Well… That Didn’t Work

Dakoda Mazzi, author of the dark fantasy trilogy The Fate of Astoran, joins us to talk about querying, landing an agent, and walking away to publish on her own terms. We dig into how she built a devoted fanbase through human-made art, newsletters, and giveaways, why she refuses to write to market, and why book three gets no deadline. Plus real talk about day jobs, risk, and why the author community needs to remember we're all on the same team.

Elizabeth Gillman joins Jenna and Cait to talk about her novel, Maybe, Maybe Not. Annie has learned to live well with her OCD, but travel has always been off the table, and she has never left her little Gulf Coast community. When her boss offers to sell her the boutique she has worked in since she was a teenager, Annie finally decides to face travel with her fearless best friend Kat by her side. Then Kat dies unexpectedly, leaving behind a list of offbeat places to scatter her ashes and a surly little brother to help get it done. It is funny, it is tender, and it is full of road trip energy. We get into why OCD is not the antagonist of this story, the deeply personal reason Elizabeth wrote it, the octopus hiding on her gorgeous cover, and her ten-year road to publication.

Katie Jung joins us to talk about her debut romance, You're the One That I Haunt, and the surprisingly hard rules of writing a love interest who can't be touched. We dig into how Trip became a ghost in the first place, the logic she had to build so the "rules" of a paranormal romance actually hold up (turns out you don't need to explain everything, sometimes a ghost is just an octopus), and why every bit of magic in a story needs to earn its place in the plot.