Amy & Book Club

Welcome to another Amy & Smut Month, the month where we talk about books with smut! This time we're getting to know the monstrous, the beastly, and the surprisingly sweet. We tackle what kind of monsters belong in 'monster smut', our Wills and Won'ts of monsterkind, Romantasy vs Monster Romances, and just why these beastly men appeal to readers. Fun moments include a monster dating show (Married at Firs...

We're trying something a little different for this After Dark: a get-to-know-us episode. We've been talking zines all month, so it felt right that we get together and talk about our lives as writers. We answer the age old questions like Pantser or Plotter, do you worldbuild extensively or wing it, and why is writing so hard? We get into some less traditional topics as well, like whether we'd prefer to be a Nobel winner or a New Yor...

"It's nice to be known, I guess?"

This book club episode is a liiittle bit different because it is zine month, and in lieu of a book club pick, we tasked ourselves with making our own zines. Today is the day we share them with each other and, of course, with you! From Amy & warfare to imaginary band discographies, this episode is a wild ride and the perfect culmination of everything we've explored this month - it's just un...

This week Amy, Millie and Justina are joined by local Adelaide artist, zine-maker, community organiser and author of the graphic memoir Oh Brother, Georgina Chadderton – aka George Rex Comics. Join us as we chat all about making comics, shifting between zine-making and traditional publishing, interdisciplinary creativity, building grassroots arts community, revelling in niche Australian comedy and how to explain Vegemite to C...

Welcome to week two of Zine Month! Today Amy, Justina, and Payton are joined by friends of the pod Gemma Neall and Shona Edwards. These wonderful guests are zine experts AND classicists — just about the coolest cross-section of interests a person could possibly have. So in this episode we make a journey from ancient poetry to Shakespeare and then all the way to Ronald Reagan, Spockanalia, and Riot Grrrls. But mainly we will f...

New month, new us! This July we’ll be drawing, writing, cutting, pasting, photocopying, folding and talking all things zines and zine-making. To kick off the month, we dove into Justina’s personal zine collection to find the answers to all our burning zine questions. What is a zine? Where do you find them and how do you make them? How do you archive something so varied and ephemeral? And, most importantly, is it pronoun...

As we wrap up queer sci-fi month (😔🫶🏼) we get together to chat about our incredible book club pick, IDA by Alison Evans. This book follows Ida, who believes that she can time travel and uses her ability to amend errors in her life. From avoiding car crashes to rewinding conversational hiccups, who wouldn't want to travel through time? But when Ida's doppelganger sits down beside her at the train station, and her gra...

This episode Amy, Justina & Abby are joined by Alison Evans, author of our June BOTM Ida, as well as a whole host of other queer YA and middle grade speculative fiction, sci-fi and fantasy. Join us as we discuss all things reading and writing queer spec fic, imagining hopeful futures in YA, zine making for horse girls (gender neutral) – plus some (mostly) spoiler-free Ida chats ahead of next week’s book club.

MENTI...

For the second week of Pride Month we're tackling fanfiction, all the way back to the Kirk/Spock community that started it all. There's something for everyone this episode: the history and fundamentals of fanfic, the community and passion of the craft, the social implactions of ladies reading slash, and even how AI could effect the way we approach fanfic (clue: we don't like it!). Harry tells us about some strange and thought-provo...

Hi Gay, Happy Pride Month!

Today we're kicking off the month of June with a festive introduction to Queer Sci-Fi. There are some big Sci-Fi heads in Amy &, so get ready for a journey through all of our favourite books, authors, and films in the beloved genre. We consider if and why Sci-Fi is on the rise lately (it's existential doom again, isn't it?) and discuss the inclusion and exclusion of queerness (or sex/sexuality in gene...

We’re sad to say goodbye to dragon month, but happy to send it off with a book club chat about Moniquill Blackgoose’s incredible first installment of the Nampeshiweisit series, To Shape a Dragon's Breath. This book follows the journey of Anequs, who bonds with a dragon hatchling and becomes the first Nampeshiweisit of her people in generations. However, the laws of the Anglish colonisers require her to receive formal tr...

Join us for our hilarious interview with USA Today, Indie, and Sunday Times bestselling author Rebecca Thorne. Rebecca talks us through her life-long love of dragons, retrospective worldbuilding, the phenomenon of cozy fantasy, and the joy of writing established lesbian couples. We had an absolute blast talking to Rebecca, so we know you'll enjoy this interview: described by participants as "cozy, like the genre".

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This week, Justina & Payton have diligently done their homework on dragon mythology to share with us the history of dragons across time and culture. This includes their connections to colonialism, Christianity, creation, harvest, life, nature and more . . . and then Amy asks us what we would hoard if we were dragons (no books allowed!), and the conversation hatches into something else entirely (I fear that I cannot list the top...

It's dragon month, which means we're talking fire, scales, and flying. To kick off the month, we dive headfirst into all the dragon lore we know and try to figure out what we consider True Dragon Lore (hint: none, it's all valid). We talk about what we'd like to shoot from our mouths, whether our wings are our arms, and just how small a dragon can get before it's too small. Most importantly, we answer the burning question of whethe...

It's our first After Dark of the season, and we're revisiting a childhood classic, Dragonheart, as a bridge between April's YA month and our upcoming theme for May: dragons!

We reflect on the movie, discuss the lore behind the original script, lament at the lost potential for a romance between Dennis Quaid and Draco, and then deep dive into the fantasy films that we feel nostalgic for (they're just not making them like Ladyhawke an...

Eggshell is a young adult novella set in 2000s Adelaide that tells the story of Kira, a sarcastic, cynical teenager living in a council house with her Cantonese grandmother (Apoh) and her rebellious older cousin, Jake. As Kira navigates her experience of Year 12, the novella grapples with themes of identity, racism, romance, sexuality and adolescence.

Join Amy, Payton & Abby as we deep dive into Eggshell and ask each other impo...

Join us in conversation with New York Times bestselling author, Amie Kaufman, as we continue Young Adult month! We discuss the novels that shaped Amie as a young adult herself, the YA genre as a literature of transformation, what it's like to write in conversation with teenagers, how to find the quiet moments when writing with pace, how Amie got a tour of NASA, and we take a peek into Amie's soon-to-be finished PhD research (one of...

Can you remember what it was like to be a teenager? This week, author Olivia De Zilva joins us again to recall the feelings and stories that shaped us when we were young. As an ex-teenager and current writer for teens/young adults, Olivia has much wisdom to share about the whimsy and grittiness that characterise those formative years. Over the past few decades, what’s changed and what’s remained the same about books for...

Welcome to YA month! We're starting off the month talking about the fundamentals of the genre: what is it, whyis it, and is it even a real genre? We get into the politics of ratings for books, letting kids pick their own reads, the YA author's obligation to hopefulness, and we name more books than ever, maybe.

This month we’re reading Eggshell by Olivia De Zilva. Grab your copy and have a read before our bookclub on 23rd...