Tag: featured
NURTURING THE WRITING SPIRIT
by RJ Thesman When I taught English as a Second Language, my class was filled with post docs, brilliant scholars with multiple PhDs in science and medicine. One Chinese doctor specialized in the research of cancer modalities. He regularly harvested rats, collected data and reported his findings to the university. But his English was broken. […]
Authors Interviewing Their Characters: Donna Hermans
Donna Hemans interviews Plum, who, in her novel, Tea by the Sea, spends seventeen years searching the daughter taken from her at birth. Tell us a little about yourself. My name is Plum Valentine. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and two daughters, and work as a lab technologist. Tell us a little about […]
Kimberly Belle: 5 Things I’ve Learned From Writing Through A Global Pandemic
As an author of domestic suspense novels, I like to think that my premises are firmly grounded in reality. A cheating spouse. A missing child. Friendships turned lethal. Open any newspaper or scroll through Facebook, and you’ll find stories much like mine, tragedies that can—and do—happen all too often in the world. It’s why I […]
From Premise To Publication – Writing The Sight Of You
The idea for The Sight Of You first came to me around a dinner table with friends, where we were debating that familiar-albeit-slightly-morbid question, If you could find out the date you were going to die, would you want to know? I was fascinated by how quickly and definitively the table split between Definitely, yes, […]
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING CHARACTERS: Mary Helen Fein
Conversation Helen Breakstone, Sixteen-year-old heroine of “Stitching a Life,” and author Mary Helen Fein Helen and I met at Katz’s Deli on Houston Street in New York’s Lower East Side. Turned out we both love Pastrami sandwiches, and of course Katz’s is the best. It was easy to spot her in her long skirt and […]
Seven Essential Writing Exercises
Rich Characters and Dialogues that Drive the Story: 7 Practical Exercises to Avoid Falling Flat By Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger I will never forget sitting in that room full of grad students in a creative writing class at the University of Minnesota, My short story was coming up for critique. Here was the problem: I was a […]
My Experiences Writing and Publishing as a Teen
For me, the biggest difference between writing as a teen and as an adult is being able to write how teenagers think, what it’s like to be in school, because you’re not looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, looking back on it with nostalgia; you don’t have to remember what it was like, you’re still […]
Happiness in the Time of Covid-19, Climate Change, Violent White Supremacy, etc.
Perhaps surprisingly, a season of unrelentingly grim news is the perfect time for a serious discussion of both personal and collective happiness. That is because genuine happiness is the opposite of a self-indulgent quest for pleasure. Rather, deep inner happiness leads to thriving, performing at our best, and greater compassion – along with a much-needed […]
The-It’s-Never-Too-Late Edition: Publishing A Debut Novel At 79
By Anne Oman, author of MANGO RAINS (published by Galaxy Galloper Press) To make life complete, you’re supposed to bear a child, plant a tree, and write a book. Not sure who said that. It’s been attributed to the Talmud, Cuban revolutionary Jose Marti, an obscure Czech poet, and maybe even Mark Twain and Yogi […]
AREN’T YOU FORGETTING SOMEONE? Excerpt
Kari Lizer is a gifted comedic storyteller. She is an Emmy-nominated, co-executive producer and writer for Will & Grace and creator of the award-winning show, The New Adventures of Old Christine, which was based on her life as a single working mother raising three kids. Lizer recently signed with ABC for her new comedy series, […]
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