Living In the Pages: Recent Episodes
Willow Aster
Living in the Pages is a podcast hosted by author Willow Aster. Insightful interviews with authors about their books, life, and the art of writing. Willow Aster is a bestselling author, wife, mother of two children and a rescue puppy. She cares passionately about women, books, the craft of writing, and finding out the secrets behind the words.
“When I started writing my Brookston Housewives series, I thought I was writing a romance with lots of sex...I just felt like something was missing, and I thought, ‘So which one of these housewives is gonna die?’“
— Shay Apple
“It helps a lot to have those writer friends—that community, that tribe—to be there and say “Hey, come on, let’s do this together, let’s help each other out.” Because there are some days when it gets hard!“
— CeCe Ferrell
“I don't have that story of, "I've written since I was six," like I hear a lot of authors saying.“
— Tillie Cole
“With paranormal, it's whatever you want it to be. It doesn't necessarily have to coincide with everyone else's vision of paranormal.“
— Leslie Fear
“I just have a lot of brackets [laughs] that say, ‘Write something really great here.’“
— Emery Rose
“I love antiheroes. I love writing about situations that, maybe aren’t comfortable in society…because that’s where I think all the fun is.“
— Giana Darling
“There's no ego or personality conflicts that exist with Marlowe. She doesn't blush, she doesn't judge, she likes all genres...“
— Alessandra Torre
“Being in that double position of authoring and narrating—and sort of seeing that & feeling that—was really cool, and took my respect for authors to a new level.“
— Erin Spencer
“Even when I'm exhausted, I can do it because I love storytelling, I love my characters—and now, I've fallen in love with my readers!“
— Dylan Allen
“I try to just focus on the thing I'm doing, and the work in front of me, because it's hard to count on much else.“
— Kimberly McCreight
“Even if you want to write something, if something else is louder, you have to go with what's screaming.“
— Q.B. Tyler
“That is the reason that I wake up every morning. I'm like, 'Ok, I'm going to work on this story, and I'm going to make it the best that I can, no matter how hard it is.'“
— Saffron Kent
“I’ve always been a very twisty writer. Even most of my romance novels have some kind of twist that blows up in your face.“
— Shanora Williams
“As I develop the story around the characters, bits and pieces of their personalities come through…they always, always, always surprise me.“
— Carmel Rhodes
"I think we just try to talk ourselves out of doing the hard things we need to do with our art. And when you stop listening to that voice, and start working with it...then things go smoother.“
— Tarryn Fisher
"I think the biggest thing you need to do is write for yourself. Write what you want to write—not what other people want you to write, or what’s expected of you to write.”
— Kelly Elliot
"There’s just something about a forbidden touch or kiss…I just feel like I was born in the wrong time sometimes.”
— Korrie Kelley
"I'm really inspired by people and what motivates them...so my plots usually evolve from the motivations of my characters.”
— P. Dangelico
"I'm just one of those writers where I like to draw inspiration from my environment.”
— Monica James
"I love that fact that something that we create might make somebody else happy!”
— Jenny Kate Altman
"I have always been a writer. As for back as I can remember, I was writing on construction paper with crayons.”
Emma Renshaw
"You know, it's like breaking that idea that melanin dictates what you're going to enjoy.”
Nana Malone
"My mind has to be distracted for me to get over whatever is blocking me.”
Nikki Sloane
"I am a lifelong Anglophile. I grew up reading Austin and discovered Georgette Heyer in college, which I didn't realize were romance novels at the time—but they totally were!”
Martha Waters
"I just needed a piece of me, and a challenge—and it took off so quickly.”
Willow Winters
"I feel really lucky that I get to (write) full-time now, and I’m so thankful, because I love it. I wake up excited every day.”
Laura Pavlov
"When you write, you get attached to these characters, and you end up really wanting to dive further into them.”
Kelsey Clayton
"I think [writing humor] is harder, because not everybody thinks the same thing is funny.”
Alison G. Bailey
"I would have never guessed that picking up a book—an indie book—would change, and lead to all of this.”
Charleigh Rose
"There's, like, a buzz when you release a book, and it's anxiousness, and nervousness, but excitement...I love releasing a new book.”
CoraLee June
"Bits of my experiences now have been planted in my works before...Maybe it's not so strange. Maybe all of that is already in us, and our job as writers is just to unearth it and put it out there.”
—Emma Scott
"There's always a romantic element, but that's not the point of the story—it never is. It's always about the growth of the characters.”
L.B. Simmons
"I’m a big rewriter. My books change a lot from draft one to draft two.”
Catherine Cowles
"My goal was, when I published my first book, that I wanted forty-seven people to read it—47 people that I didn’t know—because I thought fifty was a stretch!”
Natasha Madison
"One of the problems I have with my books is figuring out which shelf to put them on.”
