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…
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.
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…
My co-presenter this week was the wonderful Jenn McMenemy, whose own podcast The Ancient History Fangirl, has just launched its second episode and it’s a blast. Check it out here.
In other news, I hit 60% funded on The End of Magic this week! A huge thanks to everyone who has supported the book so far. As a reward (punishment) here’s me reading from the book with another terrible “comedy” accent…