Tag: featured
How Novels Bloom
As a girl, I listened to my mother’s stories about her teenage year quarantined, deathly ill and bedridden after a diagnosis of tuberculosis in St. Paul in the mid-1940s. As an adult, upon my mother’s death, I discovered for the first time I’d been adopted as a 7 month-old infant. As a writer, I’ve used […]
The May-December Affair in Novels: The Allure Versus the Perils
The May-December Affair in Novels: The Allure Versus the Perils By Cindy Fazzi Readers have always been fascinated by May-December relationships, judging by the wide appeal of novels like Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier). However, when the age gap is too huge, the relationship turns creepy, just like […]
Writing While Blocked
Writing While Lazy Uninspired Distracted Overwhelmed Self-Critical Blocked At book presentations, I’m invariably asked, “What’s your process?” By which the curious listener is asking me to describe how I managed to come up with some 350 pages of narration. Questions about process make me quail. Yes, I’ve created enough content to fill the pages of four (soon to be five) books. […]
Finding Inspiration in Failure By Barbara Claypole White
In my second novel, THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR, my protagonist is a celebrity author on the cusp of a career crash and burn. The hero of his best-selling series, Agent Dodds, is dangling from a helicopter, and all Will can think is, “Let go, dude. Just let go.” Unlike Will, I’m not one of the big […]
From Kiddie Pool to the Big Wheel by Savannah Hendricks
Summer has arrived in Arizona, strong and heated. The morning hot beverage is now a sweaty glass of iced tea. I find this time of year has me reminiscing more than I do the week before New Years. My mind travels back to my bare wet feet smacking the concrete slab stretching the length of […]
How the Idea of a Flower That Makes You Forget Grew Into a Novel
Plants are smart little creatures. We don’t generally think of them as creatures but in some ways, they are. They’re animate beings that know what they’re doing from day to day. They grow toward the light, they take in water, make their own food, communicate, and migrate. They’ve even learned how to adeptly procreate. Part […]
True Crime Book Dead in the Water – When Life Is More Terrifying Than Fiction
Matt Nixson of Mail on Sunday: “A real life page turner more intriguing than anything on Netflix. The gripping story of a woman who turned detective to track down her brother’s killer – nearly four decades after he was brutally murdered.” Ben Dirs, BBC News: “[A story] almost too mad to make up, too good […]
When Dark Became All The Light, I Knew
When Dark became all the light, I knew “Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, […]
The Art of Breaking the Rules
The Art of Breaking the Rules Dear Author, have you ever hit the delete key mid-paragraph because you feared you might be breaking some grizzled piece of writing advice? We’ve all heard those pearls of wisdom that bullet-point so easily: Do this, don’t do that. Show don’t tell. Always avoid adverbs. Never open with a […]
How I Found a Publisher for My Short Story Collection
By Yu-Han Chao, author of Sex & Taipei City Everybody says story collections don’t sell. “Editors don’t want story collections. Not unless you’re Stephen King.” Agents say, “I like your stories, but call me when you have a novel (translation: and not until you have a novel).” I grew up in Asia, where the short […]
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