unfortunately.) Here are our top five tips for making a shared writing project work:

1) Make sure everyone is sold on the idea

Before you get going in earnest it’s vital that all of you are really invested in the idea, and that you spend some time fleshing out the structure and characters and arc. This gives you time to check that everyone is really engaged enough to want to see the project through. It’s also where that extra creative input can really make a difference: we found that when it came to plotting and characterisation, three heads were definitely better than one.  

2) Focus on the How as much as the What

Collaborating with one or more other writers is inevitably a more clunky process than writing on your own, so you need to have a robust way of working in place that can work for all involved.

Some collaborators take a different character each and write alternate POV chapters. Some people divide up outline, first draft and second draft. Some sit together and sweat over every sentence (not recommended). In our case, we set up an email account and devised a fluid structure where each character could fire in messages at will; this suited well the various time pressures of day jobs and parenting that each of us had to juggle.

Obviously there are no rules here, except to say that your communal MO will have to be one that sits fairly comfortably within the constraints of everyone’s daily schedule. A novel is a marathon, not a sprint, after all.  

3) Agree on some practical ground rules

Once you have hit on a basic working process, there will be other more granular—but just as crucial—questions to address. What if at some point you disagree on a way forward for the story? What if you dislike the edits your partner has done of your work? What if you feel you’re doing more of the work than they are?

There is no easy answer to any of these questions. Ideally you will have ironed out some of them in the thinking about planning and process. One good ground rule is to say that no co-author is allowed to undo the edits of another co-author; this can be quite a strong self-policing mechanism, of course, as it cuts in every direction.

Ultimately, though, you have to respect the people you work with, and to love the shared process; otherwise, what’s the point? Personally, I’m a big fan of the writing of both my co-authors, and feel very lucky that they have agreed to work with me. And we have always seen the books as ours, never as a bit mine (this bit) and a bit yours (that bit). When the voice of the book takes off, it belongs to all of you, together.

4) Schedule regular check-ins

When you’re busy drafting chapters, it’s easy to get your head down and lose sight of the bigger picture: Where is the story heading? Are we still on track? Are we all still happy? Does anything about the plot or the process need reconsidering?

Over the course of Kitten on a Fatberg, we met frequently to chat through such questions. The conversation usually began with a discussion of our different characters, as if we were catching up on absent friends. Though we had a rough idea of the various arcs at the start of the book, these inevitably changed dramatically over the course of the actual writing. Characters and plot points came and went, and gradually the path to the story’s madcap denouement became clear.

5) Divide up the post-writing jobs

Once you have a draft, there are of course still plenty of other jobs to do. There’s editing at various levels, from sense-checking structure and plot right down to proofing. There’s the work of submitting the manuscript. There’s the marketing hustle, the liaising with publishers and—in our case, as we’re with Unbound—the securing of pre-orders.

Different jobs play to different strengths. Different people have different amounts of available time. We found quite organically that these tasks sat naturally with different people. Alex sense-checked the plot, I enjoyed the marketing side, and Martin is already planning our next one. And that’s when you know that your process is working—when you’re ready and willing to do it all over again…

Dan Brotzel’s first collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, is due out in early 2020. He won the Riptide short story competition in 2018, and was Asda Christmas Cracker gag champion in 2004.

He wrote his latest book with co-authors Martin Jenkins a freelance writer, researcher and editor with numerous publications including an experimental novel A New Science of Navigation, and Alex Woolf who has written over 100 books for young people and old, both fact and fiction, published by the likes of OUP, Ladybird, Heinemann and Watts.

Their book Kitten on a Fatberg is now available from Unbound. As a DIY MFA reader, you can get 10% off Kitten on a Fatberg (Unbound) using the promo code KITTEN10!

The post #5onFri: Five Tips for a Successful Author Collaboration appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I am so excited to have Ashley and Leslie Saunders on the show!

Ashley and Leslie are award-winning filmmakers, twin sisters, and authors. Hailing from the suburbs of Dallas these two honed their love of storytelling at The University of Texas at Austin.

While researching their debut novel, The Rule of One, Ashley and Leslie fell in love with America’s national parks, as they traveled the path of their main characters (also twin sisters) Ava and Mira.

I’m reading The Rule of One right now, and OMG it is soooooo good! I was delighted to learn that this book will be followed by a sequel, The Rule Of Many, releasing in spring of 2019.

So listen in as Ashley, Leslie, and I chat about this awesome book, and and crafting a visually stunning near-fi dystopia on the page.

