THE VOW In a stunning work of feminist historical fiction for readers who loved Dawn Tripp’s Georgia and Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, Jude Berman brings painter Angelica Kauffman to life. Accused of dressing as a boy to study in the prestigious galleries of eighteenth-century Italy, child prodigy Angelica Kauffman has set high goals for herself. She […]
SILVER LADY: TRAVELS ALONG THE RIVER ROAD Character interview: Cassie in Silver Lady by Susan E. Sage Cassie Navrone is the main character in my recently published novel, Silver Lady: Travels Along the River Road. The year is 2033. A new pandemic (The Strangler Virus) has left many dead and the USA is about to […]
Hello Reeders & Friends, I’m shouting this month’s reads from the rooftop because it just so happens that my latest WE ARE MADE OF STARS is on the list! Welcome to the world eighth book baby. I hope you’ll all check it out, plus these great reads from my Lake Union imprint sisters, a FREE […]
THE VOW In a stunning work of feminist historical fiction for readers who loved Dawn Tripp’s Georgia and Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, Jude Berman brings painter Angelica Kauffman to life. Accused of dressing as a boy to study in the prestigious galleries of eighteenth-century Italy, child prodigy Angelica Kauffman has set high goals for herself. She […]
SILVER LADY: TRAVELS ALONG THE RIVER ROAD Character interview: Cassie in Silver Lady by Susan E. Sage Cassie Navrone is the main character in my recently published novel, Silver Lady: Travels Along the River Road. The year is 2033. A new pandemic (The Strangler Virus) has left many dead and the USA is about to […]
Hello Reeders & Friends, I’m shouting this month’s reads from the rooftop because it just so happens that my latest WE ARE MADE OF STARS is on the list! Welcome to the world eighth book baby. I hope you’ll all check it out, plus these great reads from my Lake Union imprint sisters, a FREE […]
Will the following authors please stand up: Marie Benedict, Jude Berman, Teri M. Brown, Denny S. Bryce, Diana R. Chambers, Janet Skeslien Charles, Stephanie Dray, Joan Ferndanez, Jill George, Nicola Griffith, Kristen Hannah, Penny Haw, Carole Hopson, Piper Huguley, Martha Hall Kelly, Eliza Knight, Judith Lindbergh, N.J. Mastro, Paula McLain, Heather B. Moore, Victoria Christopher […]
This is the most personal book I have yet written. Perhaps it might go some way to explaining the recurrent theme of secrets and covert operations in several of my previous novels. The Secretary is based on the diary my late mother Joy wrote in Moscow in 1958, a tiny book measuring eight centimetres by […]
By Christina Hamlett For as many conversations as we chatter in or listen to every day, capturing that same rhythm and realism in a project for page, stage or screen is no small challenge. Too often the result is characters who (1) all talk in exactly the same voice, (2) talk more formally/rigidly/eloquently than normal […]
By Iris Glazner Leigh There is no magic to writing a book. I can safely say that, as it took me eleven years of editing, rewriting, and sifting through rejections from publishers and agents to bring Liza’s Secrets from inception to publication. Throughout that process I remained determined to tell the story, a cautionary tale […]
According to my cousin Deena, I’ve lived my life unencumbered by traditional expectations. When she mentioned this about thirty years ago, I didn’t relate to her observation, although looking back, this lack of self-awareness is hard to believe. I know that being born with a physical disability has had something to do with my ability […]
By Beth Kephart The Substack experts have advice for those seeking to carve out a place on this online platform that offers authors a chance to build both a newsletter and an audience. How to convert non-paying subscribers to paying ones via the strategic use of paywalls. How to write less and earn more. How […]
How to let go and allow the threads of your story find one another by Rebe Huntman When I attended graduate school for creative nonfiction in the early 2000s, writing that diverged from linear narrative was often looked at with suspicion, as if the writer was intentionally trying to be circuitous because they were incapable […]
THE VOW In a stunning work of feminist historical fiction for readers who loved Dawn Tripp’s Georgia and Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, Jude Berman brings painter Angelica Kauffman to life. Accused of dressing as a boy to study in the prestigious galleries of eighteenth-century Italy, child prodigy Angelica Kauffman has set high goals for herself. She […]
