Advertise on podcast: The Book Hook: Books as Resistance

Why can we suspend our disbelief for dragons, but not for a heroine with a stomach roll? Victoria S. Walsh built a self-love and whimsical-fashion platform to half a million followers on Instagram and three-quarters of a million on TikTok before she'd sold a single book. Now she's a debut romantasy author with The Iron Hex — book one of a trilogy — and the same instinct that built her audience is what's driving the pushback she gets every time she mentions her heroine's body. KJ sits down with Victoria S. Walsh to talk about: ✨ Writing a plus-size main character who's never on a weight-loss arc ✨ The specific comments that show up every time she mentions Eira's body ✨ The decade it took to go from hating her body to "loudly loving" it ✨ Getting her book deal call from a street corner in Tokyo, mid-honeymoon ✨ Why she chose traditional publishing but markets like an indie author ✨ The parasocial relationship every author now has to reckon with ✨ Her hot take on STEM, the humanities, and why books are having a moment "If Eira doesn't have to change her body, then I don't have to change my body." Get the books at THE BOOK ARCHIVE: https://thebookarchive.ca/?sca_ref=11303480.9wDYSblrIy CONNECT WITH VICTORIA S. WALSH: Instagram: @victoriashaz Website: https://www.victoriaswalsh.com HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

In the faith Tamara Jong grew up in, there was no hellfire — there was Armageddon, the destruction of the wicked, and a word for anyone who thought too hard about anything else: worldly. Jong is the Tiohtià:ke (Montréal)-born author of Worldly Girls (Book*hug Press), a memoir-in-essays about growing up a full-time Jehovah's Witness minister, losing her mother young — without the memorial the congregation wouldn't grant her — and rebuilding a relationship to family, faith, and motherhood almost entirely on her own terms. Jong joins KJ Aiello to talk about: - Growing up in the faith, and what "worldly" really meant inside it - Losing her mother at 21, after years of estrangement - Grief the congregation wouldn't let her have - Editing an entire memoir — and an entire life — in under a year - Wanting to be a mother, and finding one in her stepdaughter - What she's researching next: a second book about her father, a "paper son" who built a life under a name that wasn't his own "I couldn't grieve the way everyone else could grieve, because she was disfellowshipped." This episode is for anyone who left a faith and had to invent their own way of mourning, anyone holding a fractured family together without a script, and anyone who became a parent to someone who didn't have to choose them — and did anyway. Get the books at THE BOOK ARCHIVE: https://thebookarchive.ca/?sca_ref=11303480.9wDYSblrIy CONNECT WITH TAMARA JONG: Instagram: @bokchoygurl Website: https://www.tamaraljong.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

What happens when you and your son are both autistic, and the world judges you for both? Julie M. Green knows. Her debut memoir, Motherness: A Memoir of Generational Autism, Parenthood, and Radical Acceptance, braids her own late autism diagnosis at 44 with her son's first thirteen years — the joy, the aggression, the medication stigma nobody in the autism community wants to talk about, and the judgment aimed at mothers specifically. Green's work has appeared in The Washington Post, HuffPost, The Globe and Mail, Today's Parent, and Chatelaine. She was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Non-Fiction Prize and writes The Autistic Mom on Substack. In this conversation, Green and KJ talk about: - Writing her own diagnosis alongside her son's - Masking, and why it's so much harder to spot in girls and women - The "spiky profile" — and why she refuses to call it a superpower - Aggression, antipsychotic medication, and the silence around both - How working remotely changed her health before she even had a diagnosis - Curating a memoir that's fair to a child who can't consent to being written about - Why she calls autism a disability, not just a difference "It's not about coveting a label. It's about trying to not hate yourself." — Julie M. Green This episode is for late-diagnosed adults still working out what the label changes and doesn't, for parents of autistic kids who've felt the particular judgment aimed at mothers, and for anyone who's ever been told to just try harder. Get Motherness at THE BOOK ARCHIVE: https://thebookarchive.ca/?sca_ref=11303480.9wDYSblrIy CONNECT WITH JULIE M. GREEN: Instagram: @juliem.green Website: https://juliemgreen.ca/ Substack (The Autistic Mom): https://theautisticmom.substack.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

