Category: On Writing
On Finding My Voice Through My Father’s Stories by Donna Hills Patrick
The Town I Crow About launched on September 20, 2026 in East Millstone, New Jersey. As I reflect on that long-anticipated day, my thoughts turn to Dad and the realization of just how many people he touched throughout his lifetime. It’s amazing to think about how much he meant to others and the impact he […]
Excerpt from World News from Waverley High by Linda Kass
WORLD NEWS FROM WAVERLEY HIGH A tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history—through the eyes of one unforgettable girl. 1969. Lena Rosen is an intelligent, observant teenager torn between spontaneity and self-consciousness. During […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Andrea Thome
A fresh voice in contemporary romance, Andrea Thome, author of the award-winning Hesse Creek Series, returns with Mine Again, the first book in her new Sunflower Series, set in a fictional small town in western Montana. Delilah Spencer is a rolling stone. A big city attorney from Chicago on a temporary work assignment in Sunflower, […]
You Are the Heroine You’ve Been Waiting For by Dale M. Kushner
I’m sitting at my desk in writing studio, my golden retriever, Maisie, curled at my feet. Outside, summer sunlight sifts through the leaves. A new wren family has moved into the birdhouse, the mother wren in a flurry of departures and returns, food for her nestlings in her beak. She reminds me of the helper […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: D.M. Pulley
Stone Mad by D.M. Pulley On the coldest of nights, you can hear a girl crying . . . Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace when her daughter’s best friend was abducted from right under Mannie’s nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer-turned-insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family […]
The Book My Mother Was Supposed to Write by Alicia Duncan
On October 29, 2021, my mother was released from an involuntary psychiatric hold in British Columbia. Four hours later, she died through Canada’s assisted-dying program, officially known as Medical Assistance in Dying. She was sixty-one, she was not terminally ill, and three days earlier, she had attempted suicide. In the years since, I have returned […]
Kent State and the Making of Alice Kaplan By Ellen Halter
As the official publication of my debut novel, All That I’m Asking, approached, I’ve thought about its sources of inspiration. Although set in 1968 to 69, the book’s focus on the social and political upheaval at the time was inspired by the protests against the Vietnam War. Weeks from graduation, I was an undergraduate senior […]
Interviewing My 16-Year-Old Self: Damn, That Girl Had Nerve by Deborah Samuel
Deborah Samuel is the author of Grace Through Fire: A Memoir of Murder, Tragedy, and Resilience If I could sit across from my sixteen-year-old self today, at fifty-eight, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be intimidated by me. She’d probably check me out, wonder how the hell she got that old, and then start asking questions […]
The Inspiration for The Camp Muralist by Jacqueline Sheehan
Author’s Note The woods in the Connecticut town where I grew up were filled with treasures and it was our childhood our mission to uncover them. A secret path through woods near my house led to an abandoned cemetery from the 19th Century filled with headstones melting into the ground. We squinted at the barely […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Jessica Rao
NOWHERE TO GO BUT EVERYWHERE Helena Vinci might like grunge and Camel Lights, but she’s not a fan of frat boys or anything else about Albany college life. When she drops out and takes a job waiting tables near the Capitol, her plan is to save up to see “the real world” out west. But […]
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