Tag: featured
The NaNoWriMo Novel that Wasn’t…and Then Was
By Ona Gritz Two Autumns ago, I attempted to draft a manuscript for National Novel Writing Month and failed. Actually, I failed in two ways. To win NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Not only didn’t I make it, but before my marathon even began, I blew a goal I’d set for […]
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING CHARACTERS: Diane Owens Prettyman, author of Love is for the Birds
LOVE IS FOR THE BIRDS For fans of Mary Alice Monroe’s The Beach House comes a heartwarming story from women’s fiction author Diane Owens Prettyman about second chances as two people find a pathway out of their grief—directly in the aftermath of a hurricane. The Texas Gulf: beautiful yet unpredictable. A beach town destroyed. Her mother’s candy […]
New Women’s Work: Reimagining Feminine Craft in Contemporary Art by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy: Excerpt
A celebration of “women’s work,” this book features contemporary artists from around the globe who are transforming what it means to make craft. “Women’s work” has historically been relegated to the domestic, absent from galleries and discussions of “art.” From cross-stitching and quilts to baskets and decorative ceramics, women have spent centuries creating masterful crafts […]
Writing Historical Fiction with Strong Female Characters: Ensuring that the Past Doesn’t Repeat
By Ann E. Lowry Author, The Blue Trunk A blue trunk sits in my foyer. I see it every day when I take my dog, Loki, for a walk. It belonged to my Great-great Aunt Marit who used it when she immigrated from Norway to the United States. When I first noticed the blue trunk […]
Putting “Why It Matters” on Page One
By Julie Castillo Author, Long Man’s Pillow When gentle friends tell me they’re going to read my novel, I’m tempted to tell them to skip the first scene. Someone dies of thirst, literally on the first page, and it’s not pretty. Maybe the book should have come with a disclaimer. Why in the heck did […]
Four Ways Being a Magazine Editor Helps Me Write Fiction—and One Big Thing I Had to Learn
By Erin Quinn-Kong When I was a sophomore in high school, I took an Intro to Journalism class where we learned about news and feature writing, the role of editors, and more. That was it—I knew what I wanted to do with my life. After attending the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I moved […]
Shedding the Masks: Finding Healing in Our Darkest Truths
Before I could write What I Couldn’t Tell My Therapist, I had to write a different book. My original goal was to create a book about my grueling medical journey with an inexplicable headache, aiming to help others who suffered from headaches. I gathered all my medical records, sifted through hundreds of pages of medical […]
The Bulls, The Bears and the Bea’s Knees: The Inspiration Behind The Trade Off
I’m not a finance person. When I decided to apply to business schools for an MBA, my mom refused to believe I didn’t mean a master’s degree in journalism or creative writing. Even after business school, I found the stock market boring. That changed in January of 2021. The stock of a failing video game […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Julie Edelman
The Accidental Sisterhood Jules Malone has sworn off love after two failed relationships: one with an abusive fiancé whom she calls her white knight-mare, and the other with a nice-but-boring ex with whom she co-parents their son, Max. But then one fateful Christmas Eve, Jules meets Sean, a twinkly-eyed charmer with a captivating smile and […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Laurie Notaro
THE MURDERESS Anne LeRoi moved to Phoenix in 1930 with her friend, Sammy Samuelson, so that Sammy could recover from tuberculosis. They met in Alaska when Sammy was an elementary school teacher and Anne was an X-ray technician. They quickly made the acquaintance with Ruth Judd, a medical secretary who worked at the Grunow Clinic, […]
Recent Comments