This week, I talk with CJ Leede about her new horror novel Headlights!

Listen to hear about:

• How CJ originally planned to become a medieval historian, but after a professor helped her discover storytelling was what she wanted to pursue.
• How Headlights began with the idea of people waking up on the side of a highway wearing the skin of strangers, and evolved into a story about grief, mortality, family legacy, and the search for meaning.
• Why Leede treats setting as a character, using Colorado's beauty, danger, wildlife, and landscapes as metaphors for the novel's larger themes about life, death, and the unknown.
• How the novel contains investigative thriller and horror elements, but is really a book about confronting sadness, loss, and the things we cannot outrun within ourselves.
• Why horror can uniquely encompass mysteries, romance, literary fiction, supernatural stories, social commentary, and psychological explorations, making it one of the broadest and most creative genres available.

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, Emma West joins and shares her reading journey, her favorite genres, and how she ended up the Inventory Manager at Wild Geese Books.

Listen to hear about:

• Emma's reading journey beginning as a substitute for formal education, and how she approached books as a way to keep learning and expanding her worldview.
• How both of us gravitate toward layered, "mind-bending" stories that require active engagement rather than straightforward "popcorn thrillers."
• How romance works best for uswhen it's about more than romance—family dynamics, grief, friendship, identity, or creative life make the emotional stakes richer.
• How books can explore identity, trauma, religion, immigration, and society through speculative or horror elements, with special praise for Sublimation and Yesteryear.
• Our shared obsession with Ashley Winstead, and how both of us now consider Hot Girl Murder Club our favorite book of hers!

Check Out Author Social Media Packages

Check out the Bookwild Community on Patreon

Check Out My Stories Are My Religion Substack

Get Bookwild Merch

Follow @imbookwild on Instagram

Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

In this episode, I talk with Isabel J. Kim about her debut speculative fiction, Sublimation!

Listen to hear about:

• How Isabel J. Kim's inspiration for Sublimation came from her own experience growing up between Korea and the United States and wondering how different her life might have been if she had stayed in Korea permanently.
• Why "instancing" (where you split into two people when you cross a border) worked so well as a speculative framework to explore identity, immigration, belonging, and the ways environment shapes who we become over time.
• The process of expanding her short story into a novel, which required adding new perspectives and characters to show that different people would experience the phenomenon of instancing in radically different ways.
• How she chose to approach borders as both physical and social constructs, examining how governments, corporations, immigration systems, and personal choices all influence identity and belonging.
• Why speculative fiction often isn't really about the future—it uses imagined worlds to examine present-day social, political, and cultural tensions through a different lens.

Check Out Author Social Media Packages

Check out the Bookwild Community on Patreon

Check Out My Stories Are My Religion Substack

Get Bookwild Merch

Follow @imbookwild on Instagram

Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba