Category: How To and Tips
An Ode to Sticky Notes
Occasionally someone in one of the various on-line writing groups in which I hang out will ask how people organize their research. It usually generates a discussion of digital versus paper filing systems. And I occasionally weigh in with my own multi-layered, always evolving system of computer files, notebooks, 3 x 5 cards, and the […]
Interview with Jeanne Baker Guy
Cedar Park, Texas – In 1977, Jeanne’s German ex-husband, Klaus, tells her he has a new job and wants to take their three-year-old daughter and six-year-old son away for a long weekend to celebrate. Jeanne relents. But Klaus never returns and instead sends Jeanne a letter, delivered by a priest, in which he declares that […]
From Poet to Picture Book Author — The Pitfalls and Pleasures of Changing Genre
Deborah Fannie Miller I never had any intention of writing a picture book. I had no knowledge, experience, or discernable skills in that area, either. At the time I ended up writing one, I thought of picture books as just one more tool for getting our young night owl daughter to go to sleep. Writing […]
Writing Historical Fiction with Debut Novelist Samantha Specks
Inspired by the true story of the thirty-eight Dakota-Sioux men hanged in Minnesota in 1862―the largest mass execution in US history―Dovetails in Tall Grass is a tale of two young women connected by the fate of one man. Writing Historical Fiction with debut novelist Samantha Specks Though my novel is about events in 1862, for me the […]
On Getting the History Right (or Trying to…)
The foundation for All Things That Deserve To Perish, the story of a gifted German-Jewess who finds herself in a fragile mixed marriage, was laid in my early days as a graduate student in history. On reading a biography of Bismarck’s banker, Gerson Bleichroeder, I landed one day on a story that really moved me. […]
On Writing and Teaching: Barbara Bleiman
I was ten when I wrote my first novel. OK, so it was on lined paper, in a blue exercise book, written in pencil with lots of crossings out, and its subject was a fairy, but it was the start of thinking ambitiously about writing fiction. For many decades after that, life got in the […]
Happy Ever After: Tracy Corbett
Happy Ever After by Tracy Corbett …and they all lived Happily Ever after. It’s a phrase we’re all familiar with. The handsome prince wins the hand of the beautiful princess and they sail off into the sunset amid shooting stars, fireworks, and showered in hearts and moonbeams. Like everyone else, I believed that’s all it […]
Witnessing Witchcraft: The Inspiration for Cunning Women
Witnessing Witchcraft: The Inspiration for Cunning Women Sitting at my laptop and scrabbling for inspiration a few years ago, I did not plan to write historical fiction. My previous (unpublished) novels were not in this genre – one was a futuristic love story, the other a coming of age tale set in the eighties. This, […]
Finding the right fit: How I found my agent By Elissa Grossell Dickey
Finding the right fit: How I found my agent By Elissa Grossell Dickey Almost five years ago, I was fresh off the thrill of participating in Pitch Wars, waiting to hear back from agent-round requests, and overall excited for the possibilities. They say that publishing is incredibly slow until it’s suddenly not—and that was so […]
Motherhood: a Time of Crisis Equal to Adolescence
Everyone recognises that adolescence is a time of development and upheaval; a period of identity crisis. In my view, there are real parallels with motherhood. A woman who becomes a mother experiences huge change, emotionally as well as physically. Suddenly, the world is tipped on its axis, and finding balance again means forging a new path; […]
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