Join me each second and fourth Monday of the month, when I’ll be in conversation with an author about one (occasionally more) of their books. We’ll be taking a fairly deep dive, looking at the background, the topics, writing, and the nitty gritty. Expect some spoilers and frequent discussions of the endings.
To listen to the episodes on this site, click on the links in the table below. This will take you to the episode’s page which includes all the notes. Or, to listen on apps, click the buttons (or links in the case of sites I can’t find buttons for).
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Charlie and Emma Cowell (The Island Love Song) discuss the Greek island of Hydra, reactions from readers in regards to IVF and polyamory plot threads, early onset dementia, and the Parthenon sculptures.
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Charlie and Susan Muaddi Darraj (Behind You Is The Sea) discuss the Palestinian Christian community, her immigrant characters and their children, how she used the current conflict in her stories, and the segregation and working class in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Charlie and Louise Morrish discuss the extensive efforts the latter went to in order to be published, the networking she did prior to that, and how she’s giving back to the writing community.
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Charlie and Mark Stay (The Witches Of Woodville) discuss writing humour into wartime, using period-correct language as well as slang, why community is important and how much we’ve lost over the decades, and the metric ton of projects he has on the go.
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Charlie and Jessica Bull (Miss Austen Investigates) discuss Jane Austen! The mysteries in her books, what and how she read, her likely views on slavery, her forgotten brother, the proposals of marriage she received (there were many!), and her life in her birthplace of Steventon.
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Charlie and Nikki Marmery (Lilith) discuss her epic tale that looks from the start of the Genesis story all the way to our present day, showing how the biblical stories did away with an all-important goddess for women – Yahweh’s wife – and the consequences that has had. There is discussion, too, on the Gnostic gospels, various mythologies, and environmentalism.
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Charlie and Natalie Jenner (Every Time We Say Goodbye) discuss the war years and 1950s Italian film industry and the Vatican’s authority over it, changing working practices after being accused of discrimination, and including still-living celebrities in your book.
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Charlie and Matt Ottley (The Tree Of Ecstasy And Unbearable Sadness) discuss Matt’s type I bipolar disorder and how it has influenced this, his latest book, and his life in general. As Matt is also a composer and illustrator and the book involves both, we also discuss in detail the creation of the music and artwork.
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Charlie and Kate Weston (You May Now Kill The Bride) discuss her hilarious comedy thriller wherein a group of friends go on a hen do, one of them is murdered, but they don’t stop going to hen dos…
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Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is Joined by Liz Fenwick, Emma Cowell, Ronali Collings, and Tammye Huf, for a general bookish chat. We start off with an excellent conversation on the industry’s use of ‘women’s fiction’ when the genderless ‘commercial fiction’ would do very well.
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Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is joined by Phillip Lewis, Melissa Fu, and Amanda Geard for a general bookish chat. This is a slightly quieter episode with some incredibly poignant and compelling stories.
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Charlie and Manda Scott (Any Human Power) discuss her book in terms of its Shamanist contexts, her informed ideas for how we can change and thus improve the UK political system, and playing Dungeons And Dragons with Terry Pratchett and Fay Weldon. We also discuss Mass Multiplayer Online gaming in the context of both Manda’s book and, briefly, ourselves – this is an episode wherein two gamers meet.
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Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is joined by Elissa Soave, Jenni Keer, and Chloe Timms for a general bookish chat. This one is big on writing, branding, and marketing, and, if Charlie dares says herself, is one of the most fun episodes of this entire show.
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Charlie and Jacquie Bloese (The Golden Hour/The Secret Photographs) discuss early erotic photography, Victorian erotic stage performances, and the beginnings of bicycle use for women which had a huge impact on female agency.
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Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is joined by Alex Hay, Stacey Thomas, and Lucy Barker for a general bookish chat with a concentration on the writing. The trio toured together as debuts and we get to witness just how well they work together.
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Charlie and Liz Fenwick (The Secret Shore) discuss the women cartographers who were fundamental in the Allies winning the Second World War and the way women at university at the time had to choose between their career and having a family. We also discuss Liz’s love of Cornwall, her use of Dorothy Sayer’s Gaudy Night, and we go back a few times to the people who were involved in the secret flotillas that preceded the Normandy landings.
