TMO Background Mode: Interview with Thriller Novelist & Entrepreneur Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn is a best-selling thriller novelist. She’s published over 20 books and sold over 450,000 copies in 74 countries and five languages. She’s most famous for her ARKANE series described by readers as ‘Dan Brown meets Lara Croft.’ Joanna is also an entrepreneur who teaches writers how to hone their craft. I interviewed Joanna about her past which includes a Master’s degree in Theology from Oxford. Joanna spent years working on computer code before she realized that she wanted to write fiction. And she’s a self-admitted techie, using a Mac and Scrivener. Today, Joanna leverages her background in theology and psychology plus extensive travel to write her thrillers. We talked about the craft of writing fiction and finished up with whether AI agents will ever put us both out of work.