What happens when the story you need to tell won't let you write it until you're ready? This week Jenna and Cait sit down with Kathy Sherbrooke (Katherine A. Sherbrooke), author of the new novel This Much Is True, out September 17th. It's a conversation about elapsed time, trusting your subconscious, and making the case for protagonists who have some real life experience behind them.

What happens when a sous vide nerd falls hard for a war college full of dragons? You get a cookbook. This week we sit down with Chelsea Cole, the mind behind A Guide to the Kitchen Quadrant, the (unofficial) Fourth Wing cookbook that is embossed, spot glossed, and frankly prettier than most things in our houses. We get into how you build a recipe out of four passing food mentions, why aesthetic is the entire point, and how she turns a book launch into a full night at Basgiath (axe throwing, a maker's market, and a marketplace throne included). Come hungry. Leave manifesting Rebecca Yarros's phone number.

When Elizabeth Richardson's novel TRAD died on submission, she did something a lot of authors are told never to do: she published it herself, one chapter at a time, on Substack. In a single summer she built an audience of 800+ readers, turned her book into a twice-weekly must-read, and proved that a "dead" manuscript can have a very loud second life. In this episode, Elizabeth joins Cait and Jenna to talk about the highs and lows of querying and going on sub, why toxic positivity runs rampant in publishing, and how the no-rules era of indie publishing is opening doors that used to be firmly shut. She shares her surprisingly simple serialization strategy (it started with fanfiction), why she treats every release like a debut, and the hustle behind actually getting people to read your work. Whether you're querying, on sub, or just Substack-curious, this one's for you.

Debut author Emily joins Jenna and Cait to talk The Care and Feeding of Dead Mothers, a psychological thriller set in the Wisconsin Northwoods. Margot Hale flees Manhattan after her career collapses, only to have her estranged sister and long-buried trauma come clawing back. Emily digs into her wild Wisconsin research, her indie publishing journey, and the unhinged meta-twist waiting in book two. Dark, twisty, and exactly our kind of story.

Travel rom-com author Kat Mackenzie joins us to talk about her new release, Experiments in Offline Dating, set around a real Irish matchmaking festival in County Clare. We dig into how she lived the research in Ireland, writing authentic dialect, her six rescue dogs, the art of a good insult, and her honest take on the indie vs trad publishing divide. Pour a marg and settle in.

This episode's Lime Light shines on Marissa Malson, author of the Average Jane PI series, cozy-adjacent mysteries following a delightfully forgettable private investigator with a knack for landing in the middle of a heist. We talk about the book that arrived fully formed after a yoga class, building her own publishing company with her sister, and why author events became her secret weapon.