Alli Temple's lesbian pirate fantasy started as a joke about a plot hole in The Princess Bride. The joke became a trilogy. The trilogy sold thousands of copies. And "lesbian pirates" remains, by her own account, the single best tagline she has ever written for any book, at any point in her career. Alli Temple is a Toronto-based indie author of 20 books — queer romance, sapphic fantasy, and now a paranormal comedy about a woman who has organized her own death right down to the minute, and then the afterlife doesn't show up. She joins KJ Aiello to talk about writing the books traditional publishing told her didn't fit the mold, and why that turned out to be exactly right. In this conversation, Alli and KJ discuss: ✨ The Heated Rivalry reel that sparked a conversation about romance shame — and why "sliding notes across the counter" is still a problem ✨ How Uncharted got pitched as YA by a traditional agent — and why Temple walked away from the deal ✨ The argument that women's fantasy gets shelved as YA while the same story with male leads stays on the adult shelf ✨ Why adding sex to a fantasy novel somehow makes it "not serious fiction" — and the stronger word Temple chose not to say on YouTube ✨ The Afterlife Inc. trilogy: Beetlejuice meets The Good Place, born from pandemic ennui and a grandmother's death ✨ Medical assistance in dying — what it actually looks like in practice, and why Temple wrote it into Only Mostly Dead ✨ Kelly, the non-binary grim reaper who loves pizza, video games, and nothing else about humans ✨ The new unannounced princess novel — with a heroine who's about to be shipwrecked on foreign shores "I find, largely, I find life to be absurd." Temple says this like it's the most obvious thing in the world. It might be the best summary of her entire body of work. This episode is for every queer reader who found themselves in a pirate's found family, every writer who's been told their book would sell better as YA, and anyone who's ever had to tell someone their grandmother was going to die on Tuesday at 2:00. Plus: Mango the 12-pound orange himbo who hates closed doors and will not be excluded from podcast recordings. Books mentioned: Uncharted (The Pirate and Her Princess #1), Only Mostly Dead (Afterlife Inc. #1), Hate to Haunt You (Afterlife Inc. #2), Vacation From Hell (Afterlife Inc. #3) Get the books at THE BOOK ARCHIVE: https://thebookarchive.ca/?sca_ref=11303480.9wDYSblrIy CONNECT WITH ALLI TEMPLE: Instagram: @allisontemplebooks Website: https://www.allisontemplebooks.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

She went from Governor General's Award winner to romantasy debut — and she did it because she was sad, pandemic-bound, and couldn't find the book she wanted to read. Anuja Varghese is the author of Chrysalis, a short story collection that won the Writers' Trust Dane Ogilvy Prize for LGBTQ+ emerging writers and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Her debut novel, A Kiss of Crimson Ash — the first book in the Games of the Goddess trilogy — just came out, and it is a medieval India-inspired romantasy that is queer, brown, intersectional, sex-work positive, and genuinely hot. In this conversation, Anuja and I get into: 📚 How a DND homebrew campaign became the world of A Kiss of Crimson Ash 📚 Why she was writing literary short stories while secretly wanting to write big sexy fantasy 📚 What it means to write a sex-work positive female character who has a plan and doesn't need saving 📚 The four POV structure — and how each love story does something different that romantasy rarely does 📚 Writing intentionally queer and brown characters after years of defaulting to straight white ones 📚 Why a story about women and queer folks taking down a tyrant king feels extremely timely right now 📚 Getting fired, crying in her car on the QEW, and deciding on that drive home that she was going to be a writer 📚 Building CanLit community from the outside in — and her role as board chair of gritLit Hamilton “Looking around right now — it is an interesting thing how relevant a story about women and queer folks and people of colour working together to take down a tyrant king feels.” This episode is for every queer or brown reader who has picked up a fantasy novel and not seen themselves in it, every writer who has written a safe version of a story they actually wanted to tell, and everyone who has ever made a major life decision while crying on the highway. Get the books at THE BOOK ARCHIVE: https://thebookarchive.ca?sca_ref=11303480.9wDYSblrIy CONNECT WITH ANUJA: Instagram: @anuja_v | Website: https://www.anujavarghese.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

Welcome to season 2 of The Book Hook Podcast, where we've got in-depth conversations with authors whose writing resists, questions, and reimagines our world. Haven't checked out Season 1 yet? No problem! Here's just a few of the authors who joined us: 📖 Rebecca Yarros 📖 David A. Robertson 📖 Ian Williams 📖 M.K. Lobb 📖 Catherine Bush 📖 And many more! Make sure you follow and subscribe so you don't miss an episode! #podcast #authorinterviews #rebeccayarros #

