Category: On Writing
Life Disrupted: A Source Of Creation
A month ago we moved. We left a community where we’d been deeply rooted for the last thirty years. We left wide skies and open fields of the high shrub steppe for a forested island near Seattle. The move brings us closer to family, to grandkids, to big city opportunities, but wrenches me from the […]
Writing My Debut
I raised a glass, looked across the table at my mum and plastered the smile on my face; trying not to stare or show my heartbreak at the yellow paper Christmas cracker hat sitting too low on her thin hair, or the collar bones that jutted above her black sparkly cardigan. ‘Happy Christmas.’ I clinked […]
Why Women Read Fiction
Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives By Helen Taylor Copyright Over several decades, I’ve been fascinated by the importance women attach to reading fiction, and how eager they are to discuss it. In the 1980s, I began to research a scholarly book about that classic bestseller Gone With the Wind, and was astonished how many […]
Inspiration For The Silence
The Silence began as a story about my experience of living and working in Sydney in the late nineties. More specifically, my experience of failing to love Australia, while my ex-pat friends were excited and amazed, desperate to stay, to see more. It wasn’t Australia, it was me. I knew this as I followed the […]
The Myth of Closure After Loss
by Sharon Prentice, Author of Becoming Starlight: Surviving Grief and Mending the Wounds of Loss “This wasn’t supposed to happen! Tell me why this has happened!” These are the spoken words of countless bereaved parents throughout countless years in countless languages. A never ending and always present wound in the Souls of those who have […]
From Rejection To Publication
I’m 54 years old and very proud of my age. It’s the time in my life where I feel most comfortable with me and who I am. It’s taken me a long time to get to this place where I think life is just what it is…it’s just life…just live it. I’ve been writing for […]
How My Children Inspire My Writing – Samantha King
When I start writing a new book, I begin not with a plot idea, but a feeling – a vivid, compelling emotion that I have either experienced myself, or can imagine my characters experiencing. For me, two of the strongest are fear and yearning: yearning to become or to find something; and, set alongside that, […]
The Forgotten Home Child
For the past ten years or so, I have made it my mission to learn as much as I can about Canadian history. Back then, I was as surprised about my own enthusiasm for the subject as my high school history teacher would have been. After all, I had slept through most of those classes, […]
Best Friends In Books
There are many books filled with stories about diabolical women and how vicious they can be to each other. I read these books, and I find them fascinating. However, I started thinking about other books I’ve read through the years where women’s friendships were the central theme. The two that immediately came to mind were […]
Search Heartache: Carla Malden
Raised in Los Angeles, Carla Malden began her career working in motion picture production and development before becoming a screenwriter. Along with her father, Academy Award–winning actor Karl Malden, she coauthored his critically acclaimed memoir, When Do I Start?. More recently, Malden published AfterImage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of A Charmed Life, a fiercely personal account of battling […]
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