18Jun/21

D’yan Forest

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June 18, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome D’yan Forest and Stephen Clarke as the guests on Season 6, Episode 24 – Try Thinking The D’yan Way!

D’yan Forest & Stephen Clarke join us to talk about living a full life, creating both stand-up and written comedy, their co-authored memoir “I Did It My Ways” and asking the difficult questions.

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D’yan Forest has always done things her way – or her ways, because she’s lived a dozen different lives. She’s been a desperate Boston housewife, a New York night-club singer and a Paris swinger. She’s been the only Jewish girl in a Christian choir and the female pianist in a transvestite cabaret. She had day jobs teaching basketball, piano and sex education. She dated Paris’s second-ever female bus driver, a transsexual rock guitarist and a defrocked nun. She also managed to get German friends to visit Nazi concentration camps, on her personal quest to understand why her European relatives were massacred. At 86, D’yan is still a working stand-up comedian and musician, but she’s much, much more than that, as her hilarious but heartfelt memoir reveals.

Stephen Clarke grew up in Bournemouth (the Bondi Beach of England), where he played bass in some of the worst rock bands in musical history before leaving town to study French and German at Oxford. After university, he got a series of high-powered jobs – in the wine industry (grape picking), tertiary sector (washing up in a German hotel), and in international diplomacy (teaching English to bored French businessmen). Meanwhile I started writing novels, all of which remained unpublished due to a vast – and never before revealed – conspiracy in the global publishing industry. Deciding to self-publish, his Paul West series includes a sequel to a sequel. Stephen also does his bit for non-fiction, though still through his delightful comedic lens.

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18Jun/21

Stephen Clarke

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June 18, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome D’yan Forest and Stephen Clarke as the guests on Season 6, Episode 24 – Try Thinking The D’yan Way!

D’yan Forest & Stephen Clarke join us to talk about living a full life, creating both stand-up and written comedy, their co-authored memoir “I Did It My Ways” and asking the difficult questions.

Follow D’yan and support her work:

Follow Stephen and support his work:

Mentioned in this episode:

Bio:

D’yan Forest has always done things her way – or her ways, because she’s lived a dozen different lives. She’s been a desperate Boston housewife, a New York night-club singer and a Paris swinger. She’s been the only Jewish girl in a Christian choir and the female pianist in a transvestite cabaret. She had day jobs teaching basketball, piano and sex education. She dated Paris’s second-ever female bus driver, a transsexual rock guitarist and a defrocked nun. She also managed to get German friends to visit Nazi concentration camps, on her personal quest to understand why her European relatives were massacred. At 86, D’yan is still a working stand-up comedian and musician, but she’s much, much more than that, as her hilarious but heartfelt memoir reveals.

Stephen Clarke grew up in Bournemouth (the Bondi Beach of England), where he played bass in some of the worst rock bands in musical history before leaving town to study French and German at Oxford. After university, he got a series of high-powered jobs – in the wine industry (grape picking), tertiary sector (washing up in a German hotel), and in international diplomacy (teaching English to bored French businessmen). Meanwhile I started writing novels, all of which remained unpublished due to a vast – and never before revealed – conspiracy in the global publishing industry. Deciding to self-publish, his Paul West series includes a sequel to a sequel. Stephen also does his bit for non-fiction, though still through his delightful comedic lens.

This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
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11Jun/21

Peter M. Krask

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June 11, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Peter M. Krask as the guest on Season 6, Episode 23 – Who Are You Going To Be?

Peter M. Krask, the “Project Whisperer” shares his love of the creative process and nurturing creative artists by introducing us to The Creativity Guide. We cover the necessity of artistic expression, ways to work through creative blocks and stuck points, and discuss ways to view creative feedback.

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PETER M. KRASK is an artist based in New York City whose practice is concentrated in photography and writing. Krask has studied at the International Center of Photography and worked privately with photographer Carol Dragon. His non-fiction essay, The Question I Asked Him, opens the anthology The Man I Might Become and his memoir, The Way the Stars Come Home, was included in the anthology Wrestling with the Angel. He has written features and criticism for The Baltimore Sun, The City Paper, and The Boston Phoenix.

