Get ready for a plot twist—this week, we summon Jesse Q. Sutanto! The bestselling author of Dial A for Aunties and Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers shares how she traded marathon writing sessions for focused 15-minute sprints—and still gets just as much done. She unveils the surprisingly luxurious way she tackles the dreaded saggy middle of a book (hint: it involves a special WhatsApp butler) and commiserates with me about the mean little voices that live in our heads. (Don't worry, we’re both in therapy, and we talk about that too.)

Ever wondered what it takes to wrangle a team of spy cats? This week, we summon John Scalzi, the bestselling author of Starter Villain and Old Man’s War. We chat about chipping away at the boundaries of what’s possible in the genre, how his brain holds so much information that he doesn’t even need to outline, and how he decided which genre to write in by flipping a freakin’ coin.

DFTBA, buttercups, because this week, we summon John Green! The beloved author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down joins me to talk about the writing process—starting with the shocking amount of words in his first drafts that never see the light of day. We also dive into how storytelling helps him search for “good news,” why dread might just be another form of wonder, and his belief that death is “the weirdest thing we do as people.”