Category: On Writing
Authors Interviewing Characters: Zoje Stage
DEAR HANNA Zoje Stage delivers another knockout with a blood-chilling follow-up to international sensation Baby Teeth, taking readers back into the unsteady world of a young sociopath who’s all grown up. Hanna is no stranger to dark thoughts: as a young child, she tried to murder her own mother. But that was more than sixteen years […]
Alix Rickloff: On Writing
The Last Light Over Oslo is my thirteenth published novel in a career that has spanned seventeen years. And there are some writing constants that never change. I will think it’s the best shiny new idea ever for the first fifty pages. I will think it’s the worst crappy idea ever and question how I […]
Telling the Truth: Memoir, Myth and Magical Realism
By Ann Batchelder Writing the truth has long been standard procedure for memoir authors. But truth is not fact. For every story, there might be several points of view. Memoir narrators assume readers understand that their book is one version of what happened. Still, it is the memoirist’s job to remain honest. My memoir, Craving […]
On Writing I’m History…but do I repeat myself? by Lee Knapp
By Lee Knapp Somewhere on my old MacBook Pro that ran on Snow Leopard OS are dozens of files from around 2009 entitled “Tucker Book,” where I sketched out a vague idea about my old high school being a microcosm of America itself. With my marriage in turmoil, in 2003 I returned to teach history there. I […]
Finding Inspiration in Darkness: Cults, Characters, and Crafting Only the Guilty Survive
By Kate Robards When I sat down to work on my second thriller novel, I knew only one plot point: a teenager would go missing from a place called the Bird Haven, a wildlife sanctuary where she worked part-time after school. As a dedicated plotter, I finessed this idea through multiple iterations of outlines, but […]
July: Reading With Rochelle Weinstein
Hello Readers & Friends, It’s been steamy hot around most of the country, but July was a great time to lose yourself in the pages of a good book. Here are the stories that got me through: some old, some new, French, memoir, and a summer splash. If you need a break from the world, […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Lauren Thoman
About You Shouldn’t Be Here: Two strangers search for the truth behind bizarre occurrences no one else dares to discuss—only to discover that they’re connected by secrets that could destroy them both. A thrilling and twisty novel by the acclaimed author of the Mindy’s Book Studio pick I’ll Stop the World. When sixteen-year-old Angie Stewart […]
In It Together
By Ona Gritz There is a moment I describe in my memoir when my deceased sister whispered a crucial detail into my ear. She had been gone for thirty years by then, brutally murdered along with her husband and infant son, and I had finally garnered the courage and compulsion to learn all I could […]
Raising Awareness of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery through Fiction
by HELEN MATTHEWS Did you know that Tuesday 30 July is World Day Against Trafficking in Persons? This is an annual focus on human trafficking and modern slavery championed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. We all need to know about this hideous crime so we can understand why it happens and […]
The Disappeared by Rebecca J. Sanford
by Rebecca J. Sanford The year I met the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the organization was celebrating its twenty-fifth year and I was a twenty-five-year-old graduate student conducting field research for my thesis in Argentina. I worked with the Archivo Biográfico Familiar de Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, an initiative founded in partnership […]
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