Tag: featured
Publishing With Audible: Birdie & Jay
For my third novel, Birdie & Jay, I chose Audible as my publisher. So, how is that different from other methods of “traditional” publication? What it means is that my book will be available exclusively (and only) as an audio book on Audible for nine months. Like Netflix (and other premium services) Audible wants to […]
Turning Doubt into Triumph
I spent twenty years collecting titles and trophies like they were trading cards, not because I wanted to fill up the empty spaces on my bookshelf, but because I needed to fill a hole inside of me. I was a card-carrying member of the overcompensation club; not feeling good enough most of the time pushed […]
If Not Now, When?
By Diane Byington Maybe you’ve longed to write a novel since you were ten, but you have no idea what to write. Or you’ve started several novels but given up after thirty or fifty pages, and you’re close to telling yourself that maybe this dream just wasn’t fated to be. That was my situation the […]
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING THEIR CHARACTERS: MELINDA LEIGH
#1 Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh Interviews her character Bree Taggert For more than twenty-five years, Philadelphia homicide detective Bree Taggert has tucked away the nightmarish childhood memories of her parents’ murder-suicide…Until her younger sister, Erin, is killed in a crime that echoes that tragic night: innocent witnesses and a stormy marriage […]
Climbing Many Mountains: An essay by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai‘s THE MOUNTAINS SING—starred, recommended, and celebrated in virtually all of the big book reviews and magazines, from Kirkus to O to the NY Times—is out today! With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s PACHINKO or Yaa Gyasi’s HOMEGOING and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s IN THE SHADOW OF THE […]
Why Do Some Characters Live On Beyond The Book?
Why is it that some characters just don’t disappear? The book is finished, the edits have been completed, the next work is in progress and yet… a particular character is still refusing to rest or retire or whatever it is that characters do when the writer has finished the book. I’ve been reflecting on this, […]
Who Are You To Write Two Memoirs?
I’ve had that question posed to me, most often from my editor. God love her for always asking the tough questions so that I can ensure both my writing and I are in the best shape for readers. Famous people typically have no more than one memoir. So who am I to write two? As […]
Surviving Hardship: What We Can Learn From History
Why Write about the Great Depression? By Jill Caugherty People sometimes ask why I chose the Great Depression as one of the central time periods of my novel, Waltz in Swing Time. After all, they reason, it’s a dreary chapter in history. One bookseller remarked, “we don’t want to relive it.” Perhaps that’s why a […]
On Writing into Danger
My second novel, Pigs, came out this past October, sixteen and a half years after my first novel, City of Ghosts, was published. It follows the lives of four parentless children who live on an island that serves as the repository for the entire world’s trash. Ships pass by and drop garbage in the water. […]
Going to the Writing Gym: On Writing Between Modes
When we go to the gym, we do a variety of exercise routines to strengthen different muscles. Likewise, writing in different modes can stretch a range of writer muscles. Fiction (particularly genre fiction) prioritizes reader engagement through plot, movement and voice. Ideas tend to be embodied through plot movements, dialogue and character arcs. Because fiction […]
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