by Tracy Shawn When we writers create with readers in mind, we can craft our stories into more vivid, engaging, and, well…readable works. Why? Because writing for readers keeps us more engaged in the process, increases awareness of how our writing will resonate with others, and inspires us to work that much harder to create captivating […]
By Donna Moore During World War I, with so many male police officers away fighting, the Glasgow Vigilance Association, a branch of the Suffrage Movement, took the initiative and patrolled the streets. One such woman was nurse Emily Miller. On 6th September 1915, Miller was appointed to the police force in Glasgow, although her official […]
From Nicola Kraus, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nanny Diaries, with over 6 million copies in print in 32 languages, comes her first solo novel, a powerful heartbreaking story about righting the wrongs of a family’s past. In THE BEST WE COULD HOPE FOR: A Novel (Little A; on sale: May 1, 2025), Kraus delivers a fiercely imagined and moving […]
Hello Readers & Friends, Is it just me or is time flying? I’m heading into May wondering where did April go? Did you have any rain for those promised May flowers? Here in Miami we’ve had unseasonably cooler temperatures (not much of a drizzle). The breezy days meant balcony reads spent flipping through pages. This […]
Vatican Daughter The Evolution By Joni Marie Iraci In the throes of teenage angst, I wrote poetry. Some of it was decent, but most not so much. But what novelist didn’t have his or her beginnings as a poet of sorts? As I ventured out into the world, I mastered letter writing. I was glib […]
By Lynne Shaner I started writing what would become my debut novel more than ten years ago. The first draft was messy and awful and all over the place, in the way firsts drafts are (mine, anyway). I printed it out it and boxed it up and lugged it halfway across the country. I tucked […]
by Jayne Chard I started writing at about eight; I wrote all the junior school plays. When I was fourteen, I wrote my first “novel.” One of my friend’s Dad was a writer, and I always remember him saying, “If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day,” I guess I’ve […]
By Sweta Vikram We were at a dinner gathering the other night when a few people asked, “When are you writing your next novel?” I didn’t have an answer. These people knew that I started work on a new novel in summer of 2020. They had shown interest in the storyline. They wanted to know […]
By Nancie Abuhaidar WIP: abbreviation for work in progress or process: a piece of work or a product that has been begun but is not finished or ready –Cambridge Dictionary In the work in progress that is my life, it feels like I’m living the boggy middle of a first draft, a fact echoed literally in my current project. Since I self-published my debut, I’ve been working on the next […]
By A.C. Adams My wife and creative partner, Christina Adams, and I met in San Diego in our early twenties. She had just returned from a tour in India and Europe as the lead singer of Vrindavan, a world music ensemble. I was the composer and book writer for an original rock opera, An Eye […]
Melissa Payne is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Wild Road Home, A Light in the Forest and her latest, In the Beautiful Dark. After an early career raising money for nonprofit organizations, Melissa began dreaming about becoming a published author and wrote her first novel. Her stories feature small mountain towns with […]
In Ana Hebra Flaster‘s powerful debut memoir, Flaster chronicles her family’s refugee journey from a Cuban barrio to a New Hampshire mill town, capturing the resilience, love, and complex identity of immigrant life in the U.S. Featured on NPR and PBS, and a finalist for major literary prizes, Flaster’s memoir reveals how the strong-willed women in her family wove stories of their Cuban […]
Fine, I’m a Terrible Person Fine, I’m a Terrible Person is a funny, heart wrenching adult mother daughter story. It begins when 73-year-old, worn out, former beauty, Aurora Hmans Feldenburg, a hapless, perpetually broke, eccentric, divorcee living in the wealthy enclave of Marin County in Northern California, is wakened by a phone call informing her […]
The Life and Loves of an American Artist: An Interview with Marguerite Thorne By Paulette Kennedy, author of THE ARTIST OF BLACKBERRY GRANGE (Lake Union; May 1, 2025) The Artist of Blackberry Grange: A Novel For a young caregiver in the Ozarks, an old house holds haunting memories in a ghostly novel about family secrets, sacrifice, […]
And They Had a Great Fall is a love story about a secret relationship between a single mother and a rising celebrity. Their romance started during the pandemic, a time when the entire world stopped. This unlikely pair reunite a year later in Copenhagen, after the world has reopened. What happens when they have to […]
By Andrea J. Stein, author of Typecast and Dear Eliza When babies are born, there are celebrations galore. Showers are thrown. Gifts are given. Visits are paid. In many ways, books are authors’ babies. They take hours and hours (truthfully, years!) of work to create and cultivate, and then they face a big world full […]
by Marilyn Simon Rothstein Getting published saves time. That’s because it’s no longer necessary to spend hours yearning to be published. Nine out of ten authors are “bestselling”. The rest are “award winning”. Almost every writer was once a lawyer. Smile at this remark, “I’m constantly lending your new book to friends. Did I mention […]
Why is Book Marketing So Damn Hard? I offer a marketing mastermind for writers, called 12 weeks to Book Launch Success. In this group program, I guide novelists and memoir writers to develop a successful launch plan for their book. (If this sounds interesting, more details at the end!) Before developing my program, I interviewed […]
Things I wish I’d known about book marketing: A few specific tips for the author who wants to sell books as well as write them! (1) When people ask me how I found my agent, I tell them about Publishers Marketplace https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/. This is an enormous database that lists (nearly) every book deal, as well […]
