The Hobcast Book Show

Feb 03 2025 186 ep. 78 mins 4

The Hobcast Book Show Podcast artwork

How do you launch a publishing house from scratch? The Hobcast brings you insights, interviews and ideas for aspiring authors and creative entrepreneurs, as well as anyone who loves books.
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207: The power of prizes - with Anna Vaught

Feb 03 2025 90 mins

As you may be aware, we run a short-story competition alongside presenting The Hobcast Book Show and our publishing firm, Hobeck Books. The Henshaw Short Story competition has uncovered many new talented authors, and raised funds to support school libraries. So we were delighted to be contacted by author Anna Vaught who has created The Curae Prize for non-paid carers. There are mil

206: The state of the crime fiction nation - with Donna Morfett

Jan 30 2025 68 mins

As we start 2025's run of shows, we thought we'd catch up with one of UK crime fiction's biggest champions, Donna Morfett, who returns to the show for the third time. Donna is a prolific blogger, the founder of The Dark Side of Brighton weekend crime festival, and an author in her own right. In recent weeks though, she's revealed how she's become embroiled in a dispute with a well-

205: Learning from co-writing - with Joel Hames

Jan 21 2025 89 mins

As we return for 2025, the new year has already proved one thing - nothing in publishing ever stands still. It's an industry that is constantly evolving and adapting and facing new challenges. Our guest this week, author and editor Joel Hames, in many ways reflects this. As he tells us, when he released his first novel in 2014 he assumed the world would be ready to embrace it. Now,

204: Crossing Genres - with Claire Sheldon

Dec 18 2024 90 mins

We're delighted to be joined this week by crime author Claire Sheldon, author of the Jen Garner series. Published by Choc Lit, an imprint of Joffe Books, Claire has laced her main character's life with a host of secrets and contradictions that threaten her perfect life. With four books published to date, the series offers a mix of psychological fiction and police procedural, and ha

203: Finding your voice in poetry - with Maria Cohut

Dec 08 2024 87 mins

We've delved into poetry on a few rare occasions on The Hobcast Book Show, so it feels right we explore it again with our guest, Maria Cohut. Maria's most recent published collection is Spatter Pattern, in which she takes inspiration from her love of classic crime fiction to give her poetry a narrative theme and power. As Maria tells us, she wants to explore challenging themes, par

202: A career as a storyteller - with Georgia Jeffries

Dec 01 2024 97 mins

We're delighted to be joined this week by multi-award winning author and screenwriter Georgia Jeffries from her home in Pasadena, California. Georgia's career in Hollywood began in the early 80s when she was invited to join the team behind a new cop drama, Cagney and Lacey, after she sent in a script on spec. With countless Writers Guild Awards and Golden Globes to her name, Georgi

201: Juggling a complex narrative - with Ben Hawken

Nov 25 2024 93 mins

The great American novelist, Sinclair Lewis, was once asked by another writer how to approach flashbacks in fiction. The answer was simple and blunt. "Don't." So what do you do if your story demands time jumps? How do you deal with the complex narrative threads and keep your readers on board? It's one of the issues that our guest, Ben Hawken, faced with his debut novel Chandelier.

200: The secrets of a successful series - with Michael Wood

Nov 18 2024 76 mins

We've done it! 200 episodes of The Hobcast Book Show! To celebrate this landmark, we're joined by bestselling crime author Michael Wood, creator of the DCI Matilda Darke series. His twelfth novel in the series, Last One Left Alive, was published by Harper Collins imprint One More Chapter last month. In this fascinating interview, Michael explains how he moved from being an avowed c

199: The Future of Truth - with Lindley Gooden

Nov 11 2024 89 mins

Never has "truth" been under greater scrutiny than in the past months leading up to Donald Trump's re-election to the Presidency last week. It seems that every side of every debate claims to be speaking the truth, and accuses their opponents of spreading disinformation or downright lying. No matter what the issue, not everyone can be right, can they? So how do you discern what you

198: Drawing on your life experience - with Gillian Jackson

Nov 04 2024 79 mins

Every so often an interview will take a truly unexpected direction. That's the case this week as we speak to prolific author Gillian Jackson in her first ever podcast appearance. Gillian principally writes psychological fiction, which to some extent draws on her professional experiences as a therapeutic counsellor working with Victim Support. But as she reveals in this startling in