Category: How To and Tips
The Importance of Setting in my Books
One of the questions we writers get asked most frequently is where we get our ideas from. I would say that the theme that links all of my books is the desire to create a sense of time and place. I had always been a mystery reader, enjoying the books of the ladies of the […]
Finding Balance
I’ve studied ballet since I was five. Even with taking a decade hiatus during college and just after, it’s still a lot of years. In my mid-forties, at least once a week I practice my pliés and pirouettes. My passé and my relevés. Yet I am known to fall over while putting on my sock […]
What If I Can’t Write Anymore?
While shepherding a new book through a launch, I experience what can only be described as separation anxiety from writing, but then, when it’s time to get back to it, the all too familiar crash of confidence and nagging question re-emerges. What if I can’t write anymore? I’m told this fear is not uncommon with […]
Writing Innamorata
After a certain birthday, I was feeling extra appreciative of my life, realizing I was in a very happy place and couldn’t ask for anything more. I began to reflect a bit, thinking about all the roads that led to getting here. So much of the journey wasn’t pretty; many hurdles and stumbling blocks presented […]
Writing the Western Romance: a Short Tutorial with Some Methodology
Since I was a young girl, I had a fascination with Westerns and Native American cultures. When I was about five years-old my father took me to Jones Beach in the summer. There was a teepee set up with a beautiful Indian girl with long black braids in a white buckskin beaded and fringed dress. […]
AND THEN SHE SAID…I’M NOT ENOUGH
This may be a cliché, but clichés come from somewhere…usually reality. A male individual contributor was promoted to manager, even though he wasn’t entirely ready for the position. Let’s call him Scott. Scott is being promoted because the hiring manager believes he has potential. Remember, “men are often promoted based on their potential to be […]
Why Write about Trauma? By Lisa Braver Moss
I have a nice life. I’m blessed with wonderful work, I’m in good health, I’m comfortable, I’ve been married for 36 years, and I have two delightful grown sons. Besides, I’m a positive person. I don’t like to focus on misery for its own sake. So why would I want to write about my violent, […]
Unusual Writing Tips
The first rule of writing tips, is there ARE NO RULES There is nothing more annoying for a writer than reading a list of rules that another writer has come up with and feeling if you don’t comply with them, that somehow you are failure. It is even more annoying when you try them and […]
The Importance of Obsession by Wendy Trimboli
Every few years I get on a reading kick about extreme mountaineering. The annual assault on Everest by climbers from around the world fills my Twitter feed each May, prompting me to cram more books with titles like Into the Silence and Dark Summit onto my already cluttered bookshelves. While I have zero interest in […]
5 Reasons Why I Took the Series Writing Plunge
By Veronica Cline Barton, Author of My American Almost Royal Cousin Series #CozyMystery When I first started my writing career in late 2016, it didn’t take me long to figure out that I was destined to create a cozy mystery series. It’s my favorite genre, and one where I feel a sense of lovely, deadly, […]
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