It’s been a busy time lately with the release of Poison at Penshaw Hall. Four weeks later, things are calming down again. I’m getting back into a regular kind of rhythm with my writing, as well as engaging with my bookish communities, fellow authors and readers. This has included catching up with The Bestseller Experiment podcast, only to find I’ve been mentioned not once, but twice!

Selling books at the Rainbow Fair

This episode’s feature interview is with Heather Morris and you can watch the full interview and discussion from the start [00:00:00], or jump straight to the brief discussion about my bookselling experience at the Rainbow Fair [01:22:00].

We celebrate seven years of the podcast with the amazing Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which has sold over 6 million copies worldwide. She returns with a new novel, Sisters Under The Rising Sun, which transports the reader to the women in Japanese POW camps in WWII and is another incredibly powerful story. Heather talks about the role of listening in her work, creating fiction from reality, and what she learned from screenwriting.

I blogged about the Rainbow Fair at the time as well, which you can read here.

Poison at Penshaw Hall pre-orders

Again, totally recommend watching the discussions and interview with Mira V Shah from the start of this episode [00:00:00], but if you prefer, you can jump ahead to the two Marks discussing how I put Poison at Penshaw Hall up for pre-order before it was even written [00:52:21].

Mira V Shah is a British-African-Indian author and legal writer who lives in North London with her husband, three good dogs and one mediocre cat. She studied History at the University of Warwick before practising as a City lawyer. During the pandemic, Mira wrote her first ever novel, HER, a psychological drama, which explores themes of female friendship, flawed perception, trauma and race. Mira tells about writing the novel during lockdown, telling the story from two different perspectives, and how she’s carved out time to write.

Keen for more bookish, writerly interviews?

The two Marks and their fantastic guests are always so inspiring and motivating – I would absolutely recommend listening for any keen readers and writers. With almost 500 episodes under their belts, you have plenty of good stuff to catch up on! You can search for The Bestseller Experiment wherever you get your podcasts, or find more information on their website. Maybe you’ll give their 200 Word Challenge a go?