Suanne Laqueur
"It was a little bit of an uneven process in, kind of, building these three women in different ways. But I found it a great challenge—not one that I'm eager to replicate.”
Megan Angelo
"It was a little bit of an uneven process in, kind of, building these three women in different ways. But I found it a great challenge—not one that I'm eager to replicate.”
Megan Angelo
"I've been trying to desensitize myself, but it doesn't work...it just got really hot in here.”
Matt Russikoff — She Said, He Said
"I hear of these people who are on such schedules, and I always say “Oh, I’ve got to become one of those people.” But I’m really not.”
— Elizabeth O'Roark
"I thought it would be interesting to see the world that I knew through the eyes of these two young people.”
— Paullina Simons
"I love secondary characters and I love having this full world for each book.”
— Rebecca Jenshak
"I realized that hearing from the readers that your stories have really touched them, really is why you do this.”
— Lisa Renee Jones
"They're not the typical warm and fuzzy [characters]—they're broken, and raw, and honest—so, that's the kind of people I'm drawn to.”
— Willow Aster
"That's the thing with my books; I feel like they're all so different from one another that, if you're not in the right frame of mind, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not for you ever.”
— Willow Aster
"At the end of the day, I've still got to get up and take the trash out and mow the yard and walk the dogs and, you know, life goes on.”
— Jeana E. Mann
"Writing can be isolating as a whole, and it’s nice to have a teammate…you know, someone who’s just as invested as you…in the stories and the career and everything.”
— Piper Rayne
"I find I do muse more on location than I do on people. If I go to the beach I'm inspired, if I'm in the mountains I'm inspired, If I walk through Williams & Sonoma I'm inspired...”
— Kathryn Andrews
"I feel like most of us read to live a different life temporarily or just experience a different life—whether it's for escapism or just wanting to understand something or whatever—so that's kind of the mindset I have when I'm writing. I think if I can get lost there, then someone else can get lost there.”
— Natasha Boyd
"I was actually writing a young adult series, and all of a sudden this rock star series just popped into my head...and it just wouldn't let me write the other story!”
— Anne Mercier
"When you find the things that resonate with you and you collect them, you create a world that you can love.”
— Leylah Attar
"It's not really like we're in competition with each other, because there is no way I could ever keep up with the demand for romance. Romance readers are ravenous, and they are constantly looking for the next great read.”
— Tia Louise
"You almost can’t say you’re a writer until somebody says you’re the worst writer in the world.”
— Lexi Blake
"My husband swears by taking a walk, so he’ll always walk the dog. I want to be that person that’s just like, “I’m going to go take a walk.” Honestly, I hardly ever do. Like, sometimes I go, 'I’m just going to sit here...'”
— Lauren Layne
"I was sobbing during one of the scenes I wrote in the last book because, honestly, they were supposed to have a fight and then it just got to a level that was so raw and real.”
— Geneva Lee
"Writing is mentally consuming. It's hard for me to think about the real world when I'm in the middle of a fantasy one.”
— Rachel Higginson
"Most of my heroines are kind of broken people...strong, flawed women.”
— Laurelin Paige
"I think you've got to have that thread of insanity in you to enjoy the fruits of the imagination. I really do think bookworms are in a league of their own, and authors are in a league of their own. That's what makes it such a fun community to hang out in.”
— Pepper Winters
"When I’m stuck, I have to just get away from the computer. Staring at the screen does nothing for me…”
— Melanie Harlow
"I've always just been that person who has these wild thoughts. So I like that instead of torturing my friends, I can just put them into stories.”
— Meghan Quinn
"I never know from day to day what I'm going to write or what's going to happen...I don't even know what's going to be in the next paragraph until I write it.”
— Chelle Bliss
"That to me is what writing is about—trying to capture those feelings that we all feel, and bring them into words that maybe others couldn't before.”
— Kandi Steiner
"We’re all human, and we all share a common human experience that we can all relate to on a certain level...We need to start meeting each other at that level and working together to believe in making things better.”
— Alyson Santos
"I feel like I don't have a choice of what my characters do in my books—ever.”
— Anna Todd
"I always like to say, 'If the reader is surprised by something, it’s because I was surprised by it too.'”
— Monica Murphy
"You have to close off the outside noise if you want to grow, and you have to find your own arena to fight in. Nothing works the same for everyone…There’s no one way to be successful in this career.”
— Brittainy Cherry
"It’s about longevity for me—this is what I want to keep doing.
There are so many things you can’t control about being an author, so you just have to keep writing. And that’s what I’ve been doing, and I’m lucky that I can continue to do that.”
— Tracey Garvis-Graves
"It’s just the way I’ve always communicated. Even now, when I need to tell something really important to my husband, I’ll send him an email, or I’ll send him a text...I was never much of a talker, so [writing] just made sense.”
