Meet Julie Mae Cohen

The million-copy bestselling author talks to us about her latest book Eat Slay Love and much more!

This week we had the privilege of talking to the insightful and inspiring author Julie Mae Cohen. Julie joined us at Fourbears Books in Caversham to talk about everything writing-related: "about craft, the publishing industry, process, the writer’s life, and of course my books. Even the dreaded pantsing vs plotting. Just throw ‘em at me." So I did.

And when you get Julie, you’re actually getting three people in one, with a breadth of knowledge and experience that’s hard to match. You get:

• Julie Mae Cohen, author of thrillers Bad Men and Eat, Slay, Love

• Julie Cohen, author of book club novels such as Summer People and Together (a Richard & Judy book club pick)

• Julie Cohen, creative writing teacher and lecturer

Photo by Caversham Writers’ Moira Newton

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“There are no rules in writing, by the way. It's like the pirate code - it's only guidelines. The only real rule for writing is do what works.” —Julie Mae Cohen

We recorded our conversation at Fourbears, which included discussions on

• Her latest thriller, Eat Slay Love (“A friend will help you move on. A best friend will help you move the body”)

• How Eat Slay Love demonstrates several topics that have come up in recent Caversham Writers meetings, such as

  • Where to start a story

  • Writing from multiple points of view and transitioning between them

  • Crafting compelling characters - what attributes do they need?

  • Setting up questions for the reader

• The Bechdel Test

• The traumatic experience that went viral on Twitter and the subsequent misogynistic abuse that inspired her to write Bad Men

• Purpose in writing and understanding who you’re writing for

• Book club books and how Julie switches between her two authorial personas

• Writing her first book at age 11 and her long path to publication

• Why writing for Mills & Boon is really hard

• The importance of failure in the writing process

• Marketing and the business of writing

• Julie’s Post-it note planning and outlining method (more on that below)

• Can you teach anyone to write?

So settle yourself down with a cuppa (actually, you might need a whole pot) and enjoy listening to Julie on all of the above and more:

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Using Post-its to Transform Your Writing

How do you set about planning and outlining a book? Julie talked about her Post-it note method in our discussion above and also mentioned she has a course on the whole strategy.

The course takes you through six stages: Brainstorming , Plotting, Structuring, Managing Subplots, Simplifying, and Revising. One section builds on the other, though you can revisit them any time you like. Each section has videos, exercises and examples, and Julie will explain how she's used Post-its to write her bestselling novels.

You can find Julie’s course here: Using Post-its to Transform Your Writing

And as a special offer to Caversham Writers members only, Julie is offering a discount of 30% on a full-price course. I’ll be sending a separate email out to members with the discount code to use at checkout, let me know if you don’t get it.

‘The finest and the most inspiring creative writing teacher you will ever meet'

—Sunday Times bestselling novelist and nonfiction author Joanna Cannon

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Next Week's Meeting

Prompt-Write Night

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM GMT

Feeling stuck? Unblock yourself in this writing session where I set a prompt or theme for members to use as a jumping off point for an hour of writing. You can use it to write fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose.

This event will be online via Zoom, register to attend on Meetup to get the link:

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Free To Join, Free To Attend

When

Crystal Bourque

founded Caversham Writers she did so with two main principles that I have tried to uphold since taking over: that it be inclusive and open to all writers at any level of experience and in any genre ("If you write, you're a writer") and that it be free to join and free to attend. Substack does have a paid subscription tier, but in keeping with our foundational principle I have no plans to start charging.

(If you want to help me keep Caversham Writers free to join and free to attend, you can always Buy Me a Coffee - any contributions go towards the running of the group)