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Celebrating 100 episodes of this podcast, Charlie is joined by Elizabeth Fremantle, Gill Paul, Amanda Geard, and Maggie Brookes for a general bookish chat. We get all philosophical about genre, discuss film adaptations (Elizabeth’s Firebrand is out), whose books we wish we could have written, and best fan encounters.
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Charlie and Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ (Dazzling) discuss Igbo mythology, the differences between polygamy and monogamy in Igbo culture, and the social impacts of colonialism and military coups in Nigeria. Chịkọdịlị also talks about having her characters bother her when she’s trying to shower, finding literature in rubbish heaps, and needing a literary residency – please let her know if you’ve one to spare!
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Charlie and Sarah Marsh (A Sign Of Her Own) discuss the lesser-known aspect of Alexander Bell’s work – teaching deaf children to speak – in terms of both the real history and the fictionalised character she created in order to explore the events. This includes snippets about the manufactured rivalry between the two inventors of the telephone; Bell’s wife, Mabel Hubbard (who was deaf); the Deaf community in London in the late 1800s; and the way Sarah employs language – written, signed, spoken – to excellent effect.
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Charlie and Natasha Solomons (Fair Rosaline) discuss Natasha’s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, told from the perspective of Rosaline, wherein Romeo is a groomer and Juliet must be saved from him. We discuss as well Natasha’s stylistic choices for her prose and the changes she made to the original ending.
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Charlie and Lucy Barker (The Other Side Of Mrs Wood) discuss Victorian mediums both factual and fictionalised – their work, the spiritualism that led to their popularity, the social circles, the rivalry, the rumours of fraud, and the women’s roles as early grief counsellors. We also talk about the early days of the Suffrage movement and various aspects of the book’s ending.
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Charlie and Jennifer Saint (Atalanta) discuss the forgotten story of the female member of the Argonauts – Jennifer’s use of and changes to the various versions of the mythological story, including her usage of motherhood as a theme, Homer’s thoughts on his women characters, the assault of Callisto, and the fact that Jason isn’t much of a hero.
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Charlie and Elizabeth Fremantle (Disobedient) discuss the formative life, and Elizabeth’s fictionalisation, of Artemisia Gentileschi, a woman painter from the 17th century.
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Charlie and Kristy Woodson Harvey (The Summer Of Songbirds) discuss whether we should like her character, Lanier (who stops her best friend and brother being together); the various plot threads she left out of the book (including alternative endings); and US summer camps (both Kristy’s experiences, and the effect of the pandemic lockdowns). We also spend a good amount of time discussing the pre-actor’s-strike announcement of an adaptation of Kristy’s Peachtree Bluff series and her next two books.
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Charlie and Maggie Brookes (Acts Of Love And War) discuss the small group of British Quakers who went to aid refugees during the Spanish Civil War, the way the war tore families apart as people chose different sides, and why she ended her romantic thread differently than might be expected.
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Charlie and Stacey Thomas (The Revels) discuss English Civil War era witch hunting which includes the methods, the propaganda, and the awful theatre of it all. We also discuss Stacey’s inclusion of actual witches in her narrative, and Stacey’s recommendations of Wolf Hall and A Little Life.
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Charlie and Celina Baljeet Basra (Happy) discuss the experiences some undocumented migrants to Western Europe face, French film director Jean Luc Goddard’s seminal film Bande à part, Indian talkshow Koffee With Karan, and Celina’s particular usage of Umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh.
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Charlie and Rachel Abbott (Don’t Look Away) discuss young carers and the guilt they can feel, trafficking in Cornwall – both fact and fiction – and having her series’ policewoman staying in the background of the story rather than take the spotlight. (We talk about that a couple of times, I loved it!)
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Charlie and Karen Hamilton (The Contest) discuss the specifics of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and the vast support crews, her ridiculously privileged holidaying characters and where their requests are based in reality, and why everyone is obsessed with toilets. We then move on to an extensive discussion of the thriller aspect of Karen’s book and whether, even though there is one killer in her book, there are in fact more.
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Charlie and Radhika Sanghani (I Wish We Weren’t Related) discuss having alopecia, healing from being a people pleaser and self-empowerment in general, and her comic novel which includes an ex-fiance turned future brother-in-law, and a father who died, was not dead, but then died – true fictional story. Radhika’s book also includes beloved cats, so we talk about cats too.
