Category: On Writing
How I Almost Had Dinner with Dave Letterman, and Walked Away
By Deanne Stillman Back in 2019, comedy writer Nell Scovell wrote a piece about a conversation with Dave Letterman. It was a follow-up to an essay she had written 10 years before, in which she talked about walking away from a job as a writer for the Letterman show because of sexual favoritism — the now-familiar […]
On Writing Your Forgotten Sons by Anne Montgomery
In 2019, I traveled to Baltimore at the request of a dear friend. She was facing a delicate, possibly life-changing surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and asked that I stand in as her healthcare power of attorney. The night before the operation, Gina handed me a ziplock bag. Inside I found a packet of yellowed […]
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA: How Authors Find Ideas for Their Novels
by Susie Orman Schnall, author of ANNA BRIGHT IS HIDING SOMETHING In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how ideas can be understood as living things. That a stagnant idea in one author’s imagination can “travel” to another author to become fully realized. Such was the case when Gilbert struggled with an idea for a novel […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Mae Bennett
A grumpy, rich recluse meets his match in this steamy Beauty and the Beast retelling—with a Succession twist. Barely Even Friends by Mae Bennett, on sale now from Alcove press, is a fresh spin on a tale as old as time. Bellamy Price has just been offered the job of a lifetime: lead contractor on the restoration of the mysterious and sprawling […]
Getting to the Truth in Fiction
By Gina Carroll Lois Daniel says it best, “All good writing is an excursion into honesty.” I’ve written a lot about truth—how important but tricky telling our truth can be in memoir writing and in the telling of our own stories. In A Story that Matters, I acknowledge that truth in memoir can be a […]
The Power Of Place by Kay White Drew
The Power of Place by Kay White Drew It’s a lovely May day in 2013, and I’m sitting on an aging wooden bench in a brick-terraced park behind the Baltimore rowhouse where I lived as a second-year medical student almost forty years earlier. My arms form a W across the top of the bench as […]
May: Reading With Rochelle Weinstein
Hello Readers & Friends, May Reads are here, and while you’ll see some familiar names, I changed my focus a bit to share some new-to-me authors and debut novels. It’s not always easy to break out and get noticed, so I hope you’ll give some of these books a chance. Is there an author you […]
The Paris Widow – Character Interview
The Paris Widow – character interview Kimberly Belle A dream vacation turns deadly when secrets from the past catch up to a married couple in Paris in this new edge-of-your-seat thriller from USA Today bestselling author, Kimberly Belle. When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy—a welcome change from […]
Ellen Barker: Authors Interviewing Characters
Ellen Barker’s provocative second novel, Still Needs Work (June 11, She Writes Press), addresses the still-pervasive difficulties of women working – and looking for work – especially in the tech marketplace. With the narrator Marianne as our eyes and ears into what many of us have experienced, Still Needs Work is an enlightening and thought-provoking read that encourages […]
What Remains of Love – Serendipity
What Remains of Love – Serendipity I’ve discovered that writing is often an act of faith. Faith that the story will come together, faith that that I’ll find the creative energy to push through challenging moments, faith that I will finish the book. But it is sometimes also the result of serendipity, events coming together […]
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