Today’s guest is someone whose work asks a deceptively simple question: What happens when you really go back—and look again?

My guest is Amy Weinland Daughters, the award-winning author of Dear Dana and the hilarious, heartfelt novel You Cannot Mess This Up. In this book, Amy sends her protagonist—at 46 years old—back to 1978, where she’s forced to spend 36 hours in her childhood home with her nuclear family… including her ten-year-old self.

What follows is funny, uncomfortable, nostalgic, and quietly profound. It’s a story about memory, family, jealousy, cigarettes, Bonanza Sirloin Pit, and the realization that our life stories may not be universally important—but they are profoundly important to us.

Amy is a writer who blends humor with emotional truth in a way that sneaks up on you, and today we’re talking about time travel, malleable memories, writing personal stories without apology, and what happens when you finally let yourself believe that your story matters.

So settle in—because this conversation might not change the past… but it just might change how you remember it.

You can find Amy at:

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“Sometimes the best stories don’t start in film school… they start in an argument.”

Today’s guest is proof that creativity doesn’t always arrive politely—it shows up in the middle of a late-night debate, challenges everything you think you know, and dares you to prove your point with a story.

After a 22-year career in law, Monte Albers de Leon began screenwriting on a dare—sparked by a heated conversation about artificial intelligence, humanity, and whether we’re fundamentally good or doomed to lose ourselves to technology.

What started as a Notes-app allegory about The Breakfast Club, an AI apocalypse, and Amazon workers in suburban Omaha turned into Good—a screenplay now on draft fifteen, with over 160 international awards, currently in production with Impossible Dreams Productions, and part of a powerful anthology called The Parables.

Monte writes modern fables—stories about morality, choice, and the belief that even at the end of the world, people can still do the right thing.

Today, we’re talking about reinvention, writing from conviction, trusting your voice, and why sometimes the best way to win an argument… is to write a movie.

I’m Erin, and this is Plot Twist Radio. Let’s get into it.

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Welcome to Plot Twist Radio , where we talk about the stories that shape us, challenge us, and sometimes refuse to behave.

Today’s guest is Sue William Silverman — an award-winning author known for her fearless explorations of trauma, identity, desire, spirituality, and mortality. Sue is the author of multiple acclaimed memoirs, including How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, Love Sick, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, and The Pat Boone Fan Club, along with two essential craft books on writing true stories.

Her forthcoming collection, Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader, continues her signature blend of lyricism, insight, and unflinching honesty — work that reminds us that truth doesn’t always arrive neatly, and stories don’t owe us comfort.

In this conversation, we talk about writing the things we’re afraid to name, how memory both betrays and saves us, why flash essays can feel like emotional misdemeanors, and what it really means to write fearlessly — not without fear, but through it.

This episode is for writers, readers, and anyone who believes that telling the truth can still ignite the soul.

Let’s get into it.

Sue William Silverman - WELCOME TO SUE'S VIRTUAL HOME