On Better Words this week: Jodi McAlister
When writing a romance trilogy also involves creating the full run-down for a fictional reality dating show.
Jodi McAlister is an author and academic. In her author life, she’s written for a young adult audience with Libby Lawrence Is Good At Pretending, a campus rom-com about theatre kids with too many emotions, and a rom-com trilogy playing with reality TV tropes. As an academic, she researches romantic love and popular culture and is a Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University.
This episode is part of our ‘Re-Read’ series – bonus episodes where we chat with previous Better Words guests and catch up on what's happened since they joined us on the pod.
🎧 Listen to the episode on Spotify below or search ‘Better Words’ in your podcast player 🎧
Things we talked about
The complex reality TV world Jodi created across her rom-com trilogy, including exploring the series 'villains' in the final book
Writing the third book in dual perspective and why this took Jodi by surprise (and why it was 'harder than all six of my previous books combined')
Could Love Island inspire another series in the future?
How Jodi planned the series, including plotting a season of a fictional dating show
Jodi's next romance series and upcoming academic projects
🎧 Search ‘Better Words’ in your favourite podcast player to get new episodes as soon as they’re live. We’ll be back soon with our 2023 Wrap Up episode! 🎧