Life on Words

Sheila Roberts: No Problem, No Story

Terry Heath — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 07:00:00 GMT

Sheila Roberts wanted to be a songwriter. Sixty books later — with movies on Lifetime, Hallmark, and Great American Family — she says the writing life has cost her nothing at all.

That answer is worth sitting with, because it doesn't come from an easy career. Sheila talks about crashing twice: once over a research error in a Regency romance that nobody caught until the reviewer did, and once when a box of influencer copies never went out, her editor stopped taking her calls, and her agent let her go. She calls the second one a dark night of the soul, and describes the friends who showed up with champagne and chocolate and told her the only writers who fail are the ones who quit.

Along the way: the purple gaucho outfit, the Dancing with the Stars audition, a mother who hid the naughty book face-to-the-wall, and the New York Times list she has decided to stop wanting.

Topics & Timestamps

(01:05) Stumbling into a career, and a book sold on the first try

(03:19) Paying your dues: beginning, middle, or end

(04:21) The purple gauchos, and a friend who said "you look like a cliché"

(05:14) Auditioning for Dancing with the Stars

(06:37) The résumé — and roughly sixty books

(07:09) What it cost: nothing

(08:54) Crash #1: the Regency error four sets of eyes missed

(10:25) Crash #2: copies that never shipped, an agent who let her go

(11:21) The dark night of the soul

(11:49) Champagne, chocolate, and Susan Wiggs

(13:18) "No problem, no story"

(14:28) Nashville, and an ambition that became an idol

(15:27) Songwriting success or the marriage

(16:26) The movies, and bribing a film crew with cookies

(18:15) What an extrovert knows about loneliness

(19:50) Why isolation starves the idea machine

(20:21) Not fear exactly — not knowing who she was

(21:20) Did success change how people see her?

(22:09) How it changed how she sees herself

(22:50) Two older brothers and no pedestal

(23:31) The naughty book, and a discovery after the funeral

(25:47) Once it's in print, it's there forever

(26:32) The hardest conversation: being dropped

(27:24) Brain baby versus product

(28:20) Letting go of the New York Times list

(29:34) A cat on his last life, and an agent who laughed

(30:39) Muses, wiring, and ideas circulating in the air

(32:06) The Man Next Door: Rear Window with two nosy women

(33:20) Killing darlings, fool's gold, and the ideas still waiting

(34:57) How you know it's gold (you don't)

(36:04) Tennis, ping pong, and a husband who'd rather pretend

(37:11) Writing every day but Sunday

(38:18) Miss one boat, be ready for the next

(39:16) What it gave her that outsiders never see

(39:57) Genre fiction, humor, and the layer underneath

(41:20) Giftings, and becoming who she's meant to be

(42:36) Unexpected Journey, and the copies she still sends to strangers

(43:43) Why books — "because songs didn't work"

BOOKS: 9780999439807, 9780369773784, 9780312594497, 9780312370220

Kirby Larson: The Girl Who Wanted to Be Dorothy

Terry Heath — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:00:00 GMT

Kirby Larson learned that words have power at age seven, standing on a playground where the popular girls always got to be Dorothy. She told them her mother was in the hospital — leaving out that she was there having a baby — and got to be Dorothy that day. Decades and 250 rejection letters later, she'd write Hattie Big Sky, a Newbery Honor book, and a shelf of historical novels about the slices of American history most of us were never taught.

Kirby talks about what a silver sticker costs you: the innocence of writing purely for love, the privacy that disappears when strangers call you by your first name. About the manuscript she rewrote entirely on a trusted reader's advice, then threw out and restored, because her writer's gut wouldn't budge. About the novel she started in 2011 and only sold this year. And about book banning, and what it's doing to the middle grade market and to writers with less privilege than she has.

Topics & Timestamps

(00:43) The playground, the Wizard of Oz, and a seven-year-old's discovery that stories change people

(02:18) From broadcast journalism to picture books — and the library trip that flipped the switch

(04:16) 250 rejection letters, and learning that revision is 95% of the job

(05:33) What she imagined the life would look like, and how little she let herself dream

(07:01) The bookstore event with two toddlers — and how that "disaster" launched a career

(09:01) Publishing is a relationship industry

(09:37) The Newbery Honor: "like winning an Oscar"

(10:08) What it cost — ghostwriting, working on spec, losing the freedom of anonymity

(12:27) Giving up privacy: presentations, vulnerability, and strangers who feel they know you

(13:56) What loneliness taught her — the observer's advantage, and mining old cruelties for characters

