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Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read — Books
Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read

Living The Next Chapter: Inspiring Conversations with Amazing Authors and Writers – Better Questions, Better Conversations, Better Connections

Are you an avid reader or an aspiring writer seeking inspiration to embark on your own literary journey? Look no further! Welcome to “Living The Next Chapter,” the podcast that celebrates the world of books and writing. Join us as we connect you with captivating authors who have mastered the art of storytelling.

Living The Next Chapter is more than just a podcast. It is a platform built for meaningful conversations, authentic storytelling, and real connection within the literary world. Each episode highlights inspiring authors who openly share their journeys, including the struggles they have overcome, the triumphs they have achieved, and the lessons they have learned along the way.

This is a space where better questions lead to better conversations, and ultimately, stronger connections. Whether you are an experienced author or continuing to grow your voice, this platform offers a unique opportunity to expand your reach, elevate your message, and connect with a global audience that is passionate about books and writing.

This show is always ad free, if you love what you hear, please refill our coffee cup here! https://buymeacoffee.com/truemediaca

https://livingthenextchapter.com/

Author Podcast, Podcast for Authors, Book Podcast, Authors, Writing, Books, Literature, Storytelling, Creative Writing, Bestselling Authors, Interviews with Authors, Writing Tips, Publishing Insights, Book Recommendations, Author Experiences, Literary Discussions, Writing Process, Inspiring Conversations with Authors, How to Write a Book, Tips for Aspiring Writers, Behind the Scenes of Writing, Exploring Author Journeys

Latest Episodes:

E693 - Lally Pia - Fortune Teller’s Prophecy: A Memoir of an Unlikely Doctor Mar 30, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 693 - Lally Pia - Fortune Teller’s Prophecy: A Memoir of an Unlikely Doctor
Lally Pia is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and an award-winning author. Her debut memoir, The Fortune Teller’s Prophecy: A Memoir of an Unlikely Doctor was published by She Writes Press in April, 2024. It received first place in the Chanticleer International Book Awards (2023), third place at the Independent Book Publisher Awards (2024) and second place at Book Fest (2024).
Lally was a finalist in the nationwide talent search for America’s Next Great Author (2022). Her article about recovery from a stroke featured in The Davis Enterprise and on Doximity’s Op-Med. A video, A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrist, landed over 71,000 views. She amassed over half a million views on TikTok @theunlikelydoctor.
Lally worked as assistant professor at California North State University School of Medicine and is currently a voluntary faculty member there. She is on the Board of Directors for the Sacramento California Writers Club.
Lally has lived in Sri Lanka, Wales, England and Pennsylvania and she currently lives in Davis, California with her husband, Tim. She is currently completing a novel, Andorea, (psychological suspense). She is pitching a TV pilot based on her memoir.
Book: The Fortune Teller's Prophecy - A single mother must navigate the difficult path of family, promises and elusive dreams.
When Lally was three months old, a fortune teller told her father that she would one day become a doctor. Could he be right?
https://www.lallypia.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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E692 - Sandra Freels - Anneke Jans in the New World - an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life Mar 27, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 692 - Sandra Freels - Anneke Jans in the New World - an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life
Originally from Indiana, Sandra Freels majored in Russian at Indiana University and then completed a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford University. The author of three textbooks, for many years she headed the Russian Program at Portland State University. An interest in genealogy led Sandra to the Council Records of New Netherland and the delicious stories of the people who once lived there. She claims descent from Anneke Jans and sixteen other major and minor characters in her debut novel, Anneke Jans in the New World. Sandra at present lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Joel and their two cats.
COMING JANUARY 6, 2025
Timed perfectly to publish just as New York celebrates its 400th birthday, a riveting story of a spirited young mother who faces the unknowns of seventeenth-century New Amsterdam after fleeing the Old World in search of a better life.
It’s 1630, and Anneke Jans has just arrived in the fledgling colony of New Netherland with her husband, Roelof, and their two young daughters to create a new life for herself and her family. One of very few women in the colony, Anneke quickly realizes that she will need to make her own rules if she is to survive.
When Roelof dies, Anneke marries Everardus Bogardus, the flamboyant minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. With this marriage, Anneke joins the elites of the colony—but when the colony’s new director provokes war with the region’s American Indians and her new husband emerges as the head of the anti-war opposition, she also finds herself in the midst of political turmoil. As difficulties mount, she must rely more than ever on her quick wits to protect herself and her growing family.
Based on real events, Anneke Jans in the New World tells the story of an ordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life.
https://sandrafreels.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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E691 - Laura L Engel - You’ll Forget This Ever Happened - Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s Mar 25, 2026

