So You Want To Be A Writer With Valerie Khoo And Allison Tait: Australian Writers' Centre Podcast

What’s more fascinating than reading actual books? Well, it’s the weird and bizarre stories behind the stories themselves! At least, that’s what journalist and author Alex Johnson hopes with his latest book, When Books Go Bad – exploring some of the strangest and most infamous stories about book writing and publishing experiences through the years. In this episode, Alex shares his love of writing these kinds of ‘behind the scenes’ industry books and how he ended up with the publishing relationship that has yielded 20 books to date. He also explains how he chooses the stories to go in his books and some of the more surprising entries. 00:00 Welcome06:11 Writing tip: Associative triggers11:00 WIN!: Diaries of Note by Shaun Usher13:02 Word of the week: ‘Deuteragonist’15:12 Writer in residence: Alex Johnson16:00 Alex explains his latest book, When Books Go Bad16:55 Why he wrote this book19:58 Journalistic not academic21:51 Starting his relationship with the British