Tag: featured
Waiting for the Parade
They would not leave me alone; the lonely virgin who stumbles on a breast feeder’s group and decides to pose as a mother and stay, the aging beauty queen who covers all her mirrors but helps a friend with Alzheimer’s remember what it felt like to be sixteen, the mother who finds an unlikely way […]
Place In A Book – Do You Need To Go There?
Place in a book – do you need to go there? Some years ago I went to a talk by the award-winning Irish writer Colm Tóibín. It was after the launch of his much acclaimed novel, Brooklyn, and I remember him telling the audience that when he wrote Brooklyn he had never been to the […]
When a World Crisis Makes Your Backlist Historical Fiction Novel Suddenly Relevant Again: Is It Still Your Story to Tell?
When George Floyd’s televised murder and reaction, is startlingly similar to a historical incident depicted in your own two-year-old novel, how do you manage privilege and political correctness to revitalize interest in your story . . . and should you? Since my protest days, I’ve been concerned about the hamster wheel of history, how we […]
Authors Interviewing Characters: Sarah Lahey
The first book in a brand-new science fiction romance trilogy, Gravity is Heartless by Sarah Lahey is bold, speculative fiction that propels readers into a deeply imaginative world on the brink of climate catastrophe. The year is 2049, and when an unexpected tragedy occurs and her famous mother is presumed dead, cloud scientist Quinn Buyers is imprisoned on […]
Smile
When I was a child, my mom would sing the theme-song to COPS, and she was horrible at it. I don’t remember if she knew all the words, but when the chorus came on, she belted out the lines at an ear-piercing volume of a peacock. I remember these moments like they were last week. […]
Inspiration and Writing
Inspiration and Writing By Catherine Bellizzi Inspiration for writing can come from the most unusual places. Even from something as misunderstood and anxiety-causing as assisted living. As I sat visiting my elderly aunt in her small apartment in the assisted living facility she had just moved into, I got the idea for my novel, The […]
Children Need To Write
All the teachers and parents I know are struggling to climb the piles of shoulds and coulds and woulds on behalf of the school age children they care for. They’re making learning choices for students who have been home from school for months, who will now be home all summer, and who may yet still […]
The Real Life Horrors That Find Their Way into Fiction
For several years, I spent my nights fighting crime. I worked in the records department of a police station in Colorado. My job was varied. I was a reference librarian for the officers, and a department dispatcher for the public. I processed police records; performed research using local, state, and national criminal databases; entered warrants, […]
Dystopia Meets Dystopia, Carmit Delman
In Fall 2019, I celebrated the release of my new dystopian novel, Consider the Feast. Set in a near-future New York City that’s obsessed with food, the characters are bloated from privilege and always seeking out the next decadent gourmet experience. Eventually in the story, the broken food system and the rift between the haves […]
Perfect Heroines
By: Vanessa Westermann “The perfect heroine for our times” is how Canadian crime writer Barbara Fradkin described Kate Rowan, the protagonist of my mystery An Excuse For Murder. High praise indeed! Barbara identified Kate’s strengths as being her “wit, charm, and spirit balanced by impressive skills in self-defense and lock-picking”. I was overjoyed, especially because […]
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