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Author Lessons I learned in 2025

Wow, I really missed the mark on some of my 2025 goals. In this episode, I talk about what went wrong, what went right, and what I learned along the way.

00:00 Intro

00:54 Goals and Challenges: A Year in Review

01:42 Rewriting and Retitling: The Creative Process

03:27 Lessons Learned from Podcasting and Writing

07:14 Looking Ahead: Goals for 2026

09:42 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

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About the Podcast

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Killer Prose

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About your host

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Tanner Rutledge

Tanner Rutledge writes small-town mysteries and supernatural thrillers. Before turning to fiction, he spent 15 years as a private investigator, working on everything from missing persons to homicide cases. Those years gave him an intimate understanding of motivation and the quick thinking it takes to crack a case.

Tanner’s love of storytelling started early. He was the kid who wrote spooky tales for his second-grade classmates and stayed was always up late reading Stephen King and RL Stine under the covers. In college, he studied criminal justice but couldn’t stay away from creative writing and literature classes. When the world shut down in 2020, he finally gave himself permission to shift his focus back to writing and hasn’t looked back since.

He also hosts The Killer Prose Podcast, where he talks about the craft of writing, creativity, and the strange overlap between true crime and the paranormal.

When he’s not writing, you can usually find him spending time with his family or hanging out with his little black cat, Broccoli—his constant companion and occasional editor.