Category: On Writing
Carrying the Stories Home: Becoming a First-Time Author By Sierra Biidaaban Nadeau, Anishinaabe storyteller
There is a strange loneliness that comes with writing a first book. Before there are readers, before there are reviews, before anyone knows the story exists, it belongs only to the writer. It lives in the quiet hours before sunrise, in the glow of a computer screen long after midnight, and in the constant tug-of-war […]
The Legacy, with Medusa by Sharon Linnéa
If only Bob was here. I looked at the brown box sitting on the kitchen table, on a yellow and blue tablecloth decked with sunflowers. If only he could see this. I used a steak knife to slice the packing tape. Inside sat a stack of beautiful books, topped by a medallion of a Medusa […]
My Road Curved at Age 71 by Marianne Lonsdale
My debut novel, When The Road Curves, was published in June 2026, the same month as my 71st birthday. I’d somewhat given up on having a book published, so having a launch party felt dreamy and on track with being as big a day for me as my wedding. When The Road Curves follows thirty-six-year-old […]
The Mystery Writer Who Can’t Murder by Claudia Hagadus Long
As many of my long-term readers know, I can write a sex scene with wild abandon. I can craft a fight scene with brio. I can plot with the intricacy of an aerospace engineer, and explore family dynamics like a psychologist on crack. But I have a really hard time killing anyone. For a normal […]
The Dream Purse: A Psychoanalytic Journey of Becoming through Psilocybin, Art, and Movement by Natalie R. Cohen, PsyD
I am a psychologist and psychoanalyst who also identifies as kind, tired, and a mover. Creating art has always been a vehicle for my inner life, offering relief from conflict and a nonverbal invitation to explore what wants to emerge. During my psychoanalytic training, I engaged in multiple psychedelic journeys, and each one taught me […]
It’s Not the Witches. It’s Us By Kimberly Belle
A couple Halloweens ago, Vanessa Lillie, Cate Holahan and I stood in a graveyard in Salem, Massachusetts, debating how exactly four young, rich widows in heels and pencil skirts could break into an ancient crypt without getting caught. This was after we’d bumped into Sasquatch strolling down the street with a plastic pumpkin bucket and […]
How ILLEGITIMATE Took Seven Revisions and Ten Years to get Published by Maddie Lock
I didn’t start out to write a memoir. It was in a small café in Bavaria that my German aunt lifted a glass of wine to her lips and casually stated that she had found her father; that our grandfather, who we thought was her father was not. She was, in fact, a child created […]
Judy Foreman: On Writing The Scallop Plot
I’ve been writing my whole life — my high school newspaper, my college paper, many, many wonderful years as the Boston Globe health columnist and science writer, and most recently, as a novice writer of thrillers. And I can tell you, writing fiction, mysteries no less, after all these years of telling the truth, of […]
From Journaling to a Novel by Lorelei Brush
The Boy With the Butterfly Mind started out with journaling in the late 1990’s. I was married to a man with ADHD, raising a child with ADHD, and working a demanding job in international development. My life felt like chaos much of the time. Traveling internationally was actually the part of life that kept me […]
When is it Time to Write a Sequel? by Deb Richardson-Moore
It’s easier than writing a standalone, that’s for sure. You’ve already got your setting, many of your characters, and a certain comfort with a specific time and place. Think Louise Penny’s Three Pines and her stalwart Armand Gamache, surrounded by a stable of colorful Canadians. Or J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts and Harry, Hermione and Ron. My […]
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