Show notes

Episode 691 - Laura L Engel - You’ll Forget This Ever Happened - Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960s

This intimate conversation with memoirist Laura Engel explores late blooming creativity, the cost of secrecy, and the profound impact of reunion and loss across generations. Speaking from the foothills outside San Diego, Laura reflects on beginning her first book at sixty eight, transforming decades of journals and memories into a deeply personal memoir about closed adoption in the nineteen sixties. She describes teaching herself to write a book draft by draft, learning to trust editors, and slowly finding the courage to tell a story she had been told to bury.
Laura shares how writing moved her from isolation to community. After a career in real estate and title insurance, she discovered that writers form a different kind of tribe, one built on shared obsession, vulnerability, and encouragement. She urges aspiring authors of any age to never give up, to seek out classes and critique groups, and to write even if publication is not the goal. For Laura, the act of putting words on the page became both a craft and a lifeline.
At the heart of the episode is the story behind her memoir, You’ll Forget This Ever Happened. As a seventeen year old in nineteen sixty seven, Laura was sent to an unwed mothers home in New Orleans, pressured into a closed adoption, and shamed into silence for decades. She recalls the lasting trauma of leaving her newborn son behind, the small act of defiance in pocketing his birth card, and the way that secret shaped her sense of self, her health, and her relationships. For fifty years, she carried that grief alone, hiding it from her children and most of the people closest to her.
Everything changed when her firstborn son found her through DNA testing, just as she had retired and begun taking creative writing classes. The reunion, which she describes as both miraculous and exhausting, brought overwhelming joy, new grandchildren, and a longed for chance to be authentic about her past. It also revealed how complex reunion can be when histories, families, and expectations collide. Their four and a half years together were filled with visits, laughter, and deep conversation, even as he faced divorce, job loss, and growing depression.
Laura then recounts the shattering aftermath of her son’s death by suicide and the agonizing decision about whether to publish a book that originally ended on a hopeful first Christmas together. With the support of another author, she chose to add an epilogue and release the memoir, confronting not only the stigma of unwed motherhood but also the stigma of suicide.
The episode closes with a look at Laura’s next project: a fiction based on her father’s stories and her parents’ love story in Biloxi, Mississippi, starting in nineteen twenty eight. Writing this second book has brought a different kind of joy, allowing her to portray her parents in a fuller light and to honor the promise her father once made when he gave her a little desk and asked her to write him a book someday.
https://lauralengel.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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E690 - Cindy Eastman - True Confessions of An Ambivalent Caregiver Mar 23, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 690 - Cindy Eastman - True Confessions of An Ambivalent Caregiver, Grief, Loss and The Next Chapter
About the author
Cindy Eastman is a writer and an educator.
Her career has taken a wide and diverse route from introducing computer skills to elementary schoolchildren, teaching freshman English as an adjunct at a community college to facilitating a writing course for seniors for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. In her weekly essay on Substack called Silver Linings, she discusses getting older with a sense of humor--a must!
Eastman makes her home in Connecticut with her husband, Angelo. Her second collection of essays, "True Confessions of an Ambivalent Caregiver" will be published by She Writes Press in Sept. 2024 and she is submitting an anthology on grief to publishers. She can be found writing or teaching unless she gets to spend time with her grandkids. Then all bets are off.
Book: True Confessions of an Ambivalent Caregiver: A Memoir in Essays
Written for caregivers of parents and spouses, this funny but brutally honest collection of essays from award-winning author Eastman challenges the romanticized notion of caregiving, portraying it as an elegant conflict that reshapes family dynamics.
At first grateful to be able remodel the dining room of her family's modest home in Connecticut to accommodate her eighty-six-year-old father for what everyone felt would be a short duration of care, Cindy Eastman ultimately experienced a whole gamut of feelings over the course of what turned out to be four years of caring for her dying dad. Caregiving impacts everyone, and this account—told in essays recorded before, during, and after the time Eastman's father was with her—details that impact, not just on the primary caregiver but also the rest of the family.
One of the reasons Eastman committed to writing down her experiences was because she predicted that once her dad died, there would be a tendency to soften or even deny any of the negative and challenging times—and there were many. As of 2020, more than 53 million adults provide homecare in this country, and the reality of that arrangement is different for every family. It is not, as some might suggest, a "noble gesture" but rather an elegant conflict—an intricate reassembling of the family dynamic that many people don't ever see coming. In these candid, often poignant essays, Cindy Eastman brings all the emotions of taking on the challenging responsibility of caregiving a parent at the end of their life to the surface.
With lots of humorous insight, Cindy Eastman validates the struggles and sacrifices and describes what you want to say - even if you never utter a word. Eastman isn't afraid to reveal genuine thoughts and feelings about caregiving, even if these aren't always flattering.
True Confessions of an Ambivalent Caregiver shows that, sometimes, just getting through the day is an accomplishment, and it's enough.
~ Courtnee Turner Hoyle
for Readers' Favorite
https://cindyeastman.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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E689 - Matthew Neal Boedy - The Seven Mountains Mandate - Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy Mar 20, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 689 - Matthew Neal Boedy - The Seven Mountains Mandate - Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy
A movement driven by prosperity preachers, extremist politicians, and right-wing power brokers laid the groundwork for Trump’s presidency and is now advancing its agenda under his second administration. This multipronged effort against our national institutions is being led by millennial “kingmaker” Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and the new face of Christian Nationalism.
"A sobering assessment of the evolution of Christian nationalism." - Publishers Weekly
Matthew Boedy has written for many publications and authored three books. He's appeared on CNN and MSNBC and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other media outlets.
He has been a leader in faculty organizing since 2020 as president of the Georgia conference of the American Association of University Professors, a national higher education advocacy group.
He completed his Ph.D. in English in 2015 at the University of South Carolina where he also received in 2010 a master's in creative writing. He most prizes his bachelor's degree in journalism in 2001 from the University of Florida and his work at the campus newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator.
He is a full professor of rhetoric at the University of North Georgia. He researches and writes about religious rhetoric, particularly in the last few years about the rise of Christian Nationalism.
He was once a crime reporter and high school teacher. He resides with his wife and two daughters in Gainesville, Georgia.
https://www.matthewboedy.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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E688 - Ruth A Milligan - The Juniper Ridge Trilogy - A Dystopian Science Fiction Thriller Series Mar 18, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 688 - Ruth A Milligan - The Juniper Ridge Trilogy - A Dystopian Science Fiction Thriller Series
Ruth A. Milligan writes Science Fiction and Horror stories. She found her love of writing in grade school where she pounded out her stories on an old typewriter heavier than her and spent almost every day reading at the public library. When she's not writing, Ruth enjoys dance, hockey, airplanes, really strong coffee, and meeting new people. She published her first book in December 2023.
https://www.ruthamilligan.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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E687 - Carter Vance - A story of living, loving and growing up on Canada's Parliament Hill Mar 16, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 687 - Carter Vance - A story of living, loving and growing up on Canada's Parliament Hill

