Dear Rach & Soph

Even if you don’t read spicy books, as they’ve come to be known, you’ve no doubt read spicy scenes in other books (and we're using the term ‘spicy’ instead of the other because we’d have to use an asterisk in that to avoid internet-consequences, plus we're sure you understand what we mean when we say ‘spicy’). If you are a writer of spicy books, you’ve definitely written them, and even if you don’t write spicy books you may have written spicy scenes anyway.Soph reads spicy books. Both Rach and Soph have both written spicy books - although Soph's are no longer available and were under a completely different name - and Rach writes spicy scenes in other books. So when Rach suggested we talk about writing spicy scenes, of course Soph agreed.What follows in this podcast episode is Soph doing a lot of laughing and Rach essentially giving a masterclass in how to write spicy scenes. [Note from Soph: writers, I thoroughly suggest you take notes because she has so many good tips!]Writers - do you have a challenge or conundrum, or a question about process, how to get started, or anything at all to do with writing? We’d love to be your writing agony aunts.Readers - we would love to hear from you too! You can ask us questions about our books … and we’d also be happy to be YOUR agony aunts. We may not have professional qualifications but we sort out problems for our characters all the time, so if you’d like to get something off your chest/ask for some input/just see what we think about something, let us know.If you have a question for us, please email sophie@sophie-green-author.com and put ‘Dear Rach & Soph’ in the subject line.And if you’d like to actually be in the podcast with us while we answer your question, please let us know in the email.For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

In this episode we talk to Lainie Anderson, author of the new novel The Death of Dora Black: A Petticoat Police Mystery. We had a lovely time, as Lainie was warm and engaging and very, very interesting. If you'd like to see Sophie's review of the book, it's here. If you'd like to read more about the book and Lainie, you're in luck! That information appears below. ABOUT THE DEATH OF DORA BLACK A charming, uplifting cosy murder mystery inspired by the true story of Australia's pioneering policewoman Kate Cocks Summer, Adelaide, 1917. The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister, and determine to take matters into their own hands. After all, who knows Adelaide better than the indomitable Miss Cocks? *In 1915, Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary as men. This novel is a rich exploration of that little-known chapter of Australian history.* ABOUT LAINIE ANDERSON Lainie Anderson is a writer whose 35-year career in journalism and public relations includes 17 years as a columnist with Adelaide's Sunday Mail, as well as stints at Melbourne's Herald Sun, London's The Times and the South Australian Tourism Commission. After being awarded a Churchill Fellowship, Lainie published her debut novel Long Flight Home in 2019. In 2024, Lainie completed a PhD with the University of South Australia, researching the life of Kate Cocks, the inspiration behind The Death of Dora Black. In 2023 she was announced as the Emerging Historian of the Year by the History Council of South Australia. The Death of Dora Black is her second book. For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

Ambition is a tricky subject for Australians - our Tall Poppy Syndrome is alive and well, and when you combine that with lingering Cultural Cringe, for an Australian writer to say they have ambitions/that they are ambitious can be seen as cringey in and of itself.Well, we decided that it’s too bad if anyone sees us as cringey - or, rather, we don’t care, because we do have ambition and we wanted to talk about it. Partly because we hope that by naming it, by talking about it, other writers (especially female writers, since girls and women tend to be socialised to not have or own up to ambition) may feel that they can claim their own ambition. And also consider what they’re ambitious for.So in this, the first episode of the second season of Dear Rach & Soph - a podcast that exists partly because we have ambitions: to make interesting stuff, to communicate with other writers, to be useful - we discuss our ambitions, what forms ambition can take and how it can affect writing.As with last season, this season’s episodes are released out of recording order, so don’t attach too much to the timing of what’s in the intro for each …We hope you enjoy this episode, and this season, and while we’ve already had some listener questions to cover, we welcome more. Either send one of us a DM or email sophie@sophie-green-author.comThanks in advance for listening! And for another take on 'grand ambition', go here.For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

When we recorded our first episode of our podcast, Dear Rach & Soph, earlier this year, we talked about her then-new novel The Other Bridget. So even though we've wrapped the first season, Rachael suggested we do an episode devoted to Sophie's new novel, Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel. So this is a bonus episode of the podcast - or a bridging episode, if you will, since we have already started recording season two! We have so appreciated the feedback from listeners, including telling us that you miss the pod, so we hope you enjoy this episode and we'll be back soon. For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (published in August 2024)

When we started this podcast we don’t think either of us had a single thought about how long it might go for - probably not this long! It's hard to believe we’ve released an episode a week for the past 17 Sundays, but we haven’t run out of things to talk about and we still have a long list of subjects we’d like to discuss. However, we’re going to take a little break as we both have books to write.In this, our final episode of season 1 (as we do plan to do a season 2), we discuss Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book that Rach has held dear for a while and which Soph read for this podcast but wishes she’d read earlier. She listened to the audiobook, narrated by Gilbert, and loved that experience, but then went and bought the print book as I wanted to have it to refer to. It’s a special book, partly because of how cleanly and clearly Gilbert expresses herself. In this episode Rach and Soph discuss some elements of the book - definitely not all - in light of our own experience as writers. Happily listening, and we’ll be back!For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening SocietyHer next book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (to be published in August 2024)

