Last year, Dan’s Halloween book sale pulled around 2,500 people to the page. This year it pulled 850. The click-through to authors’ books dropped too, and the sales didn’t follow. It’s a candid opening to an episode that’s less a victory lap and more an honest post-mortem, recorded the day after launching his first solo fiction in three years.

This is a solo episode. Dan celebrates the release of Cock, his psychological rural horror novella about a killer cockerel (yes, the title is the joke, and the book is far darker than the pun suggests), and breaks down what he’s learned launching it. That includes why he sat on finished books for years, why he’s moving towards direct sales and in-person events, and what’s actually working for discoverability in a market where organic reach has all but dried up.

He also shares the upcoming events he’s booked for 2027, an update on the Hatching Season charity anthology for Mind, and the early results of his Facebook ad tests on the Twisted Tales series. The through-line is a practical one: build a consistent reader experience, sell direct where you can, and stop expecting the platforms to do the discovery for you.

🎙️ What we get into:

• The Halloween sale post-mortem: 2,500 page visitors last year versus 850 this year, and why cross-promotions are getting harder
• Why he believes sharing failures is more useful to other authors than sharing wins
• The paralysis that kept him from publishing a solo book for three years, and the mindset shifts that got him out of it
• How he reframed his priorities around print books and events, rather than chart positions and review counts
• The origin of Cock: a four-year-old joke that became a darker, more psychological story once he stopped forcing it into the Twisted Tales mould
• Why selling ebooks direct (via PayHip, and testing a platform called Curious) means fewer sales but a much bigger margin and instant payouts
• How the playful Cock marketing got around 25,000 views and interactions, yet converted to very few sales
• The TikTok Live experiment: the requirements to unlock extra visibility and why it may be one of the last organic discovery routes
• Why Facebook ads to the Twisted Tales series work: readers who buy Jack go on to buy the rest, so ad spend comes back
• Why a consistent reader experience (branding, linked stories, a shared universe) matters more than any single book, and how he plans to build that from his backlist

Links & Resources:

• Cock by Daniel Willcocks: https://danielwillcocks.com/cock

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"If we don't define the canon, someone will define it for us." That line, from Dr. Chesya Burke, became the organizing principle behind an anthology that started as a phone call between two old friends and ended up assembling some of the most influential names in Black horror alongside brand-new voices getting their first-ever publication.

Maurice Broaddus is an award-winning Afrofuturist, editor, and librarian with over a hundred short stories published in Lightspeed Magazine, Black Panther anthologies, Jordan Peele's Out There Screaming, and more. Dr. Chesya Burke is an assistant professor of English and US literatures and director of Africana Studies at Stetson University, whose writing has been compared to Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison by Nikki Giovanni, and named "formidable" by Samuel Delany. Together they've edited Black Horror: Canonical Voices from Then to Now, out from Flame Tree Publishing on 17 November 2026, featuring contributors including Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and P. Djèlí Clark.

We get into how the project evolved from an impossibly broad vision into a focused, budget- and genre-constrained anthology, why a poetry reading at a convention led to poems being added to the collection almost by accident, and how a script from Tales from the Hood ended up sitting inside a prose anthology. We also talk candidly about what new writers actually need to hear — that developing a distinctive voice can take a decade, that AI actively hinders that development, and that rejection is universal even among the writers who inspired this very book.

🎙️ What we get into:

• What Afrofuturism actually means, and its roots tracing back through Martin Delany, W.E.B. Du Bois, Sun Ra, and Octavia Butler
• How a phone call between longtime friends became a full anthology partnership with Flame Tree Publishing
• Why the anthology had to start at a specific point in history rather than attempt a full chronological survey
• The budget and licensing realities that shaped which historical voices could and couldn't be included
• Why they invited every contributor to choose their own foundational story rather than assigning one
• How a convention poetry reading led to poems — including someone's first-ever publication — being added to the anthology
• Why Dr. Burke believes AI actively hinders new writers developing their own voice, rather than helping them
• The years-long process of developing a distinctive authorial voice, and why rushing that process is one of the biggest reasons writers don't make it
• Why they see the book as "myth-making" — defining Black horror's canon on their own terms before someone else does it for them
• What's exciting both editors most about where Black horror and new voices in the genre are headed next

