Fantasy author Richie Billing returns to the Future Lab Podcast to talk about The Breakaways, a dark fantasy comedy about a crew of spectacularly useless monster hunters. He and Lee Schneider discuss mixing grit with slapstick, writing a novel in weekly chapters on Patreon, and why selling books directly to readers lets authors keep up to 97% of each sale.

After writing the political novella Together We Rise, Richie Billing wanted something lighter. The result is The Breakaways, a "sitcom" set in a dangerous fantasy world. A crew of underqualified monster hunters take on a job they can barely handle, with funny and sometimes fatal results.

Chapters:

• (00:43) The Breakawaysand blending dark fantasy with comedy
• (04:05) Writing in chapters and getting to know the characters
• (07:06) Meet the crew: making incompetence relatable
• (10:28) Genre rules, slapstick and schadenfreude
• (14:08) Why go direct to readers through Patreon
• (18:35) Lee's serial stories, Hollywood Extinction Event
• (20:31) Building a audio player with AI
• (21:30) Mailing lists, traffic and the economics of selling direct
• (24:30) Marketing for introverts
• (27:53) Teaching, map-making and a book-promotion vlog
• (31:48) The "Fixing Bad Writing" exercise
• (34:55) Why people are reading less
• (39:19) Clear prose and shorter attention spans
• (42:54) The future of books
• (43:39) Where to find The Breakaways

Links:

• Richie's website: https://richiebilling.com
• The Breakaways in weekly chapters, plus the audiobook: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/cw/RichieBilling
• Also on Amazon and other major stores

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• Richie Billing - Guest

Author DeAndra Davis (All the Noise at Once; The Lovers, the Liars, and Me) joins the show to talk how screen culture can help authors. She makes the case that screens can bring readers to books rather than pull them away, defends audiobooks without qualification, and explains why her drafts keep getting longer instead of shorter. She drops some hints about her upcoming books.

Davis points to adaptations — The Hunger Games, The Summer I Turned Pretty, We Were Liars — as proven on-ramps to reading, and argues for investing in book IP across a wider range of genres. The practical work, she says, is recommendation-making: connecting readers to books through the shows, films, and games they already care about. A fan of a show could easily become the fan of a book.

No agent, editor, or publisher has asked her to write shorter or more “scrollable” prose. In fact, All the Noise at Once went in the opposite direction, growing from 66,000 to roughly 92,000 words; The Lovers, the Liars, and Me from about 72,000 to around 100,000.

As an educator, Davis sees the drop in reading as a layered issue. Long (and heavy!) books can be intimidating. Schools teach test-oriented passages instead of whole books. Hardcover covers are rising. and rising hardcover prices Libraries, she notes, help tremendously, because they make so many different editions of a book available, from hardback to audiobook.

She talks about what she’s reading now, what her workspace is like, and how she fills notebooks with hand-written character profiles complete with astrological charts for them. She rounds out the interview with some hints about what she’ll be publishing next.

Chapters

00:18 Are people reading less?
00:38 Screens as an ally: adaptations, IP, and games
03:23 Has the media landscape changed how she writes?
04:00 Writing on contract and the shift toward romance
06:42 The All the Noise at Once audiobook
07:33 "Audiobooks don't count as reading" — a rebuttal
10:05 Requests to write shorter and snappier
11:04 Word counts, ballooning drafts, and editorial advice
13:08 Smaller books, or a bigger problem?
14:30 Teaching passages instead of whole books
17:00 Hardcover prices and the paperback catch-22
19:00 The case for libraries
20:24 What DeAndra is reading now
21:27 Workspace, notebooks, and a 49-inch monitor
23:11 Digital drafting vs. handwritten character profiles
25:29 What's books are coming next

Books Mentioned

All the Noise at Once · The Lovers, the Liars, and Me · André Santana (narrator) · The Hunger Games · The Summer I Turned Pretty · We Were Liars · The Kite Runner · Holly Black, The Cruel Prince series · Kamilah Cole, Wicked Endeavors and An Arcane Inheritance · Noelle Monét, Bound by Fury

Creators & Guests

• Lee Schneider - Host
• DeAndra | add ALL THE NOISE AT ONCE on GR! - Guest

Hi, it’s Lee Schneider, host of the future lab podcast.

In Season 3, The Future Lab goes after the big questions that readers, authors, parents, and educators are asking about reading and young audiences.

Why does reading drop off among nine-year-old kids, and even more when they reach thirteen? Why has screen-based entertainment grabbed so much attention?

Even adults are less likely to pick up a book these days.

In every episode, I’ll seek answers from guests like best-selling authors, librarians , publishers, YouTube and TikTok reviewers, and audiobook producers.

Join me for season three of the future lab. Look for the future lab with Lee Schneider on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app. You can also find the show at thefuturelab.redcupagency.com