As the official publication of my debut novel, All That I’m Asking, approached, I’ve thought about its sources of inspiration. Although set in 1968 to 69, the book’s focus on the social and political upheaval at the time was inspired by the protests against the Vietnam War. Weeks from graduation, I was an undergraduate senior […]
Deborah Samuel is the author of Grace Through Fire: A Memoir of Murder, Tragedy, and Resilience If I could sit across from my sixteen-year-old self today, at fifty-eight, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be intimidated by me. She’d probably check me out, wonder how the hell she got that old, and then start asking questions […]
Author’s Note The woods in the Connecticut town where I grew up were filled with treasures and it was our childhood our mission to uncover them. A secret path through woods near my house led to an abandoned cemetery from the 19th Century filled with headstones melting into the ground. We squinted at the barely […]
NOWHERE TO GO BUT EVERYWHERE Helena Vinci might like grunge and Camel Lights, but she’s not a fan of frat boys or anything else about Albany college life. When she drops out and takes a job waiting tables near the Capitol, her plan is to save up to see “the real world” out west. But […]
Interview with Noli Cooper, lawyer and investigator, protagonist in Mortal Zin MORTAL ZIN When corporate attorney Noli Cooper visits her godparents’ Santa Cruz Mountain winery, she’s hoping for a few quiet days to consider her future. But the future will have to wait. The body of her childhood mentor, a crusading social justice lawyer and […]
We were sitting in our usual places on Mike’s L-shaped sofa in the brightest room in the house. I was leaning against the arm of the sofa, my feet stretched out to touch Jack, a black and white cat who was glued to Mike’s hip. Mike sat on the chaise of the sofa facing Trout […]
I didn’t know much about memoirs when I decided to write one. But what I did know – I was a serial storyteller. Being a film editor for twenty-five years, I told hundreds of stories through film. Most were only thirty seconds while some were full ninety minute features. Many of them comedies, my favorite […]
Once upon a time, women were taught to wait. Wait for Prince Charming, for the shoe to fit, for the happily ever after. But what happens when you realize life doesn’t come with a fairy godmother to wave her wand and grant your dreams? You grab a sword, get on a white horse, and get […]
I happened to be touring the beautiful Middle Rhine area of Germany at the same moment that my newest Arthurian novel (The Faerie Handmaid) was being released in the United States. Many travelers, myself included, visit that romantic region because of the numerous castles, particularly on the Middle Rhine. They are best seen from the […]
As writers, we hear it from everyone—from other writers, from people who teach writing, from readers, and from people who are tired of hearing us groan and whine about writing. (Little do they know how much fun groaning and whining is if you’re sharing it with sympathetic listeners.) Write what you know, they say. It’s […]
Regret No More: A Flannigan Girls Story One mother. One daughter. A lifetime of things left unsaid. Becca Flannigan believed distance was the only way to survive her complicated relationship with her mother. But when Justine asks her to come home during her radiation treatments for breast cancer—and swear her to secrecy from her sisters—Becca […]
Deborah Samuel is the author of Grace Through Fire: A Memoir of Murder, Tragedy, and Resilience If I could sit across from my sixteen-year-old self today, at fifty-eight, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be intimidated by me. She’d probably check me out, wonder how the hell she got that old, and then start asking questions […]
Interview with Noli Cooper, lawyer and investigator, protagonist in Mortal Zin MORTAL ZIN When corporate attorney Noli Cooper visits her godparents’ Santa Cruz Mountain winery, she’s hoping for a few quiet days to consider her future. But the future will have to wait. The body of her childhood mentor, a crusading social justice lawyer and […]
By Jocelyn Cullity In an industry often defined by opacity and commercial pressure, independent publishers continue to offer alternative models shaped by mission rather than scale. At the center of one such effort is Jaynie Royal, founder of Regal House Publishing, whose work reflects both a personal reckoning with traditional publishing and a sustained commitment […]
Evie Walters Takes The Wheel In this warmhearted and witty debut, a mysterious gift spurs a widow to take a cross-country journey to find its sender—and along the way, she rediscovers herself. Evie Walters has lived most of her seventy-one years according to others’ expectations. But on the day of her husband’s funeral, she receives […]
