Most Writers Are Fans

Terry Bartley
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Join host, Terry Bartley, as he talks to writers, songwriters, and game designers about what got them interested in storytelling, the successes and struggles of being an indie creative, and their thoughts of mainstream writing tropes. Most Writers Are Fans is a support group and idea workshop for independent creatives.

  1. 3d ago

    Not a Token: What It Really Takes to Write Outside Your Experience

    What does it actually mean to write diverse characters, and who gets to do it? In this conversation, Terry sits down with Black romance author Rae Shawn to dig into one of the messiest, most necessary questions in contemporary fiction: when writers reach beyond their own experience, what separates authentic representation from tokenism, trend-chasing, or outright harm? Rae writes contemporary Black romance rooted in real cities, real class dynamics, and real psychological complexity, and she brings that same grounded honesty to this conversation. She and Terry discuss the difference between wanting to include diverse characters and actually doing the work, why the sports romance genre's whitewashing of majority-Black leagues is such a tell, and how "just having a trans person in your book" isn't the same as having a trans character. They also get into the industry-level problem: what it means when a white author lands a six-figure deal for a story about a marginalized community's experience while actual members of that community are still screaming into the void, and what indie publishing does and doesn't change about that dynamic. Topics covered in this episode: Why "inclusive" can still be cringy and how to tell the differenceThe cowboy romance moment as a case study in selective historical memoryToken characters vs. characters who happen to be marginalizedTrans representation, coming-out narratives, and the gap between what fiction offers and what trans people actually experienceWriting characters "outside your experience" and the cultural knowledge required to know when you're outside the normHow Rae thinks about class, mental health, grief, and regional identity across her ensemble castsSensitivity readers: why Rae used two trans readers for one character, and why beta readers alone aren't enoughThe 50 Shades problem and why romance bears a specific burden around prescriptive readingBrave New World, younger readers, and the question of whether fiction should only reflect what authors believeWhy consuming diversely isn't just a writer's responsibility it's a human oneThe publishing industry's role in gatekeeping whose story counts as a universal storyFind Rae Shawn: Website: loveraeshawn.comSocial media: @RaeshawnStories (Instagram, TikTok, Reddit)Patreon: Raeshawn StoriesMost Writers Are Fans is a Starlight King production. Audio/video editing by David Riverol.

    58 min

  2. May 21 ·  Bonus

    When Did We Stop Believing In Magic?

    We've been told that "main character energy" is a symptom of a screen-addicted generation that can't tell reality from performance. But what if the real problem isn't that we see ourselves as protagonists? It's that we've lost the understanding of what fiction is actually for. Using Megan Garber's Screen People as a jumping off point, this episode makes the case that fiction was never escape. It was always how we understood our world.

    16 min

  3. Apr 2 ·  Bonus

    Special: The Article That Started It All — Rose Horowitch on Reading, Education, and What's at Stake

    In this special minisode, a kind of proto-episode of the Ink Over AI series, Terry sits down with Rose Horowitch, staff writer at The Atlantic, to discuss her widely-read article "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books." What begins as a conversation about struggling college readers quickly opens up into something much larger: a wide-ranging diagnosis of why students across all levels have such a complicated relationship with reading, critical thinking, and the humanities. Rose and Terry trace the roots of the problem from multiple angles. Technology and social media earn their share of the blame, not just because they compete for students' time and attention, but because they've quietly reshaped what students expect from any given moment. When everything in your feed is instantly engaging, sitting with a difficult or slow-moving text starts to feel genuinely unbearable. But Rose is careful to note that anxiety about young people and reading isn't new; she cites someone raising the same concerns back in 1979, and that what makes the current moment distinct is the convergence of several concrete, trackable shifts happening all at once. Among those shifts: the lasting academic fallout of the pandemic, a decades-long pivot in educational policy toward informational texts and standardized testing at the expense of full novels, and a broader cultural devaluation of the humanities in favor of more "marketable" fields like STEM. Terry brings his own perspective as a public school English teacher in rural West Virginia, reflecting on the gap between the populations Rose was reporting on, elite college students, and his own students, and finding more overlap than you might expect. He shares the sobering experience of students telling him that listening to an audiobook in class was the first book they'd ever finished. The conversation also touches on what's actually at stake. Drawing on her reporting, including a conversation with neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, Rose makes the case that deep reading isn't just a nice habit; it's tied to critical thinking, civic engagement, and the ability to hold complexity in your mind. In an era of eroding institutional trust and easy misinformation, that feels more urgent than it might have in previous generations. The two close on a more personal note, with Rose sharing what got her hooked on reading as a kid, her current attempt to make it through War and Peace, and a brief discussion of diversifying the literary canon as one potential path toward re-engaging students who have historically felt left out of the humanities. Topics Covered: The Atlantic article that sparked the Ink Over AI series and how this interview served as its origin pointHow social media and smartphones are reshaping students' attention and expectationsThe lasting academic impact of pandemic-era schoolingHow No Child Left Behind and Common Core shifted classroom focus away from full novelsThe cultural pressure on students to pursue STEM over the humanitiesWhat deep reading actually does for the brain, per neuroscientist Maryanne WolfThe challenge of motivating students when traditional tools like grades lose their leverageDiversifying the literary canon as a potential re-entry point for disengaged studentsRose's own reading origin story and her current read: War and PeaceGuest Bio: Rose Horowitch is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers education and culture. Her article "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books" sparked widespread conversation among educators, academics, and readers about the state of literacy and the humanities in America. Edited by Nena King.

