In this special episode of Book Talk with Cara, host Cara Putman sits down with author, former Hollywood media executive, and producer D. J. Williams! D. J. drops in to discuss his transformative new book, Art of the Margins: A Countercultural Manifesto—a cinematic, memoir-driven guide for anyone navigating creative burnout, wilderness waiting, and the pressure of modern platform-building.

D. J. reflects on his eclectic creative journey—from growing up as a missionary kid in Hong Kong playing street basketball to building Christian record labels, managing a commercial entertainment firm in Los Angeles, and hearing God's voice in a tent on Africa’s Zambezi River. He and Cara explore the hidden gift of "fallow seasons", why referring to God as "the Presence" offers an accessible open door for seekers, and how everyday acts—from coaching little league to managing corporate teams—are profound expressions of creativity.

Plus, D. J. shares his practical blueprint for avoiding burnout using scheduled four-day blackouts and batching six months of social media in just three days so you can chase creativity instead of clicks!

⏱️ Welcome & Intro: Cara welcomes creative catalyst D. J. Williams to explore Art of the Margins.

⏱️ From Hong Kong to Hollywood: D. J.’s unconventional path through music label leadership, commercial media management, and keeping rock artists out of trouble.

⏱️ The Zambezi River Calling: How a documentary shoot in the African wilderness planted the seed to leave corporate entertainment and start writing.

⏱️ The Secret Novelist: Launching an independent production company and keeping his first novel hidden until author copies arrived in the mail.

⏱️ The Pivot to Art of the Margins: Why D. J. rejected the rigid "10-step how-to" model to write an honest, relationship-driven guide for creatives.

⏱️ Encountering God as "The Presence": Reframing faith without heavy theological jargon to create an open door for spiritual exploration.

⏱️ Delay vs. Depth: Learning to see delay as depth, disappointment as maturity, and silence as strengthening roots.

⏱️ The Power of Fallow Seasons: Cara and D. J. discuss why resting and letting projects breathe is essential for long-term endurance.

⏱️ Surrendering the Outcome: The 10-year journey behind the Beacon Hill YA series and trusting God to open doors rather than kicking them down.

⏱️ Everyday Creativity Outside the Spotlight: Why making dinner in an air fryer, managing teams, or coaching kids is just as creative as fine art in a gallery.

⏱️ Beating Creative Burnout: How scheduling quarterly 4-day blackout blocks and running work in "sprints" protects creative flow.

⏱️ Chase Creativity, Not Platform: D. J.’s strategy for batching 6 months of Instagram content in 3 days to free up brain space for deep writing.

📚 About Art of the Margins: A Countercultural Manifesto (Available Now)

The moment we exchange our soul’s call to create for our culture’s demand to be seen, joy gives way to exhaustion. Art of the Margins calls creatives to embrace obscurity as the sacred birthplace of purpose. Across thirty cinematic chapters, former Hollywood executive and novelist D. J. Williams blends personal story and biblical wisdom to reframe hidden seasons as holy ground. This countercultural guide propels us to create from conviction, live from calling, and have lasting spiritual influence—especially when our work feels unseen.

🔗 Connect & Resources

Guest Website: DJWilliamsBooks.com (Access series details and exclusive Art of the Margins content!)

Instagram: @DJWilliamsBooks

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!

Twenty years after his groundbreaking global bestseller The Shack redefined conversations around pain, grief, and God’s relentless love, Wm. Paul Young returns to the story of Mackenzie Phillips in his long-awaited sequel, Return to the Shack.

In this episode of Book Talk, I'm delighted to sit down with Paul for a deeply vulnerable and raw conversation on what happens after an encounter with God. Set ten years after the tragic loss of his daughter Missy, Mack is faced with an unthinkable journey: entering death row to look into the eyes of the man who took her. Paul explores the slow, messy reality of healing, the real-world friendships on death row that shaped the narrative, the silent grief that tests a marriage, and what to do when God feels quiet. This bonus episode is for you if you are walking through a season of grief, wrestling with hard questions, or longing to understand the depths of redemption. If you are, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Return to the Shack.

Key Discussion

• Healing Beyond the Breakthrough: Why healing is not a neat, linear finish line and how deep trauma continues to ripple through faith, marriage, and family years later.
• Stepping onto Death Row: Crafting Mack’s encounter with a serial killer, Paul’s real-life ministry with friends on Nashville's Unit 2 death row, and humanizing people society labels irredeemable.
• Navigating Divine Silence: What to cling to when God feels quiet, moving from the paralyzing "Why?" to "What now?", and trusting God’s goodness without relying solely on emotional feelings.
• Fury, Grief, and Compassion: Why raw fury is a natural, righteous response to evil, and how honesty with God opens the door to genuine compassion.
• Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation: Clarifying why forgiveness is for the victim’s freedom rather than excusing the wrong, and why trust must be earned through repentance.
• The "Wastefulness of Grace": Discovering God’s overwhelming, everyday beauty in the middle of our deepest shacks.

About: Wm. Paul Young is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Shack, which has sold over 25 million copies worldwide and was adapted into a major motion picture. Born in Canada and raised by missionary parents among a Stone Age tribe in the highlands of Netherlands New Guinea, Paul's life was shaped by diverse cultures, profound personal loss, and deep spiritual restoration. His writing explores the boundless nature of grace, the healing of trauma, and the relentless love of God. Paul lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, Kim, surrounded by their children and grandchildren.

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!

In this episode of Book Talk with Cara, host Cara Putman sits down with Christie Award–winning author and former journalist Patricia Raybon! Patricia drops in to talk about her thrilling new World War II historical mystery, The Sedalia Code.

Patricia shares her shift from news reporting to feature writing—moving "from writing about facts to writing about feelings"—and how her parents’ wartime romance inspired her latest book. She dives into the shocking history of German and Italian POW camps in North Carolina, why female math teachers were the secret codebreakers of WWII, and how a physical trip to North Carolina transformed her manuscript. She and Cara also discuss navigating the complex, painful realities of Jim Crow in fiction and the power of communal singing to lift the spirit through grief.

Plus, stay tuned for our signature Lightning Round, where Patricia breaks down her favorite murder mysteries, her favorite three-word book description, and her upcoming leap onto TikTok!

• From News Desk to Novels: Patricia shares her career at The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, and how writing human interest features prepared her for fiction.
• Uncovering Colorado's Klan History: The real-life history behind her 1920s Annalee Spain mystery series.
• The "What-If" Behind The Sedalia Code: Merging her parents' WWII romance with female math codebreakers, Nazi U-boats, and US-based POW camps.
• Hidden WWII History on American Soil: Exploring Camp Butner in North Carolina, which housed 35,000 troops alongside thousands of German and Italian POWs.
• The Power of Site Visits: Why flying to North Carolina to walk the grounds made Patricia rewrite the opening chapters of her book.
• Writing Jim Crow with Purpose: Framing historical racism as a story complication while creating a heroine who refuses to be stopped by it.
• #1 Advice for Aspiring Authors: "Don't go it alone"—why attending annual conferences and finding your writing community is essential.
• Book Club Debate Question: Is The Sedalia Code a suspense-romance or a romance-suspense?

Host Cara Putman catches up with fan-favorite guest and writing friend Katherine Reay to discuss her upcoming novel, The Undercover Bookshop! Combining the charm of classic Golden Age detective fiction with real-life Cold War espionage, Katherine crafts a story that feels like "a delicious scone of an escape" with a little clotted cream on top.

Katherine breaks down her meticulous historical research process—including her rule that only books published before November 1949 could be referenced in the text—and explains how she balanced real MI5 history with a lighthearted coming-of-age story. She and Cara explore why post-WWII England in 1950 mirrors our own post-pandemic world, how she uses literary references as a "shared love language" with her readers, and why she keeps returning to bookshop settings in her fiction.

Plus, stay tuned for our signature Lightning Round, where Katherine drops television recommendations, her top Austen and C.S. Lewis favorites, and her ultimate favorite word!

• Welcome & Intro: Cara welcomes back writing friend Katherine Reay to talk about her new mystery-laced historical novel, The Undercover Bookshop.

• Homage to Golden Age Mysteries: Sliding nods to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Father Brown, Marjorie Allingham, and Josephine Tey into the story.

• The 1949 Cutoff Rule: Katherine’s strict research boundary to ensure historical accuracy.

• Introducing Gemma Brown: The kooky, loveable 22-year-old protagonist searching for belonging after childhood displacement in WWII.

• A Spy as a Secondary Character: Why Katherine chose a lighter, coming-of-age perspective over a heavy spy point of view.

• Setting the Scene in Great Rollright: Researching the actual 1950 English village (population 247) down to the high street layout and constabulary placement.

• Uncovering the Real Historical Spy: How research in Ben Macintyre's work and Oxford museum debates revealed gaps in classified MI6 files, leaving room for fictional "what-ifs".

• Thinking "In Books": Why bookshops recur in Katherine's novels and how literary allusions build community with readers.

• Historical Hooks & Parallel Timelines: Finding the emotional connection between 1950 post-war rationing/uncertainty and modern post-pandemic life.

Guest Website: KatherineReay.com (Use the contact page to email her directly—she replies to all emails herself!)

Instagram: @katherinereay

Facebook: Katherine Reay Author

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!

Welcome to Book Talk! Today we're diving into the haunting, sweeping vistas of 1960s Northern Michigan with my good friend, author Janyre Tromp. Janyre is renowned for her rich, atmospheric historical fiction, and in this episode, we're discussing her captivating Gothic suspense novel, Burning in the Raven Tree. I loved this fun, relaxed chat about Janyre's writing journey, her unique approach to storytelling, and the intricate details of her latest work.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll discover in this absolutely page-turning episode:

• The "Rapid Release" Strategy: Janyre explains the publishing industry's "rapid release" strategy, where she's publishing a book roughly every six months. This involves a pivot in her writing, incorporating myth and magical realism into her historical suspense, imagining how mythological and folklore characters influence real history.

• "Burning in the Raven Tree": A Deep Dive: she's publishing a book roughly every six months. This involves a pivot in her writing, incorporating myth and magical realism into her historical suspense, imagining how mythological and folklore characters influence real history.

• "Burning in the Raven Tree": A Deep Dive: ◦ Intriguing Premise: The story features a disgraced Chicago lawyer, a woman accused of a decade-old murder, and a town steeped in rumor and superstition. Most uniquely, the book features a tree that is part of the story and even has a point of view. ◦ Northern Michigan Setting: Janyre, a Michigander herself, discusses her "natural obsession" with her home state, particularly the Leelanau Peninsula. She explains how the remote, densely forested landscape, combined with the immense Great Lakes—which she calls "freshwater oceans" with the highest concentration of shipwrecks in the world—creates an inherently eerie and mythical backdrop for her Gothic novel. ◦ Weaving Myth and Folklore: Learn how Janyre skillfully blends local folklore, such as the real-life phenomenon of "shoe trees" in Michigan, with deeper mythologies. For "Burning in the Raven Tree," she chose Ukrainian and Polish Slavic myth, specifically the World Tree. ◦ The World Tree's Role: The World Tree is central to the narrative, separating the mortal world from the gods and acting as a prison for the underworld. In the story, the raven tree is dying, trying to hold down evil, and has witnessed the events that led to Coin's accusation. ◦ The Terrifying Baba Yaga: One of the characters recruiting help to destroy the tree is the Baba Yaga, a creepy forest witch from Slavic myth with her own sense of justice. The town even calls Coin the Baba Yaga.

◦ Historical Context & Themes: The novel explores themes of true justice, dealing with trauma from the past, and the significant societal changes of the 1960s regarding child protection and family laws. ◦ Characters: Coin & Marcus: Coin is seen by the community as a "monster or a coarse woman who sees specters in the woods," a "witch". Marcus, a brilliant and gentle lawyer, aims to prove her innocent, even as he struggles with the town's secrets and his complicated past relationship with Coin.

• Behind the Scenes: Janyre is not only an author but also a published photographer and even designs her own book covers, having drawn the raven tree and the Egyptian outline for "The Scorpion Thief". This episode is a must-listen for fans of historical fiction, Gothic suspense, and anyone fascinated by how history and mythology intertwine. Don't miss this engaging conversation that promises to entertain and enlighten!

Connect with Janyre Tromp: • Website: jaynretromp.com (sign up for her newsletter for extra treats and a free ebook!).

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!

Welcome back to Book Talk with Cara! In this episode, we're thrilled to present a captivating conversation with the ultimate thriller insider, Ryan Steck, the acclaimed author of the Matthew Redd series, founder and editor-in-chief of The Real Book Spy, and even a continuation author for Ted Bell’s iconic Alex Hawke series.

In this episode, Ryan sits down with Cara for a fun, relaxed chat that feels like a conversation over coffee and tea, rather than a data dump. Cara, a thriller enthusiast herself who grew up on authors like Tom Clancy and currently inhales books by Daniel Silva and Vince Flynn, guides Ryan through an insightful discussion about his writing, career, and his latest Matthew Redd thriller, Target Down.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll discover in this adrenaline-packed episode:

• From Reviewer to Renowned Author: Learn how Ryan's years as "The Real Book Spy" – analyzing the best in the genre and growing his readership to around 3 million readers a year – uniquely shaped his approach to pacing, plot twists, and building tension in his own Matthew Redd series. He knows what readers want!

• The Genesis of Target Down: Dive into the exciting premise of Target Down, featuring former operative Aaron Decker who cashes in a major favor with Matthew Redd after a Russian mafia home invasion. Ryan reveals this book is a reimagining of his very first unpublished manuscript, exploring themes of old military debts, tactical relocation, and relentless action across Michigan, Yellowstone, and Montana.

• Matthew Redd: Vince Flynn Meets C.J. Box: Ryan shares his ambition to write a series that blends the action-driven pace of Vince Flynn with the deep character focus of C.J. Box, Matthew Redd's character is a "sledgehammer in a scalpel's world" who also grapples with the challenges of being a hero with a family.

• Unconventional Writing Methods: Get an exclusive look into Ryan's unique writing process, including his fascinating habit of writing the last chapter first to ensure a satisfying ending for readers. He also explains his "write what you want to read" philosophy and how his real life – including his best friend Mikey Durhammer and his 144-pound Rottweiler, Rubble – inspires his characters.

• The Art of the Hook: Discover Ryan's secret to instantly grabbing a reader: a great first line or opening sentences that make you "want to know more".

• Beyond the Books: Cara and Ryan also "geek out" about intellectual property law and his surprising journey as a part-time seminary student who had to learn to write "bland" academic papers.

This episode is packed with insights for aspiring writers, thriller fans, and anyone curious about the journey of an author. Don't miss this engaging conversation that promises to entertain and enlighten!

Connect with Ryan Steck:

• Social Media: @TheRealBookSpy and @RyanSteckAuthor
• Website: TheRealBookSpy.com
• Substack: The Real Book Spy Substack

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!

Welcome back to Book Talk! I’m your host, Cara Putman, and today we’re stepping into the glamorous, intoxicating world of post-WWII Paris with Australian author Christine Wells. Christine is a former corporate lawyer turned historical novelist who masterfully brings incredible, resilient women to life on the page. In this episode, Christine sits down with me for a fun, relaxed chat that feels like a conversation over coffee and tea, much like the previous discussion, rather than a dry data dump. You might not know this, but I'm also an attorney, and I guide Christine through an insightful discussion about her writing, career, and her captivating new book, The Lost Perfumes of Paris. We even "geek out" over our shared legal backgrounds and how it influences our writing.

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll discover in this scent-sational episode:

• Scent-Sational Research & Artistry: Learn how Christine delved into the "delicate, highly technical world of mid-century perfumery" for The Lost Perfumes of Paris, and how she captures evocative scents on the page. She shares insights from perfume courses she took, including one in Paris, and her decision to focus on the creative aspect over overwhelming chemistry, ensuring readers aren't "bogged down".

• A Woman's Fight for Recognition: Dive into the fascinating dynamic of Élodie Limeaux, a daughter fighting her own father to gain a foothold in her mother’s legacy at the House of Limeaux. Christine reveals this struggle is inspired by real-life perfumer Patricia de Nicolaï, a celebrated perfumer from the Guerlain family who faced similar gender bias in a male-dominated industry.

• High-Stakes Competition: Explore the "Essence of Paris" contest within the book, Élodie's fictional path to independence and securing crucial investment, loosely inspired by real "Young Perfumer Awards".

• From Law to Literature: Discover how Christine’s legal background – much like mine – helped her become a "fast, clean writer" and equipped her with strong research and analytical skills for crafting believable plots involving business rivalries and corporate sabotage. She also humorously notes how it taught her to "add" descriptive detail rather than cut.

• The Allure of Post-War Paris: Understand why the mid-century era in Paris was the perfect canvas for a story about "resilience, beauty, and renewal". You'll also hear intriguing facts about perfume innovation during WWII and the surprising lack of "snobbery" among perfumers regarding synthetic notes.

• Beyond the Books: Christine shares travel anecdotes about Paris, including Christine’s love for Saint-Germain-des-Prés and a recommendation for Alain Ducasse's chocolate shop. This episode is packed with insights for historical fiction lovers, aspiring writers, and anyone fascinated by the blend of history, artistry, and strong female characters. Don't miss this engaging conversation that promises to entertain and enlighten!

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!

In this episode of Book Talk with Cara, host Cara Putman welcomes back Christy Award–winning author Michelle Griep! A self-proclaimed "Dickens aficionado," Michelle drops in to talk about her Christmas novella, Belle's Christmas Carol. Michelle shares the creative spark behind exploring Belle—the iconic woman who dumps Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol—and answering what happened to her ten years later. She dives into the research hurdles of writing a 19th-century court trial involving a handsome barrister, the challenge of staying creative after writing dozens of books, and her family's hilarious Christmas morning traditions (and the great "Breakfast Pizza Mutiny").

Stay tuned for our signature Lightning Round, where Michelle reveals her favorite book vibes, her pre-order bonuses, and where readers can get her exclusive Dickensian party kit!

Want to watch this interview? You can see this episode as well as multiple others on YouTube! Enjoy!

If you enjoyed this conversation, I would be thrilled if you left a rating and review on your favorite podcast app and leave me a note below letting me know who you would love to see on the show!