Category: On Writing
From Journaling to a Novel by Lorelei Brush
The Boy With the Butterfly Mind started out with journaling in the late 1990’s. I was married to a man with ADHD, raising a child with ADHD, and working a demanding job in international development. My life felt like chaos much of the time. Traveling internationally was actually the part of life that kept me […]
When is it Time to Write a Sequel? by Deb Richardson-Moore
It’s easier than writing a standalone, that’s for sure. You’ve already got your setting, many of your characters, and a certain comfort with a specific time and place. Think Louise Penny’s Three Pines and her stalwart Armand Gamache, surrounded by a stable of colorful Canadians. Or J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts and Harry, Hermione and Ron. My […]
Character Interview: Kathleen Reidy
At twenty-nine, Chelsea Lefevre’s life choices have been considered and prudent, meant to secure her on a shore far from the rocky place where she started out. Yet as Engineering a Love Story opens, the strands of Chelsea’s steady and safe life are unravelling. But I don’t know any of that. To me, Chelsea is […]
On Writing Betting the Farm – How a Maverick Entrepreneur and a Band of Scientists Changed Agriculture Forever
“Betting the Farm – How a Maverick Entrepreneur and a Band of Scientists Changed Agriculture Forever” chronicles the story of Agrigenetics, a company that pioneered technology to create better plants using gene technologies. It was the early 1980s. The authors Janice Kimpel and Adrienne Clarke are scientists and were both involved in the company, Adrienne […]
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 […]
How Finding Grace Found me by Fiorella Ruas
“She went out to buy wine. She didn’t mean to disappear.” That single sentence sums up the question that had been preoccupying me for years. Why do so many women reach a point where they wonder how they became strangers in their own lives? The answer, for me, didn’t arrive all at once but in […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Susan Coll
Word Salad Matilda loves logic and order, and now her structured world is falling apart—in a bookstore, of all places. Former economics major Matilda is living where she never thought she would—back in her hometown of Washington D.C.—at a job she never imagined she’d take—at her neighborhood bookstore. She’s coping with the recent loss of […]
The Castle in the Glen, by Rhys Bowen: Excerpt
THE CASTLE IN THE GLEN A ghostwriter plunges into danger as she unravels the dark secrets of a powerful Scottish family in a thrilling novel of romance and mystery by the bestselling author of Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure. Australian writer Emma Callander has been recruited to complete the final historical mystery in a series by celebrated […]
How a Professor Got Mixed Up in Murder by Cheryl Miller Dellasega
I loved reading and writing from the time when I learned to do both, obviously a sign I was meant to be an author. In seventh grade, my English teacher submitted one of my poems to a contest and it won. When he bowed, presented me with a printed copy of the magazine and announced, […]
Writing was Never that Hard for me Until …
I had several concussions in the span of 6 weeks. Most people apparently stop after the first one. Perhaps I unconsciously wanted to try to set a record, so I had five in 6 weeks. While not relevant to this story, everyone seems to want to know what happened, so I will share. The first […]
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