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Charlie and Gill Paul (A Beautiful Rival) discuss the working lives of and rivalry between businesswomen Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, and the antisemitism in the US during WW2. We also discuss our views of Wallis Simpson.
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Charlie and Tasneem Abdur-Rashid (Finding Mr Perfectly Fine) discuss writing a story that hadn’t yet been told in novels and working with getting the balance and choices right when it came to writing for British Bengali Muslims, Muslims from other cultures, and other readers. We also discuss the guys she cut from the first draft, why she decided to finish her rom-com on the somewhat controversial note she did, oh and if you’re looking for a great Turkish restaurant in North London, we’ve got you covered.
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Charlie Place and Amanda Geard (The Moon Gate) discuss Tasmania in WW2 and in general, Australia’s famed poet Banjo Paterson and his fellow Bush Ballad writers, British Blackshirts and the Mitfords, and the Moorgate Tube Crash in London. On a lighter note, Amanda also tells us much about the writing of her book, including a lot of what she left out in order to reduce her book from the lengthy draft it was to the mere 500 hardback pages it is.
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Charlie and Alex Hay (The Housekeepers) discuss his meticulously planned and fast-paced 1900s heist novel wherein the entire contents of a grand house are to be removed… and the mistress of the place is in on it. Alex tells us about the successful collaboration between himself and his three editors and we discuss the various comedy aspects of the book.
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Charlie and Paula Cocozza (Speak To Me) discuss how phones have taken the place of conversation, a number of literary Susans, and Paula tells us about her love of reading and libraries in childhood.
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Charlie and Nicolai Houm (The Gradual Disappearance Of Jane Ashland) discuss a unique and somewhat extreme form of coping with grief, where his characterisation blends into his own writer self, and the open ending he left his readers with.
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Charlie and Elissa Soave (Ginger And Me) discuss including the working class in fiction, writing about neuro-divergence without labels, and social care and society in context. We also touch on Elissa’s Greggs habit, writing about her home town, and why her editor told her ‘this is not Reservoir Dogs…’
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Charlie and Lisa See (Lady Tan’s Circle Of Women) discuss the medieval Chinese woman doctor Tan Yuanxian, whose book is still in use today. We also discuss, in this context, the isolation and disability of being an aristocratic woman in the time period.
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Charlie and Eleanor Shearer (River Sing Me Home) discuss how slavery didn’t really end when it was abolished, and Eleanor’s experiences studying the Caribbean during this time and the knowledge she gained. We also explore different versions of freedom, and the way Eleanor’s family influenced her writing.
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Charlie and Jenni Keer (The Legacy Of Halesham Hall) discuss wacky puzzle houses, writing as a reader, the age gap in her book, and Rebecca-like characters who remain alive.
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Charlie and Kate Thompson (The Little Wartime Library) discuss the wartime history and community of East London’s Bethnal Green – the Tube station that housed locals during the Blitz, the library that moved down into the tunnels and is now back overground, and the people that made the community what it was. We also discuss wartime reading and the measures put in place to stop women reading escapist fiction.
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Charlie and Ronali Collings (Love & Other Dramas) discuss her relationship with her mother and where that influences her novel, racist comments and decisions in the workplace, and her experiences of female friendships during her IVF journey. We begin with her studies for a Masters – her supervisor was Bernardine Evaristo.
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Charlie and Kristina McMorris (Sold On A Monday; The Ways We Hide) discuss the harrowing photographs of children that inspired her last two novels, why she chose to focus – in the first book – on the news reporters rather than the children, and changing the fictional outcome of the stories.
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Charlie and Orlando Ortega-Medina (The Fitful Sleep Of Immigrants) discuss the reality for LGBT asylum seekers in the US, Orlando’s own experiences as a lawyer, and same-sex marriage rights now Roe v Wade has been overturned.
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Charlie and Amita Parikh (The Circus Train) discuss how Amita’s dancing and performing experiences influenced her work, her controversial decision to have her wheelchair-using heroine learn to walk, and the WW2 Theresienstadt Ghetto (concentration camp) where prisoners led a fairly cultured life.