    25 min
  4. The ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Scam

    Mar 26 ·  Bonus

    The ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Scam

    In this solo minisode of Ink Over AI, Terry starts where a lot of good rabbit holes begin: a personal frustration. While working with Claude to spec out a new gaming PC capable of running Dragon Age: The Veilguard, he noticed that RAM and storage prices were dramatically inflated, a direct consequence of AI companies gobbling up hardware at scale. That observation sent him down a research spiral about the AI bubble, boom-and-bust economics, and whether any of this is actually good for the rest of us. The intellectual core of the episode is a tension between two schools of thought. On one side, venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel argue that economic bubbles are a necessary cost of innovation, that the pain of a bust is worth the technological leap that precedes it. On the other hand, Terry draws on Elizabeth Warren's critique of boom-and-bust economics and Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book Abundance to push back on that framing. His argument: the most transformative technologies of the modern era, the internet, GPS, the touchscreen, the mobile phone, the foundational research behind AI itself, weren't products of VC-fueled risk-taking. They came out of universities, government programs, and publicly funded research during a period of relative economic stability. Venture capital didn't invent any of it. It just monetized it. From there, Terry turns to what he sees as the real cost of the current AI gold rush, not just inflated RAM prices, but something more corrosive. In the classroom, he's watching students outsource their thinking to AI tools, and he worries that a generation raised on frictionless answers will lose the cognitive muscle to generate ideas of their own. He connects this to a broader pattern he's observed in the tech industry: VC money props up a service until it's embedded in people's lives, the cash dries up, and suddenly what used to be affordable becomes essential and expensive. He uses Uber as a case study, a company that disrupted an existing industry, made fares artificially cheap, and then jacked prices once the competition was gone. He doesn't want to see AI follow the same trajectory, especially if the thing people are outsourcing is their own thinking. The episode closes with a challenge to the industry's own promises. If AI is supposed to usher in an era of abundance and ease, Terry asks, where are the measurable, tangible benefits right now? As a teacher who has to set SMART goals every year, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-based, he finds it maddening that the tech industry operates almost entirely without accountability to the people absorbing its costs. Topics Covered: How building a gaming PC led to a rabbit hole about AI's impact on hardware pricesMarc Andreessen and Peter Thiel's "good bubbles vs. bad bubbles" theory, and why Terry isn't convincedElizabeth Warren's critique of boom-and-bust economics and what a more stable economy actually producedAbundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on the pace of innovation then vs. nowThe surprisingly old origins of the internet, GPS, touchscreens, mobile phones, and AI itself — and what that says about who actually drives innovationThe Uber-ification of technology: cheap until it isn't, then too embedded to escapeAI in the classroom and the risk of a generation that can't think without itWhy Terry thinks the tech industry needs to start building real products with measurable value