Krask is the librettist of the opera With Blood, With Ink, which received its acclaimed professional premiere at the Fort Worth Opera Festival, and has been twice featured on New York City Opera’s VOX festival, and produced by universities around the country.

Peter holds a Master’s Degree in Critical Studies from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.

Krask is the Founder and Creative Director of The Creativity Guide which was launched in 2019. He is returning as a Dedicated Mentor at the New Museum in New York City for their New Inc. Program. A frequent podcast guest, he has recently been heard discussing creative entrepreneurship on Queer Money and the intersections of LGBT spirituality and creativity as they connect with questions of personal and communal desire on The Forbidden Apple.

This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
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04Jun/21

Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, & Fiona Zedde

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June 4, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, & Fiona Zedde as the guest on Season 6, Episode 22 – Worthy of a Sheet Protector!

Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, and Fiona Zedde join us for a hilarious unveiling of their new book of three individual novellas that are bound together, Love, Blood, and Sanctuary. The innuendos, double entendres and comedic riffs happen so fast with this episode, we could almost classify it as a “jam session!”

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Bio:

Brenda Murphy (she/her) writes erotic romance. You can catch her musings on writing, books, and living with wicked ADHD on her blog Writing While Distracted. She loves sideshows and tattoos and yes, those are her monkeys. When she is not loitering at her local library, she wrangles twins, one dog, and an unrepentant parrot.

Megan Hart writes books. Some of them use bad words, but most of the other words are okay. Some of them hit bestseller lists and win awards and some don’t, but that’s the way it goes. She can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but she and soda have achieved an amicable uncoupling. She loathes the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves her cold. She writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance, though she’s best known for writing steamy fiction that sometimes makes you cry.

Fiona Zedde was born under the Jamaican sun but now makes her home in Spain. Since getting the writing bug, she’s published around thirty books and short stories, mostly about black queer romance. At this very second, she’s probably writing another book, and it has 100 percent chance of having queer romance and queer women in it. Her pseudo-healthy obsessions are French pastries, English cars, and Jamaican food.

This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
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04Jun/21

Fiona Zedde

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June 4, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, & Fiona Zedde as the guest on Season 6, Episode 22 – Worthy of a Sheet Protector!

Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, and Fiona Zedde join us for a hilarious unveiling of their new book of three individual novellas that are bound together, Love, Blood, and Sanctuary. The innuendos, double entendres and comedic riffs happen so fast with this episode, we could almost classify it as a “jam session!”

Follow Brenda and support her work:

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Follow Fiona and support her work:

Mentioned in this episode:

Bio:

Brenda Murphy (she/her) writes erotic romance. You can catch her musings on writing, books, and living with wicked ADHD on her blog Writing While Distracted. She loves sideshows and tattoos and yes, those are her monkeys. When she is not loitering at her local library, she wrangles twins, one dog, and an unrepentant parrot.

Megan Hart writes books. Some of them use bad words, but most of the other words are okay. Some of them hit bestseller lists and win awards and some don’t, but that’s the way it goes. She can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but she and soda have achieved an amicable uncoupling. She loathes the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves her cold. She writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance, though she’s best known for writing steamy fiction that sometimes makes you cry.

Fiona Zedde was born under the Jamaican sun but now makes her home in Spain. Since getting the writing bug, she’s published around thirty books and short stories, mostly about black queer romance. At this very second, she’s probably writing another book, and it has 100 percent chance of having queer romance and queer women in it. Her pseudo-healthy obsessions are French pastries, English cars, and Jamaican food.

This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
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Or Listen Right Here:

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04Jun/21

Megan Hart

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June 4, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, & Fiona Zedde as the guest on Season 6, Episode 22 – Worthy of a Sheet Protector!

Brenda Murphy, Megan Hart, and Fiona Zedde join us for a hilarious unveiling of their new book of three individual novellas that are bound together, Love, Blood, and Sanctuary. The innuendos, double entendres and comedic riffs happen so fast with this episode, we could almost classify it as a “jam session!”

Follow Brenda and support her work:

Follow Megan and support her work:

Follow Fiona and support her work:

Mentioned in this episode:

Bio:

Brenda Murphy (she/her) writes erotic romance. You can catch her musings on writing, books, and living with wicked ADHD on her blog Writing While Distracted. She loves sideshows and tattoos and yes, those are her monkeys. When she is not loitering at her local library, she wrangles twins, one dog, and an unrepentant parrot.