Links & Resources:

• Halloween Book Sale https://devilsrockbooks.com/halloween-2026/
• Black Horror: Canonical Voices from Then to Now https://www.flametreepublishing.com/black-horror-canonical-voices-from-then-to-now-isbn-9781835629598.html
• Maurice Broaddus: https://mauricebroaddus.com
• Dr. Chesya Burke: https://thechesyaburke.com
• "Cock" by Daniel Willcocks https://www.danielwillcocks.com/books/cock/

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Daniel Willcocks' own nonfiction book got flagged and blocked from Draft2Digital — not because it was bad, not because it broke any rules, but because an automated system decided it looked too generic. The irony wasn't lost on him: a book written entirely by hand, blocked by a filter built to catch AI slop. There was no appeal process. Just a flat rejection email and a trail of customer support conversations to work through.

In this solo episode, Dan steps away from interviewing guests to talk through what's actually happening in his own author business right now — from a stalled flat sale eating his bandwidth, to relaunching The Self-Publishing Blueprint 2.0, to finally publishing a new solo horror novella, Cock, four years after the idea first came up on a beach at ChillerCon.

He gets candid about the current state of author marketing: why organic discovery on social media has become nearly impossible, why pay-per-click advertising is now close to essential, and the early results from his first real Facebook ad test selling his Twisted Tales series. He also shares an honest, no-polish look at submission life — including a full manuscript read request from Tor Nightfire that ultimately ended in rejection — and makes the case for writing in series as one of the clearest paths to sustainable author income right now.

🎙️ What we get into:

• Why The Self-Publishing Blueprint 2.0 got blocked from Draft2Digital and other platforms as flagged "generic AI content" — and how he got it unblocked
• Why there's currently no formal appeal process when a platform blocks your book, and what persistence actually looks like in practice
• The Deliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale running 5–11 October, featuring Flame Tree Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, Bloodbound Books, and dozens of indie authors
• The four-year origin story behind Cock, his new rural horror novella, from a joke on a beach at ChilliCon to a finished 37,000-word book
• Submitting The Nowhere Line to Tor Nightfire, getting a full manuscript read request, a kind rejection, and where the book stands now
• Early results from his first Facebook ad test promoting Jack and the Twisted Tales series — real numbers, not just theory
• Why he believes pay-per-click advertising has become close to essential for discoverability in 2026, not just a nice-to-have
• His argument for writing in series rather than standalones, based on what's actually working for authors he knows
• The ongoing mission behind Devil's Rock Publishing beyond being a personal imprint — including nearing £15,000 raised for charity since 2022
• An early-stage idea for a new kind of incubator publishing contract to help new horror writers get started

Links & Resources:

• Devil's Rock Publishing: https://devilsrockbooks.com
• Deliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale: https://devilsrockbooks.com/halloween-2026
• Cock by Daniel Willcocks https://www.danielwillcocks.com/books/cock

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Jennie Nash once told a three-time New York Times bestselling author to throw out a 500-page memoir she'd spent years writing. It wasn't cruelty — it was pattern recognition. The author's own frustration, the sprawling page count, the lack of a clear intention: all of it was a signal Jennie had learned to read after years of asking the right questions instead of promising the right outcomes.

Jennie Nash is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a company built to help writers write books worth reading. She's coached clients to deals with agents and major publishers including Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, and is the author of nine books across three genres. Before book coaching, she was a solid mid-list traditionally published author — until a failed six-figure auction and a botched self-publishing attempt pushed her toward the coaching work that would become her real career.

We get into why she treats book coaching like an entrepreneurial startup problem — borrowing directly from Seth Godin and Simon Sinek — rather than a purely creative one, and why she believes most writing education fails to address the actual, holistic support writers need. We also talk candidly about pricing: why she charges thousands of dollars for services others sell for fifty, and why she thinks the myth of the "genius struck by lightning" is directly responsible for writers chronically undervaluing their own work.