In this engaging episode, author Carter Vance shares his writing journey with host Dave, connecting as fellow Canadians. Originally from the small town of Cobourg, Ontario—famous for its literal Big Apple roadside sculpture and summer beach—Carter credits a high school teacher's encouragement for launching his creative path. She connected him with local cafe owners for poetry readings, sparking his early involvement in plays, school magazines, and submissions to prestigious outlets like Arc Poetry Magazine, which offered a mentorship that honed his skills in audience focus, form, and resilience against rejections.
Reflecting on advice he'd give his younger self, Carter emphasizes demystifying publishing, treating writing like a disciplined job—as Stephen King advocates with daily hours—and clarifying one's unique "why" amid abundant content. Creative writing, for him, captures intangible life moments and fosters empathy by letting readers inhabit others' minds, unlike film or music. His diverse career, including policy work in Canada, the UK, Indonesia, and Parliament (as a House leader staffer from 2015-2019 and Senate role), humanized politicians as flawed individuals, revealing unexpected alliances, young staffers' influence, and information's power in decision-making.
Carter's debut novel, Smaller Animals (released November), draws from these experiences, following young Canadian political staffers' relationships and growth amid power dynamics—"smaller animals" behind the spotlight. Comparable to Arthur Phillips' Prague, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, or Sally Rooney's works, it appeals to politics enthusiasts and character-driven readers alike, requiring no deep parliamentary knowledge. He discusses staff autonomy, grunt work evolving to info control, and hopes readers connect personally while gaining insights into unseen influencers.
Amid recent Canadian tragedies, Carter finds hope in political maturity, rising public engagement, and openness to change. Upcoming: a short story in Plentitude magazine, more writing, and ideas like a Berlin Wall saga.
Key Takeaway: Writing thrives on encouragement, discipline, and authentic voice—craft stories that build empathy and unique perspectives, turning personal experiences into shared connections.
https://cartervance.ca/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
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E686 - Richard Walter - DEADPAN is a funny novel about an unfunny subject - Hate speech and bigotry Mar 13, 2026