SILVER LADY: TRAVELS ALONG THE RIVER ROAD Character interview: Cassie in Silver Lady by Susan E. Sage Cassie Navrone is the main character in my recently published novel, Silver Lady: Travels Along the River Road. The year is 2033. A new pandemic (The Strangler Virus) has left many dead and the USA is about to […]
A CONCOCTION OF LIES Yvonne Hollister is a wealthy, older woman who has led a privileged life in the US and Belize. But she’s suffering from chronic depression after the unexpected deaths of her immediate family members. She’s failed in-patient and outpatient therapies and is now a functional addict hooked on both prescription drugs and […]
Interview by Morgan Baker If you read “The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared,” and you should, it may seem like the memoir is about Casey Mulligan Walsh’s son Eric’s untimely death in a single-person car accident when he was 20 and Casey’s grief. While that is most definitely part of it, […]
Ellen Barker’s illuminating third novel, The Breaks (February 18, She Writes Press), takes a look at the deep injustice of wrongful conviction and what “freedom” means after release from prison. All this is set against the story of Marianne, white and middle-aged and struggling with her own life challenges, including sort-of dating a Black cop. Mixing […]
By Andrea J. Stein, author of Typecast and Dear Eliza When babies are born, there are celebrations galore. Showers are thrown. Gifts are given. Visits are paid. In many ways, books are authors’ babies. They take hours and hours (truthfully, years!) of work to create and cultivate, and then they face a big world full […]
by Marilyn Simon Rothstein Getting published saves time. That’s because it’s no longer necessary to spend hours yearning to be published. Nine out of ten authors are “bestselling”. The rest are “award winning”. Almost every writer was once a lawyer. Smile at this remark, “I’m constantly lending your new book to friends. Did I mention […]
Why is Book Marketing So Damn Hard? I offer a marketing mastermind for writers, called 12 weeks to Book Launch Success. In this group program, I guide novelists and memoir writers to develop a successful launch plan for their book. (If this sounds interesting, more details at the end!) Before developing my program, I interviewed […]
Things I wish I’d known about book marketing: A few specific tips for the author who wants to sell books as well as write them! (1) When people ask me how I found my agent, I tell them about Publishers Marketplace https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/. This is an enormous database that lists (nearly) every book deal, as well […]
I was at a low. I’d just broken up with my literary agent after three years, and it felt as if my publishing dreams would never come true. I couldn’t sleep. I was cranky. When The Secret by Rhonda Byrne was published in 2006, I didn’t read it but at 2am one night the Netflix […]
Here’s why. You slump, shrink, curl down in your seat, never stand up straight. As if an arrow might pick you off. Not an arrow, a bullet. Not a bullet, a blow. Not a blow, words. Not words, looks. Here’s why. You’re a freak. Four inches in one year? Your father’s colleague says he keeps […]
He wanted you to have this. It was written with exaggerated clarity on a scrap of paper, as if the author was unsure of the reader’s grasp of English. The torn paper, rather than a proper card, another signal from the sender. It was signed Elaine, with a rounded, buxom capital E. On the padded […]
Elaine Walsh Barrington revs up her white BMW and reverses the car out of the double garage behind the house. “I really don’t mind getting a taxi to the station again,” Lorna, her younger sister, says from the passenger seat. “You didn’t have to leave your New Years Day open house like this.” The clenched […]
She’s a woman who discards anything which causes sorrow or blocks her path. A man she cares for does both, and she leaves him. She takes only what she really values, an old set of books, a few china plates of her mother’s, an abstract painting she’d found in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She abhors […]
This is an account of what it was like to be nine years old and on the receiving end of the bombing power of a well-armed enemy. Like millions in London we were evacuated at the start of the war. My father went to Harpenden with the insurance company he worked for, two days before […]
