Bound Together: Recent Episodes
Laura Catherine and Sarah Gray
Self-published authors Laura Catherine and Sarah Gray talk about their experiences with writing, editing, publishing and marketing. This is their different views on the writing world. Laura is a mum of two with little time on her hands and Sarah followed a career, while still studying craft. Join them as they chat about their lives and share tips and advice.
Sarah and Laura talk about their favourite books from different genres such as Fantasy, Scifi, Romance, Queer, and YA.
Laura and Sarah reflect on their first published books and how they feel bout the writing and process now that it's been over 10 years.
Sarah and Laura are checking in on the author goals they set at the start of the year. Have they completed any? Have they failed? Find out!
Sarah and Laura have a discussion about Ai in creative spaces, their opinions on the topic, and stories of how it is being used throughout the creative community.
Laura and Sarah are talking about writing and editing slumps in this episode of Bound Together. They talk about their own current slumps and give each other advice on how to handle it.
Laura and Sarah talk through a number of options for author to check out once they have finished their book and ready to publish.
Laura and Sarah talk about book milestones, past author milestones, and milestones they look forward to in the future.
Last week we read Sarah's second chapter and now it's time to hear Laura's. Get ready for cringe and hilarious teenage writing.
Sarah and Laura are back reading chapter of Sarah's first ever novel written many many years ago. Get ready to laugh.
Laura and Sarah has swapped their styles of writing in an experiment to see if the Plotter can pants and the Pantser can plot. How'd our heroes go with writing in a completely foreign way? Listen and find out!
In this first part of the Plotting vs Pantsing Challenge Sarah and Laura teach each other the rules of their wildly different writing routines in preparation to swap them!
Sarah interviews Laura about their upcoming cozy fantasy Enemies to Booksellers that is releasing on January 18th.
It's the end of the year, Sarah and Laura are gearing up for 2025 with a whole new ambitious list of author goals for the year. Will they complete them or are they flying to close to the sun?
Remember those author goals Laura and Sarah made at the start of the year? They totally remembered and now they're going to go through and see which ones they completed.
Sarah and Laura have large TBR piles so they're picked a few of the books they are excited to read next year.
Laura and Sarah recently learned about quick and slow release authors. Now, they're here to tell you all about what they are.
Laura and Sarah read the first chapters on their very first works to see what they could do better. Enjoy an angsty sly warrior just trying to save the world while being distracted by cherry blossoms in Laura's "Ash Vena and The Keeper of the Knives". Then delve into the apocalyptic zombie action in Sarah's "Them", as we drive a car with far too many characters to keep track of, that all end up gone-burger within a few paragraphs. Magic!
Sarah and Laura have some more book recommendations for you. So strap yourselves in to hear about some amazing books.
Sarah and Laura discuss endings of chapters. Why are they important? Does every chapter require a hook? Is there such a thing as a chapter-less novel?
Nanowrimo came under fire at the start of 2024 and Laura and Sarah decided to no longer associate with the website. Now, as the organisation comes under fire again, they talk about how they have moved on from it.
Sarah and Laura chat about creating new writing routines for themselves after being influenced by famous writers and their routines. With they wake up and have breakfast like all good writers do? And can they make their new routines stick?
Laura and Sarah talk about a some of the wacky and wild routines that some famous writers swear buy.
Listen to Sarah and Laura totally avoid info dumping while talking about info dumps! We talk about how to spot them and what to do with them.
Sarah and Laura are talking about book lengths! Long ones, short ones, and never ending ones! How long should a good book be?
How do you format a ebook or a paperback? Well, Sarah and Laura are here to tell you how they've done it in the past and different ways they want to try in the future.
It's that time of year again where Laura and Sarah go through the goals they made at the start of the year and see if they've actually been doing them.
On this episode of Bound Together Sarah and Laura go in depth about content warnings in books. Should we have them? What content needs to be explained? Should it be used as advertising for a book?
Laura and Sarah talk about YA fiction. What makes YA fiction work? What would you expect to see in a YA book? Find out now!
Sarah and Laura are going down memory lane to talk about the golden age of YA books back in the 90s and 00s. There were vampires, angels, dystopia and more, but does it hold up?
Laura and Sarah are reminiscing about their old writing processes and how they have changed over the last 10+ years. Did you know Laura was a pantser? Sarah used to stay up late?