Jen Sookfong Lee became a writer out of spite — her older sister gave her a C+ on a short story, and she decided to prove her wrong. She never stopped. Jen is the author of The Hunger We Pass Down, a horror novel about five generations of women, Asian mythology, and the intergenerational trauma that refuses to let you leave your country of origin behind — even when you think you have. She's also the co-host of the literary podcast Can't Lit (with Dina Del Bucchia), and an editor at ECW Press (yes, the same press that published The Monster and the Mirror — Jen was KJ's editor). This episode gets personal. We talked about: Why Jen chose horror to write about female rage and diaspora — and how she didn't even know the book was about intergenerational trauma until draft three. Respectability as survival strategy — and why it always cracks eventually ("It's a thin veneer of b******t") Nam Koo Terrace: the supposedly haunted Hong Kong building tied to the stories of comfort women, and how it became a centrepiece of the novel What a ghost story actually is — and why the real question isn't how to defeat the demon Racism in CanLit: where progress has been made, where gatekeeping persists, and why the festivals are programming for an audience that's aging out Writing out of spite, 13 books in, and still waiting for CanLit to accept her HRT, perimenopause, and why this is apparently also a wellness podcast now "I reel you in with the demons. But what I'm actually trying to tell you is that the demons are real." This episode is for anyone who has ever been handed a respectability script they didn't write, anyone who uses genre fiction to say the thing that would otherwise go unheard, and every reader who knows that the ghost story is never really about the ghost. Plus: a cozy mystery is coming. With a dead body nobody will feel bad about. It's a man. CONNECT WITH JEN: Instagram: @jensookfonglee | Website: http://sookfong.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

What happens when you build a world designed for failure — and then realize you can't write your way out of it? Jael Richardson, author of Gutter Child and founder of the Festival of Literary Diversity, joins KJ to talk about building something because the door wasn't open, why traditional publishers promote books for six weeks and then move on, and what writing the sequel to her favourite novel is teaching her about why oppressive systems are so hard to dismantle. In this episode: - The FOLD at 13 years — where it started and why community wasn't the plan - Why indie authors get excluded from literary festivals, and how the FOLD is changing that - The six-week publicity window: why publishers move on before most readers have even started - Jael's four-month-block framework for managing your own promotion for a full year - Why she didn't specify race in Gutter Child — and what that choice made possible - The sequel: nine POV characters, a relay plot structure, set 30 years forward - Why writing new oppressive laws was fast and easy — and dismantling them was nearly impossible "Making systems stronger is easy. Tearing them down — that's the hard part." This episode is for every writer who's had a book come out and felt the machinery stop after six weeks, every reader who found something unexpected in Gutter Child, and anyone who's spent time building something because there was nowhere to go. Plus: Taylor Swift's Folklore/Evermore framework applied to sequels, KJ's notes on her own promotional mistakes, and what it means that Imani Barbarin's first literary festival was the FOLD. CONNECT WITH JAEL: Instagram: @jaelrichardson | Website: https://www.jaelrichardson.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

What does it mean to write a love letter to a culture the whole world imitates but rarely honours? Morgan Campbell knows — and he's got receipts. Campbell is an award-winning journalist (CBC Sports, New York Times, Toronto Star) and author of My Fighting Family: Borders, Bloodlines and the Battles That Made Us — a memoir about Black American heritage, a jazz musician grandfather who moved the whole family north, a mother who punched a bully in the jaw at age twelve, and a son trying to make sense of it all as a Black man straddling Canada and the US right now. In this conversation, KJ and Morgan get into: Why he calls his memoir a love letter to Black America — and what that actually means His grandfather's jazz career and the music that brought his family across the border The Chicago Bears Super Bowl season — and why the memory is bittersweet His mother punching a racist bully in a segregated neighbourhood at 12 years old Trump, the media's refusal to connect the dots on racism, and what a "s****y first draft" looks like in real time Book banning, Black authorship, and why journalists should stop acting like they're safe The brutal honesty about his book's sales — and what award nominations feel like when they're vindication, not just validation Why you should buy the hardcover (10% royalties, people), borrow from the library, and definitely skip Amazon "I knew I had written a damn good book. And the award nominations were not validation — they were vindication." — Morgan Campbell This episode is for every reader who grew up between two cultures, every journalist frustrated by what mainstream media keeps refusing to say out loud, and every writer who has ever been told their book didn't sell — when really, nobody pushed it. Plus: what a red eye coffee habit says about a writer's soul, and the real difference between a paywall and a price. CONNECT WITH MORGAN: Instagram: @morganpcampbell HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack: https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

