Category: On Writing
Turning Doubt into Triumph
I spent twenty years collecting titles and trophies like they were trading cards, not because I wanted to fill up the empty spaces on my bookshelf, but because I needed to fill a hole inside of me. I was a card-carrying member of the overcompensation club; not feeling good enough most of the time pushed […]
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING THEIR CHARACTERS: MELINDA LEIGH
#1 Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh Interviews her character Bree Taggert For more than twenty-five years, Philadelphia homicide detective Bree Taggert has tucked away the nightmarish childhood memories of her parents’ murder-suicide…Until her younger sister, Erin, is killed in a crime that echoes that tragic night: innocent witnesses and a stormy marriage […]
Climbing Many Mountains: An essay by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai‘s THE MOUNTAINS SING—starred, recommended, and celebrated in virtually all of the big book reviews and magazines, from Kirkus to O to the NY Times—is out today! With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s PACHINKO or Yaa Gyasi’s HOMEGOING and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s IN THE SHADOW OF THE […]
Surviving Hardship: What We Can Learn From History
Why Write about the Great Depression? By Jill Caugherty People sometimes ask why I chose the Great Depression as one of the central time periods of my novel, Waltz in Swing Time. After all, they reason, it’s a dreary chapter in history. One bookseller remarked, “we don’t want to relive it.” Perhaps that’s why a […]
Writers, Bombers, India, and US
I live in Norway now, and when people ask where I’m from, I say, of course, that I’m American. If conversation turns to my writing, and to my forthcoming novel, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow, set in early 20th century India, they sometimes ask why I don’t write about America. (In Norway, the word […]
My Writing Journey: Saz Vora
I’ve wanted to write this story for a long time, it will be twenty-eight years since it began. The prequel is part of the two novels in the University Series – Reena and Nikesh, Book One My Heart Sings Your Song was released in January of this year. It is a romance with references to […]
No Place is a Saint by Alison Stine
I live in rural, remote Appalachia. You may know this place from a bestselling memoir, or many national news articles on poverty, coal, disability, drugs, or politics—articles written overwhelmingly by people who never lived here. Then you don’t really know this place at all. Central Appalachia is the setting for my novel, Road Out of […]
Authors Interviewing Their Characters: Eleni Kyriacou
Hello, my name is Eleni Kyriacou and my debut novel, SHE CAME TO STAY, is set in London’s glitzy, smoggy Soho in 1952, among the Cypriot community. It was selected by Hachette’s Future Bookshelf initiative, which was created to discover unpublished authors from underrepresented backgrounds. Prepare yourselves to meet one of my lead characters, Bebba […]
Lessons From a Story Collection: The Smashing of False Beliefs
False Belief #1: I am only a novelist. I am a novelist—I did not intend to write a short story collection. I write what I love to read, and since I was a young child that has been novels. I used to lie on my side on my bed, elbow bent, head resting in my […]
Interview with Millicent from MY LOVELY WIFE
Author SAMANTHA DOWNING interviews her main character Milicent, from her novel MY LOVELY WIFE. Dexter meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith in this wildly compulsive debut thriller about a couple whose fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting… — Interview with Millicent Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. The pleasure is all mine. Why don’t you […]
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