Category: Contemporary Women Writers
When My Cat Died and Came Back to Life, I Did What Any Writer Would Do
Recently, Senator Tammy Duckworth mentioned her “Alive Day” anniversary on Twitter. She said, “Today is my Alive Day, the anniversary of the day I almost died but didn’t.” She went on to describe how 14 years earlier, an RPG hit the helicopter she was piloting in Iraq. She lost both of her legs. But instead of […]
The Shame Of Losing
My first book is a memoir called The Shame of Losing. I didn’t mean for it to be a memoir; in fact, I tried in my writing program to make it a movie script, then a collection of short stories. It was my mentor, a memoirist, who called me out, saying that this was my […]
The Fear and Joy of Writing on Proposal
Most new authors, whether searching for agent rep or a publishing contract, will need to complete a manuscript, polish it up, and then hope and pray the concept is one that will pique interest, that the writing and voice will connect, and that story will ultimately satisfy. It’s a leap of faith and a lot […]
Where have all the Mobile Libraries gone? By Olivia Rana
When I was a child I can vividly remember the mobile library coming to my rural school in County Fermanagh. It arrived once a fortnight, bringing great excitement for bookworms like myself, and a welcome break from the tedium of schoolwork. We would promptly line up outside the school gates and wait our turn as […]
How Fairytales Can Deepen Themes in Our Writing
When I was little, my mother read me fairytales. I remember Andrew Lang’s books, The Tall Book of Fairytales, and a peculiar story about a girl who jumped rope and could skip through a key hole and light as a feather on dandelion thistle. It took me years to track down Elsie Piddock Skips in […]
How Research Made me a Better Writer
When people find out that I have graduate degrees, they often expect me to tell them I studied English. The wrinkles of confusion on their faces deepen even more when I tell them that my field of research and study was Human Geography. I know what you’re thinking: What’s that?! Even I didn’t know until […]
Is It a Floor Wax or a Dessert Topping?
If you’re of a certain age, you will remember the classic Saturday Night Live “commercial” featuring Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd bickering over whether “New Shimmer” is a floor wax or a dessert topping. The argument is resolved when pitchman Chevy Chase steps in to demonstrate that it’s both! I was reminded of this comedy […]
Writing Through the Guilt by Alessandra Harris
At the beginning of the school year, my sixteen-year- old son and I did an exercise to foster conversation between parent and teen. The counselor would ask a question, and we would write our answer down and a guess as to the other person’s answer. After, we went over the questions and our answers, then […]
How Writing Made Me More Of A Feminist
What’s an independent woman to do in a world where marrying means losing ownership of everything, even herself? The first book of my Redway Acres series, Helena, references a piece of English law from the early 1800s called Coverture. “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being […]
The Inspiration Behind Counterfeit!, Deception! and Corruption!
When I’m asked about the inspiration behind the Suzanne Jones series, my mind scurries off in a number of directions. The books are all thrillers set in the sometimes murky world of international pharmaceuticals. And hence my thirty plus years working as a manufacturing consultant and technical writer in that industry obviously played a part. […]
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