#1 NYT bestselling author Danielle L. Jensen joins KJ Aiello to talk fandom culture, the backlash that nearly broke her creative process, and what it really costs to write female characters who refuse to be easy to love. They cover why Jensen wrote Lara as self-serving and morally complex before the fantasy romance market was ready for her, where Freya's pandemic-born fury came from, and the reader rage that had her opening her laptop to panic attacks when she dared to write new characters in the Bridge Kingdom world. They also get into why negative reviews in fantasy romance almost always target the FMC and never the love interest, the rise of self-insert reading and what it's erasing from the genre, and Jensen’s new post-apocalyptic duology Defy the Dusk — coming November 2026. Unfiltered, sharp, and essential for anyone who loves fantasy romance or cares about how women are written in fiction. CONNECT WITH DANIELLE L. JENSEN: Instagram: @danielleljensen Website: https://www.danielleljensen.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello | Substack:https://substack.com/@thebookhookpodcast | Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, Onyx Storm) discusses writing Violet Sorrengail with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, the same chronic illness she and her children live with. We talk about why magic doesn't fix disability in the Empyrean series, the political critique of book banning woven throughout Fourth Wing, and what literary success actually costs—including death threats, burnout so severe she doesn't remember Good Morning America, and why her husband said "you can't do this again." Yarros also shares her creative process (music playlists and color-coded Post-Its!), why romance is radical and how she's protecting herself while writing Book 4. This interview is for every disabled reader who saw themselves in Violet, every writer navigating burnout, and everyone who's ever wondered what's really beneath the surface of Fourth Wing. CONNECT WITH REBECCA YARROS: Instagram: @rebeccayarros Website: https://rebeccayarros.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello FOLLOW THE BOOK HOOK PODCAST: Substack: https://kjaiello.substack.com/ Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast (https://www.instagram.com/thebookhook_podcast) Topics: Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, Onyx Storm, Empyrean series, disability representation, chronic illness in fiction, EDS, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Violet Sorrengail, romantasy, fantasy romance, book banning, author burnout, writing process, Rebecca Yarros interview

What happens when you write your own religious deconstruction into your debut fantasy novel? M.K. Lobb knows. At 10 years old in Germany, a friend told her "I don't believe in God"—and Lobb realized belief was a choice. That childhood epiphany became the foundation for her YA fantasy debut, Seven Faceless Saints, where she put her rage and regret into two characters fighting against a corrupt religious system. In this conversation, we dive into: ✨ The exact moment Lobb realized she could question her beliefs ✨ How "Roz is my rage and Damien is my regret" shaped her debut | ✨ Why her books are "indictments, not compare-and-contrasts" ✨ Building gritty, politically corrupt fantasy cities—then tearing them down ✨ Writing in 10-hour marathons between government job shifts ✨ Creating morally gray characters who compromise everything for change ✨ Her upcoming adult dark romance debut that "gets really kinky" "When you feel really hopeless about what is going on in the world, at least you can kind of bring down your fictional institution." Lobb’s approach to fantasy is unapologetic, political, and deeply personal. She uses world building as catharsis. Her characters make terrible choices in service of bigger goals. And when people criticize her work for only showing one side? "It's not for them, then." This episode is for anyone who's questioned their belief systems, uses writing as therapy, loves morally gray characters, or is tired of "both sides" discourse in art. Plus: velcro cats, correcting people on the internet (even though it won't work), and why having a day job in the criminal court system helps with perspective when you get a bad review. BOOKS MENTIONED: Seven Faceless Saints (2023) Disciples of Chaos (2024) To Steal From Thieves (2025) To Deal With Kings (coming March 2026) The Dark in Her Veins (coming August 2026) CONNECT WITH M.K. Lobb: Instagram: @mk_lobb Website: https://mklobb.com/ HOSTED BY: KJ Aiello FOLLOW THE BOOK HOOK PODCAST: Substack: https://kjaiello.substack.com/ Instagram: @thebookhook_podcast

In this episode of The Book Hook, Rowan Jetté Knox talks coming out as trans right after all his books were printed, opening a trans-owned coffee shop, maintaining safety in an unsafe world, and many more thoughtful topics. "Most of what we see on social media is performative hate. There are people who are shouting into the void, and there's a whole group of people who are standing behind them nodding along. But there are also people on the fence. People who are curious. People who might be persuaded." Rowan's approach: ✅ Legitimate question + respectful manner = response ❌ Pure hate = block and move on 🎯 Goal = Create curiosity for the fence-sitters "I hope that I can create enough curiosity that the people who are on the fence can see that there are trans people who are willing to have these conversations. I'm not representing everybody. I just represent my experience."

Welcome to The Book Hook: Books as Resistance where in each episode, we dive into thoughtful conversations for critical readers like you. Each episode is packed with answers to all the questions you've been wanting to ask. From debut writers, to bestselling authors like Rebecca Yarros, The Book Hook has all the author and reader conversations to help you make sense of the world, through books.

When books are being banned and diverse stories face erasure, every book becomes a political act. Host KJ Aiello interviews contemporary authors and thought leaders, exploring how literature becomes an act of resistance right on the page. In this episode, author and poet, Hollay Ghadery chats about rejecting reader sanctity, writing as two halves of a whole, and fantasizing about widowhood.