"If we don't define the canon, someone will define it for us." That line, from Dr. Chesya Burke, became the organizing principle behind an anthology that started as a phone call between two old friends and ended up assembling some of the most influential names in Black horror alongside brand-new voices getting their first-ever publication.

Maurice Broaddus is an award-winning Afrofuturist, editor, and librarian with over a hundred short stories published in Lightspeed Magazine, Black Panther anthologies, Jordan Peele's Out There Screaming, and more. Dr. Chesya Burke is an assistant professor of English and US literatures and director of Africana Studies at Stetson University, whose writing has been compared to Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison by Nikki Giovanni, and named "formidable" by Samuel Delany. Together they've edited Black Horror: Canonical Voices from Then to Now, out from Flame Tree Publishing on 17 November 2026, featuring contributors including Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and P. Djèlí Clark.

We get into how the project evolved from an impossibly broad vision into a focused, budget- and genre-constrained anthology, why a poetry reading at a convention led to poems being added to the collection almost by accident, and how a script from Tales from the Hood ended up sitting inside a prose anthology. We also talk candidly about what new writers actually need to hear — that developing a distinctive voice can take a decade, that AI actively hinders that development, and that rejection is universal even among the writers who inspired this very book.

🎙️ What we get into:

• What Afrofuturism actually means, and its roots tracing back through Martin Delany, W.E.B. Du Bois, Sun Ra, and Octavia Butler
• How a phone call between longtime friends became a full anthology partnership with Flame Tree Publishing
• Why the anthology had to start at a specific point in history rather than attempt a full chronological survey
• The budget and licensing realities that shaped which historical voices could and couldn't be included
• Why they invited every contributor to choose their own foundational story rather than assigning one
• How a convention poetry reading led to poems — including someone's first-ever publication — being added to the anthology
• Why Dr. Burke believes AI actively hinders new writers developing their own voice, rather than helping them
• The years-long process of developing a distinctive authorial voice, and why rushing that process is one of the biggest reasons writers don't make it
• Why they see the book as "myth-making" — defining Black horror's canon on their own terms before someone else does it for them
• What's exciting both editors most about where Black horror and new voices in the genre are headed next

Links & Resources:

• Halloween Book Sale https://devilsrockbooks.com/halloween-2026/
• Black Horror: Canonical Voices from Then to Now https://www.flametreepublishing.com/black-horror-canonical-voices-from-then-to-now-isbn-9781835629598.html
• Maurice Broaddus: https://mauricebroaddus.com
• Dr. Chesya Burke: https://thechesyaburke.com
• "Cock" by Daniel Willcocks https://www.danielwillcocks.com/books/cock/

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel Willcocks' own nonfiction book got flagged and blocked from Draft2Digital — not because it was bad, not because it broke any rules, but because an automated system decided it looked too generic. The irony wasn't lost on him: a book written entirely by hand, blocked by a filter built to catch AI slop. There was no appeal process. Just a flat rejection email and a trail of customer support conversations to work through.

In this solo episode, Dan steps away from interviewing guests to talk through what's actually happening in his own author business right now — from a stalled flat sale eating his bandwidth, to relaunching The Self-Publishing Blueprint 2.0, to finally publishing a new solo horror novella, Cock, four years after the idea first came up on a beach at ChillerCon.

He gets candid about the current state of author marketing: why organic discovery on social media has become nearly impossible, why pay-per-click advertising is now close to essential, and the early results from his first real Facebook ad test selling his Twisted Tales series. He also shares an honest, no-polish look at submission life — including a full manuscript read request from Tor Nightfire that ultimately ended in rejection — and makes the case for writing in series as one of the clearest paths to sustainable author income right now.

🎙️ What we get into:

• Why The Self-Publishing Blueprint 2.0 got blocked from Draft2Digital and other platforms as flagged "generic AI content" — and how he got it unblocked
• Why there's currently no formal appeal process when a platform blocks your book, and what persistence actually looks like in practice
• The Deliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale running 5–11 October, featuring Flame Tree Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, Bloodbound Books, and dozens of indie authors
• The four-year origin story behind Cock, his new rural horror novella, from a joke on a beach at ChilliCon to a finished 37,000-word book
• Submitting The Nowhere Line to Tor Nightfire, getting a full manuscript read request, a kind rejection, and where the book stands now
• Early results from his first Facebook ad test promoting Jack and the Twisted Tales series — real numbers, not just theory
• Why he believes pay-per-click advertising has become close to essential for discoverability in 2026, not just a nice-to-have
• His argument for writing in series rather than standalones, based on what's actually working for authors he knows
• The ongoing mission behind Devil's Rock Publishing beyond being a personal imprint — including nearing £15,000 raised for charity since 2022
• An early-stage idea for a new kind of incubator publishing contract to help new horror writers get started

Links & Resources:

• Devil's Rock Publishing: https://devilsrockbooks.com
• Deliciously Twisted Halloween Book Sale: https://devilsrockbooks.com/halloween-2026
• Cock by Daniel Willcocks https://www.danielwillcocks.com/books/cock

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jennie Nash once told a three-time New York Times bestselling author to throw out a 500-page memoir she'd spent years writing. It wasn't cruelty — it was pattern recognition. The author's own frustration, the sprawling page count, the lack of a clear intention: all of it was a signal Jennie had learned to read after years of asking the right questions instead of promising the right outcomes.

Jennie Nash is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a company built to help writers write books worth reading. She's coached clients to deals with agents and major publishers including Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, and is the author of nine books across three genres. Before book coaching, she was a solid mid-list traditionally published author — until a failed six-figure auction and a botched self-publishing attempt pushed her toward the coaching work that would become her real career.

We get into why she treats book coaching like an entrepreneurial startup problem — borrowing directly from Seth Godin and Simon Sinek — rather than a purely creative one, and why she believes most writing education fails to address the actual, holistic support writers need. We also talk candidly about pricing: why she charges thousands of dollars for services others sell for fifty, and why she thinks the myth of the "genius struck by lightning" is directly responsible for writers chronically undervaluing their own work.

🎙️ What we get into:

• Why she told a three-time bestselling author to scrap a 500-page memoir — and how she read the signals before ever seeing the pages
• The failed six-figure book auction and botched self-publishing attempt that redirected her from writing full-time into book coaching
• Why she borrows directly from Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, and startup culture to teach writers how to operate in the modern publishing world
• The real distinction between an editor (who arrives after the work is done) and a book coach (who's in the process with you the whole way through)
• Why she charges $3,500 for a 250-word query letter — and what she's actually delivering beyond the edit itself
• Her method for asking the "big questions" about a manuscript instead of getting lost in line edits
• Why she believes the "genius in the attic" myth of creativity devalues writers' actual labor and justifies underpaying them
• How breaking the creative process into replicable systems changed both her coaching practice and her business
• Why she believes writers should think like entrepreneurs: find the market's unmet need, then build a business around solving it
• Her honest framing of coaching responsibility: you provide the road, but the writer has to drive

Links & Resources:

• Jennie Nash: https://jennienash.com

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 Jennie Nash

Jennie Nash is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to help writers write books worth reading. Since the company's inception, writers serious about reaching readers have trusted Jennie to coach their projects from inspiration to publication. Her clients have landed top New York agents, national book awards, and deals with houses such as Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Jennie is the author of nine books in three genres. She taught for thirteen years in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, is an instructor at CreativeLive.com, and speaks on podcasts and at writing conferences across the country.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.