Rachael Herron's editor once gave her a note that's stuck with her ever since: \"less feely, more stabby.\" She'd written a thriller with too much heart in it, and had to go back through and strip warmth out in favour of terror. It's a small, funny detail β but it points at something bigger this episode digs into: the tension between writing what sells and writing what you actually love, and what happens to a career when you finally stop chasing the market.
Rachael Herron is the international and USA Today bestselling author of more than two dozen books spanning fantasy, thrillers (written as R.H. Herron), mainstream fiction, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She holds an MFA from Mills College and has taught writing extension workshops at UC Berkeley and Stanford. A dual Kiwi-American citizen, she now lives in Wellington, New Zealand, five years after relocating from the US with her wife during the pandemic.
We get into the fantasy novel she wrote purely for herself β with no market strategy at all β that became her first USA Today bestseller, why she now makes more money from an unpromoted self-published backlist than from actively marketed new releases, and why she believes chasing sales math (\"if I can write this much in two hours...\") is a trap that destroys writers. We also talk candidly about jealousy versus insecurity among peers, why she hates every promotional email she's ever sent, and how running her podcast for years has quietly become the thing that keeps her from ever fully quitting writing.
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π₯οΈ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair
π About Rachael Herron
Rachael Herron is the international and USA Today bestselling author of more than two dozen books, including fantasy, thrillers (under R.H. Herron), mainstream fiction, romance, memoir, and nonfiction about writing. She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland, and sheβs taught writing extension workshops at both UC Berkeley and Stanford. A dual New Zealand and American citizen, she lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her banjo-playing wife and brick-eating dog.
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