Tag: Jeevani Charika

Jeevani Charika: Doing Funky Things | Mark Stay’s Creative Differences Episode 16

Jeevani Charika writes award nominated romantic women’s fiction and romcoms. She’s written books on how to write romcoms, and sustaining a career as a writer and she also has an amazing YouTube channel teaching authors how to use Canva to make marketing graphics. Her latest book How Can I Resist You is out now! 

We Discuss: 

What she’s learned from her love of Korean dramas 

How ‘writing tighter’ has been good for her prose style 

How oversleeping led to a breakthrough in her career 

Why she enjoys doing funky things with Canva and much more… 

LISTEN NOW

Or watch on Youtube…

LINKS 

Jeevani’s website: http://www.rhodabaxter.com

Jeevani’s Canva Tips Youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/@jeevanicharika

Jeevani’s Substack: https://substack.com/@canvatips4author

What’s Giving Us Joy… 

A Merry Little Ex-mas (Netflix): https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81735104

T Kingfisher’s books with the Paladins (I earn commission if you click on this link): https://amzn.to/49ZV358

A Mind of My Own, Kathy Burke (I earn commission if you click on this link): https://amzn.to/4ovrNGJ

Cole Haddon’s 5am Storytalk: https://colehaddon.substack.com

50 Years of Shit Robots: https://shows.acast.com/fifty-years-of-shit-robots

Film Stories: https://filmstories.co.uk/category/podcast/

Pluribus: https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/pluribus/umc.cmc.37axgovs2yozlyh3c2cmwzlza

A huge thanks to Emily for production assistance, to Kai Newton for the edit, and Dominic Currie for the jingle. 

Support the show 

Visit https://markstaycreativedifferences.com/

Join The Green Room: https://ko-fi.com/markstaywriter/tiers

Buy my books here: https://witchesofwoodville.com/#bookshop

And there’s more about me at: https://markstaywrites.com/

Jeevani Charika on the Creative Differences Livestream

Jeevani Charika (‘Jeev’) writes award nominated romantic women’s fiction and romcoms. She also writes under the name Rhoda Baxter.
She is a ‘resting’ microbiologist – she used to study Rhodabacter species, which is why her other pen name is Rhoda Baxter. She lives in Yorkshire in the UK, where she enjoys eating cake, playing with Lego and, when she’s run out of excuses, writing.
She has a YouTube channel teaching authors how to use Canva to make marketing graphics and her latest book How Can I Resist You is out now!

Join us on TUESDAY 18th NOVEMBER, 8PM GMT

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Or on Youtube…

Fancy Some Magical Mischief?

I’ve got a (sort of) short story in this excellent new collection of short stories from the listeners of the Bestseller Experiment podcast (click on the image to get your hands on a copy)…

Why only sort of? Here’s my authors’ note from the collection…

Author’s Note (and excuse)

What you’re about to read is not exactly a short story. I did start one — honest, guv! — and it was a belter, all set in the world of my Witches of Woodville series. It started in the 1920s and ended in the 1970s*… which is where the problems started. As I began jotting down ideas for the story it soon became clear that I wasn’t about to squeeze it all into the allotted five thousand words. No, it soon became clear that this was going to be a whopper, perhaps even a novel all of its own. And things happen in the story that, at first, I thought I didn’t want to rush. Then it occurred to me that the real reason that I didn’t want to rush it was that, actually, I might not be ready to write them yet, as it meant saying a final farewell to certain characters. So I’ve popped that story back into a drawer at the back of my mind and will wait till the time is right to go back and see if I’m ready to finally [REDACTED] to poor old [REDACTED].

And if that wasn’t enough of a tease, then what you’re about to read is the first chapter of a thing that might never happen. It’s a new story, set in the world of the Witches of Woodville, and I’m still wondering where it might go, if anywhere. But I had great fun writing this opening chapter and I think it almost works as its own little standalone moment. So, in the spirit of mischief, I offer you The Canary Girls…

Happy reading, and please send all complaints to Miss Araminta Cranberry at the Woodville Village Library,

Mark Stay

*If you’ve ever wondered why the Woodville Village motto is ‘Witch-free since 1973’ this story was going to reveal all

So there you have it… and don’t forget, the anthology is packed with terrific stories from amazing authors, including (deep breath) W. J. Grupe, Jr, Rosie Stirling, Phil Oddy, Jeevani Charika, Jan Carr, Eva St. John, Dylan Blake, Anne Woodward, Angela C Nurse, Andrea Corzatt, BR Dexter, ZA Gowland, WA Leggatt, Trey Montague, Tommy Wills, Morgan Delaney, Kate Baker, Karen Storey, Julian Barr, Jocelyn Sordoni, GM White, GB Ralph, Gareth Lewis, Emmanuella Dekonor, Andrew Guile, Andrew Chapman, Alex Weight, SC Gowland.

Treat yourself…

Get your copy here

My Last Ever Episode of the Bestseller Experiment Podcast

Merry Christmas! That’s if you celebrate, if not then Happy Monday! Mondays have been ‘New Podcast Day’ for the last seven and a bit years, and today marks the release of my last ever episode of The Bestseller Experiment as co-presenter. Why am I leaving? I explain myself in full here. And rest assured that this isn’t the end of the podcast: Mr D will continue and it’s going to be amazing.

What will I be up to in the meantime? Well, stand by for an update in the New Year. Until then, here’s our special Christmas episode where I share some of my favourite moments, outtakes, and we get a visit from a very special elf…

Peter May on the Bestseller Experiment

Peter May has this uncanny knack of peeking into the near future, writing about it, and getting it right. He did it with his novel Lockdown, which was about a SARS-like pandemic. It was rejected by all the major publishers for being unrealistic… Those same publishers clamoured to buy it when Covid changed all our lives. He’s done it again with his novel A Winter Grave, which is set in a near future that’s been ravaged by climate change.

If this all sounds a bit grim, don’t worry. Me and my guest co-presenter Caimh McDonnell do a good job of lowering the tone with some grounded writing advice. And this is the episode where I reveal why Caimh is thanked in the credits of Unwelcome.

Oh, and if you’re watching the Youtube version, have fun spotting the moments where my internet dropped out and either me or Caimh have baffled expressions on our faces…

More podcast goodness for your ears (and mind…)

We’ve had two cracking – a very different – episodes of the Bestseller Experiment recently. First up is a report from The Romantic Novelists’ Association conference in Leeds where I spoke to Rhoda Baxter, Nicola Cornick and Sheila Crighton (aka Annie O’Neil) about all sorts of love including instalust, passionate blur and the scale of hotness. And it was great to finally meet Rhoda Baxter (aka Jeevani Charika), who also proved the Lego image above! Listen to the podcast here.

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Rhoda (Jeevani) and me at the RNA

This week’s podcast features John McGhie, an investigative journalist who has worked for the BBC, Channel 4 News and the Observer. John and I met on Whitstable beach at the peak of the football world cup at what felt like a brief moment of optimism in an otherwise politically depressing 2018. We cheer ourselves up by talking about the historical atrocities chronicled in John’s excellent new book White Highlands! No, really, it’s a fascinating episode and we cover writing historical fiction in some detail. Listen here.

And if you want to know more, the documentary that inspired John’s book can be seen here…

And last but by no means least I was once again on the Dominic King show on BBC Radio Kent in the conversation slot. We chatted about YALC, YA fiction, The End of Magic, podcasts, soundtracks and I even wheel out my Sean Connery impression. You can listen here and for my bit skip forwards to 2 hours and 11 minutes…

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Here are links to stuff I talk about on the shows below…