Category: On Writing
ON EVOLUTION AS A WRITER
As I prepare to release my fifth book and I look back on my evolution as a writer, I am reflecting on how much has changed … and how much has stayed the same. I wrote my first book with no knowledge and no plan—a truly wonderful way to write a book. Each day I […]
Writers: Empower Yourself With Self-Care
It’s Women’s History Month. Social media is ablaze with quotes and pictures of women’s empowerment. It’s that time of the year when we start to look at impossible as the “new” possible. We remind each other that we aren’t alone. And that a supportive community exists—online and offline—that holds us in our weaknesses and strengths […]
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger!
It was the wise old philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who came up with the plum that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and it does seem that he had a point. Whilst huge traumas can be psychologically damaging, the smaller hiccups can actually make us more resilient. In other words, a bit of misery […]
BEING AGENTED IRL – Part One
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION ONE Why did you choose the traditional publishing track? Abha: Because I […]
In Praise of Difficult Women: Life Lessons from 29 Heroines Who Dared to Break the Rules
When I began writing In Praise of Difficult Women in 2014, I had no idea that it would publish during a time when women, by and large, had had enough. Writing and publishing books continues to be the occupation of the tortoise living in the era of hares on speed. Who knew time would be […]
Tapping the Experts: How to Enrich Your Research and Your Writing
Books are great, the Internet can’t be beat for looking up and verifying facts quickly, and libraries are awesome. When I’m researching a novel, one of my favorite places to spend an afternoon is in the dusty, musty, bookish-smelling stacks of a university library. With my list of sources arranged in alphabetical order by call […]
The Search for Shadow Ranch
I blame my lust for the lawless West on Nancy Drew and The Secret of Shadow Ranch by the magnificent author Carolyn Keene. When exotic Nancy took off for a vacation at the Arizona ranch with her pals Bess and George a young Kris Radish, growing up across the street from a Wisconsin cornfield, all […]
Writing Fiction based on Family History
My novel, When It’s Over, set in Europe during WWII, is based on a true story: the story of my mother’s experience as a refugee from the Holocaust. She was a young woman, an anti-fascist activist from a secular Jewish family, when she fled Czechoslovakia and then Paris, and spent the war years in the […]
Darkest Moment In My Writing Career
The second darkest moment in my writing career was when I reached that awful juncture with my then-agent: she asked me if I had anything else to show her because my novel didn’t sell. Editors had overwhelmingly praised it, but they wanted the next bestseller, not a solid mid-list novel. It was a crushing disappointment, […]
The Needle and the Pen
When asked to write about how acupuncture affects my writing, I had to think long and hard on the matter. The two seem like strange bedfellows, and yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how they go hand in hand. Both are such a part of me, that they seep into […]
Recent Comments