By Carmen Amato “We’re going analog,” he said. “Analog?” I echoed. I was speaking to David Bruns, who with J.R. Olson co-writes the military-espionage Command and Control series. He explained that they’re skipping a digital-first playbook. Instead they’re leaning into an analog marketing strategy built around thematic speaking engagements, such as with veterans’ groups. It’s […]
Your dream finally came true. You wrote a book, you found a publisher who loved it as much as you do, and now, your book is in your hands. You’re officially a published author. After the unboxing and the champagne, you sit back and wait for the royalties to roll in… And that’s where the […]
By Carol Hoenig If you’re like me, you worked on your novel for a number of years before it’s ready for publication. Then once it is published there’s the feeling of accomplishment and celebration along with upcoming events and interviews. But about six months later you discover you’ve had your opportunity to get readers but […]
By Zelly Ruskin I thought the hard part was going to be finishing the book. Then I published. The image of an author is often one of someone chewing a pencil, with wads of papers beneath their chair. Maybe they’d be deep in thought, or frazzled—or both. In today’s world, they are sitting uninspired at […]
It’s impossible to forget the thrill of the moment when you come across a great idea for a novel. For me, the idea was a child with past life memories of being a soldier in Vietnam and the challenges this presented his mother as she looked for answers. As I wrote, this grew into alternating […]
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 […]
If you’re the daughter of an unhappy mother, school can save your life. Most children don’t think of their parents as depressed, anxious, or lonely because we don’t yet have words for those nuanced emotions. We might know that “Mom is sad” or sense that it’s a good time to stay quiet because the air […]
At twenty-nine, Chelsea Lefevre’s life choices have been considered and prudent, meant to secure her on a shore far from the rocky place where she started out. Yet as Engineering a Love Story opens, the strands of Chelsea’s steady and safe life are unravelling. But I don’t know any of that. To me, Chelsea is […]
Every bone and joint aches. My heart races, and my stomach is kind of seasick. The ground is unpredictable and might meet my face instead of my feet. Ignoring the side effects of chemotherapy, I risk the yellow morning. The meadows have swallowed the late summer sun and offer it back to the sky in […]
I’m a mood reader down to my bones, and very often, my mood is dictated by the season. A chilling locked-room mystery January, a sizzling summer camp thriller in July…if the story or setting corresponds with the weather, I’m in. My latest thriller, The River Runs Black, is set around Halloween, and I’ve loaded it […]
I was born and raised in Ukraine during the Soviet era, in a world shaped by discipline, endurance, and quiet resilience. My childhood was a complex mosaic. Life was certainly not easy, and the shadow of antisemitism was a heavy, painful reality we had to navigate. Yet, in our neighborhood, Jewish and Ukrainian families lived […]
Ask me how I came to write of loss and grief. Ask me at night when I’m especially tired, when my guard is down, when my heart is heavy from the slow grind of the day. I will tell you a story, maybe, about a boy, a friend, who was goofy and kind. His gait […]
Over twenty years ago, I had a conversation with a friend who wrote children’s books reviews for Publisher’s Weekly. I told her I would like to write a memoir. She quickly said, no one is interested in reading a memoir unless it is about a celebrity. That may have been true then, or maybe that […]
Engineering a Love Story, Kathleen Reidy At the height of the boom, ambition is easy —love is the real gamble It’s the year 2000—dot-coms, Bush v. Gore, and sky-high San Francisco rents. But while the country swoons with irrational exuberance, Chelsea Lefevre’s life is deflating faster than a tech bubble. She’d had everything she thought she […]
By Nikki Laycy, author of Out of the Shadows – From Despair to Self-Acceptance and Love There is something very different about living through painful experiences and sitting down years later to write about them. When I was living through some of the darkest periods of my life, I wasn’t thinking about what they meant […]
You Can Be a Disaster and Still Get Invited to the Fish Fry: At the beginning of Love and Other Incurable Ailments, Serenity Tomczyk doesn’t emerge from loss with newfound wisdom or enviable resilience. She nurses a cat. She attends group therapy. She catastrophizes every headache with a late-night Google search. Years after losing her […]
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