Category: On Writing
The Empress of Cooke County: What My Mother, a Doctor, and Pocahontas Have To Do With It All
By Elizabeth Parman I had taken my mother to see her doctor and while we were waiting, we chatted about a story in our family that we are descendants of Pocahontas. My mother asked me if I knew Pocahontas was known as the Empress of Virginia. About that time Mom’s name was called, and I […]
The NaNoWriMo Novel that Wasn’t…and Then Was
By Ona Gritz Two Autumns ago, I attempted to draft a manuscript for National Novel Writing Month and failed. Actually, I failed in two ways. To win NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Not only didn’t I make it, but before my marathon even began, I blew a goal I’d set for […]
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING CHARACTERS: Diane Owens Prettyman, author of Love is for the Birds
LOVE IS FOR THE BIRDS For fans of Mary Alice Monroe’s The Beach House comes a heartwarming story from women’s fiction author Diane Owens Prettyman about second chances as two people find a pathway out of their grief—directly in the aftermath of a hurricane. The Texas Gulf: beautiful yet unpredictable. A beach town destroyed. Her mother’s candy […]
New Women’s Work: Reimagining Feminine Craft in Contemporary Art by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy: Excerpt
A celebration of “women’s work,” this book features contemporary artists from around the globe who are transforming what it means to make craft. “Women’s work” has historically been relegated to the domestic, absent from galleries and discussions of “art.” From cross-stitching and quilts to baskets and decorative ceramics, women have spent centuries creating masterful crafts […]
Writing Historical Fiction with Strong Female Characters: Ensuring that the Past Doesn’t Repeat
By Ann E. Lowry Author, The Blue Trunk A blue trunk sits in my foyer. I see it every day when I take my dog, Loki, for a walk. It belonged to my Great-great Aunt Marit who used it when she immigrated from Norway to the United States. When I first noticed the blue trunk […]
Putting “Why It Matters” on Page One
By Julie Castillo Author, Long Man’s Pillow When gentle friends tell me they’re going to read my novel, I’m tempted to tell them to skip the first scene. Someone dies of thirst, literally on the first page, and it’s not pretty. Maybe the book should have come with a disclaimer. Why in the heck did […]
The Bulls, The Bears and the Bea’s Knees: The Inspiration Behind The Trade Off
I’m not a finance person. When I decided to apply to business schools for an MBA, my mom refused to believe I didn’t mean a master’s degree in journalism or creative writing. Even after business school, I found the stock market boring. That changed in January of 2021. The stock of a failing video game […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Julie Edelman
The Accidental Sisterhood Jules Malone has sworn off love after two failed relationships: one with an abusive fiancé whom she calls her white knight-mare, and the other with a nice-but-boring ex with whom she co-parents their son, Max. But then one fateful Christmas Eve, Jules meets Sean, a twinkly-eyed charmer with a captivating smile and […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Laurie Notaro
THE MURDERESS Anne LeRoi moved to Phoenix in 1930 with her friend, Sammy Samuelson, so that Sammy could recover from tuberculosis. They met in Alaska when Sammy was an elementary school teacher and Anne was an X-ray technician. They quickly made the acquaintance with Ruth Judd, a medical secretary who worked at the Grunow Clinic, […]
History Rhymes, Repeats and Backpedals
By Melissa Connelly When I began writing my novel, What Was Lost, I thought I was opening a window into an earlier time that would illuminate America’s past before Roe v. Wade. But progress isn’t a straight line; sometimes it takes us back to a place we thought we’d left for good. I had no […]
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