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Charlie and Emma Cowell (One Last Letter From Greece) discuss grief, miscarriage and expectations surrounding it, and, in keeping with her book’s title, Greece and its culture.
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She’s back! Charlie and E C Fremantle (The Honey And The Sting) discuss producing a book that is utterly devoid – and then some – of filler, Black people of the Stuart era, and the film of Fremantle’s first novel, which will star Jude Law and Alicia Vikander.
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Charlie and Cecelia Tichi (A Fatal Gilded High Note) discuss the Gilded Age in its success and its crimes, her rebellious 1890s character who defies class, and the history of French Bulldogs.
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Charlie and Kate Glanville (The Peacock House) discuss her main character who is 90 years old, and villains who aren’t so villainous after all. Kate also discusses the way her dyslexia has effected her reading, and some of her thoughts on education in this vein in the context of her younger character.
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Charlie and Kristin Harmel (The Forest Of Vanishing Stars) discuss the true story, and Kristin’s own fictional one, of a group of over a thousand Jewish people who during WW2 slowly escaped to and hid in a vast forest away from the Nazis.
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Charlie and Sally Page (The Keeper Of Stories) discuss story collection, the forgotten mistress of the abdicated Edward VIII, and dogs who swear something chronic!
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Charlie and Natalie Jenner (Bloomsbury Girls) discuss Jane Austen in all Natalie’s interesting concepts, tales of related auctions she has been involved in, and the work to ‘preserve and pull together’ a record of the books that inspired her. They also discuss Natalie’s inclusion of Daphne du Maurier in her novel, Persephone Books, and genre in its context as a label.
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Charlie and Chloe Timms (The Seawomen) discuss Chloe’s dystopian fictional religious cult in all its fantasy and reality, the major changes she made to the book as the editing progressed, and her own interpretations of the various parts of the ending.
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Charlie and Amanda Geard (The Midnight House) discuss buying big derelict houses, the importance of community in County Kerry, and Amanda’s stunning epilogue – which is one of Charlie’s favourites.
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Charlie and Grace D Li (Portrait Of A Thief) discuss Chinese American identity, art theft and repatriation, and bonkers fun fictional heists.
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Charlie and Yvonne Bailey-Smith (The Day I Fell Off My Island) discuss the effects on children of immigration from Jamaica to the UK, the effects on parents, and the lack of educational care afforded to and the assumptions made about Black British students.
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Charlie and Jennifer Saint (Elektra) discuss the Trojan War in terms of the women the men left behind – Elektra, Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and, arguably, Helen.
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Charlie and Melissa Fu (Peach Blossom Spring) discuss the experiences of Chinese refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War – particularly those who fled to Taiwan – the centuries old hand scrolls that inspired her own character’s scroll, and how the lives of her family influenced her work.
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Charlie and Natasha Miller (Relentless) discuss Natasha’s incredible and inspirational life as a classical violinist and jazz singer, and founder and owner of a multi-million dollar events company. Our discussion includes her childhood – she’s a survivor of abuse – and being a parent who strives to get it right.
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Charlie and Kate Quinn (The Rose Code; The Diamond Eye) discuss the extraordinary people behind Bletchley Park’s successes, including socialite Osla Benning, and her relationship with Elizabeth II’s future husband, Prince Philip. And, in a nod to her latest novel, Kate introduces us to Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a WWII Soviet sniper from Kyiv.
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Charlie and Imogen Clark (Impossible To Forget) discuss her latest novel – a pre-release bestseller, creating the story as she goes and publishing what is her first draft, and beginning her career as a novelist in her 50s.
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Charlie and Patrick Gale (Take Nothing With You; Mother’s Boy) discuss musicality – his own and his character’s, setting a childhood in a care home, the beloved Cornish poet Charles Causley, and a future stage production of Take Nothing With You.
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Charlie and Kaia Alderson (Sisters In Arms) discuss the little-known 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black female US unit in WW2 – their day-to-day work dealing with a backlog of post that no one else could figure out, the leaders, and the various responses to them then and now – and Kaia tells us about the influential Dr Mary McLeod Bethune as well as the baseball Negro Leagues.
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Charlie and Sara Nisha Adams (The Reading List) discuss books! The ways they can bring very different people together, the importance of libraries in Sara’s life and their impact as a community hub, and her family in the context of her work.
