Tag: featured
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 […]
Ancestry, Archives, and Acadian Folklore: The Inspiration Behind A SEA OF SPECTRES
Nancy Taber What to do with an article about an 18th century ancestor during the Acadian Expulsion, an almanac excerpt about a 19th century bank cleaner (possibly) turned thief, and research about 20th and 21st century military women? Blend it all into a historical novel with three protagonists and three timelines. Throw in a phantom […]
Telling the Truth: Memoir, Myth and Magical Realism
By Ann Batchelder Writing the truth has long been standard procedure for memoir authors. But truth is not fact. For every story, there might be several points of view. Memoir narrators assume readers understand that their book is one version of what happened. Still, it is the memoirist’s job to remain honest. My memoir, Craving […]
From Super Collaborator to Solo Historical Novelist
By Peggy Joque Williams If I could claim to have a writerly Superpower, it’s that I am a great collaborator. As far back as sixth grade I was collaborating with friends, spending our summer evenings brainstorming and passing around the notebook as we wrote the next great Beatles movie after A Hard Day’s Night came […]
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