Category: On Writing
THIS IS GOOD
G.P. Gottlieb Long before I started writing books, when I was focused on creating, teaching, and performing music, I was plagued by a little voice continuously telling me that I wasn’t good at any of it. That voice never shut up. When I was raising children, I never felt like I was the best mother, […]
It Takes a Village to Write a Novel by Martha Conway
I spend a lot of time alone. I like it. I like writing, I like doing research, I like thinking about what I’m writing, and I like making notes and scene lists. When I’m alone, I can dig deep to explore what is meaning to me, and how best to express it. But during the […]
THE BLACKTHORN WOMEN by Jess Lourey: Excerpt
THE BLACKTHORN WOMEN A terrible family curse threatens four generations of women in a spellbinding novel of haunting secrets, magic, and healing by the Edgar Award–nominated author of The Taken Ones. After her husband’s infidelity, devastated Katrine Blackthorn reluctantly returns to Faith Falls, Minnesota, to her family’s Queen Anne mansion on the hill and the magic […]
Do You Like Retellings? By Andrea Ezerins
Do You Like Retellings? I’ve always loved a fresh take on a classic. Jane Austen—especially Pride and Prejudice—has inspired countless reinterpretations, many of which I’ve happily devoured. Retellings can be loosely “inspired” by the original, or they can follow the narrative arc more closely, with the only changes being the setting’s time and place. For […]
Interview with Perrin Pring
“This may not be the future we want, but it feels right, which is sort of terrifying, sort of exciting, and, in Perrin Pring’s hands, nothing short of spectacular.” – Stephen Graham Jones Travel to the edge of time where the future of America is on the brink. Corporations dominate the White House and Chevy Cole, a […]
The Stories We Inherit by Kalyani Adusumilli, author of The Invisible Canvas
There are stories we grow up hearing, and then there are the ones we learn not to ask about. I heard my parents’ arranged marriage story—how families met, decisions were made, and their lives set into motion with quiet certainty. But I never heard about my mother’s dreams, or what she may have had to […]
Crow Fans will Tell you these Birds are Characters. This Writer Took that Literally By Pam McGaffin
Like many a modern romance, my love for crows started online. In 2015, while scrolling Facebook, I saw the story the British Broadcasting Corporation did on Gabi Mann, “The girl who gets gifts from birds.” Then 8-year-old Gabi shared with the BBC reporter the more than eighty small objects – pieces of glass, buttons, earrings, […]
The Rewards of Writing a Book, 15 Minutes at a Time by Carolyn McConnell
I didn’t set out to write about witches. While I was writing my book Motherhood Discounted, I encountered Sylvia Federici’s work on the European witch hunts and became fascinated by her insights about their role in controlling women’s reproductive powers. But I was trying to write a work of sober political analysis, and witches seemed […]
Where History Meets Fantasy by Meghan Le Fay
When I set out to write Wings of Life as an epic romantic fantasy, the last thing on my mind was sitting down to hours of research. I knew that I wanted the influence of medieval and Viking history to add color to the fantasy world I was creating, while still taking liberties of my […]
How Family Connections Inspired My Writing by Imogen Matthews
The inspiration for my new novel The Girl with Two Names came in a roundabout way through the chance discovery of a cousin I never knew I had. Through Anita, I was able to gain an insight into my Dutch heritage and unearth wartime stories I might never have discovered, and which have made it […]
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