Q&A with Literary Agent ERIN NIUMATA Folio Literary Management, VP and Literary Agent Erin Niumata has been in publishing for over three decades. She started as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster in the Touchstone/Fireside division for several years; then moved over to Harper Collins as an editor, and then she went to Avalon […]
Three years ago, I was a freelance writer with an extremely long Word document chilling on my hard drive. Today, those 98,000 words mark my shift from aspiring writer to fiction author: The Lost Night is coming out from Crown. My novel is a thriller about a woman uncovering the dark truths surrounding her best […]
A few days ago I did an interview and one of the questions was did I think having an agent was crucial in this business. The answer for me was a huge, resounding yes. My agent is Carly Watters at P.S. Literary Agency, and I literally wouldn’t be where I am now without her patient […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series Part One Part Two | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION ELEVEN Historically, how many story ideas do you […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series. Read Part One HERE | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION SIX Did your first agented manuscript sell? If […]
By Leslie Kain GOD: Leslie, what inspired you to write your first book, ‘Secrets In The Mirror’? LK: I know someone whose two daughters were very close during childhood, then became estranged when the older one began manipulating and gaslighting the younger one in their early adulthood, asserting her superiority and the younger one’s inferiority. […]
What if Orchids Grew From Your Belly Button: Katy Wimhurst What if orchids grew from your belly button? What if your hair was replaced by a lucious plant? What if you could suck up everything you hated in the world with a hoover? What if, in a world of scarcity, chocolate was outlawed? My new […]
Rachel Callaghan is the author of Under Water, Devils Knob (with its sequel) and the dark comedy Grab the Groom. She hosts the Dark and Outrageous Humor Author Interviews series, coming soon. People often ask about the need for beta readers and how to get them. Yes, most writers need them. Yes, your friends and family can be […]
Grit & Grace: The Transformation of a Ship & a Soul “Engaging and informative, with moments of great excitement—but also disturbing and weighted with angst.” —Kirkus Reviews Deborah Rudell’s world unravels when the leaders of her spiritual commune are exposed, arrested, and imprisoned for bioterrorism and attempted murder. Crushed and adrift, she moves her family […]
The inspiration for my book began one spring eight years ago. It was the year I turned fifty; the same year my oldest son turned eighteen, graduated from high school, and left for a college five states and two airplane rides away; and the year the troubles started between me and a beloved sibling. I […]
By Penny Haw Where do ideas come from? What motivates an artist to paint landscapes, not portraits? What compels a writer to pen prose, not poetry? What inspires an author to create romance, not crime? Why are some people compelling, and others not? There are countless ways of responding to these questions. However, I can […]
By Sally Page Hello Women Writers, My discovery that the Titanic was ‘a ship full of flowers’ led to a novel that was five years in the writing. The Secrets of Flowers is a contemporary tale of Emma, a young widow, interwoven with the true story of Violet, a stewardess who worked on the Titanic. A stewardess who survived the sinking […]
By Shirley M. Phillips One of the hardest tasks for me in finishing my memoir How Not to Fly an Airplane was choosing a title and cover. Although I suspect this is a challenge for many authors, for me it was compounded by the fact that my debut memoir is about my forty years of flying airplanes and teaching others how to fly. Although I […]
By Alexandria Faulkenbury As an author about to publish my debut novel, I’m often asked about the inspiration for the story. And at this point in the roller coaster that is publishing a book, I have a standard answer: I’ve always been interested in cults, so I wanted to write about one. But that’s only […]
By Betsey Kulakowski Imposter syndrome is something many authors — even those of us with almost a dozen books on the shelf — suffer from. No number of accolades, awards or best-seller badges can drive out the demons when you lack the feeling of being worthy. The key to building lasting confidence in your writing […]
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