🎙️ What we get into:

• Why she told a three-time bestselling author to scrap a 500-page memoir — and how she read the signals before ever seeing the pages
• The failed six-figure book auction and botched self-publishing attempt that redirected her from writing full-time into book coaching
• Why she borrows directly from Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, and startup culture to teach writers how to operate in the modern publishing world
• The real distinction between an editor (who arrives after the work is done) and a book coach (who's in the process with you the whole way through)
• Why she charges $3,500 for a 250-word query letter — and what she's actually delivering beyond the edit itself
• Her method for asking the "big questions" about a manuscript instead of getting lost in line edits
• Why she believes the "genius in the attic" myth of creativity devalues writers' actual labor and justifies underpaying them
• How breaking the creative process into replicable systems changed both her coaching practice and her business
• Why she believes writers should think like entrepreneurs: find the market's unmet need, then build a business around solving it
• Her honest framing of coaching responsibility: you provide the road, but the writer has to drive

Links & Resources:

• Jennie Nash: https://jennienash.com

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📚 About Jennie Nash

Jennie Nash is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to help writers write books worth reading. Since the company's inception, writers serious about reaching readers have trusted Jennie to coach their projects from inspiration to publication. Her clients have landed top New York agents, national book awards, and deals with houses such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Jennie is the author of nine books in three genres. She taught for thirteen years in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, is an instructor at CreativeLive.com, and speaks on podcasts and at writing conferences across the country.

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Michael David Wilson had two months to save his debut novel from going out of print. When his publisher decided to discontinue its entire back catalogue, he wasn't about to let his most popular book — and one with a film adaptation in active development — quietly disappear. Instead, he turned the crisis into an event: new cover art, a bonus short story, an exclusive afterword, and a first-ever Kindle Unlimited release.

Michael David Wilson is the founder of the UK horror website, podcast, and publisher This Is Horror. He's the author of The Girl in the Video, They're Watching (with Bob Pastorella), House of Bad Memories, and Daddy's Boy. His work has appeared in The NoSleep Podcast, Dim Shores, Dark Moon Digest, and Hawk & Cleaver's The Other Stories. Michael lives in Gifu, Japan.

We get into the full story behind re-releasing The Girl in the Video as a second edition — from commissioning new cover art from Ben Baldwin while deliberately paying homage to the original artist's design, to restructuring the novella into chapters for the first time. We also talk candidly about contract red flags every author should watch for, why he isn't afraid to walk away from a publishing deal over unfair terms, and what "Gaijin J-Horror" actually means as an emerging subgenre — horror set in Japan, told specifically from the expat's perspective.

🎙️ What we get into:

• The full story of how his debut novella went out of print with only two months' notice — and what he did to save it
• Why he restructured the novella into chapters six years after its original release, and the aesthetic reasoning behind it
• How he paid homage to the original cover artist's design while commissioning an entirely new cover from Ben Baldwin
• Why he chose to put The Girl in the Video on Kindle Unlimited for the first time, prioritizing reach over per-unit revenue
• His blunt take on predatory publishing contracts: "If a publisher asks you for money, walk away — and tell people about it"
• Why he's willing to walk away from a book deal entirely over unfair contract terms, even after months of negotiation
• What "Gaijin J-Horror" means as a genre — horror set in Japan told from an expat's perspective — and why he's uniquely positioned to write it
• The real, still-evolving story behind the film adaptation of The Girl in the Video, including a dropped deal and a new manager
• Why Daddy's Boy became an unexpected outlier in his catalogue, and its sold-out Thunderstorm Books limited edition
• His advice for authors negotiating creative control and contract terms with small and independent presses

Links & Resources:

• Michael David Wilson https://thisishorror.co.uk
• The Girl in the Video (2nd edition) https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/shop/the-girl-in-the-video-by-michael-david-wilson/
• Ben Baldwin https://benbaldwin.co.uk
• Pye Parr https://www.pyeparr.com

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📚 About Michael David Wilson

Michael David Wilson is the founder of the popular UK horror website, podcast, and publisher, This Is Horror. He is the author of The Girl in the Video, They’re Watching (with Bob Pastorella), and House of Bad Memories. His work has appeared in various publications including The NoSleep Podcast, Dim Shores, Dark Moon Digest, and Hawk & Cleaver’s The Other Stories. Michael lives in Gifu, Japan.

