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.

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.