    18 min

  5. Mar 19

    How to Crowdfund as an Indie Author

    In this episode of Most Writers Are Fans, Terry sits down with old friend and fellow teacher-author Cody Walker to talk about one of the most practical and often intimidating tools in the indie author's toolkit: crowdfunding. The conversation starts at the beginning, Cody's first campaign for a comic called Noir City, launched in the shadow of the Sullivan Sluggers controversy, an early cautionary tale about the hidden costs of international shipping. From there, Cody walks through his evolution as a crowdfunder: the failed December Everland comic campaign that taught him never to launch during the holidays, the pivot away from comics after realizing he didn't want to depend on outside artists, and the discovery that his prose could carry a story on its own. Terry and Cody dig into the mechanics of sustainable indie publishing. Cody keeps his Kickstarter goals modest (around $1,500, enough to cover a cover artist, editing, printing, and shipping, with a small buffer) and has found that a reliable core of roughly 30 repeat backers provides a meaningful floor for each campaign. On Patreon, he runs a simple, low-pressure operation with a single dollar tier, driven less by audience obligation than by his own need to feel creatively productive. One of the episode's most interesting threads is Cody's relationship to ambition. Terry observes that Cody doesn't seem to be chasing a career pivot; he identifies primarily as a teacher, and yet he has books planned years out and a creative output that would embarrass many full-time authors. Cody traces his philosophy back to his grandfather, a master craftsman who gave his work away freely because the making of it was the point. That ethos shapes everything: Cody crowdfunds to cover costs, not to get rich, and his most fulfilling moments have nothing to do with sales numbers; they're reading aloud to his son at an empty signing and watching him cry with laughter, or hearing his dad call Patchwork the best thing he's ever written. Topics Covered: [0:30] Intro — Terry introduces Cody Walker and his work[1:20] How Cody got into crowdfunding: his first Noir City comic campaign and the Sullivan Sluggers controversy[3:54] The failed December Everland comic campaign and what it taught him[4:46] Pivoting from comics to prose and recognizing his own strengths as a writer[5:29] Building a loyal backer base over time, Patreon, and the value of community support[7:57] Why Cody chose Patreon and how he keeps it simple and sustainable[10:34] Kickstarter goal-setting: why Cody aims for $1,500 and how social media algorithms have changed promotion[12:01] Lessons learned from early campaigns — only promise what you'll actually deliver[14:50] Balancing full-time teaching, adjuncting, and a prolific creative output[16:06] Cody's grandfather's craftsman philosophy and why the making matters more than the money[17:10] The most fulfilling moments: reading to his son at an empty signing, and his dad's reaction to Patchwork[21:52] The weird and specific dynamics of being a teacher who is also a published author[26:43] Final crowdfunding tips for authors thinking about taking the leap[27:45] "What Have You Been a Fan Of Lately?" — Lore Olympus, Vampire Hunter D, Elric, and James Gunn's Superman[38:26] Where to find Cody onlineGuest Bio: Cody Walker is a high school English teacher, poet, and indie author based in Missouri. You can find him and support his work at patreon.com/popgunchaos and on Instagram at @popgunchaos. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tyranny of the Fey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ is now available in ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠hardcover and paperback⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠eBook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠audiobook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Read my stories now on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠terrybartley.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Send requests to be a guest or comments about the episode to press@starlightkingpress.com Theme Song: Young Squire - TrackTribe, Piano track by sing2pianos

