By Lisa C. Taylor When I worked in the field of counseling, I encountered both parents and children who were grieving. During the eight years it took me to complete The Shape of What Remains, I immersed myself in research about the grieving process. I do not claim to be an expert but what I […]
by Patsy C. Robertson When I embarked on my writing journey, I had a clear vision of the types of stories I wanted to write. I wanted modern stories that displayed current and historical connections between Native Americans, African Americans, Africans, and the African diaspora throughout the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and Mexico. For […]
By Ginny Kubitz Moyer Over the twenty-six years that I taught high school English, many students noticed an unfortunate pattern among our assigned texts. “We always have to read such depressing books in our English classes,” they would complain. “Aren’t any of the classics happy?” It was a valid point, because our department curriculum—like that […]
By Lisa C. Taylor When I worked in the field of counseling, I encountered both parents and children who were grieving. During the eight years it took me to complete The Shape of What Remains, I immersed myself in research about the grieving process. I do not claim to be an expert but what I […]
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 […]
by Sally McQuillen I began writing to my son Christopher twenty-one days after he died at the age of twenty-one in an accident. I wrote to connect with him. I wrote to let him know how I was feeling after he left his beautiful body and went somewhere I wasn’t yet sure existed. Most of […]
By Kathleen Somers For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to write and had often fantasized about writing a book, though I never expected that I would one day do it. I have a drawer full of binders with children’s stories I had started over the years, bits and pieces of potential novels, […]
WHEN SHE WAS GONE Was she taken … or did she run? The pulse-pounding new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of You Don’t Know Me Rose once walked away from her daughter. Now she may be the only one who can save her. Former London police officer Rose Campbell has been estranged from her daughter, […]
by Patsy C. Robertson When I embarked on my writing journey, I had a clear vision of the types of stories I wanted to write. I wanted modern stories that displayed current and historical connections between Native Americans, African Americans, Africans, and the African diaspora throughout the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and Mexico. For […]
By Ginny Kubitz Moyer Over the twenty-six years that I taught high school English, many students noticed an unfortunate pattern among our assigned texts. “We always have to read such depressing books in our English classes,” they would complain. “Aren’t any of the classics happy?” It was a valid point, because our department curriculum—like that […]
by Rachel Stone Most days, I’m am author. The odd day, like today, I’m a speaker who tells people how I came to be an author in hopes of inspiring them to make space for their passions. But lately, I’ve felt unjustified in calling myself either. My current manuscript has me totally stuck. My last […]
What is the spark that ignites your creativity? What sets your imagination on fire, sending you to your laptop or notebook to record those thoughts before they fly away? What keeps you moving forward? This is the best part of writing, letting the words fly across the page as your characters take shape and you […]
By Dessy Levinson Here are two truths and a lie: Our nervous system floods our minds in ways that become overwhelming. Our brain can parse overwhelm and clear it if we focus more on what is troubling us. There’s a way of navigating overwhelm that—over time—can steer you toward becoming your most caring and creative […]
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 […]
THE VOW In a stunning work of feminist historical fiction for readers who loved Dawn Tripp’s Georgia and Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, Jude Berman brings painter Angelica Kauffman to life. Accused of dressing as a boy to study in the prestigious galleries of eighteenth-century Italy, child prodigy Angelica Kauffman has set high goals for herself. She […]
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 […]
Hello Readers & Friends, March. One of those looooooong months. And unbearably long when you’re under the weather fighting Covid FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. Yep. The good news: I had plenty of time to catch up on some memorable shows (The Pitt, The Life List, Adolescence, Long Bright River) and of course there were […]
Unraveling the Knots: A Sister’s Relentless Fight for Justice in the Murder of Rebecca Zahau Convinced that Rebecca Zahau’s death was not a suicide, her sister vowed to unravel the truth—no matter the cost. Unraveling the Knots is the gripping true story of Rebecca Zahau, a vibrant woman whose tragic death in 2011 ignited her family’s […]
by Savannah Hendricks When I set out to write my latest book, Sun City, 85373, I’d toyed around with the idea of the main character being a social worker. For the last thirteen years, it has been my day job, and as such, makes writing a story with a realistic career much easier because I […]
by Amanda Speights I first fell in love with books when I read Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell in Mrs. Arter’s fourth-grade class. The idea of becoming an author, though, didn’t occur to me as something I could—or even wanted—to do, until my teen years. My late husband believed in my writing […]
BY IRIS MITLIN LAV My mother’s name in the Yiddish language was Itta Gitel. Many Americans who are Jewish have an English name that they use every day – in my mother’s case it was Anne Gertrude – and a name in the Hebrew or Yiddish language used for ceremonial purposes. Those names were often […]
By Jess Ames Throughout our lifetime, friends of every season will come and go, fade and grow. Some will float away on the wind, while others will take root in our lives and become the backdrop to all our most important moments. Weddings… and everything that comes after. Births. Deaths. Divorce. Anniversaries. Birthdays. New jobs. […]
Maternal Ambivalence: The Loving Moments & Bitter Truths of Motherhood by Margo Lowy PhD Maternal Ambivalence is a groundbreaking examination of the myriad complex emotions that accompany motherhood for so many women. Dr. Margo Lowy tackles the dark and shameful feelings associated with this long-misunderstood and taboo topic, offering the reader genuine self-acceptance and a transformative […]
By Joanne Intrator, author of Summons to Berlin: Nazi Theft and A Daughter’s Quest for Justice I was in Edinburgh on my way to Berlin via Amsterdam to give a paper at a conference organized by Benedikt Goebel, an architectural historian and expert on East Berlin where my family’s large manufacturing building was located until […]
By Cynthia Moore I started writing at 6, filling notebooks with scribbled poems and stories, to drown out the sound of my stepfather’s rage. At night, when the gin flowed freely, his yelling filled the house and all I could do was write, write, write. In the morning, I would tenderly offer a crumpled poem […]
by Ellen Yaffa Aging is like a cautionary tale. A horrified friend lectures her 70-year old husband as he descends from the roof, “At your age, you shouldn’t be climbing up ladders!” My daughter warns, “Watch your step, use your flashlight.” My partner’s refrain: “Be careful! And whatever you do, don’t fall!” Vulnerability is in […]
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