(16:11) A quieter Newbery, before social media — and building a circle of fellow creatives

(18:29) Her own definition of success (hint: it happens at the desk)

(19:25) Fan mail: Duke, Dogs for Defense, and readers convinced her invented characters were real

(21:37) Turning down a respected editor because the story didn't touch her heart

(23:32) Killing darlings, abandoned projects, and the novel she started in 2011

(25:06) How she knows a story is right — overlooked women, forgotten history, and why there are so many dogs

(26:36) C.S. Lewis on children's books, and why adults write her as often as kids do

(27:39) The hardest lesson: learning to ask for help

(29:05) A typical work day — and the research assistant asleep under the desk

(30:20) What people get wrong: the fame, the money, the second job most writers have

(31:08) The hardest conversation — rewriting Liberty in one POV, then trusting her gut and going back

(34:04) Book banning inside publishing houses: editors asking writers to second-guess themselves

(34:58) Where the inner voice comes from

(36:10) Self-discipline, and what her son taught her about it

(37:50) Violet the contemptible cow, stubbornness, and the folded love notes she leaves on her laptop

(39:35) What she'd be doing instead

(41:05) Why books: "I could find a friend between the covers of a book"

(42:23) The price right now — the middle grade market and fear

(43:24) The stories she isn't blocked from telling, and who is

(44:46) What she's afraid of: the blank page, and writing the terrible

(45:53) The charming literary note practice that made her closest friends

(49:17) What the life gave her that outsiders never see: confidence, and a passport that stays current

(50:38) What the whole arc has been about

(51:30) What made it worth it — the awards kids vote on themselves

(52:10) The metaphorical headstone

BOOKS: 9780385735957, 9780545416368, 9780808532101, 9780345440464

Christina Braver: Real Sex, Real Stories

Terry Heath — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:00:00 GMT

Steamy romance novelist Christina Braver has never turned a profit on her books — and she's never regretted a page. In this conversation, Christina talks about writing "real sex representation" into the romance genre: heroines with endometriosis, sexual trauma, and bodies that don't work perfectly, who are still worthy of love and a happy ending. She shares the reader letter she returns to when imposter syndrome hits, the one-star review her Formula One–obsessed son wanted to answer personally, and why a woman with a clinical psychology background and a corporate career ended up writing romance during COVID. Along the way: the "generative stage" of life, the tyranny of the checklist, charlatans in the self-publishing space, and what her husband's coworkers think when they find out what his wife does for a living.

The main question of this podcast: What has your life in books cost you, and what has it given you?

Topics & Timestamps

(00:47) The main question: cost and reward
(01:01) The honest ledger — money lost, free time gone, work-life balance eroded
(03:49) The generative stage: writing to leave a mark, not to climb
(05:59) The reader letter she saved — Hawaii for Two and one woman's healing
(09:25) Endometriosis, authenticity, and the romance genre's turn toward inclusion
(11:34) Imposter syndrome, charlatans, and why she rereads those letters
(15:02) What could ever make her walk away
(17:24) Kennedy Ryan and discovering that romance can say something real
(21:35) Medium essays, a craft book in progress: writing intimacy with intention
(23:44) The famous one-star review — Formula One Noel and a son's defense
(26:50) Process: the "plotzer" method — start with the sexual health issue, then find the characters
(34:34) Where ideas come from: Michael Pollan, Mary Roach's Bonk, and the vet tech who explains boyfriends via animal husbandry
(38:17) Writing young men — bro culture, toxic messaging, and the new adult WIP
(40:41) Has writing changed her? ("My therapist says my word is why.")
(42:18) What she wouldn't tell her younger self — and what she would
(47:00) What everyone gets wrong about the job: Nashville dreams and the myth of making it
(50:39) The most unglamorous thing she did this week (a tent was involved)
(51:28) A day in the writing life: email as the frog, sprint partners, Tuesdays as flex days
(55:44) Boundaries, budgets, and refusing the "you should" advice
(01:00:05) On a scale of one to ten — was it worth it?

Books by Christina Braver Mentioned

Hawaii for Two
Formula One Noel
Your Two Lips (first in her series)

Books & Authors Mentioned

Kennedy Ryan
Michael Pollan
Mary Roach, Bonk
Liz Plank, For the Love of Men
Michael Kimmel, Guyland
Stephen King ("the boys in the basement")
John Gottman (5:1 ratio in relationships)

Life on Words — the life behind the work. New episodes weekly at lifeonwords.com.

