Category: On Writing
When a World Crisis Makes Your Backlist Historical Fiction Novel Suddenly Relevant Again: Is It Still Your Story to Tell?
When George Floyd’s televised murder and reaction, is startlingly similar to a historical incident depicted in your own two-year-old novel, how do you manage privilege and political correctness to revitalize interest in your story . . . and should you? Since my protest days, I’ve been concerned about the hamster wheel of history, how we […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Sarah Lahey
The first book in a brand-new science fiction romance trilogy, Gravity is Heartless by Sarah Lahey is bold, speculative fiction that propels readers into a deeply imaginative world on the brink of climate catastrophe. The year is 2049, and when an unexpected tragedy occurs and her famous mother is presumed dead, cloud scientist Quinn Buyers is imprisoned on […]
Smile
When I was a child, my mom would sing the theme-song to COPS, and she was horrible at it. I don’t remember if she knew all the words, but when the chorus came on, she belted out the lines at an ear-piercing volume of a peacock. I remember these moments like they were last week. […]
The Real Life Horrors That Find Their Way into Fiction
For several years, I spent my nights fighting crime. I worked in the records department of a police station in Colorado. My job was varied. I was a reference librarian for the officers, and a department dispatcher for the public. I processed police records; performed research using local, state, and national criminal databases; entered warrants, […]
Dystopia Meets Dystopia, Carmit Delman
In Fall 2019, I celebrated the release of my new dystopian novel, Consider the Feast. Set in a near-future New York City that’s obsessed with food, the characters are bloated from privilege and always seeking out the next decadent gourmet experience. Eventually in the story, the broken food system and the rift between the haves […]
Openhearted Listening To The Stories Of Others, Including Victorian Women Artists
Openhearted Listening To The Stories Of Others, Including Victorian Women Artists One of my favorite writers, Brené Brown, endorses what she calls “openhearted living.” When I hear that phrase, I envision spreading my arms and taking in what is present around me, fearlessly and with curiosity. This stance isn’t second nature. I grew up in […]
Interview with Sharon Kirsch, author of The Smallest Objective
Sharon Kirsch’s new book, The Smallest Objective, is both topical and universal. This intriguing narrative nonfiction examines the complexities of lives lived: a personal and literal spring-cleaning—the need to sift, take stock and filter for the important things; our concern for senior members of our family, and the consolation offered by staying close to loved ones […]
Interview with Sarah Relyea, Author of Playground Zero
PLAYGROUND ZERO, Sarah Relyea’s debut novel, is a coming-of-age story set in Berkeley in the late 1960s. “Like a trip through the Looking Glass, Sarah Relyea’s engrossing debut novel takes you by the hand back to the sixties, where social rules were being challenged and political upheaval was the norm. Relyea tells the absorbing story of […]
What Is Poetry? Review of TO THE MAN IN THE RED SUIT by Christina Fulton
To the Man in the Red Suit by Christina Fulton Review by Dr. Maureen Goldstein What is poetry? This age-old question spans from the Ancients to the millennium, and in most cases, the answers will vary according to the literary period. Poetry may convey emotions/attitudes on any given subject ranging from philosophy, social consciousness, to […]
Jane Austen and the Zombie Apocalypse
At one point in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, the heroine Anne Elliot takes it on herself to recommend some prose reading to an acquaintance who, recently bereaved, is exacerbating his depression with too much poetry. On her list are ‘such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of […]
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