    40 min

  6. Mar 12 ·  Bonus

    The Lost Generation Problem

    In this minisode of Most Writers Are Fans, Terry steps back from writing craft to dig into something that's been on his mind as a lifelong comics fan: a phenomenon he's calling the Lost Generation Problem. It starts personally. Terry came to comics in college through Geoff Johns' Teen Titans — Tim Drake, Conner Kent, Cassie Sandsmark — and fell in love with the energy of younger heroes still figuring out who they want to be. But over time, he noticed something troubling: those characters tend to vanish. A creative team wraps up, priorities shift, and a character with real momentum simply stops appearing. When they resurface, it's usually under a new writer with a rebooted status quo, and everything that came before has been quietly erased. Cassie Sandsmark is the episode's through-line. After strong pre-New 52 characterization, she was reimagined under Scott Lobdell's New 52 run as a much darker figure — thorn-covered lasso, a suit that caused her constant pain — then disappeared entirely when Lobdell left. When Bendis brought her back in Young Justice, she was rebooted again, with the prior era treated as though it never happened. Both DC and Marvel repeat this pattern constantly. X-Men titles introduce new classes of young mutants with every creative era; when the run ends, most of them quietly fade. Jenny Hex, introduced in Bendis's Young Justice with genuine promise, hasn't been seen since. The counterexamples are instructive. Miles Morales and Kamala Khan avoided this fate because Marvel decided they were priorities — pushed across games, animation, and team books. Magik has remained relevant since her debut because someone always champions her editorially. The difference isn't which characters are more interesting; it's whether anyone in power keeps fighting for them. This is where the Lost Generation Problem becomes a Lost Generation Opportunity. Terry pitches a 12-issue Cassie Sandsmark miniseries built around her identity as Zeus's daughter: a Hercules-style trials arc culminating in a choice between ascending to godhood or staying on Earth with the life she's built. It's a story that maps directly onto something real for young readers. the pull between an extraordinary opportunity and the roots you've already put down. The episode closes with Terry naming the real emotional cost of the Lost Generation Problem: the anxiety that sets in every time you invest in a new character. He loves what Eve Ewing is doing with young mutants in her X-Men run and is following Gail Simone's Outliers closely, but he's already bracing for the possibility that when those writers move on, those characters disappear too. His ask to Marvel and DC is simple: stop treating the end of a creative run as the end of a character's story. Topics Covered: [0:00] Cold open[0:30] Terry's comics origin story: the Bruce Timm animated universe and Geoff Johns' Teen Titans[1:49] The New 52 and Scott Lobdell's reimagining of Cassie Sandsmark / Wonder Girl[3:08] Brian Michael Bendis's Young Justice and the erasure of prior continuity[4:19] Defining the Lost Generation Problem[5:23] The X-Men's recurring new class problem — and Chamber as a case study[6:26] Miles Morales, Kamala Khan, and Magik as examples of characters who escaped the cycle[8:11] Jaime Reyes / Blue Beetle as a prime Lost Generation example[9:45] The untapped story potential of sidelined characters[10:15] Terry's pitch: a 12-issue Cassie Sandsmark trials miniseries[13:56] The Lost Generation Problem as a Lost Generation Opportunity for publishers[14:45] Current anxiety: Eve Ewing's X-Men and Gail Simone's Outliers[16:01] What Terry actually wants: continuity, not resetsTyranny of the Fey is now available in hardcover and paperback, eBook, and audiobook. Read my stories now on terrybartley.com. Send requests to be a guest or comments about the episode to press@starlightkingpress.com.

    17 min
  7. AI Can Mimic Writing. But It Can’t Mimic Voice

    Mar 5

    AI Can Mimic Writing. But It Can’t Mimic Voice

    In this episode of Ink Over AI, Terry steps outside the usual solo format to welcome educator and author Patty McGee, whose book Not Your Granny's Grammar connects directly to a theory he's been developing: that teaching students to find and own their individual writing voice is one of the most powerful tools teachers have against AI in the classroom, both as a goal and as a form of inoculation. Patty opens by reframing grammar entirely. Rather than a rulebook to memorize, she thinks of it the way a painter thinks of a paintbrush, a tool for making meaning with intention. Her book is built around four sentence types and a pedagogical model that moves through curiosity, explicit instruction, hands-on play with physical word cards, and reflection. The identification-first approach most of us experienced growing up, she argues, doesn't just fail to teach grammar, it actively gets in the way. Terry connects this to his classroom immediately: students know the rules when standardized tests ask them to identify correct answers. The AI angle comes into focus when Terry describes something he's been noticing in student papers: some read like AI output, but contain small telltale quirks, a phrasing too weird to be generated. The deeper problem is that some students have started to genuinely write like AI, because AI is the writing they consume most. They've absorbed its rhythms and diction, and because they've never been explicitly taught what their own voice sounds like, they don't know the difference. Patty adds an important layer: writing is one of the most vulnerable things students do in school, and a culture still built on a factory model of accuracy pushes students toward the safest possible output. AI feels safe. It produces something that looks complete and correct — even on a two-sentence assignment. Her practical response is elegant: require specific sentence structures as part of the assignment parameters. Ask for one simple sentence and one compound or complex sentence. The conversation broadens into the harder question of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Students have learned to ask not "what do I think?" but "what does this teacher want?" Patty admits she told her own kids the same thing when grades were suffering. Topics Covered: [0:00] Intro — Terry explains the Ink Over AI format and introduces Patty McGee[1:03] Patty's framework: grammar as paintbrush, not rulebook[1:53] The four sentence types and the Not Your Granny's Grammar approach[3:24] Terry on grammar in the high school classroom — what students know vs. what they apply[4:45] Why engagement matters: creative writing and the limits of essay-only instruction[8:11] Voice as the antidote to AI in the classroom[10:37] How students have started writing like AI — and why they don't know it[12:00] Patty's college writing story and what it means to be a "strong high school writer"[13:24] The three research-backed methods for learning grammar: sentence creation, combining, and expansion[16:53] The vulnerability of writing and the pull toward "correct"[20:45] School as completion activity: the factory model and extrinsic motivation[27:44] Screen time, paper and pencil, and designing novel end products[32:40] Starting on paper to build ownership before turning to AI[33:24] Social media as a parallel: from banned to essential[36:08] Not outsourcing your thinking: Terry's core framework for productive AI use[37:58] How Patty and her co-author documented AI use for their publisher[39:30] Where to find Patty onlineGuest Bio:Patty McGee is an educator, literacy consultant, and author of Not Your Granny's Grammar, a practical guide to teaching grammar through curiosity, play, and intentional sentence-building. She works with teachers and schools on connecting grammar instruction to student voice and engagement. You can find her at pattymcgee.org (that's Patty with a Y).

