Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Finding the Funny in Your Mysteries and Thrillers
Finding the Funny in Your Mysteries and Thrillers Humorous Thrillers. That sounds like an oxymoron. How can there be anything funny about murder, mayhem, and mystery? Yet, finding the comedy in crime has rocketed true crime to the top of the podcasting world. As of this month, three of the top ten podcasts are in […]
An excerpt from LB Well’s new novel, The White Coat Effect
L.B. Wells is the pseudonym for a very successful Board-Certified Surgeon, an ambitious physician who made her way through the jungle of medical training while overcoming the resistance of the male-dominated world of surgery. Wells has written a novel that unleashes the ambition necessary for a woman to push through the long road to becoming […]
The Power of the Group: How a Writing Group can Support, Inspire, and Sustain a Writer
The year was 2002. Michelle Kwan had a devastating fall in her long program at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, the Queen Mother died, and Michael Jackson briefly dangled his baby off a Berlin balcony. I was new to the city of Ottawa and didn’t know many people. In an effort to be more […]
Four Books into the Publishing Game, My Best Writing Tip is to be a Feminist
Four Books into the Publishing Game, My Best Writing Tip is to be a Feminist In 2014, when my first book came out, people would ask me how excited I was. While I certainly was thrilled, I was also mostly relieved, because no longer would I be a writer without a book. That year was […]
Necessary Fiction: Writing My Debut Novel
Necessary Fiction: Writing My Debut Novel Janet Kelley My book, Taint: A Novel, was published by Atmosphere Press in December, 2021. My first handwritten drafts were produced for a novel writing class with Ben Brooks at Emerson College in Boston. In the year 2006. You do the calculus. A wedding, a move from Indiana to […]
When an Idea “Cuts in Line”
When an Idea “Cuts in Line” By Dallas Woodburn In 2017, my goal was to finish a novel manuscript. At the time, the Word document on my computer contained nothing more than a title, a handful of scenes, and a burgeoning sense of great possibility. The idea for my young adult novel The Best Week That […]
From Indie book to TV Movie: The Three Questions I’m Asked the Most
In late 2018, as I wandered lost and alone on the streets of Uruguay during a temporary hiatus from my life in Alaska, my cell phone pinged. Someone had contacted me on my author website, wanting to know if my memoir’s dramatic rights had been optioned for film.“Probably just another scammer,” I told myself. Still, […]
On “Significant Authorship:” Writing as a Team
“We should write a book.” My husband, Jon, said it casually, five or six years ago. I adjusted our baby son on my lap and laughed a little. “Write a book.” My voice was deadpan as I repeated it, as if I thought he were joking. Hell, half of me hoped he was joking. Write […]
A Christmas Perspective
A Christmas Perspective “Snowd all night & snows yet rapidly. Great difficulty in getting wood. Offerd our prayers to God this Cherimass morning. The prospect is appalling but hope in God.” —Patrick Breen, December 25, 1846 So wrote Donner Party survivor Patrick Breen as he and his family of nine holed up in a windowless […]
I’m not good at this yet
I’m not good at this yet is the very last line of a long list in my daughter’s notebook. She has underlined yet in her precise and even handwriting. Her penmanship is just one mark of her signature care and attention. Today, seeing the word, yet, makes me second guess my own work. Last summer, […]
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