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EPISODE 686 - Richard Walter - DEADPAN is a funny novel about an unfunny subject - Hate speech and bigotry
Richard Walter is an author of best-selling fiction and nonfiction, celebrated storytelling educator, screenwriter, script consultant, lecturer and retired professor who led the screenwriting program in the film school at UCLA for several decades. He has written scripts for the major studios and television networks; lectured on screenwriting and storytelling and conducted master classes throughout North America as well as London, Paris, Jerusalem, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney and Hong Kong.
DEADPAN is a funny novel about an unfunny subject—hate speech and bigotry—that takes readers on an extraordinary ride of unlimited imagination, providing gobs of entertainment and delivering a comedic body blow to prejudice.
https://www.richardwalterbooks.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
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E685 - Scott Hatfield - The Shadow of Cáelunárra, Semi-Clean and NO SPICE - Epic Dark Immersive Fantasy Mar 11, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 685 - Scott Hatfield - The Shadow of Cáelunárra, Semi-Clean and NO SPICE - Epic Dark Immersive Fantasy
About the author
Scott A. Hatfield Jr. is a lifelong storyteller, political scientist, and avid hiker who blends myth, emotion, and world-shaping prophecy into his writing. Based in the Intermountain West, Scott draws inspiration from the raw landscapes of Utah, his academic studies, and the human struggles that echo through history. He earned his Master of Public Administration from Utah Valley University and has studied abroad at the University of Oxford.
After years of imagining the world of Cáelunárra, it was an injury sustained while scouting trails for his nonprofit—the Utah Trail Association—that finally pushed him to write it. That first story quickly became a multi-book saga. His debut novel, The Shadow of Cáelunárra, launches a sweeping epic of destiny, darkness, and the high cost of hope.
When he's not writing, Scott can be found deep in the mountains with his wife, young daughter, and a very opinionated chihuahua.
https://www.facebook.com/p/Scott-Hatfield-the-Author-61578132508209/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
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E684 - Cyndi Brec - THE THERANS SERIES, hidden truths, the weight of untold legends, and the power of preserving the past while daring to shape the future Mar 09, 2026

Show notes

EPISODE 684 - Cyndi Brec - THE THERANS SERIES, hidden truths, the weight of untold legends, and the power of preserving the past while daring to shape the future
My name is Cyndi Brec. I love writing my heroine into dangerous webs of deception while I sip French vanilla iced coffee. I'm an avid reader turned YA fantasy romance writer with a strong background in Recreational Therapy who has penned The Therans Series. I have never thought of myself as an author, more of a storyteller. During my downtime, I started writing while caring for my husband, kids, and extended family. I'm a creative wordsmith who weaves tales that transcend the boundaries of reality—pure storytelling magic enriched by the unique lens of a dyslexic novelist.
Ahead of publication, I've snagged several endorsements from notable authors and influencers: Jonas Saul, the bestselling author of the Sarah Roberts Series; Alan Warren, NBC Radio Host/Producer/Author; and Suzy Vadori, Author and critic of the Fountain Series and three-time Aurora Awards Finalist. I have also secured a 5-star rating from Readers’ Favorite for The Therans: Secrets Beneath Scars and the second novel in the series, The Therans: Legends Never Die.
I'm just a regular gal—storyteller, speaker, and co-host of the P English Literature podcast. I joke around, saying, "I'm a sidekick podcaster interviewing authors and serving book banter." I also speak on ‘Time Management Strategies for Authors Success: Managing Your Minutes,’ aiming to inspire fellow authors to live their dreams. I champion pursuing dreams and embracing challenges, refusing to let disabilities hold me back. My faith has grown through resilience and determination.
After marrying, I traveled to Europe and many of the States. However, Ohio is my home, where my husband and I have raised two great kids and several energetic dogs. My love of history was enriched by co-owning a 200-year-old historic watermill with Rich for over 20 years, which has fostered an appreciation of historical knowledge and cultivation of The Therans Series. The Watermill is the backdrop to the Theran story world and the creation of fictional creatures.
Currently, I am working on an anthology and co-authoring a historical nonfiction book. This book will detail a historic Water Mill, its historical accounts, and the restoration process.
Stay epic, write wild, read like it's your superpower, and never stop causing chaos with your words!
Air hugs!
https://www.inkerspen.com/cyndi-brec
https://cyndibrecauthor.wordpress.com/

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podcast produced by: https://truemediasolutions.ca/
Coffee Refills are always appreciated, refill Dave's cup here, and thanks!
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