What are the tropes and reader expectations for action adventure thrillers? Why publish into KU and what are some of the ways to market there? How can travel enrich your writing? Luke Richardson gives his tips.

In the intro, ProWritingAid launches their Manuscript Analysis tool;
Navigating legal risk in memoir [The Indy Author]; Social media for authors in 2025 [BookBub]; Amazon relaunches Alexa, now Alexa+ which is now powered by Claude AI; Scribe, the world’s most accurate transcription model [ElevenLabs];
ElevenReader Publishing to the Reader app; Death Valley, A Thriller by J.F. Penn.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Luke Richardson is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archaeological Thrillers and the International Detective thriller series.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Taking the leap into full-time indie authorship
• Reasons for unpublishing books and maintaining your author brand
• Researching the tropes and market of your genre
• The purpose of a prologue and when to include one
• Tips for writing characters that are unlike yourself
• Turning travels into stories
• Why publish in KU instead of wide?
• Selling non-book items or experiences

You can find Luke at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com and his new podcast at AdventureStoryPodcast.com.

Transcript of Interview with Luke Richardson

Joanna: Luke Richardson is the bestselling author of the Eden Black Archeological Thrillers and the International Detective thriller series. So welcome to the show, Luke.

Luke: Hi, Jo. Thank you for having me. This is wonderful to be able to talk to you.

Joanna: I'm excited about it. First up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self-publishing.

Luke: It's been one of those sort of roundabout ways that a lot of people talk about, but I often cite—this is something I've written on my profiles and written emails about. I often cite my first arriving in India in 2011 as the reason I wanted to write.

It was just this transformational moment of being totally culture shocked in a completely different place in a way that I couldn't describe and couldn't really explain. We'd come out of the airport, we're into this taxi going past the slum villages on the edges of this freeway that's sort of 16 lanes wide. There's donkeys, and sports cars, and tractors, and all of this going on. It was just so overwhelming.

Although I didn't write for several years after that, it was that excitement about stuff, and the world, and discovery, and adventure that lodged in me. Then when I started to write, those things started to come out of me. Do you know what I mean? They started to come out in my writing.

Joanna: That's so funny. We're going to get into travel because you and I are travel geeks. I also remember arriving in India, would have been about five years before that, in the middle of the night in an airport in—it wasn't Delhi—but it was one of the biggest cities. It was like crazy, crazy. So that culture shock is really interesting.

How did you then get into indie publishing, as opposed to maybe going traditional?

Luke: I was an English teacher in a high school for several years, under the illusions that it would be a creative thing to do because I've always been very creative. I've always loved that. For the first couple of years, it actually was quite creative. Then, I think as I'd done the same classes four or five or six times, over and over again, it became less so.

Then I started writing. I came up with this idea for a book, and I was like, great. It was actually set in Kathmandu, and it's the first book in my International Detective series.

Someone who's like me in 2011, in the back of that taxi, totally overwhelmed, tasked with finding a missing person in this city that they've never been to. They don't speak the language, they don't know the culture, and they've got to go and find this person.

I came up with that idea based on my travels, based on the things that I've done.

It was really just a creative outlet. It was a passion. It was something I wanted to do outside of work.

Then I finished the book, and I did that thing which we've all done, I think, and you fold your arms, and you go, huh? Half of us is really impressed that you finished this thing, and the other half's like, what do I do now? What do I do with it?

I gave my mum a copy and a couple of other friends, and then I went down the rabbit hole of learning about publishing and how to get it out in the world. Your podcast, and other podcasts, and online courses, and YouTube videos, and all this sort of thing.

I never tried the traditional route. I was far too impetuous. I wanted to get on with the next book.

So I learned about indie publishing and published it in 2019.

Joanna: Are you still a teacher?

Luke: No, no. I left just before the pandemic. So I quit then. I needed a change, which was great, actually, because it meant I had the whole time of those few years to really focus on my writing.

It built up slowly, as these things do. So the first year was quite tough. I had to do some freelance work on the side and do some other writing, sort of freelance writing and things.

Then, when was it? I think it was two years ago that it became the job, and now we've surpassed the teaching. It's become more successful than the teaching was, so I'm really excited about.

Joanna: I think this is a really good point.

You left your job in 2019, and it was 2024 when your income surpassed your old job?

Luke: Yes, income from books.

I mean, we couldn't travel anyway because travel was off the table at that time, so it was a good time to not spend much money anyway. So I've lived quite a frugal life whilst I was doing that and did some freelance work on the side.

I really just started again, I suppose you'd say, in a professional capacity. Built up the mailing list, built up the socials, learned about all these things.

What I decided, I think, is that I needed to give it a proper chance. I think if I wanted to do it as a hobby, writing in the evenings and the weekends was fine.

If I wanted to do it as a job, and I wanted this to be my life, I needed to give it space.

So that was the decision.

I didn't love teaching at that point. I was ready for a change. So, yes, I think that was a good decision. It's worked out well in the end, obviously, too.

Joanna: So you mentioned the word job there. I feel like this is so important, and I've talked about this before. Having a hobby is amazing, and for most people, writing as a hobby is brilliant and probably what most people should do. As you mentioned, the word job, and that is how we make our living with books or word-adjacent things. So what does that job entail for you?

That perhaps when you wrote that first book, when you were a teacher, you didn't even think about?

I feel like a lot of people coming in don't understand what the job of an author is, or let alone the job of an indie author.

Luke: That's true. There's so much to it. There's the production side, which is obviously the writing, the researching, the actual making the book. I don't just mean research in terms of what's in the book, I mean research of what does the market need.

Now, I'm not saying you need to write to market necessarily, but you need to—I think not need, that's the wrong way to say it. It's not prescriptive, but it helps if you have an understanding of what the market likes, if that makes sense. You don't necessarily have to follow tropes.

This is an issue, isn't it, I think with indie publishing. You can do whatever you want, but with that comes great challenges as well because whatever you want is massive. No one wants to read a book that's everything, right?

It needs to be something. It needs to pin its colors to the mast.

Some colors to one mast or another. It can't be everything to everyone. So you need to decide at some point where that is, and who your reader is, and what they like and th