Can’t think of a better author to wrap up 2023 on the Bestseller Experiment with than Mike Gayle. He’s celebrating 25 years of his amazing debut novel My Legendary Girlfriend and he’s got a new one out, A Song of Me and You. We chat about keeping warm in the winter (we’re middle aged writers, so this is relevant!), how to make unlikeable characters engaging, and the really important lesson he learned from being the agony uncle for the teen magazine Bliss in the 90s…
Tag: libraries
Getting Emotional with Ivy Ngeow
Ivy Ngeow is a powerhouse of creativity. A musician, a novelist and writer of cookery books, diet books, interior design, she’s done it. Her new novel is The American Boyfriend and she talks about how she studied bestsellers before writing it to better understand what makes a smash hit and it’s paid off as she now has an international hit and is signing books at places like Singapore airport!
Then in the extended edition for our Academy members and Patreon supporters, me and Mr D discuss the different routes to market for your novels, including airports, supermarkets and gift boxes and loot crates! You can support the podcast and get hundreds of hours of extra material here.
I got a rejection this week… and I’m in good company…
I loved this Tweet from VE Schwab asking authors if they had received rejections of their work recently…
She was deluged with replies, some from some very big names, and one from me. Only last week, I had a book pitch rejected by a publisher. The response I got was, “We pissed ourselves laughing, we loved it, we just don’t know how to sell it.” And that’s fine. I appreciate the honesty and know that there would be nothing worse than slogging away on a novel for however many months only for the publisher to give a shrug on publication.
I more positive news I was inspired by blog posts from a couple of writers friends. Julian Barr talks about what he strives for here, and Laurence Doherty talks about working up from rejections to the NI New Writers Focus Scheme here.
And the big treat for the week is the Bestseller Experiment live show with Orion editor Emad Akhtar (pictured above). He answered all sorts of listener questions on writing, editing, storytelling and WWE wrestling… Yes really. You can listen here.
Till next time, happy writing!
Lara Dearman on the Bestseller Experiment
We had the brilliant and all round lovely author Lara Dearman on the podcast this week. Lara is a debut novelist who has gone from community college courses to a major publishing deal with her book The Devil’s Claw. It’s an inspirational listen and I know Lara will go on to great things. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN NOW
Also have a listen to this week’s Deep Dive, where Mr. D and I discuss the topics brought up by our chat with Lara, and I reveal my true feelings about Enid Blyton. CLICK HERE for a wee snippet.
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If you liked that episode and want some more, we’ve started having post-podcast deep dive discussions for our Patreon supporters. You can support us and get the extra content here.
And if you’re looking for something new to read in 2018, then grab a copy of our novel Back to Reality on Kindle now!
Mark Stay Writes 