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Charlie and Edward Carey (B: A Year in Plagues and Pencils; The Swallowed Man) discuss his epic drawing project wherein he undertook to create a sketch each day of the pandemic, the various individuals whose lives became a part of the wider picture, and finish on a completely different but relevant subject – the literary and social history of Pinocchio.
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Charlie and Janie Chang (The Library Of Legends) discuss the incredible journeys made by Chinese university students, during the 1937 Japanese invasion, as they evacuated their campuses and made their way on foot to safer areas of the country. We also discuss the Shanghai International Settlement and Janie’s compelling family history.
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Samantha Sotto returns! We discuss her latest book The Beginning Of Always (its inspiration was the woman whose death mask was used to create the first aid dummy Resusi Annie), and, not to be outdone, Sam’s dog Alfie also returns to make a second appearance.
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Charlie and Rebecca F John (The Haunting Of Henry Twist) discuss being gay and bisexual in the 1920s, the way the flapper years could mask the effects of War, and the fictional man who cannot believe that his male partner is not some sort of reincarnation of his dead wife.
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Charlie and Rosie Travers (The Theatre Of Dreams) discuss writing novels set amongst the working class of the south coast, Art Deco buildings we’ve lost and those we’ve saved, and the sporting professional heroine publishers rejected.
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Charlie and Jennifer Robson (Our Darkest Night) discuss the horrors of life as an Italian Jew during the Second World War, those who fled and those who helped them, and the people who chose to stay behind.
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Charlie and Hazel Gaynor (The Bird In The Bamboo Cage) discuss the lives of the pupils and teachers of the Chefoo school for missionaries’ children in China during the Japanese occupation, and the way being Brownie Guides helped to keep them going. We also discuss the beginnings of her career, and her collaborations with fellow historical fiction writer, Heather Webb.
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Charlie and Claire North (Notes From The Burning Age) discuss climate change today and into the future, sexism back of house in theatre, and how she views her books in terms of colours and shapes rather than words.
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Charlie and Tyler Keevil (Your Still Beating Heart) discuss using the violence of Snow White in an adult thriller to shocking and literary effect, writing in the second person to tell a story within a story where either – or both, or none – may be ‘true’, and the many hearts at the heart of his novel.
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Charlie and Rachel Hore (A Beautiful Spy) discuss the life and work of a female spy in the years between the First and Second World Wars, the man who inspired James Bond’s M, and how Rachel took care to do right in her representation of a real person.
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Charlie and Gill Paul (The Second Marriage) discuss the lives and loves of Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas from their early married years until later life, the womanising ways of the men in their lives, and the opera and celebrity that in Gill’s book links them all.
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Charlie and Rosanna Ley (The Orange Grove) discuss whether one of her main characters, Ella, made the right decision with the situational contexts at hand, the viability of a shop focused on orange-related products and set up in Dorset, the Seville producers of those products, and the secrets of the flour-free cake that starts the whole thing off.
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Charlie and Zen Cho (Black Water Sister) discuss traditional Chinese beliefs, smashing up shrines, and Jane Austen.
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Charlie and Christina Courtenay (Echoes Of The Runes; The Runes Of Destiny) discuss what the Vikings were really like, time travellers’ historical partners travelling back with them, and predictability and coincidence as plot devices.
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She’s back! Nicola Cornick (The Forgotten Sister; The Last Daughter) returns to discuss Amy Robsart and the mystery of her death, the relationship between Robert Dudley and Elizabeth I, and who killed the Princes in the Tower.
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Charlie and Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder) discuss publishing a dark YA series in the wake of Twilight, avoiding romance and family tropes, and the further lives of her characters beyond the final page.
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Charlie and Kate Forsyth (Bitter Greens; The Wild Girl) discuss the story and history of Rapunzel – which was part of Kate’s doctoral thesis – as well as the woman who told the Brothers Grimm many of their tales, and the progression of change those tales went through as the brothers pursued success.
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Charlie and Liz Fenwick (The Path To The Sea) discuss the success of spies in the Cold War who were – on the face of it – ‘just’ housewives, bringing new characters to more prominence and bringing past characters back from other books, and the age-old question of cream or jam first.
