Category: On Writing
Q&A with Laurie Nadel, PhD
Laurie Nadel, PhD., is a specialist in acute stress, trauma and anxiety issues. She is a member of a critical incident stress management team working with first responders. After losing her home to Hurricane Sandy, Dr. Laurie ran long-term support groups for survivors. From 2003 to 2005, she directed a program for teenagers whose fathers were […]
How Writing Made Me a More Empathic Person
My seventh English language novel released on 22 May. Hedging His Bets is the story of a high-flying investor, Jake, and his sexy British flat mate, Jess, who share a “friends with benefits” relationship…until they don’t. Hedging His Bets may rightly be described as a light read. One reviewer called it a “summer must read”. […]
It’s Never Too Late
When it comes to writing fiction, I’m a late bloomer. Like, really late. I wrote my first historical romance novel when I was forty-six. So, what the hell have I been doing all those years? I like to think I was busy becoming a writer—I just took the looooong road. Or maybe just a really […]
If You Give a Writer a Book Contract, She’s Going to Want…Everything!
Eighteen months ago, I vowed that all I wanted was for any decent traditional publisher to offer me a book contract. I swore I’d be happy no matter how tiny the advance, how miniscule the press run, how scant the publicity, how few reviews, how many bookstore shelves it might not land upon. I’d be […]
Should You Rely On Memory?
When you’ve known a secret family story for four decades and you decide to transform the narrative into a historical novel, the big question is how much should you rely on memory and how much on documented research? In my case, the story my father told me was about our family’s original home in Nesvicz, […]
How The Italian Language Has Influenced My Writing
I have always considered myself a creative person, an artist and a designer. I have expressed myself through a variety of mediums — oil and acrylic and computer graphics — but I hadn’t defined myself as a writer per se. But that image of myself changed when I began to learn the Italian language fifteen years […]
The Joys of Editing
The first time I ever remember showing my dad something I’d written—I was in middle school, I think—he peered at the pages through his tortoise-shell specs, and then, when he got to the end, said, “Great job. Now go back and take out half the words.” He wasn’t exaggerating for comic effect. He literally wanted […]
From ‘The Foolish Wise Ones’ to Shingle Beaches – Inspirations for a Crime Novel
The Temptation, published in May 2018 by Accent Press, returns to the characters in my first crime book, Some Particular Evil, and to the stretch of Suffolk coast running from Dunwich, south to Orford. Aldeburgh, a small town between those two locations, is the focal point of The Temptation. Since my early twenties I’ve […]
The Inspiration Behind Cora Baxter
I always loved writing in English class at school, but after that it didn’t really figure in my life until I was well into my thirties. By then I was working as a TV news reporter, always travelling, permanently exhausted and not enjoying any of it anymore, and I found myself looking for an […]
Penguin European Writers: Mercè Rodoreda
Penguin European Writers is a new series of forgotten classics by European writers, with introductions by acclaimed contemporary authors. As a former student of French and Italian, I felt compelled by the current political climate to begin a new initiative to promote European literature to British readers. Translated fiction offers a unique insight into another […]
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