Hi, there! I'm a published author, award-winning playwright, content writer and all-around English major nerd. I love to write. I also love to help other writers succeed, by polish their work and helping bring it to its full potential. In the Write Like a Badass Initiative, I take that a step further, by giving creatives tools they need to overcome self-doubt and blast through rejection.
Donald Davidson is writing his very first novel, a sci fi story. By the time you finish listening to this episode on the Write Like a Badass podcast – and hearing Don’s story – you are going to be out of excuses for why you can’t write. You don’t enough time. You’ve got to work, or drive the kids to school. All valid excuses, but…
Don is making steady progress on his work in progress in spite of the fact that he spends two weeks out of every four on a boat – and he can only write on a phone. He doesn’t own a laptop or a desktop. Naturally, when I encountered him on TikTok, I found his situation interesting and I thought you would, too.
Check out Don’s episode of the pod and other episodes, as well, for writing inspiration and information.
After turning 30, h.h. rune realized that she had allowed fear to shape much of her life. She resolved to lead an extraordinary life within the space of an ordinary one, and to urge others to do the same.
Hear hh discuss her writing, her life and her unique distribution strategy for her books on the Write Like a Badass podcast episode: “There’s some pretty intimate stuff in here.” (Hint: like the characters in the books themselves, readers are encouraged to enter their names, locations, and date of reading in the backs, then pass the books on to others.
Grief over her father’s death had Alexandra Chan writing down stories about him. She ultimately realized that she was writing a book, which turned into the hot-selling In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth and Magic.
Writing that book had a transformational effect on Alexandra, and reading it is – based on reviews – causing people to connect with it on a deeply emotional level.
Listen to Alexandra’s episode on the Write Like a Badass podcast to hear how this left-brained scientist discovered a whole other side of herself – one that embraces the magic and mythos that are ingrained in her family history and Chinese culture.
In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic is available from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/34dsjccd
Slavery in the Age of Reason: Archaeology at a New England Farm offers a rare look into the lives of enslaved peoples and slaveholders in early New England.
Sign up for The Glimmering, a once-a-season community and newsletter for curious minds, eye-twinklers, travelers, and seekers and seers of magic. Get inspired and stay informed about Alexandra’s books.
Connect with Alexandra on Tiktok (Alexandra Chan|Author and Facebook (Alexandra Chan).
After retiring from a career that included being an editor at the Wall Street Journal, Neal Lipschutz embarked upon a new career: writing suspense fiction. Fans of his debut novel, No Write Way to Die, are eagerly awaiting his second (in a series), Long Arm of the Past, which will be published in August.
Listen to Neal’s episode on the Write Like a Badass podcast to hear how he develops stories and characters, what is was like to find a publisher and what he’s got coming up. You will also get a sneak preview of Long Arm of the Past, when Neal reads an excerpt from it for Open Mic Night at the Badass Writers Cafe.
Lylanne Musselman is a poet, an artist, a playwright and a play director who lives in Eaton, Indiana. She spreads her love of writing to other by teaching – at the University of Indianapolis and Ivy Tech Community College. She’s also a mother, a grandmother and a furbaby mother. (How many cats do you have?) Her work has been featured in many literary journals and anthologies. She’s had six chapbooks published – so far – And she’s co-authored two books.
But Lylanne wasn’t always this productive. Listen to the Write Like a Badass podcast episode entitled, How Self Doubt Derailed a Multi-Creative for 20 Years to hear how Lylanne stopped writing at 18 – because she thought she wasn’t good at it!
Lylanne’s return to what she loves doing: writing and art, will inspire you. You’ll also hear how writing poetry and creating art helped her deal with caregiving for her unsupportive mother when her mother had dementia.
Her published chapbooks are:
Prickly Beer and Purple Panties (Bacon Tree Press, 2007), A Charm Bracelet For Cruising (Winged City Press, 2009), Winged Graffiti (Finishing Line Press, 2011), Weathering Under the Cat, (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Red Mare 16 (Pink House Literary Arts, 2018); and Staring Dementia in the Face (Finishing Line Press, 2023), Consider the Doves (Local Gems Poetry Press, 2020). She has a full-length poetry collection, In My Life: A Pop Culture Poetry Memoir, which will be published by Chatter House Press in Autumn, 2026.
She’s written It’s Not Love, Unfortunately (Chatter House Press, 2018), and co-authored Company of Women: New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press, 2013), and Marriage Maps and Driven Destinies (Chatter House Press, 2023).
As a studio exec at 20th Century Fox and Dreamworks, Steven Puri dealt with screenwriters who earned million dollar paydays for their scripts. Fascinated by these and other high performers, Steven set out to discover what gave them the ability to immerse themselves in their creative projects without letting distractions affect them.
The result: The Sukha Company, a website Steven created to help people tune out distractions and get into the “flow zone.” Listen to the episode of the Write Like a Badass podcast entitled, “How Getting Into the Flow Zone Can Help Your Writing.”
Nick Farrant’s writing has been published in a number of small press magazines and journals. They include two short stories published in F(R)iction Magazine. Nick’s debut horror/supernatural novel, The Light Between Us, is wracking up five-start reviews online.
Here’s what reviewers had to say about the book on Amazon:
“a fascinating mix of horror, otherworldly forces, and love story.”
“It made the hairs on my arms and neck stand on end. Very eerie, and hits all the feels.”
“I predict there will be a major-studio bidding war for the movie rights to this book. The dialogue is smart and screenplay ready, the characters are fully-realized, the settings and descriptions leap from the page (and would leap right onto the big screen), and the topic – ordinary people finding their lives menacingly entangled in the paranormal – couldn’t be more relevant.”
Listen to the episode of the Write Like a Badass podcast titled, “Growing up I was always the weird kid” to hear Nick talk about how he was inspired by research into folklore and mythology to place his tale in the Appalachian Mountains and create characters fit there...or do they?
Teacher, pet lover, musician, and avid reader, Jessica Glass is fascinated by fairy tales. She’s writing a novel based on a reimagining of a Snow White story – but not the one we all know. Her work in progress has been three years in the making. In the episode of the Write Like a Badass podcast, Jessica talks about where her inspiration comes from, what keeps her going, and who her readers will be.
In episode 16 of the Write Like a Badass podcast, Laurie Kirk talks about the unusual route she took with her story Baby Marvin, which started as a screenplay. She reveals who in her life inspired her main character, how their may be some debate about Baby Marvin’s genre (psychological thriller? horror?) and her certainty that the story WILL get made into a movie.
Baby Marvin is available for pre-order on Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/55f27k7t) and will be available for purchase on May 26, 2026.
Trae Dorn is a Wicca witch in Wisconsin who writes urban fantasies, comics and webcomics (they are an illustrator, too). In Trae’s free time(!), they host multiple podcasts. Listen to Trae talk about their creative process on episode 15 of the Write Like a Badass podcast.