In this episode Ashley, Leslie, and I discuss:

• Crafting a realistic twin sister relationship.
• Worldbuilding techniques for “near-fi” stories.
• The challenges of writing a novel vs. a screenplay.
• How to build a visual story on the page.
• Why connecting with other writers can motivate you to keep writing.

Plus, Ashley’s and Leslie’s #1 tips for writers.

About Ashley and Leslie Saunders

Hailing from the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, Ashley Saunders and Leslie Saunders are award-winning filmmakers and twin sisters who honed their love of storytelling at The University of Texas at Austin. Their first novel, The Rule of One, is available now and will be followed by the sequel, The Rule Of Many, coming in spring of 2019.

While researching The Rule of One, they fell in love with America’s national parks, traveling the path of Ava and Mira. The sisters can currently be found with their Boston terriers in sunny Los Angeles, exploring hiking trails and drinking entirely too much yerba mate.

To connect with Ashley and Leslie check out their website at thesaunderssisters.com.

The Rule of One

In their world, telling the truth has become the most dangerous crime of all.

In the near-future United States, a one-child policy is ruthlessly enforced. Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life.

She has an identical twin sister, Mira.

For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives.

Branded as traitors, hunted as fugitives, and pushed to discover just how far they’ll go in order to stay alive, Ava and Mira rush headlong into a terrifying unknown.

If you decide to check out The Rule of One or would like to pre-order The Rule of Many we hope you’ll do so via these Amazon affiliate links, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 235

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 235: Double Trouble: Writing Near-Fi Dystopia — Interview with Ashley and Leslie Saunders appeared first on DIY MFA.

And welcome to our extra special Halloween episode, as today I have the pleasure of having the amazing mother-daughter writing team of P.C. and Kristin Cast on the show!

P.C. and Kristin are both New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors, most known for their wildly successful House of Night series. This mega popular series spanning numerous novels and novellas, celebrated its ten year anniversary in 2017.

In honor of this milestone, P.C. and Kristin dove back into this awesome world and created the all new House of Night: Other World series. The first novel, Loved, was released in 2017, with the second, Lost, just releasing in July of this year.

So listen in as we chat about these awesome Other World novels, and get a window into the whole House of Night series.

In this episode P.C., Kristin and I discuss:

• Tag team brainstorming.
• Worldbuilding techniques to expand your story’s world over multiple books.
• P.C.’s alternative universe character building exercise.
• How to stand out in an oversaturated market.
• Why you need to get graphic with your characters’ feelings.

Plus, both P.C.’s and Kristin’s #1 tip for writers.

About P.C. and Kristin Cast

P.C. Cast is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author whose novels have been awarded the prestigious Oklahoma Book Award, as well as the Prism, Booksellers Best, Holt Medallion, and more. She lives in Oregon with lots of dogs, cats, horses, and a burro.

Kristin Cast is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who teamed with her mother, P. C. Cast, to write the wildly successful House of Night series. She has a passion for all things paranormal.

Their latest series, House of Night: Other World, released its second novel Lost in July of 2018.

To connect with P.C. and Kristin Cast check out their website at www.infinitelyinteresting.co

Lost

Things have settled down at the Tulsa House of Night since Zoey and the gang closed the tear between worlds and sent Other Kevin back to the Other World. Neferet hasn’t stirred. Damien and Jack are falling in love all over again. Stevie Rae and Rephaim are back in Tulsa where they belong. The Depot Restaurant is being rebuilt with the enthusiastic involvement of local humans. A new school year has begun, and Zoey’s exchange student program with public schools is really taking off. All is well.

But if all is well, why is Zoey increasingly withdrawn and moody?

Sadly, Stark is sure he knows the answer to that question. Zoey can’t stop thinking about following her brother to the Other World, and Stark isn’t deluding himself about why. Of course she wants to be sure her brother is okay. Of course she wants to help defeat Neferet in yet another world and be sure the balance between Light and Darkness is restored.

But the real reason Z is so drawn to that other House of Night world is because Heath Luck, her childhood sweetheart, is alive in that world—alive and mourning her death.

In Lost, we follow Zoey, Stevie Rae, and Rephaim to an alternative version of the House of Night, where dangers take the form of friends and allies are found in the strangest places. Will Z return to our world and leave Heath to his? And if she does, will Stark forgive her for leaving? Find out in the second part of this exciting new House of Night Other World adventure!

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 224

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 224: Into the House of Night — Interview with P.C. and Kristin Cast appeared first on DIY MFA.