BOOKS: 9798988547976, 9798986361451,

Ben Rockwood: The Publisher Who Rejected the Question

Terry Heath — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Ben Rockwood and his wife Tamara started Bainbridge Island Press out of frustration — she was writing better and better work and getting nothing but silence from publishers. So they decided to get on the other side of the fence and find out why. Four years later he's designing books, sitting in working groups with Penguin Random House, and helping write an international standard for royalty reporting. He also rejected the show's opening question, which results in an interesting answer.

Key topics

Why he doesn't think of any of it as a cost
The dinner in Harvard Square where the press was decided
Why most publishers won't give writers feedback — and what they do instead
The man with thirty years of handwritten poems in boxes under his bed
Hybrid and vanity presses, described generously and then honestly
Why he tells authors to publish before they think they're ready
The economics of poetry, and why so many poetry presses are nonprofits
Whether a regional name helps or hurts

Timestamps

01:28 Rejecting the opening question

02:28 Starting the company in rage

03:24 Harvard Square, and the decision to see it from the publisher's side

05:06 A reader and a writer, coming at books from opposite sides

06:48 What it's given back: being in a position to actually help

07:43 Why they answer every submission — and why most presses don't

10:09 The man who'd never read in public before

11:44 Thirty years of poems, handwritten, in boxes

13:02 Walking in knowing nothing, and why that was right

14:17 Learning enough to ask an intelligent question

15:15 Working groups with the big houses, and what publishers won't tell each other

16:38 How nuanced the industry actually is

17:34 Paper mills, high-art presses, and everything between

19:12 What's been disappointing

21:47 Why poetry is a tough space

22:34 Lots of poetry writers, not many poetry readers

23:44 What he'd tell himself, and what wouldn't have stopped him

25:14 Learning InDesign, and why poetry breaks every word processor

26:13 The Chicago Manual of Style, and the books already on your shelf

27:09 Write it down when you're a beginner, not when you're an expert

29:09 Advice for poets facing rejection after rejection

30:26 Hybrid and vanity presses — the pitch, and the reality

32:24 The people who want a book for their grandchildren

33:06 On being a gatekeeper

34:37 Chapbooks as a way to say yes

34:07 Thank-you letters for rejection letters

35:03 Authors as bands: make the album, tour, make another

36:57 Why poets keep switching presses, and why that stings

37:35 Chapbook or full collection — how they decide

40:34 Contest fees, and the poet's vice

41:54 Where a poetry press's revenue actually comes from

42:55 Why they chose for-profit over nonprofit

43:23 Copper Canyon, Wave Books, and where they want to sit

45:28 Quality first — and covers designed like album art

47:50 Whether "Bainbridge Island" helps or limits them

50:58 Prose, memoirs, and possible imprints

52:50 A real Tuesday: printers, proofs, royalties, letterpress

57:06 Five kids, a nightly fire, and a wall of book covers

59:54 What's next, including an international royalty standard

1:01:33 Is it worth it? Tech aged out. Books last.

BOOKS:

Susan Wiggs: 60-Plus Novels and What They Cost

Terry Heath — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Susan Wiggs sold her first book in 1986 while teaching full-time with a one-year-old at home. She's since written more than 60 novels, won three RITAs, and hit the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. We talk about what that life has cost — a decade of television, some friendships, the steadiness of a predictable paycheck — and what it's given back. Also: the insecurity that never leaves, the bicycle wreck that nearly stopped her, and why she says you have to be ready when your luck comes around.

Key topics

What she peeled away to make room for book after book
Why she told almost no one she was writing a novel
"Writers are one of the most insecure populations I can think of"
Wayward Girls, the Good Shepherd homes, and New York's look-back law
Why she'd rather be called a writer than an author
Operation Baby Lift, and the book she's researching now
The 2025 bicycle accident and a year of recovery
Book signings where nobody came