    40 min

  8. Feb 26

    Where Do Short Story Collections Come From?

    In this episode of Most Writers Are Fans, Terry sits down with Brent Lambert, Black queer writer, founding member of the Hugo Award-winning FIYAH Literary Magazine, and author of Necessary Chaos, to talk about community building, creative collaboration, and what it actually takes to put a short story collection together when the traditional industry doors aren't opening for you. The episode's central question is deceptively simple: which comes first, community building or collaboration? For Brent, the answer is community, decisively. His reasoning is grounded in a clear-eyed read of the publishing landscape: a lot of writers are genuinely good, which means talent alone isn't a differentiator, and for marginalized writers, the barriers are often not about quality in the first place. When Fireside Magazine published data showing the dismal numbers of Black authors appearing in science fiction and fantasy publications, the industry's response was a string of deflections. Brent and his collaborators found those excuses unconvincing. FIYAH was their answer: build the space yourself, and prove the excuse wrong. The conversation turns practical when Terry asks how writers actually find their way into collections. Brent walks through his early methods, Twitter before its decline, the Submission Grinder website, following editors and publishers on social media, and a tight-knit group of writers who shared open calls and challenged each other to submit. One of the episode's sharpest exchanges is about rejection and feedback. Brent reflects on what made FIYAH different from the start: every submission received some form of feedback. For marginalized writers especially, a rejection without context is particularly cruel, you can never be sure whether the "no" was about the writing or about who you are. Both Terry and Brent push back on the idea that short story collections need to be commercially viable to be worth doing. The real value is exposure: a publication credit gives emerging writers something concrete to point to when querying agents, and short fiction opens doors to award nominations that compound over time. Topics Covered: [0:00] Cold open[0:48] Intro — Terry introduces Brent Lambert and the episode's focus[2:10] Community building vs. collaboration: which comes first?[5:19] The Highlander syndrome and why indie writers tend to avoid it[7:10] Being the only queer person in the room vs. the experience of LavenderCon[9:00] Marginalized perspectives as the new frontier for original storytelling[12:26] How to find open calls: the Submission Grinder, social media, and community networks[15:05] The origin of FIYAH: the Fireside Magazine report and building a response[17:25] P. Djèlí Clark as an early mentor and the importance of putting the ladder back down[25:12] What Brent looks for when curating a collection: representation, variety, and emotional arc[31:25] What to do with good stories that didn't make the cut[33:45] The real value of short fiction collections: credits, awards, and platform-building[38:43] "What Have You Been a Fan Of Lately?" — The Witch Roads by K. Ellt; Giant-Size X-Men with Ms. Marvel[41:22] Where to find Brent onlineGuest Bio:Brent Lambert is a Black queer writer and founding member of FIYAH Literary Magazine, one of the most important platforms for Black voices in speculative fiction and winner of the Hugo Award. He is the author of Necessary Chaos and has contributed short fiction to a wide range of publications and anthologies. You can find him at brentslambertwriter.com, on Bluesky at @brentslambertwriter, and on Instagram at @brentslambertwriter. Tyranny of the Fey is now available in hardcover and paperback, eBook, and audiobook. Read my stories now on terrybartley.com. Send requests to be a guest or comments about the episode to press@starlightkingpress.com. Theme Song: Young Squire - TrackTribe, Piano track by sing2pianos

    40 min
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About

Join host, Terry Bartley, as he talks to writers, songwriters, and game designers about what got them interested in storytelling, the successes and struggles of being an indie creative, and their thoughts of mainstream writing tropes. Most Writers Are Fans is a support group and idea workshop for independent creatives.

Information

  • Creator
    Terry Bartley
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    84
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Terry Bartley
  • Show Website
    Most Writers Are Fans