Megan Hart writes books. Some of them use bad words, but most of the other words are okay. Some of them hit bestseller lists and win awards and some don’t, but that’s the way it goes. She can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but she and soda have achieved an amicable uncoupling. She loathes the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves her cold. She writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance, though she’s best known for writing steamy fiction that sometimes makes you cry.

Fiona Zedde was born under the Jamaican sun but now makes her home in Spain. Since getting the writing bug, she’s published around thirty books and short stories, mostly about black queer romance. At this very second, she’s probably writing another book, and it has 100 percent chance of having queer romance and queer women in it. Her pseudo-healthy obsessions are French pastries, English cars, and Jamaican food.

This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
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Or Listen Right Here:

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January 31, 2020


It gives us great pleasure to welcome Brenda Murphy and Megan Hart as the guests on Episode 253 – Intimacy With My Imaginary Friends!

Brenda Murphy and Megan Hart join us to discuss their duology release, Soul Burn, and how the team-up happened thanks to a fun road trip!

Books mentioned in this episode:

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Bio:

Megan Hart writes books. Some of them might break your heart a little, but she promises you, it will all be okay.
She loves: glitter, zombies, rainbows, unicorns, breakfast, diners, singing, dancing, reading, movies, hummingbirds, SeaMonkeys, tattoos, bees, octopuses, breakfast, the ocean, whiskey, onion rings, roses and the smell of rain on the summer pavement.
Occasionally, she takes a selfie. Or ten. She also writes under the name Mina Hardy.

Brenda Murphy writes short fiction and novels. She loves tattoos and sideshows and yes, those are her monkeys. When she is not loitering at her local library and writing, she wrangles two kids, one dog, and an unrepentant parrot. She reviews books, blogs about life as a writer with ADHD and publishes photographs on her blog Writing While Distracted.

This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
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26May/21

Review – The Called by M.D. Neu

Review, , , , , ,

M.D. Neu was interviewed on WROTE in February 2021. To find out more about him and his work, check out Episode 308 – Oh God What Was I Thinking?

I read The Calling back in 2018, so I had to play a bit of catch up to grasp The Called, which is the second book in the series. Duncan, as referred to in the blurb for The Calling, is now Chris, as he had to leave his old life behind once becoming one of the Immortals.

This is an enjoyable second instalment, with Chris finding out who his real friends are and his burgeoning relationship with Kirtus happening quietly in the wings. In fact, the whole book is subtly done, without the brash colour of the first novel. The plot could also have been tightened up a little. It could be confusing at times and when that happened, I struggled to remain engaged with the story.

The story is much more character- than action-driven, and the characters are very likeable, with chemistry between the leads and a strong sense of the practicalities of being a vampire, without a sparkle in sight.

Although the tension could have been ramped up more, and it all felt somewhat low-key and a bit dour in parts, there’s a wry sense of humour running through the book, again so subtle some might miss it. I can’t help help thinking the author needs to shake loose a little and allow themselves to go all out, as the overall tone felt restrained. However, I’ll be very interested to see what happens next.

BLURB

The world is changing quickly for Chris now that he’s part of the Immortal Community. With the events of his past finally behind him, he’s still having visions and true magic is gradually taking hold in the world. Chris is still new and has no real standing in the Immortal Community, but he is learning that nothing is what he thought.

Old enemies must work together and longtime friends may not be trustworthy. With Juliet, Amanda, and Kirtus by his side, they have to prevent the immortal and witch community from being exposed.

New friendships are made, and longtime alliances are called into question. How will The Called defeat these latest threats, and what does it mean for the world?

21May/21

Alexander Watson

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May 21, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Alexander Watson as the guest on Season 6, Episode 20 – Is Madam Having Coffee?

Alexander Watson delights and entertains us with the story behind his book River Queens. We discuss everything from upending one’s life, meeting river folk who’ve never seen a gay man, and partner shenanigans that strengthened the relationship.

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The Harrises are strict teetotaling, sabbatarian farmers, but Dale drinks. The Watsons are urbane, philandering, wanton alcoholics, but Alexander does not drink. These are but two of the myriad incongruities which bind their thirty-year partnership together.

