Category: How To and Tips
Inspiration for Waterbury Winter
Inspiration for Waterbury Winter Ordinary events can sometimes trigger unusual results. In the case of fiction writing, serendipity can spark imagination. Waterbury Winter began that way, after an excursion to a drugstore one wintry day. My husband and I were visiting family in a cold part of the country for Christmas. On December 26th we […]
My Writing Toolbox
Words, words, words. Writers string them together in a specific order to create stories and draw readers to their work. And if we’re fortunate, we keep them there, turning page after page. But sometimes, readers stop short. They get in a page or two, maybe even more, and then close the book. Decide to quit. Why […]
An Author and Her Editor Haggle Over Details
An Author and Her Editor Haggle Over Details: Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood and Travis Snyder Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood’s Constellations of Eve as a Unique Editorial Experiment In her new novel Constellations of Eve, Abbigail Rosewood offers three iterations of one love story, each beginning over with a few changed variables. These seemingly small augmentations drastically alter […]
You’ve Got to Have Grit: My Path to Publication
by Debbie Schrack One of my favorite novels of all time is a classic western by Charles Portis called True Grit. In the story, fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross teams up with a burned-out U.S. marshal and a Texas ranger to pursue her father’s killer, Tom Chaney, through hostile territory. Although Mattie doesn’t have the experience of […]
When Characters Break Free and Authors Become Scribes
I was recently in a book group discussing my novel, Between Two Rivers, set in then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) between the 1950s and the 1970s. One of the characters disappears towards the end of the story. (Spoiler alert.) The character is Beatrice, Shona maid to English wife and mother Jenny in the suburbs of Salisbury […]
Simplify the Narrative by Jean Alicia Elster
Simplify the Narrative by Jean Alicia Elster I travel before I begin work on a manuscript. My most recent three books have been historical fiction based upon my maternal family history. For the first two books, my trips were local. And many of the places were those that I had previously visited both as a […]
The Inspiration Behind Never Natalie
The Inspiration Behind Never Natalie By A.J. Walkley They say a book is a baby, some authors taking about nine months from conception to completion before birthing their new work into the world for all to read. For me, my newest title had the longest gestation of any of my books to date at just […]
How To Write When You Have Small Children
When people find out I am a writer their first reaction is usually: how do you do it? The reason why, is the small children hanging from my arms. While becoming a published author is something that people generally find impressive, becoming a published author when you are also the mother of three children under […]
A Rose and a Thorn
Many years ago, we welcomed into our family a niece, a beautiful girl who was given a beautiful name. It was, as are many births, a joyous occasion, and all were happy and merry. Almost all. I was panicking slightly, because the newborn’s name was similar to one I’d already chosen for a central character […]
My Double Life By Freida McFadden
My Double Life By Freida McFadden I lead a double life. On Friday, as my colleagues and I are getting ready to leave the hospital at the end of a long work week, we discuss our plans for the weekend. One person is driving out to a local waterpark with their kids. Another is going […]
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