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Charlie and Lillian Li (Number One Chinese Restaurant) discuss racial prejudice in Chinese restaurants, looking at the narrative of immigrant parents and sacrifice, and how her editor pushed her to increase the impact of themes and ideas.
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Charlie and Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (The Rabbit Back Literature Society; Secret Passages In A Hillside Town) discuss dreams that become literature – vampires; books where words and plot points change in a sort of book plague; secret passages that wipe your memory, and many more – writing a book that’s difficult for a reader to work out and not knowing yourself what the answer is, creepy and traumatic fictional games, and issuing an alternative ending to your novel in a brand new publication.
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Charlie and Susmita Bhattacharya (Table Manners) discuss her world-wide travel and moves abroad – including a visa-less stopover, the experiences of recent immigrants to Britain, and having your work featured and serialised on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra.
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Charlie and Elizabeth Baines (Used To Be; Astral Travel) discuss writing for radio, short stories – the relative importance of their first lines and differences to novels – writing a book about trying to tell a story, and the difficulties in labelling someone complicit or a victim in the context of past societal values.
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Charlie and Katy Yocom (Three Ways To Disappear) discuss tiger conservation in India and balancing numbers alongside human requirements for life, the importance of being diligent when writing about a culture that is not your own, and what the three ways to disappear are.
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Charlie and Marianne Holmes (A Little Bird Told Me; All Your Little Lies) discuss procedures when children go missing, societal changes in regards to domestic violence in the 1970s, and, on a lighter note, trying not to finish books you’re not enjoying.
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Charlie and Deborah Swift (Past Encounters; The Occupation; The Lifeline) discuss Brief Encounter at Carnforth, the experiences of prisoners of war at the time and once back home, the real life story of a Jersey woman who hid her Jewish friend, and reactions to the death of the last woman in Britain to be given capital punishment.
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Charlie and Tammye Huf (A More Perfect Union) discuss her great-great-grandparents’ relationship as an 1840s Irishman and a Black American slave, the way owners used Christianity to support their views of a racial hierarchy, and the lengths reached in order to label people by skin colour.
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Charlie and Eric Beck Rubin (School Of Velocity) discuss the representation of the Holocaust in literature, using classical music as a literary device, having a main character whose person limits the opportunity for dialogue through his obsession with another, and the reader being a writer.
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Charlie and Intisar Khanani (Thorn; Sunbolt; Memories Of Ash) discuss working to better the health of people in Cincinnati, rewriting and exploring the Goose Girl fairy tale to stunning effect, bonkers jail-breaking heroines, and men who take a far more subtle approach than riding in on horses to save the day.
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Charlie and Joanna Hickson (First Of The Tudors; The Tudor Crown; The Lady Of The Ravens) discuss the royal and noble individuals of the War of the Roses, the women who made an impact, the ever-present question of who killed the princes in the tower, and, on another topic entirely, using weasels to prevent conception.
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Charlie and Nicholas Royle (Quilt; An English Guide To Birdwatching; Mother: A Memoir) discuss killing yourself – your avatar – off in your fiction, using ‘it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’, and sharing a name with another British writer who also writes fiction… that is also about birds…
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Charlie and Midge Raymond (Forgetting English; My Last Continent; also Everyday Writing; Everyday Book Marketing) discuss the current situation in Antarctica and the balance of keeping it clean whilst allowing research and tourism, environmental and climate changes in the same location, and being followed to the toilet by a penguin.
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Charlie and Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl; The Fortunes) discuss moving as a writer from Britain to the US, Welsh with English as a second language, the first Chinese Americans, Hollywood star Anna May Wong, and the impact – then and now – of the murder of Vincent Chin.
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Charlie and Tracy Rees (Amy Snow; Florence Grace; The Hourglass; Darling Blue; The House At Silvermoor) discuss Richard, Judy, Dickens, Austen, and Brontë – not all at once – coffee houses in Victorian times, landslides and hourglasses, changes to the Yorkshire mines in the late 1800s to early 1900s, and the inclusion of the average person in historical fiction.
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Charlie and Sofie Laguna (One Foot Wrong; The Eye of the Sheep; The Choke; the forthcoming Infinite Splendours) discuss beginning with acting, writing from a child’s perspective and not labelling those who are different, bad fictional parents, not liking John Wayne… and we have the inaugural reading of Sofie’s October release.