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Craig A. Falconer used to believe that anyone writing 10,000 words a day had to be producing garbage. Then a deadline forced his hand: he needed 113,000 words in thirteen days, hit 14,500 words in a single 19-hour sitting, and came out the other side with what his beta readers called his favorite chapters yet. It's a blunt challenge to a belief a lot of writers hold onto — including, until recently, Craig himself.

Craig A. Falconer is a bestselling Scottish science fiction novelist behind the Not Alone series, the Teradox series, and the Sycamore series. His debut breakout, Not Alone, launched in December 2015 and became a runaway hit that's sustained his career for years — including a six-figure Audible advance built by pitching three books as a single trilogy deal instead of negotiating one at a time.

We get into the deliberate, research-heavy engineering behind Not Alone's breakout success — from choosing "aliens in a contemporary setting" as a crossover-friendly subject to reverse-engineering optimal chapter length from bestselling comps — and how a single trip to the 20Books Edinburgh conference reshaped his entire production and marketing strategy. We also talk candidly about the reality of a 10,000-word-a-day writing sprint, why he deliberately used 2D covers for his box sets against industry convention, and how "modeling specific success" (not general advice) became his core strategy for every major decision in his career.

🎙️ What we get into:

• How writing 113,000 words in thirteen days actually felt, physically and mentally, and why the prose came out cleaner than expected
• The specific, deliberate engineering behind Not Alone's breakout success — subject choice, curb appeal, and title/cover/blurb congruence
• Why he uses 2D covers for his box sets, against the standard convention in fantasy and sci-fi
• How pitching Audible a trilogy deal instead of one book at a time led to a six-figure advance
• "Modeling specific success" — his method of studying comparable bestsellers' reviews, chapter lengths, and presentation choices rather than following general advice
• Reverse-engineering an optimal ~1,400-word chapter length from studying bestselling sci-fi comps
• Why he deliberately wrote two Teradox novels between Not Alone 1 and 2 — partly as a "palette cleanser," partly to convince himself he wasn't a one-hit wonder
• How attending the 20Books Edinburgh conference directly reshaped his time-blocking, box set strategy, and production pace
• Why he's a confirmed night writer, and how he stopped fighting that in favor of working with it
• The danger of "paralysis through analysis" from over-studying story structure books after early success

Links & Resources:

• Craig A. Falconer on Facebook: facebook.com/CraigAFalconer

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📚 About Craig A. Falconer

Craig A. Falconer is a bestselling Scottish novelist specializing in science fiction. He has written several widely popular series in his career, including the Not Alone series, the Teradox series, and the Sycamore series.

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Jenna Moreci's YouTube channel almost didn't happen. She scripted ten polished, bleeped-out, professional-sounding videos before posting a single one — and none of them worked. Then, mid–bachelorette party, she posted a raw, unfiltered rant about the worst parts of being a writer. In one week she went from 100 subscribers to 7,000. This episode — pulled from the Activated Authors vault — is a reminder that the advice holds up no matter when it was recorded.

Jenna Moreci is a bestselling author known for combining sweet, swoony romance with extreme violence and bloodshed. She's also a YouTuber with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, where she shares blunt, funny, no-filter advice on writing and publishing. She's the author of The Savior's Champion and its companion novel Savior's Sister, along with the widely recommended nonfiction guide Shut Up and Write the Book.

We get into the real numbers behind building an author platform on YouTube — including the honest truth that most subscribers are there for free advice, not to buy your books — and how authenticity, not polish, is what actually grows a channel. We also talk candidly about writing her second novel while serving as full-time caregiver to her fiancé after a spinal injury and chronic pain diagnosis, why she deliberately swears and writes adult content to filter for the right audience, and where she thinks a writer's imagination actually comes from.

