Category: On Writing
Beginning a Literary Life at Seventy: What a Lifetime Gives the Writer
I began writing books at seventy. There is a tendency to describe anything begun later in life as a second act, a reinvention, a brave departure from the life that came before. Writing did not feel that way to me. I did not arrive late. I arrived with material. By the time I began to […]
Oral Histories and Gifts of Place by Jean Alicia Elster
There was a cluster of old, gnarled trees across the street from where I stood. And I knew by the look of them that, if they could talk, those trees would be a great source of oral histories. You might think that what I’m about to say is going a bit too far, or at […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Lauren Johnson
The Soufflé Also Rises (The Lizi Cleverly Midlife Badass Detective Series) A laugh-out-loud midlife reinvention caper set in Paris for fans of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series and Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age. It’s 2008 and Lizi just can’t catch a break. On the heels of a nasty divorce and a paltry settlement agreement—barely enough to […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Gabriella Saab
In 1912 aboard the RMS Titanic, Nabiha “Bea” Nohra is traveling to America to find work, eager to earn the funds necessary to afford passage for the family she left in Lebanon. On the same ship, heiress Marguerite Ashby sails home to celebrate her engagement to a dull British lord, a marriage that will secure her […]
Florence Nightingale, Hallucinogens and the Apocalypse: How I Wrote Ink Honey Blossom By Liza Losada
Ink Honey Blossom is a novel born of illness and isolation. The world was two months into the COVID lockdown, and I was lying on the floor reading about a ceremonial trading system in Papua New Guinea called the Kula Ring. Sacred beads and seashells are exchanged between islands creating a unique gift economy which […]
On Writing The Braided Prescription by Beth Ricanati, MD
A conversation, a meal, a ritual, an ordinary moment – small acts in and of themselves; and yet powerful enough to alter the trajectory of my life. Small acts that remind again and again that I don’t always know in the moment what will happen, then or later. And this, a reminder therefore repeatedly to […]
THE GETAWAY by Kieran Scott
We are delighted to feature an excerpt from Kieran Scott’s THE GETAWAY! In a taut locked-room mystery from New York Times bestselling author Kieran Scott, a group of longtime friends confronts their darkest secrets―and deadliest impulses―on the brink of a hurricane. For years, three couples have gathered at The Villa―billionaire Lincoln Foster’s Hamptons estate―for lavish weekends among […]
The Process of Writing The Feminine Code By Sabrina Bendory
When my publishers approached me three months after the release of my book Detached and asked if I’d be open to writing another book — one that dove deeper into toxic relationship dynamics and explored dark feminine energy — I was intrigued. When they said they wanted it as soon as possible, I thought they had lost […]
Finding My Voice After Fifty: How Faith, Cancer, and an Unexpected Dream Led Me Back to Writing
My path has been shaped by questions, dreams, and mysteries that kept leading me forward. Growing up Catholic in the middle of Illinois, I asked difficult questions few wanted to answer. As a child preparing for confirmation, I struggled with the idea that only Catholics could reach heaven. I couldn’t reconcile that with what I […]
Finding My Righteous Rage, or How a Political Spark and Ancient Archetypes Shaped My Book
I always knew I had a book inside me, but I didn’t know what it would be or when it would appear. Both my parents were authors; my father wrote a novel at the age of 21, and my mother wrote a couple of novellas later in life. Neither of them had any formal writing […]
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