This is a very quick post to say that from January, my podcast will be called Author’s Afterword. It’ll be the same content as always, just with a far better name.

I’ve never felt all that happy with the name ‘The Worm Hole Podcast’ – it completely fits as an entity of this blog but whereas this blog has been successful enough being called The Worm Hole, and blogs can get away with being more vaguely named, podcasts cannot.

When I say I never felt happy, it was that I knew that, away from the blog, the name made no sense, and indeed most other podcasts with ‘wormhole’ in the title, albeit without the space, are about astronomy, pun not intended. There are also just so many of them, mine rarely shows up in search.

It took a lot of thinking to arrive at the new name; many months and many names left out of the running upon finding out they were already in use or that there were podcasts with very similar names. I’m happy it took a while though – Author’s Afterword is, hands down, my favourite of the lot.

I’m excited about the change. I feel happy saying the name.

The first episode with the new title will be episode 113 with Edward Carey on Monday 13th January.

My podcast will reach 100 episodes later this month and to celebrate I invited back 16 previous guests to join me for different fun and casual bonus episodes. There are 5 or these such episodes; the first launches today and I’m joined by Elizabeth Fremantle (Disobedient; Firebrand/Queen’s Gambit), Amanda Geard (The Midnight House; The Moon Gate), Gill Paul (A Beautiful Rival; Scandalous Women), and Maggie Brookes (The Prisoner’s Wife; Acts Of Love And War).

The episode can be found on the podcast page of this here blog which includes the episode in a media player, links to various apps, and the transcript.

The rest of the schedule is as follows:

Monday 1st July: Alex Hay (The Housekeepers), Stacey Thomas (The Revels), and Lucy Barker (The Other Side Of Mrs Wood)
Monday 15th July: Elissa Soave (Ginger And Me), Chloe Timms (The Seawomen), and Jenni Keer (The Legacy Of Halesham Hall; At The Stroke Of Midnight)
Monday 29th July: Melissa Fu (Peach Blossom Spring) Amanda Geard (The Midnight House; The Moon Gate), Phillip Lewis (The Barrowfields)
Monday 5th August: Liz Fenwick (The River Between Us; The Secret Shore), Emma Cowell (The House In The Olive Grove; The Island Love Song), Ronali Collings (Love & Other Dramas/All The Single Ladies), and Tammye Huf (A More Perfect Union)

It has been an absolute joy making these episodes and I’m thrilled to be able to share them at last – the first two were recorded in January! I have to say a big thank you to Amanda Geard for giving me the idea that sparked the whole thing off – she suggested a party to celebrate and then I realised there were far too many people I wanted to include for one party to be sufficient. In truth I’d have loved to have done another three more but it turns out that my thoughts were correct and working to a weekly schedule is one heck of an undertaking when you’re a one woman band.

On that note, episode 100 itself, which is with Liz Fenwick, will be out on Monday 24th June. It’ll be a regular solo book conversation about her latest novel, The Secret Shore. The milestone episodes are essentially slotted in the weeks between regular episodes.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!

On 4th March my blog turned 10; it’s a milestone I’m still surprised by. I’m hoping to celebrate offline at some point, but for now here are the stats:

Posts: 1302
Reviews: 497
Most viewed post: The Ending of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
Most viewed review: Joanna Cannon – The Trouble With Goats And Sheep
Books read, including re-reads: 602

I started this blog because I was starting to really enjoying posting reviews to my short-term ‘everything goes’ blog and because I’d started to read book blogs and thought defining my subject would be a good idea. It indeed turned out to be the case. I love blogging; I know I’ve fallen behind sometimes but my passion for writing about books continues and I am also very happy with how the podcast is doing. I had thought to start a podcast before I began hosting live events and I’m glad I got my you-know-what into gear and got it started. Books are awesome, the blogging community is awesome, and you readers are awesome.

Thank you all for being with me on this journey. Stay safe, and stay at home.

Today’s podcast is with Laura Pearson! Email and RSS subscribers: you’ll need to open this post in your browser to see the media player below.

Charlie and Laura Pearson (Missing Pieces; Nobody’s Wife; I Wanted You To Know) discuss the process of grieving for various members of a family, writing a book about cancer when you are working through the same, and changing stories almost entirely from their beginnings.

To see all the details including links to other apps, I’ve made a blog page here. You can also subscribe to the podcast via RSS.

This photograph was taken by Chris Engelsma.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been contacting authors, re-reading books, and creating questions. I had been wanting to start a podcast for a long time but put it off because of silly worries. I finally got myself in gear, said enough was enough and it was time to get it done.

I’m excited to announce that episode one of The Worm Hole podcast will be uploaded next Monday, 28th October. The guest is Nicola Cornick. We recorded the episode on the 16th and it was a lot of fun.

It will initially go out via SoundCloud (there’s a mobile app for it as well as the web browser version) and be shared on iTunes as soon as possible following that. I’m also looking at TuneIn as a future possibility. The link will be available as part of that day’s blog post, so those of you who are on my mailing list will get it, too, and I’ll be posting it on Twitter. New episodes will go out on the second and fourth Monday of each month.

Hope you all enjoy it as much as I (we!) enjoyed making it.

Updated – first author finalised.

Tomorrow The Worm Hole will be nine years old. It’s been a strange year, a lot of difference, but full of good things. Whilst I haven’t been able to take on many review books due to uncertainty over deadlines (that’s recently started changing again) I’ve been able to spend more time on the books I already own as well as delve into classics in a more intentional manner. The necessity of posting less, due to various life changes but also to a major block (I got through eight years before having one so I guess it’s not so bad), made me think more about the content I did post. My plan for the next year is to find my way back to my schedule.

I thank you all for your support and for sticking with me when I haven’t been able to update.

Stats

Current post count: 1,208
Current review count: 465
Number of posts in the last year: 95
Number of reviews in the last year: 32
Most read post of all time thus far: The Ending Of The Awakening (7,606)
Most read post of the last year: (same as above; 3,671)