Four years of ebooks, Amazon ads, and feeding the algorithm — and Dan is done with it. Not dramatically. Just honestly. In this behind-the-scenes episode, Daniel and his co-writer R.P. Howley take stock of where Devil's Rock Publishing actually is in 2026: four Twisted Tales novellas out, a charity anthology closing submissions, and a growing suspicion that the readers they've been chasing are actually paperback collectors who'd rather buy at a convention than click an ad.

This is a different kind of episode. No formal interview, no guest credentials. Just two people who talk daily, finally sitting down on camera to work through what's going well, what isn't, and what they're going to try instead. Rob is a marketing manager at a dementia charity, studying for his mortgage advisor qualification, waking up at 4am — and still co-publishing horror novellas. Dan is re-editing The Self-Publishing Blueprint for its 2026 update and relaunching The Writer's Room. This is what the indie author life actually looks like.

💀 What we get into:

* Why posting every day doesn't mean your followers are seeing it — and what to do instead

* How marketing a book and marketing a charity use exactly the same core principles

* The brutal economics of ebooks vs. paperbacks at events (and why in-person sales now make more sense)

* Why they accidentally built a series for paperback collectors while spending all their time on digital platforms

* The Hatching Season charity anthology — what they've learned from running submissions, and what "100+ entries" actually means for two people with no time

* Rob's testimony: what he got from writing sprints before he ever knew Dan properly

* The Twisted Tales series update: where books five and six are right now

* Why "can you just" are the two most irritating words in any marketing meeting

* The philosophy of not asking "what do I want?" but "what does the reader want?"

* What premium in-person experiences might look like — earrings, wax seals, experience boxes, and why none of it is happening right now

Links & Resources:

R.P. Howley: @rphowleyauthor (Instagram and Facebook)

Twisted Tales books: https://twistedtalesbooks.com

Devil's Rock Publishing: https://devilsrockbooks.com

Hatching Season submissions: https://devilsrockbooks.com/submissions

The Writer's Room: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewritersroom

Daniel's writer resources: https://danielwillcocks.com/writers

About Rob:

Robyn Howley has three requirements to function; black coffee in the morning, red wine in the evening, and writing in between.

He has the imagination of a six-year-old, the soul of a retiree, and dreams of one day making a full time income as a multi-passionate creative.

He currently lives in Southampton, England, and when he’s not writing, he’s nestled on his favourite reading chair, wine in hand, consuming books; podcasts and YouTube tutorials on all aspects of writing, publishing and entrepreneurship.

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Writer's block doesn't exist. That's not a provocation for the sake of it — Jasper Bark will tell you exactly who invented the term (a Freudian analyst who blamed it on potty training) and why the only cure for not writing is, stubbornly, to write. Anything. A laundry list. A page of you yelling at yourself. The words come.

This week Daniel sits down with Jasper Bark — author, former freelance journalist, stand-up, performance poet, and the mind behind Crystal Lake Publishing's Bark Bites Horror imprint. Jasper has written for franchises owned by DreamWorks and New Line, ghosted other people's voices for years, and then had a long dark night of the soul (and too much whiskey) when his wife pointed out she'd never read a single thing that sounded like him. Finding his own voice is where the real story starts.

The conversation runs from the brutal economics of the modern indie author (why he dresses as an Egyptian god at conventions) through the terror of self-censorship, the joy of throwing away a third of every sentence, and the sixteen-year journey of his new novel Harmed and Dangerous — a Southern Gothic thriller that began as a rejected comic pitch and finally arrived as a book he no longer cringes to hand over.

