Category: On Writing
Authors Interview Characters: Yang Huang
“Huang does an admirable job balancing Bao’s individual story against the canvas of China’s evolution using crisply drawn characters who reveal their layers as the story progresses. . . . A knotty, engaging novel of China’s recent history.”—Kirkus Reviews When a handsome young gay American man walks into Mr. Cai’s small tailor shop in provincial […]
The first step of writing a novel? Getting out of your own way
By Peyton H. Roberts As my debut novel Beneath the Seams releases into the world, it’s humbling to remember I almost didn’t start writing it. My writing experience to date included informative articles and blog posts. Attempting longform fiction felt like traveling to a foreign country without knowing the language. The trouble was, a story […]
DOCTOR ON CALL: Chernobyl Responder, Jewish Refugee, Radiation Expert
Dr. Alla Shapiro – a pediatrician and hematologist in Kiev in the 1980s – was one of the first physician-responders to the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. Chernobyl changed her life and career forever. Within a few short years, she and […]
Imagination, Leashed and Unleashed
By Celia Jeffries My novel Blue Desert began as the story of an older woman looking back at a life she had kept secret, the life she had once lived in the Sahara. I had no trouble ‘tuning in’ to the voice of this character and following as the writing took me into a different […]
Hit Hard: One Family’s Journey of Letting Go of What Was–and Learning to Live Well with What Is
by Tammy McLeod I wrote Hit Hard seven years after my sixteen-year-old son suffered a traumatic brain injury playing football and became severely disabled for life. After a year of trying dozens of interventions, it was clear that Zach wasn’t going to have a full recovery. I started reading grief books, but they didn’t connect […]
What’s So Special About Venice? By Rhys Bowen
Rhys Bowen returns with a sweeping historical novel that will leave a mark in the hearts of readers everywhere. THE VENICE SKETCHBOOK (Lake Union | on sale April 13th, 2021), opens in Venice, 1938: a country on the brink of war and a woman at the beginning of a quest that begins with locked-away memories from a family […]
Much More Than A Group Blog!
I’ve been part of a group blog for nearly nine years. The six Wicked Authors were all starting our careers as mystery writers when we started the blog in 2013. Today we have eighty published books among us. But our blog is so much more than a five-days-a-week web presence. Each of us would tell […]
How The Piano Made Me A Better Writer
By Barbara Linn Probst The Sound Between the Notes is my second novel, but it’s also my first. I wrote it before I wrote Queen of the Owls, which was published a year ago, almost to the day … and rewrote it … and rewrote it … and rewrote it. The manuscript had even been […]
Pamela Skjolsvik: Character Interview
In Skjolsvik’s latest, the cure for vampirism is much like the 12-step treatment for alcoholism, and Veronica goes to meetings just to make bearable the maddeningly boring life of being a middle-aged female vampire. An event as mundane as a trip to a tanning salon has Veronica facing her hunger for the dim-witted Britney, her […]
Interracial Friendship in Fiction By Jill McCroskey Coupe
In my novel Beginning with Cannonballs, two infant girls, Hanna and Gail, share a crib in Gail’s parents’ house, where Hanna’s mother is the live-in maid. This is in the 1940s in segregated Knoxville, Tennessee, where I grew up. Despite having to attend different schools, the girls become close childhood friends. After that, it’s not […]
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