'Writing Excuses'

On February 10, 2008, author Brandon Sanderson, cartoonist Howard Tayler, aspiring author Dan Wells and producer Jordan Sanderson first aired a podcast called "Writing Excuses."

They had no idea how far the podcast would go.

Nine seasons and one additional podcaster - Mary Robinette Kowal, author of the Glamourist Histories series - later, it's still going strong.

"When we started those early shows ... not only did we have no idea how successful it would be, we had no idea what success looked like because podcasts were so new," said Wells, who sold his first novel, "I Am Not a Serial Killer," a few months after the first podcast aired. "Today we're ... averaging around 20,000 listeners per episode, which is gargantuan for podcasts. I'm not bragging; I'm just telling you how shocked I am that that many people want to listen to us."

The weekly podcast focuses on specific aspects of fiction writing. Past topics have included everything from "Creating Suspense" and "Writing Epic Fantasy" to "Working with Editors" and "The Business of Writing." Everything that aspiring fiction writers would like to know is fair game.

The podcast's tagline is "15 minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart." Frequent listeners may challenge those assertions, though. The podcast almost always runs a few minutes over - which most listeners don't complain about - and some would say the podcasters are much smarter than they'd like to admit.

The group regularly invites guest authors on the podcast as well, including Patrick Rothfuss, author of the Kingkiller Chronicles series; James Dashner of the Maze Runner series; David Farland of the Runelords series; Jessica Day George of the Dragon Slippers series; Brandon Mull of the...