Elle McNicoll, author of 'Unapologetic Love Story' - Carnegie Award nominated writer discusses making your book stand out, the importance of representation, and being full-time whilst never having time to write
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Elle McNicholl is a Carnegie Award nominated author. Her debut 'A Kind of Spark' won the Blue Peter Book Award and the overall Waterstones Children's Book Prize, alongside Blackwell's Book of 2020. It was turned into a BBC Children's TV show, which she wrote. That won a Royal Television Society Award, and was nominated for an Emmy.
She's published many more, 'Some Like It Cold', 'Wish You Were Her', 'Role Model', and many others.
Pretty good for a writer who didn't actually set out to write.
Her new novel is her debut for adults, 'Unapologetic Love Story'. It's all about Raina Lewis, London's hottest It Girl, who is effortlessly cool and beloved for her smash-hit podcast spotlighting autistic women. However, when she meets the investigative journalist Tom Branimir who is out to discover her secret, things change.
You can hear why representation is so important, and why her own neurodivergence helps and hinders her writing. We talk about how she gets her characters to do what she wants, how much she thinks about other audiences, and why she takes a social-media break after writing.
Elle runs through her path to publication, detailing how she really fell into writing, also she talks about how she makes her relatable novels stand out on kids bookshelves that are stuffed with magic and dragons.
You can get a copy of the book - uk.bookshop.org/shop/writersroutine
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week's episode of Writers Routine is sponsored by the Quick Book Reviews podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | If this show takes you behind the scenes of writing books, the Quick Book Reviews podcast takes you into what makes them brilliant. |
| 0:13.0 | It's all about the authors too. You can join Philippa, who for the last six years has been chatting to some of the biggest authors around and discovering |
| 0:22.0 | their newest work. If you're a reader looking for new book recommendations and getting to know |
| 0:27.1 | your favourite writers, this is the perfect show for you with in-depth chats and spoiler-free book |
| 0:33.3 | reviews in perfect bite-sized chunks to fit easily into your day. |
| 0:38.6 | Philippa gets into all the fun questions too, finding out what authors like to eat, where they |
| 0:43.9 | want to go on holiday, and the gossip about bits of their life that you won't find anywhere |
| 0:49.4 | else. |
| 0:50.8 | All that with some very speedy book reviews, getting right to the heart of all the newest stuff out there and the best ones for you to read the quick book reviews podcast is a lighthearted look at authors and what you might love about their new book you can get two episodes a week, wherever you get your podcasts. Just search |
| 1:12.6 | for the Quick Book Reviews podcast. |
| 1:23.6 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. |
| 1:27.8 | This week we're chatting to Elle McNichael. |
| 1:30.9 | Elle is a four-time Carnegie Award-nominated author. |
| 1:35.0 | Her best-selling debut novel, A Kind of Spark, was turned into a BBC Children's show. |
| 1:40.4 | She's just released her debut adult novel. |
| 1:42.5 | We talk about how she's made her books stand |
| 1:45.4 | out on very busy bookshelves. Also, how much she thought about her different audiences when |
| 1:51.1 | starting to write for adults. So I've never thought of my audience as purely young. There's |
| 1:56.8 | always been adults that read the books. So I didn't pitch this to my agent and say, |
| 2:02.1 | I think now that some of the kids have grown up, we should do an adult, but I didn't think of that |
| 2:06.0 | at all. I just thought, hey, we've got lots of adults that come to these events. Maybe, maybe some of |
... |
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