— Marni Mann
"I can overthink anything—like, how to make mashed potatoes. I can overthink that until my kids are starving at midnight. But I just try to remember the joy and the reasons why I write.
There’s not a cut and dried way. There’s not a formula. There’s not a template or an outline. You need to always remember to be genuine to who you are and to forge your own trail.”
— Adriana Locke
"I had no friends, so I told my husband I was going to make my own. And he’s like, 'You’re gonna what?' I was like, 'I’m gonna write a book.'
…Six week later I was finished!”
— Aly Martinez
"That feeling—it's like a drug. You know? You get to this scene...or you make discoveries about your characters that you didn't know were there. It's just this kind of euphoria that I don't get from anything else.”
— Jessica Park
"As far as a process, mine’s a little like chaos. I have certain hours I write, but I never write in order, I don't plot, I can’t—I’m kind of like a nightmare writer, I guess.”
— Stevie J. Cole
"The ones I wrote about were my serious, long-term boyfriends. I had plenty of duds in between that were not book worthy.”
— BB Easton
"I got Microsoft Word, I got unemployed, I got a computer, I didn't know what to do with it—so I started writing books.”
— C.D. Reiss
"It was an adjustment for me because I was not a collaborator...but seven books, man—you kind of get used to it.”
— JA Huss
"That was how the whole story started. The four of us were at the [New Kids on the Block] concert…and the four of us, because we’re such lunatics when we’re together, plotted out that entire book as a total joke!”
— Corinne Michaels
"I think I can speak for most agents when I say this; we really just want a really good book—a really well-written, well-told, well-plotted story.”
— Kimberly Brower
"I think I write to a concept more than to plot points. So I try to figure out who my characters are and what they're going to learn about themselves by the end of the story.”
— Kelly Jamieson
"Instead of just telling people about the past, I like to show it to them.”
— Aleatha Romig
"If I had to say that there was one thing that defines my writing, it would be that my heroines are really strong characters.”
— Sawyer Bennett
"It took a little convincing—and maybe some bribing—but he finally came over to the dark side.”
Erica Russikoff — She Said, He Said
"I want to do a long view of what different situations look like to different characters.
I write a lot of stuff that’s just one character’s perspective, but I always still go through the process of looking at how everybody else in the book sees that experience and sees that character.”
— Bryn Greenwood
"This guy just walked into my head. I had to write it. I was like, "Oh, my God"—I was obsessed. But I wasn't going to publish it, I just wanted to get it out.”
— Ella Fields
"...Sometimes if I get stuck writing a character, I will sort of get inside their head and write some poetry from their point of view, and it just helps me, you know, define who they are and what they want...”
— Leisa Rayven
"Once you get to know your characters, they like to take the story in a different direction sometimes...I find that fighting my characters is an effort in futility.”
— Penny Reid
"We’re not very good plotters. We basically know maybe one page of stuff when we start. We’ll know maybe what the twist is, what we’re building towards, and kind of who the characters are … then we just basically start writing.”
— Vi Keeland
"Over the course of writing this book I ended up finding a therapist and saying things out loud that I had never said in my entire life...just so I could write this book! So I have to tell you, the amount of relief that I have written it, and it is done, is incredible.”
— Skye Warren
"If my brain is starting to hurt with writer’s block, then it’s time to just find something to distract me—because I always find that if I am distracted, that’s when I’m hit with inspiration.”
— Samantha Young
"It probably sounds backwards, but I'm trying to emotionally detach and make it not so serious...They're not necessarily life-changing books, but for me, when I'm writing them, they are coming from a place that was life-changing in my heart.”
— J. Sterling
"Since we started writing together, it's just been such a relief to share in not only the good times that you experience, but also the struggles—because they're there, too. So, it is hard for me to picture writing without her, at this point, for sure.”
— Max Monroe
"There are those people that can sit down and write every day and they write consistently amazing books and they're built to write. But I'm not that person—so it’s good to have found what works for me.”
— Kim Holden
"I feel like this just slipped somewhere into my unconscious, and it's taken a decade—or fifteen years now, at this point—to come out.”
— Julia Whelan
"It felt like me embracing myself, and it felt really healthy. I loved doing that.”
— Helen Hoang
"If you would have asked me last March when I hit ‘publish’ on that first book if I would have the relationships with readers and fellow authors and bloggers that I have today, I would have said ‘You’re crazy.’ It’s wonderful…and it makes it all so much more worthwhile—and so fun.”
— Devney Perry
"I thought this would be any interesting way to explore that feeling without it just being me talking about being sad all the time. It would be a slightly more fun way of exploring a very dark topic.”
— Isaac Marion
"My big dream was 'I want to be an actor,' and the secret dream was 'I want to write!'”
— Cat Porter
"I walk to the train every day and I see different people, and I make assumptions about them in my head. I say 'Oh, they would make a good character...'”
— Christine Brae