Timestamps
02:03 A decade of TV, and the friendships that went
03:30 Uncertainty, anxiety, and the stress of being a sole proprietor
05:30 Creative gratification, and writing first drafts by hand
06:20 A stranger in foreign sales who sold her books around the world
07:34 What it cost her family — and her daughter's honest verdict
09:38 Texas in the eighties, and a first husband who wasn't a patron of the arts
10:15 Why she kept the novel to herself until she could point to a publisher
12:14 Confidence, insecurity, and never quite dropping the backup plan
14:19 Where the next book comes from — and Operation Baby Lift
16:47 On the term "women's fiction," and why she says commercial novels
18:18 Writer vs. author, and why the distinction matters to her
19:19 What she'd be doing if the writing hadn't taken
20:56 What she gave up: a predictable schedule, and health coverage
22:25 A typical writing day, and the four-hour limit
24:40 Admin, social media, and the other hats
27:14 "You don't want to be just a life support system for an imagination"
28:44 Stephen King, James Lee Burke, and why envy isn't the word
29:50 The Carrot Seed, the first book she ever read alone
30:53 What she'd tell her younger self — and what she wouldn't
33:15 The advice she got, and where to find the straight story
35:24 The imprint that closed, and the launch slot that opened
37:35 When paperbacks came out like magazines
40:30 A million words of apprenticeship, and avoiding writing programs
42:10 Whether it's harder to start now
43:28 The bicycle wreck, the airlift, and the year after
46:02 Beach-read covers with unplanned pregnancies inside
49:39 Her process: the pitch, the synopsis, and leaving room to be surprised
52:32 What people get wrong about writers' income and hours
54:29 The most unglamorous thing she did this week
55:59 The signings where nobody came
59:27 What's next: an eclipse in the North Sea

BOOKS: 9780063118263, 9780062914118, 9780063211193, 9780060233501

Alan Katz: Forty Years of Getting Paid to Be Funny

Terry Heath — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Alan Katz has written more than 50 books and spent five years writing for The Rosie O'Donnell Show. He grew up in a family of shoe-store owners and teachers and announced early that he'd be a writer — his father's response was that as a writer, you are your own merchandise. We talk about what that life has cost, the bullies who taught him to write on deadline, and why he tells kids a joke at someone else's expense is never worth it.

Key topics

"You are your own merchandise": the cost of a career where next year is never guaranteed
Comedy writing in advertising — Pepsi, McDonald's, and a musical about Sperry computers starring Kirk Douglas
Writing song parodies on the 5am train for a show that aired at 10
How his daughter's dinner-table question became Take Me Out of the Bathtub
Writing jokes for Henny Youngman at $7 apiece, in high school
The agent who said write only for television, and why he refused
What happened to the sitcom
Kids who say they don't read for pleasure

Timestamps
01:25 A family of retail and teachers, and a kid who wanted to write
02:12 The costs: a best seller one year, no idea the next
03:17 How the Rosie O'Donnell Show job happened
04:19 Broadway, comedy, sitcoms — why their sensibilities lined up
05:15 Comedy writing in advertising, and a musical about computers
06:22 The Scholastic joke books
07:01 Writing parodies on the 5:30am train
08:03 Simone's question at dinner
08:26 Simon & Schuster was across the street
09:28 What he'd be doing if none of it had worked
10:40 Got Your Nose, and the packages kids send him
11:30 Two Sides to Everything, with his wife Rose
13:12 A typical Tuesday, and Jerry the ventriloquist dummy
13:50 "Turn the Tub Around," and what his kids are proudest of
14:52 What people get wrong about a comedy writer's life
16:00 The text chain with Dan Gutman and Peter Lerangis
16:51 Whether his kids thought he was funny
18:02 Keeping a notebook — writers observe
19:15 Awesome Achievers, and never joking at anyone's expense
20:56 A funny kid, and the bullies who demanded jokes
22:04 Writing for Henny Youngman at $7 a joke
22:38 How live TV taught him to write under pressure
24:24 What he wouldn't tell his younger self
25:26 Mildred Feinsilver, and three years chasing a sitcom in LA
26:56 Is he a good boss to himself?
27:53 Soupy Sales, and why jealousy isn't the word
28:48 The part luck played, and the advice he gives his son
30:00 The most unglamorous thing he did this week
31:29 Advice for someone starting out — and stay away from AI
33:31 What happened to the sitcom
35:15 Lie-ographies: laughing your way into the facts
38:17 Two stories about his name
41:56 What's next, and 27 ways to tell a Barbie story
45:07 Has it been worth it?
46:29 Kids who don't read for pleasure
49:14 Keep reading, keep writing, keep being kind

BOOKS: 9780689829031, 9780063025042, 9780762463381, 9780762463367

Life on Words launches August 12.

Terry Heath — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 06:53:14 GMT

A podcast about the life behind the work — conversations with writers, agents, booksellers, and other book people about one question: What has your life in books cost you, and what has it given you in return?

Hosted by Terry Heath of White Rabbit Book Co. First episodes feature novelist Susan Wiggs, author Christina Braver, and Bainbridge Island Press founder Ben Rockwood — with agents, poets, booksellers, and publishers to follow.

New conversations every Wednesday. Follow now so the first episodes land in your feed.

lifeonwords.com