Tag: featured
How Studying Psychology Has Influenced My Writing
This is a ‘what came first – the chicken or the egg’ kind of question for me, or as my daughter asked me last week – the seed or the tree? Did my study of psychology influence my writing, or did my love of stories and characters develop into a love of psychology? Even as […]
Finding Common Ground
Debra Thomas eloquently tells the story of millions of immigrants in her upcoming novel LUZ. She has worked with immigrant communities in Southern California for decades, is an immigrants rights activist, has toured with Amnesty International to the US/Mexico border (speaking to people of both sides of the border, including Border Patrol agents). Finding Common […]
On Writing HERE SHE IS: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America
I wrote Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America, a book that uses beauty pageants to show how American femininity has changed over the centuries, because I thought it was a book I was uniquely positioned to author. I’m a sociologist and professor at Brown University, where one of my […]
A FEW THOUGHTS ABOUT ART AND WRITING
When I was seventeen my father gave me an autobiography called The Magic of a Line. It’s out of print now and the author Laura Knight, an English Impressionist artist, is relatively unknown in America. The book has sat on my bookshelf for years. I’ve always kept it despite many moves, partly because it was […]
Inspiration and Research by Vali Benson
My name is Vali Benson and I am a published author. That still feels strange to hear but it’s true. My first novel was just published. It has been a work in progress for over fifty years. People have asked me to explain the writing process but I can’t. Doris Lessing once stated that “There […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Avery Flynn
Avery Flynn interviews Hadley Donovan, the protagonist in her new rom-com, The Wedding Date Disaster, about snipe hunting, evil twins, and surviving family get-togethers. Giggles, slow dances, hot kisses and happy sighs, that’s The Wedding Date Disaster. It’s a romance about embracing yourself (warts and all) even when your life isn’t as picture perfect as […]
Almost
Almost could go either way. A potential—for the negative or positive. The glass is almost full. It’s almost empty. Almost is about just barely, a narrow margin, coming close. A seed that germinates and turns to fruit or flower, or doesn’t. It’s about fate. If you think about the two words all and most, your […]
Four Painful Truths About Writing and Publishing a Book
Please do not underestimate the process of writing and publishing a book. No matter how ready you are, the book beast will still bite you in the ass. To lessen your pain, I’m telling you upfront what to expect about this process. No one wants to tell you these things. It’s like when a prospective […]
Scary Clowns are so Passé: On Writing an Evil Mime Artist
Scary Clowns are so Passé: On Writing an Evil Mime Artist By Chrissey Harrison A phobia of clowns is known as coulrophobia. With their exaggerated features, clowns are very “other”, even monstrous – it only takes a small shift in perspective to turn a caricature into a grotesque. They also behave in challenging, transgressive ways, […]
A Confederacy of Authors
L B Gschwandtner A few years back, I read an article on HuffPo titled Sticks & Stones: The Changing Politics of the Self-Publishing by Terri Giuliano. She made the case that a) self publishing or, as it’s now known Indie Pubbing, is growing fast, b) some authors published by traditional houses resent this, c) sales for ebooks are climbing, d) sales of paperback books are […]
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