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07May/21

AM Leibowitz

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May 7, 2021

It gives us great pleasure to welcome AM Leibowitz back as the guest on Season 6, Episode 18 – We Can Just Make It Normal!

AM Leibowitz joins Vance and Baz for a great discussion of their latest release, Every Time We Meet. This leads us to discussing sapphic fiction, queer parenting, and the importance of nonbinary representation within fiction as well as outside of it.

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A.M. Leibowitz is the author of literary and romantic fiction who refuses to color inside the lines. They are a freelance editor and remover of stray commas. Their blog offers commentary on books, writing, life, and spirituality. … Spouse, parent, queer, feminist, reader, and writer falling somewhere on the Geek-Nerd Spectrum.

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August 17, 2018

It gives us great pleasure to welcome A. M. Leibowitz as the guest on Episode 179 – I Don’t Need A Word I’m Just Me!!

AM (Amy) Leibowitz joins us to talk about her new release Drumbeat and her novella Year of the Guilty Soul. We also talk craft, Bi-Erasure/Phobia and the impact of invisible disability in literary and media works.

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Books Mentioned in This Episode:

Read Jayne’s Review of Drumbeat here: http://www.wrotepodcast.com/drumbeat-by-a-m-leibowitz/

Bio:

Amy Leibowitz is a queer spouse, parent, feminist, and book-lover falling somewhere on the Geek-Nerd Spectrum. They keep warm through the long, cold western New York winters by writing about life, relationships, hope, and happy-for-now endings. Their published fiction includes several novels as well as a number of short works, and their stories have been included in anthologies from Supposed Crimes, Beaten Track, Witty Bard, and Mischief Corner Books. They are an occasional host for The BiCast, a podcast for the bi+ community, as well as doing bi+ advocacy work and curating the best-of bi list on the QueerBooksForTeens website. They are a social media contributor for Supposed Crimes, LLC, and they post about news, reviews, and updates for the website. In between noveling and freelance editing, they blog coffee-fueled, quirky commentary on faith, culture, writing, books, and their family.

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06May/21

Review – Dropnauts by J. Scott Coatsworth

Review, , , , , , , , , ,

J. Scott Coatsworth was recently interviewed on WROTE! Check out Episode 315: Oh My God We’re Gonna Die, to find out more about Scott and his work.

One thing you can expect from this author is superlative world-building, as I discovered when reading other books in the Liminal Sky series. There are a ton of them, and I’ve given up making sense of which book belongs where, but it doesn’t matter. This is a standalone novel as far as I can tell, although by the end, you may well be wishing for another in the series. The blurb does a good job of describing what to expect. Basically, the titular Dropnauts are on a quest to see if the Earth could be recolonised.

It’s an accepted belief there is no one left down there but they are wrong. The team get split up, meet a couple of Earth dwellers and get split up again into teams of two. With sinister drones and the dawning realisation that the AI designed to protect them is actually working against them, this is a familiar story to anyone who loves their sci-fi. Familiar, but not tired. There are sparky characters with history, new attractions, a diverse range of gender and sexuality, a tribe of vengeful women and two Earth-dwellers wanting to find medication for their sick mother.

There are great human stories within all the tech-speak. The hard-core sci fi nuts will love the intellectual-speak, the science-y stuff and the various AI’s doing battle inside each other’s heads. Lovers of human stories will enjoy the frisson of attraction between Hera and Ghost, Sanya and Rafe and Rai and Aidan. There’s a heart-stopping finale as everyone races to save both Luna and the Earth from doom. It’s all very exciting and intelligent and fun, with relatable characters and a thrilling denouement.

BLURB

Over a century after the end of the Earth, life goes on in Redemption, the sole remaining lunar colony, and possibly the last outpost of humankind in the Solar System. But with an existential threat burrowing its way to the Moon’s core, humanity must recolonize the homeworld.

Twenty brave dropnauts set off on a mission to explore the empty planet. After training for two and a half years, four of them—Rai, Hera, Ghost and Tien—are bound for Martinez Base, just outside the Old Earth city of San Francisco.

But what awaits them there will turn their assumptions upside down—and in the process, either save or destroy what’s left of humanity.