🎙️ What we get into:

• Why her first ten scripted, "professional" YouTube videos flopped — and what changed once she stopped bleeping herself out
• The real percentage of her 200K+ subscribers who actually buy her books, and why that number doesn't discourage her
• Why she deliberately swears and writes explicit content on camera to filter for her actual target readers, not a broader audience
• Writing Savior's Sister over roughly two years while serving as full-time caregiver to her fiancé through repeated surgeries for a chronic pain condition
• Her blunt distinction between "writer" (someone who writes) and "author" (someone who's sold their writing)
• The unique, gendered abuse she receives as a woman on YouTube, and why she still believes the platform was worth it
• How she diversified income through ad revenue, sponsorships, merch, and affiliates instead of relying solely on book sales
• Why she never covers topics she doesn't feel qualified to speak on, even when heavily requested
• Her actual monthly production schedule: one week out of four devoted entirely to scripting, filming, and editing videos
• Where her imagination comes from, and the recurring dream that stopped once she returned to writing full-time

Links & Resources:

• Jenna Moreci: https://jennamoreci.com
• Jenna Moreci on YouTube: youtube.com/jennamoreci

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📚 About Jenna Moreci

Jenna Moreci is a half-human, half-weaponized robot hellbent on overthrowing mankind. She's also a bestselling author specializing in "so cute you could barf" romance interspersed with extreme violence and bloodshed. A Silicon Valley native, Jenna hosts a YouTube channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, where she uses her passion for storytelling and background in business to help other creators navigate their writing and publishing journey.

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Jonathan Yanez quit his job, cashed in his 401k, and burned every safety net he had — all before he told his wife. The first month of self-publishing, he made thirty cents. Eight years later, he runs a full-time publishing business with his wife, is fielding calls from the screenwriter behind Dune and Doctor Strange, and hasn't touched alcohol since the same year he walked away from his day job.

Jonathan Yanez is the author of the sci-fi Forsaken Mercenary and Gateway to the Galaxy series, and the nonfiction motivational book Get It Done: Hard-Hitting Motivation for Authors. He's also a former full-time, now part-time, personal trainer — a background he draws on constantly when talking about discipline, routine, and physical health as a writer's foundation.

We get into his actual daily schedule (4,000 words a day, six days a week, in 20–30 minute sprints before 8 a.m.), the blunt story of quitting his job without warning his wife, and how he approaches setbacks in his current push into foreign publishing, video games, and film — including a cold rejection that turned into a meeting six months later once he'd built momentum. We also talk about sobriety, self-belief, and why he thinks most authors box themselves out of opportunities they've never actually tried to pursue.

🎙️ What we get into:

• His actual writing routine: 5 a.m. starts, 4,000 words a day, 20–30 minute sprints, six days a week
• Why he quit his job and cashed in his 401k without telling his wife first
• How the first month of self-publishing brought in thirty cents — and what it grew into over eight years
• Why he believes "fail early, fail often, fail forward" applies just as much to lifting weights as it does to drafting a novel
• The cold pitch that got rejected, then turned into a meeting six months later once the project gained visible momentum
• Why he thinks writers are athletes, and how skipping exercise directly affects his creative output
• How he built connections in foreign publishing, video games, and film through cold outreach and persistence
• Getting sober the same year he left his day job, and how that shift changed his entire drive
• Why he writes down five yearly goals, then deliberately doesn't look at them again until year's end
• His honest take on why some mentors discourage ambition — because your growth reminds them of where they stopped

Links & Resources:

• Jonathan Yanez: https://jonathanyanez.com

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📚 About Jonathan Yanez

Jonathan Yanez is an author of sci-fi and fantasy fiction. He's the creative mind behind the Forsaken Mercenary series and the Gateway to the Galaxy series. He's also the author of the nonfiction book Get It Done: Hard-Hitting Motivation for Authors. Beyond writing, Jonathan is a former personal trainer, a part-time model, and an all-round inspiring guy.

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