This is the penultimate episode of the first season of Dear Rach & Soph - Rachael and Sophie both have books to write, so we need to focus on those - but we have a long list of subjects we’d like to cover in future episodes so we will be back! In this episode we were very happy to chat to Susannah Begbie, author of The Deed, which won the Richell Prize in 2022. The Richell is a joint project of @hachetteaus and @emergingwriters; entries for the 2024 prize are open now and closing on 7 July. Details at https://emergingwritersfestival.org.au/the-richell-prize-for-emerging-writers/If you’ve ever thought about entering a literary competition, it’s worth listening to Susannah talk about how and why she did and what it’s meant to her. She’s also all-round interesting!Susannah Begbie grew up in rural New South Wales on a sheep farm and is now a GP who has worked all over Australia. In 2006, Susannah started a Graduate Diploma in Professional Writing at Canberra University and was awarded the Editor's Pick for her short story 'Fly to Meet You' in the University's First Anthology. She was also awarded the best-written text for her children's book Don't You Dare! in The Get Real Project. The Deed is her first novel.This episode was recorded as the Sydney Writers Festival was starting so we have a bit of a chat about festival programming, as Sophie anticipates going to see Michael Connelly at his event at Sydney Town Hall.Speaking of events … Rach will be in Sydney to do an event with Lizzy Dent on Wednesday 3 July at 6 p.m. and Soph will be there too, in the audience. If you’d like to join us go to: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1209662

**NB This episode was recorded in April so our intro chat will be out of sync with recent episodes.**This week we have a wonderful guest: children’s author Ashleigh Barton, who has written several CBCA Notable and Shortlist titles including What Do You Call Your Grandpa? and What Do You Call Your Grandma? (more information below). Ashleigh’s latest book is the picture book Dinosaur in My Pocket and on 26 June she’ll release two Freddie Spector, Fact Collector titles: Go for Gold and Space Cadet. Ashleigh writes for a range of ages of children and is endlessly creative. We talk to her about where she gets her ideas, how she manages writing while running a household and family, and her path to publication. ABOUT ASHLEIGH BARTONAshleigh Barton is a children's author and copywriter. Before writing full time, she pursued her love of books (children's books especially) by working in some of Australia's biggest publishing houses, running marketing and publicity campaigns for globally renowned authors and illustrators. Ashleigh has previously published five successful and highly acclaimed picture books and a junior fiction series. She lives in Sydney with her husband, three children and their dog.For more about Ashleigh: https://www.ashleighbarton.com/For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening SocietyHer next book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (to be published in August 2024)

Rejections are par for the course for all writers, whether they’ve been published or not. Even once you have a publisher they may reject your next idea - or readers may reject your book by not reading it! Both Rachael Johns and Sophie Green have been rejected - multiple times (and both of us by Mills & Boon, which we talk about in this episode). As a publisher, and when she was an agent, Sophie does some rejecting, and she also sees a lot of submissions, so she has some things to say about where writers go wrong in the submission process. (She made a ten-minute TikTok about how to write a submission letter and that is linked below.)Therefore, if you are a writer - or engaged in any creative pursuit - and want to here us chat about being rejected, how to deal with rejection, what leads to manuscripts being rejected, and who knows what else we have in there, this is the episode for you. How to write a query/submission letter (TikTok video)https://www.tiktok.com/@sophiegreenbooks/video/7360218814610443538?_t=8mdflLRbf5G&_r=1For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening SocietyHer next book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (to be published in August 2024)

A little while ago Rachael Johns suggested we do an episode on ‘retirement energy’ after one of her favourites, Elin Hildebrand, announced she was stepping back from her regular writing pace. Writers obviously don’t have the same working structures as those in other careers and the decision to step back or retire can happen for a variety of reasons. Rach also suggested that we chat to fellow Western Australian author Fiona Palmer about her decision not to write novels for the foreseeable future (her last published book is The Wrong Sister from 2022). Books mentioned: Regeneration by Pat BarkerThe Tea Ladies by Amanda HampsonJackie by Dawn TrippExpiration Dates by Rebecca SearleWe are releasing out of our recording sequence so please forgive us for little anomalies like saying Fiona is our third guest when we’ve had some other guests on!If you have a question for us, please email sophie@sophie-green-author.com and put ‘Dear Rach & Soph’ in the subject line.And if you’d like to actually be in the podcast with us while we answer your question, please let us know in the email.For more about Rachael Johns: https://www.rachaeljohns.comRachael's latest book is The Other BridgetHer next book is The Work Wife (to be published in January 2025)For more about Sophie Green: https://sophie-green-author.comSophie's latest book is Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening SocietyHer next book is Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (to be published in August 2024)