Laura and Sarah give their younger selves some pointers on the writing world and things that they have learned in the last 10+ years.
Laura has done developmental edits before and Sarah has not. So she has questions and Laura is here to answer them.
Getting book reviews is all part of the writing journey. Sarah and Laura discuss receiving glowing and less than glowing reviews on their published works, and whether they read them at all!
Laura and Sarah go through more of their old story ideas and see if they are worth writing now.
Laura and Sarah are setting new goals for 2024. They are bigger and more ambitious than ever.
It's time for Sarah and Laura to see if they managed to complete their author goals set back in January.
Laura and Sarah are exploring villains. What makes a good villain? What villain examples can they talk about?
Laura and Sarah discuss the Cosy Fantasy genre and how it is evolving since it came to light.
How do you create a character? What do they need to be good for your story? Laura and Sarah talk about their process of creating characters as a plotter and pantser.
Laura and Sarah talk about their personal bad writing habits and how we are trying to fix them...or not fix them.
Sarah and Laura are back for another look at their pile of shame - books they started writing but never finished.
How do we work on different books at once? Is it confusing? How did we make it work? Is it better to work on one book at a time.
Laura and Sarah are here to share their pile of shame-books they have started to write but never finished.
We check in with our authors to see how they are going with their goals from the start of the year.
Laura and Sarah look back on their first pieces of writing and read snippets to each other. There are many laughs to be had, so come along for a wild ride.
Sarah and Laura talk about their social media presence and how it has changed over time.
Sarah and Laura share their experiences with marketing their self-published books and talk about how marketing has changed over the last 10 years of them being in the industry.
Laura and Sarah are talking all about book covers. What are they important? How do you get one made? As usual they have a spectrum of experience and advice on the subject.
Tropes. What are they? Sarah and Laura talk about their favourite tropes in books and the tropes that make them cringe in this episode of Bound Together.
Sarah and Laura have some book recommendations for books about writing. They talk (a lot) about their favourite plotting book, Save The Cat Writes a Novel, as well as some other books that took their fancy.
Sarah and Laura are talking about standalone books and ones in series. What's the difference? What's the better one to write? What's the downside? Find out in this episode.
in this episode of Bound Together Sarah and Laura talk about different writing/ editing programs they use or have tried out and give you feedback on what they thought.
Laura and Sarah are talking about writing for games and writing in games, as they explore and learn what it takes to work in the games industry and what makes a good story in games.
This week on Bound Together, Sarah and Laura are sharing their editing routines. What steps do they take to refine and polish that first draft and make it a readable, legible story.
Sarah and Laura talk about First Drafts this episode. How do they write their first drafts? What problems do they face?
It's 2023 baby! Sarah and Laura are setting themselves new author related goals for the coming year. They are also expanding the podcast to fortnightly episodes, woo!
How has it been a whole year of Bound Together? We are so proud of the podcast we've made. In this episode, Laura and Sarah reflect on the writing goals they set at the start of the year in episode 2.
Laura and Sarah talk about their some of their latest book recommendations.
Featured Books:
The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
A Long way to small angry planet by Becky Chambers
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Sarah and Laura talk about their experiences with writing courses, both new and old.
Find Laura's novels here
Find Sarah's novels here
This month it's all about falling in love with a new manuscript and trying to stay in love throughout the drafting. Sarah and Laura were both working on new books at the time of recording and they talk about their love/hate relationships with their work.
Sarah and Laura are talking all bout Beta reading / Critiquing in this month's episode of Bound Together. They have been reading each others work for many years now and share the ways in which they go about their critique.
In this episode of Bound Together, Laura and Sarah talk about where ideas come from and how they go about brainstorming those ideas.
This month Laura and Sarah talk about how they find the time to write with their different and busy schedules.
This month Laura and Sarah talk about their Camp NaNo experience for April, as well as tell you all about Point of View in stories.
What is a plotter? What is a pantser? And where do Laura and Sarah fall into those categories? Listen as they talk about their own experiences when starting a new book.
In this month's episode of Bound Together Laura and Sarah talk about their experiences and plans for NaNoWriMo.
Authors Laura Catherine and Sarah Gray talk about their author goals for 2022 and reflect on their experiences in 2021.
Welcome to episode 1 of the Bound Together podcast where authors Laura Catherine and Sarah Gray introduce themselves, talk about their experiences in the writing world and explain what you can expect from this podcast.