Category: On Writing
On Writing The Aftertime
I despise it when my own logic is used against me. I especially detest it when the person using my words to prove their point is one of my children. That’s how I started on this road to getting my book published. I was preaching to my youngest son, Atticus, about how he should travel […]
My Transformation from ‘Slob’ to ‘Snob’— and Why I Wrote It Down
“Girl, ye getting above ye’ raisin’.” That’s what I was told. Anytime I talked about my dreams of being wealthy and successful, I was shot down with that statement. Wanting more was wrong. Wanting more meant I was a stuck-up snob. Being socialized in rural Kentucky has its fair share of disadvantages, especially growing up […]
Interview with Joselyn Takacs, Author of Pearce Oysters
We are delighted to feature this interview with Joselyn Takacs. Her debut novel, Pearce Oysters, a family drama set during the 2010 BP Oil Spill, is out now. Tell us about your beginning, where are you from? I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. How did your childhood impact the writer you’ve become? I was […]
My inspiration for The Lyric Hotel and Excerpt
By Susan Sisko Carter I lived in a boutique hotel that catered to musicians longer than Jeanette lived at the Lyric Hotel. The very nature of a hotel is character-driven. Strangers sleeping under the same roof of a small hotel can create a feeling of consanguinity, an overture to intimacy that may or may not […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Sofia Robleda
DAUGHTER OF FIRE For a young woman coming of age in sixteenth-century Guatemala, safeguarding her people’s legacy is a dangerous pursuit in a mystical, empowering, and richly imagined historical novel. Catalina Cerrato is raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling member of the […]
AUGUST RECOMMENDED READS
The Summer of Love and Death (A Ford Family Mystery Book 3), Marcy McCreary “Refreshingly smart, witty, and sophisticated . . .” —Natalie Symons author of Lies in Bone, on The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon “Propulsive, addictive, with lush, visceral prose and richly-layered characters . . .” —May Cobb, author of My Summer Darlings, on The Murder of Madison […]
What a Novel can Teach us
By Jayna Sheats In the course of the ~200,000 revisions to my debut novel (the total number of “track changes” entries) I took an online course led by a famous literary agent who need not be named. At one point I was asked for a brief description of the essential crisis or conflict of the […]
In an Age of Medical Miracles, Gains Can Also Mean Loss
By Shelley Wood Author of The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley Two ideas were working on my subconscious with The Leap Year Gene of Kit McKinley. First, I was noticing the extraordinary measures people take to look and feel younger even as aging was taking its toll on me. I have been a life-long […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Zoje Stage
DEAR HANNA Zoje Stage delivers another knockout with a blood-chilling follow-up to international sensation Baby Teeth, taking readers back into the unsteady world of a young sociopath who’s all grown up. Hanna is no stranger to dark thoughts: as a young child, she tried to murder her own mother. But that was more than sixteen years […]
Alix Rickloff: On Writing
The Last Light Over Oslo is my thirteenth published novel in a career that has spanned seventeen years. And there are some writing constants that never change. I will think it’s the best shiny new idea ever for the first fifty pages. I will think it’s the worst crappy idea ever and question how I […]
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