I’ve known Joe Lipsett longer than I’ve known my wife.
He and I met in film school way back in the early 2000s, and we bonded over our mutual love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and horror cinema.
Every October, for over half a decade, we would go to theaters together to see the latest entry in the Saw franchise. (I swear — I still can’t watch a fictional character get brutally tortured without thinking of my pal Joe.)
These days Joe is a professional film critic writing for outlets like Grim Magazine and Bloody Disgusting, while I’m an author and writing coach. We’re living the lives we dreamed about while sitting in those darkened theaters watching Eisenstein, Renoir, and Fellini. That’s a pretty darn cool thing, if you ask me.
Gather round little ones and listen up. Follow your dreams and they just might come true!
Anyway, Joe has launched a very cool new podcast called Hazel & Katniss & Harry & Starr. Each episode, he and co-host Brenna Clarke Gray discuss a young adult novel and its corresponding film adaptation.
Joe and Brenna are also making an effort to highlight Canadian YA authors, which is how yours truly managed to weasel his way onto the latest episode of the show.
Most of the press I do is related to my work as a writing coach, so it was fun to slip on my YA author hat and talk a bit about my novels and my approach to writing fiction.
The result was a great conversation that covers my plotting process, the benefits of writing teenage characters, what it means to be a Canadian author, and who I would absolutely love to see direct a film based on my novel, M School.
===>>> Click here to give a listen to all the YA booky goodness <<<===
Your pal in writing,
Kevin T. Johns, writing coach