I was at a low. I’d just broken up with my literary agent after three years, and it felt as if my publishing dreams would never come true. I couldn’t sleep. I was cranky. When The Secret by Rhonda Byrne was published in 2006, I didn’t read it but at 2am one night the Netflix […]
Here’s why. You slump, shrink, curl down in your seat, never stand up straight. As if an arrow might pick you off. Not an arrow, a bullet. Not a bullet, a blow. Not a blow, words. Not words, looks. Here’s why. You’re a freak. Four inches in one year? Your father’s colleague says he keeps […]
He wanted you to have this. It was written with exaggerated clarity on a scrap of paper, as if the author was unsure of the reader’s grasp of English. The torn paper, rather than a proper card, another signal from the sender. It was signed Elaine, with a rounded, buxom capital E. On the padded […]
Elaine Walsh Barrington revs up her white BMW and reverses the car out of the double garage behind the house. “I really don’t mind getting a taxi to the station again,” Lorna, her younger sister, says from the passenger seat. “You didn’t have to leave your New Years Day open house like this.” The clenched […]
She’s a woman who discards anything which causes sorrow or blocks her path. A man she cares for does both, and she leaves him. She takes only what she really values, an old set of books, a few china plates of her mother’s, an abstract painting she’d found in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She abhors […]
This is an account of what it was like to be nine years old and on the receiving end of the bombing power of a well-armed enemy. Like millions in London we were evacuated at the start of the war. My father went to Harpenden with the insurance company he worked for, two days before […]
Q&A with Literary Agent ERIN NIUMATA Folio Literary Management, VP and Literary Agent Erin Niumata has been in publishing for over three decades. She started as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster in the Touchstone/Fireside division for several years; then moved over to Harper Collins as an editor, and then she went to Avalon […]
Three years ago, I was a freelance writer with an extremely long Word document chilling on my hard drive. Today, those 98,000 words mark my shift from aspiring writer to fiction author: The Lost Night is coming out from Crown. My novel is a thriller about a woman uncovering the dark truths surrounding her best […]
A few days ago I did an interview and one of the questions was did I think having an agent was crucial in this business. The answer for me was a huge, resounding yes. My agent is Carly Watters at P.S. Literary Agency, and I literally wouldn’t be where I am now without her patient […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series Part One Part Two | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION ELEVEN Historically, how many story ideas do you […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series. Read Part One HERE | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION SIX Did your first agented manuscript sell? If […]
Amy Friedman, Executive Editor, Out of the Woods Press Leticia Longoria-Navarro, Executive Director, The Pathfinder Network Victor Trillo, The PATHfinder Club and POPS the Club Program Manager PATHfinder and POPS Clubs support youth who are the daughters, sons, siblings and other loved ones of those who have been or are incarcerated, detained or deported; some […]
By Jennifer Todling This fall, I originally had five solo trips planned for business retreats, milestone events and recording my audiobook. I love having time to myself and traveling on my own schedule where I get to indulge in my creative pursuits without distraction. During the pandemic, I somehow found the capacity to go back […]
By Carole J. Obley “What is my purpose in life?” “How can I distinguish between my personal thoughts and intuition?” “Why do I have difficulties with relationships, work and health?” These are some of the most frequently asked questions of clients who come for sessions in my three- decade practice of professional mediumship. Like many […]
“Rachel Paris comes blazing onto the scene with this pulse-pounding whodunit crime thriller. This is a claustrophobic, unpredictable, must-read psychological thriller with a banger of an ending.” — Best Thriller Books “See How They Fall is an artfully plotted thriller that masterfully delivers unexpected twists to keep readers hooked until its satisfying conclusion.” — Books […]
Here’s something I’ve learned about myself over the past few years—as a writer, I apparently love a challenge. My first novel, The Girl Who Tried to Change History, was a time travel-focused story mixed with historical fiction, set in London during World War Two. I decided to write this book despite the fact that I […]
Author Catalina Margulis shares her story of the transformative power of storytelling By Catalina Margulis When I started writing my book Again, Only More Like You, I had been laid off, restructured out of my job. AND I was pregnant. On top of it all I was turning 40. Having spent my whole life building […]
By Deb Richardson-Moore I have lived my best life on beaches. Oh, there were long stretches in between, but I endured them by looking ahead or behind to times on those wide stretches of sand and the sometimes gentle, sometimes turbulent waves of the mighty Atlantic. I have always resided in upstate South Carolina, so […]
By Jenni Keer Thank you so much for having me on your wonderful blog again and for inviting me to talk about my quirky historical romances. My visit here coincides with the release of my latest novel, The House of Lost Whispers, which came out on April 27th, and I’m here to tell you a […]
By Amal Hdhili I didn’t set out to write a book. I set out to remember who I was before life got too loud. There was a time I wrote often—letters I never sent, poems I didn’t show, journal entries I buried in drawers. But somewhere between growing up and showing up—at work, in life, […]
When Bob and Diane met, it was love at first sight. For both of them. In her memoirs, The Married Widow: My Journey with Bob Zappa and its companion piece, Dear Bobby: My Grief Journey, Diane describes the evolution of their relationship from their meeting in 1986 to their marriage in 2015 and his passing […]
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