The Writing Coach

Professional beta reader Mia Garay explains how to work with beta readers: the difference between a beta reader and an editor, when your manuscript is ready, how to write a questionnaire that gets real answers, and how to get readers interested in your book.

Red Falls author Linda L. Garnett returns to talk music: writing lyrics and fan fiction at fourteen, trading mixtapes with pen pals, building Spotify playlists for her characters, and why indie musicians and indie authors ride the same train.

Lorraine Johnston's debut contemporary fantasy, The Call to Witchery, began in a morning journal in 2016. She talks about the ten-year journey to publication, building a world where witches are celebrities, writing a 35-year-old heroine who buried her magic, and how she's marketing the book one reader at a time.

Sci-fi and nonfiction author David Deane Haskell talks about the five-year writer's block that followed his sobriety, the floodgates that opened with The Solarian Deep and his memoir Wounded Angels, how he uses AI as a writer, and the message of hope at the heart of his work.

Sherilyn Decter spent two years and over twenty drafts turning a minor character from her Moonshiner Mysteries series into The Promise Trilogy. Here's how a single book became three, why she writes all of them at once, and what her revision process actually looks like.

Novelist and writing coach Ellen Baker joins her longtime client Terence Sullivan, whose viral TikTok series became the novel Alice of Oz, to talk about seven rounds of developmental edits, 75 agent queries, and why Terence self-publishing turned out to be the right call.

Usama Munir, founder of Design Dusk, walks through the real difference between pre-made and custom book covers, how genre conventions actually work, and where AI fits (and doesn't) in modern cover design.

Ron Black's debut novel 'Bleu: A Transgressive Tale' takes a hard look at addiction, the art world, and domestic violence, with the abuse running in a direction fiction rarely shows. Here's how a night-shift prompt became a book, and why an unlikable character just needs to be an understandable one.

J.E. Sheasby joins The Writing Coach to explore AI, sentience, futuristic crime, worldbuilding, and the decade-long journey behind his ambitious sci-fi series.

Kevin T. Johns interviews Nathan Lang, Barbados resident, hospitality expert, and co-host of the November 2026 Barbados Writing Retreat, about what writers can expect from five days on the Platinum Coast.