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Charlie and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (The Whispering Trees; Season of Crimson Blossoms) discuss Nigeria at this time, publishing a novel on a very controversial subject and reactions to it, effects of grief, and looking at cultural expectations of women as the generations change.
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Charlie and Roselle Lim (Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune; Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop) discuss weaving culture, mental illness, and magic into your fiction, an aid for your eyes when chopping onions, and children you excitedly take to tourist attractions who wonder what you see in them.
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Charlie and Isla Morley (Come Sunday; Above; The Last Blue) discuss growing up and travelling back to South Africa, creating a negative heroine, the 1800s medical phenomenon wherein people were literally blue, and what it’s like owning five tortoises.
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Charlie and Terri Fleming (Perception) discuss looking at the further lives of Mary and Kitty Bennet, working with Austen’s original stories and prose, Mr and Mrs Bennet’s relationship, and organising bookshelves.
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Charlie and Zoë Duncan (The Shifting Pools) discuss coping with and healing from war trauma in reality and fiction, the use and power of dreams, employing various styles and formats, and how fascinating reader interpretations can be.
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Charlie and Dan Richards (Climbing Days; Outpost) discuss asking to join well-known people for lunch and producing fascinating interviews for your book, travelling the less beaten paths of your mountaineering great-great aunt, finding society in isolated places, and looking ahead to how we might continue to approach humanity’s harming of nature after the benefits to scaling back have been shown by this current crisis.
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Charlie and Weike Wang (Chemistry) discuss having both a scientific – in epidemiology no less! – and a writer background, making use of extracts and white space and preferring them beyond more long-form prose, the difficulties of studies and incorporating friends’ experiences in your stories, and fictional dogs who are inherently important to the text.
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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.
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Charlie and Camilla Bruce (You Let Me In) discuss the darker side of faerie, being as in the dark about answers as your readers are, survival and coping methods following trauma, and the habits of cats inspiring your work.
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Charlie and Fran Cooper (These Dividing Walls, The Two Houses) discuss open mic nights, current and recent sociopolitical situations in Paris (and the world), the way we talk about women and motherhood, and the complexity of relationships.
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Charlie and Andrew Blackman (On the Holloway Road, A Virtual Love) discuss life on the road, following in Jack Kerouac’s footsteps, offline and online identity, writing an entire book about a character but never giving them a voice, current climate change activism, and withholding – for very good reason – the endings your readers expect.
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Charlie and E C Fremantle (The Poison Bed) discuss changing pen names, a horrific murder case in the Stuart nobility, coping as a new mother in a one-of-a-kind situation, and the historical line between witchcraft and ‘simple’ superstition.
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Charlie and Nancy Bilyeau (The Crown; The Chalice; The Tapestry; The Blue; Dreamland) discuss the lifestyle of Dissolution-era nuns, using a website’s ‘contact me’ form to great success, there being more relics than there were items, using your family’s name in your work, and the grand amusement parks and luxury hotels of New York’s past.
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Tune in as Charlie and Samantha Sotto (Before Ever After; Love and Gravity; A Dream of Trees) discuss characters that join you in your car in the midst of a traffic jam, time travelling with Issac Newton, switching from your fully researched work in progress to a story that needs to be told, and… chickens?
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Charlie and Phillip Lewis (The Barrowfields) discuss planning out fictional houses, the detail and beauty of classical music, books about books, and how real life in all its ups and downs makes its mark on your work.
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Tune in as Charlie Place and Naomi Hamill (How To Be A Kosovan Bride) discuss post-war Kosovo, using a narrative method that divides opinion, and researching Albanian folklore.
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Tune in as Charlie Place and Orlando Ortega-Medina (Jerusalem Ablaze; The Death of Baseball) discuss celebrity fictional reincarnation, writing short stories that don’t have messages, and working with ideas that could – if misinterpreted – look like something else.
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Tune in as book blogger Charlie Place and author Nicola Cornick (House of Shadows; The Phantom Tree; The Woman In The Lake) discuss burning down your place of work in fiction, every day objects of ill repute, and solving Tudor mysteries yet to be solved.
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