Wrestling the Octopus (and Loving It)

Ted is joined by Bianca Marais, author of the bestselling The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh, and the Audible Original The Prynne Viper.Alternatively, we could’ve just told you that Ann Patchett (yes, that Ann Patchett) has declared “Bianca Marais is a genius.”When she’s not authoring, Bianca co-hosts the popular podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers become published.Her work in progress is a novel titled A Most Peculiar Tale, Indeed. A closed-room mystery chock-full of puzzles for readers to solve, it has been pitched as “Glass Onion meets the magical family equivalent of Succession” and will be published by Mira in early 2025. Just a couple of weeks removed from sending her manuscript to her editor, Bianca talked with Ted about plotting versus pantsing (i.e., flying by the seat of yours), how she approaches editing her own work before her editor sees it, letting your books tell you what they want to be, managing multiple points of view and backstories, and entertaining your readers while still making them think. She also shared a most outstanding wrinkle to the puzzle-solving in A Most Peculiar Tale, Indeed, that serves the dual purpose of keeping down the publisher’s printing costs.Find Bianca Online:Website: biancamarais.comPodcast: The Shit No One Tells You About WritingMore information about Ted and his books is available on his website, thetedfox.com.