Category: On Writing
Easter Challenges, by Kate Purcell
After suffering from eating disorders, eating an Easter egg is a personal triumph, By Kate Purcell, author of Tell Your Eating Disorder to F** Off* For most people, Easter is one of the most enjoyable festive holidays in the year. However, for those of us who may struggle with eating and body image issues, it […]
The Origin Story: How a Career’s Worth of Frustration Became a Book
By Kimberly Lee, SPHR I did not sit down one day and decide to write a book. That is not how this happened. What happened was more like a slow accumulation. Twenty years of watching the same thing play out in organization after organization, across industries, across company sizes, in good economic times and bad. […]
The Silence Between Headlines
By Fartumo Kusow Most writers would agree that fiction grows from lived experience. That is, real life and imagination meet at the point where humanity reveals itself. It is in that meeting place that fiction finds its purpose. Not to replicate events, but to illuminate their human core. As Alice Munro once said, stories are […]
History is Often too Good to be True. Especially When it is True
By Jean Baveystock Writing historical novels should come with a health warning. It becomes a selfish solitary occupation and research becomes addictive. Fate has an unexpected habit of intervening too. My own exciting journey began some thirty years ago when I happened to pick up a second-hand book about French Marshal Ney. The book looked […]
Owning the Story: Marie Kuipers on Healing, Humor, and Writing We’re All Mad Here
In her fearless and deeply personal memoir, We’re All Mad Here, Marie Kuipers transforms a lifetime of complicated family dynamics, survival, and healing into a story that speaks powerfully to women navigating their own pasts. With striking honesty and a sharp sense of humor, Kuipers explores how the chaos of childhood can shape a woman’s […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: R. K. Harrington interviews the Marquess of Rochester
Kindred Schemes “An entertaining period love story, nicely balancing breathless lust with social satire and high-mindedness.” -Kirkus Reviews Kindred Schemes takes place in 1809, and follows Lady Alaina through her first season in London. Displeased with her start in society, she decides to set her sights on the most eligible bachelor of the season, the […]
The Transition from Wildlife Biology to Debut Novelist
by Laura Frost In my closet sits a box of adorable, misspelled stories written in the haphazard hand of six-year-old Laura. Although hidden away for decades, storytelling has always lived within me; it just took a twisty road that included hawks, sparrows, and wildflowers to find my way back to it. As a kid, I […]
Power, Fear and Survival: how Six Mile Store Centres Female Characters at the Heart of a Crime Thriller
by A.M. Belsey Crime fiction is all too often filled with characters who exist as extreme versions of themselves. Police detectives are supernaturally perceptive, able to piece together the most opaque clues to find a killer in moments, while victims, especially female victims, are often portrayed as broken, helpless, totally without agency. But I didn’t […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Mary Kendall
The Redux of Sam Murdoch Sam Murdoch fractured his life into bits and is in dire need of a redux. While stuck in a midlife meltdown with a broken marriage, angry offspring and a crumbling career, Sam stumbles upon a long-buried family secret: the grandfather he idolized once shot a man. Desperate for an escape […]
I Spent Four Years Married to a Monster – and Then Wrote a Novel About it
Patricia Gordon Stevens is a counsellor who endured domestic violence and stalking before fleeing the family home. She cautions friends to pick up on signs that others missed in her case. By Patricia Gordon Stevens I wrote Madness In Memphis out of necessity. I spent too long married to a man who made me afraid, […]
Recent Comments