💀 What we get into:

• Why "writer's block" is a made-up excuse — and the one technique that breaks it every time
• How to actually find your voice when you've spent years writing in everyone else's
• The real reason no one ever has "editor's block" or "plumber's block"
• Why turning off every notification you own is the only writing advice that survives time and attention being your scarcest resources
• The shift from author-as-freelancer to author-as-artisan-trader — and what it means for how you sell
• Why cutting 30,000 words from a 120,000-word draft feels like scoring a winning goal
• How a song about Gary Gilmore's eyeballs seeded a paranormal Southern Gothic thriller
• Why horror is a healing, cathartic genre — and the two sectioned readers who proved it to him
• Plot vs. pants: when to outline and when to let the story drag you
• The "deathbed self" trick for beating procrastination

Links & Resources:

Jasper Bark: www.jasperbark.com

Crystal Lake Publishing https://www.crystallakepub.com

Daniel's writer resources: https://danielwillcocks.com/writers

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📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor

🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair

📚 About Jasper Bark

Jasper Bark is infectious - and there’s no known cure. If you’re listening to this then you’re already at risk of contamination. The symptoms will begin to manifest any moment now. There’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no itching or unfortunate rashes, but you’ll become obsessed with his books, from the award winning collections 'Dead Air' and 'Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts', to cult novels like 'The Final Cut' and acclaimed graphic novels such as 'Bloodfellas' and 'Beyond Lovecraft'.

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Dan Howarth didn't set out to write a novel about far-right violence tearing communities apart. He set out to write what he knew — the north, the landscape, the idiotic magnificence of men — and the wound was already open. Lion Hearts is the book that nearly broke him during the writing, nearly got him an agent three times, and has now landed him on the 2026 British Fantasy Award shortlist for Best Novel. Sometimes the book that costs the most is the one that matters most.

Dan Howarth is a British author of gritty northern weird fiction published under his own Northern Republic Press. His work sits at the intersection of place, folklore, and the social fault lines running through contemporary Britain. In this conversation, he and Daniel dig into writing location with precision rather than excess, the case for the novella as the perfect literary form, what indie publishing actually costs (financially and creatively), and why knowing who you are as a writer takes longer than most people think.

💀 What we get into:

- Why Dan writes British, specifically northern British, horror — and how place becomes character in his fiction

- The screenwriting lesson that changed how he edits: if you can't say it in two lines, say it better

- Character passes vs plot passes — Dan's practical approach to keeping voice consistent across multiple POVs in Last Night of Freedom

- How both Territory and Drone accidentally became novellas, and why he thinks it's the perfect form for both writer and reader discovery

- The case for traditional publishers taking novellas seriously — and why Eric LaRocca's Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is the proof of concept

- Three to four years into running Northern Republic Press: what he'd tell his earlier self about brand identity, cover consistency, and knowing what you stand for before you publish

- Lion Hearts — the BFA-shortlisted novel that's not quite horror, not quite crime, and is one of the most politically raw things he's written

- Why being indie means the book you couldn't place anywhere is also the book that gets you on award shortlists

- The practical realities of self-publishing: proofreading, cover design, budgeting, and why there's no excuse for an unprofessional book in 2026

- What's next: another novella, The Beacons, and a pipeline of four or five books already queued up

Links & Resources:

Dan Howarth website: https://danhowarthwriter.com (verify exact URL)

Dan Howarth on social media: @DanHowarth20

Northern Republic Press: https://www.northernrepublic.co.uk

Paul Stephenson / Hollowstone Press: https://paulstephensonbooks.com/

Vicky Brewster: https://vickybrewstereditor.com/

https://danielwillcocks.com/writers

Subscribe to The Writer's Chair

If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow writer.

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willcocksauthor

🎧 Listen on your favourite app: https://pod.link/1829723468

🖥️ Find out more: https://danielwillcocks.com/thewriterschair

📚 About Dan Howarth

Dan Howarth is a British author of gritty Northern Weird horror fiction with a strong focus on societal issues and tinged with folklore and the supernatural.

He is the author of Last Night of Freedom, Lionhearts (which was recently shortlisted for Best Novel in the 2026 British Fantasy Awards), Territory, his new novel Drone and the short story collection, Dark Missives.

His short fiction has been published in numerous places including Weird Horror Magazine, Chthonic Matter Quarterly, The Other Stories podcast and Motives Unknown: New Northern Crime from Dead Ink Books.

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