Tag: featured
Tapping the Experts: How to Enrich Your Research and Your Writing
Books are great, the Internet can’t be beat for looking up and verifying facts quickly, and libraries are awesome. When I’m researching a novel, one of my favorite places to spend an afternoon is in the dusty, musty, bookish-smelling stacks of a university library. With my list of sources arranged in alphabetical order by call […]
The Search for Shadow Ranch
I blame my lust for the lawless West on Nancy Drew and The Secret of Shadow Ranch by the magnificent author Carolyn Keene. When exotic Nancy took off for a vacation at the Arizona ranch with her pals Bess and George a young Kris Radish, growing up across the street from a Wisconsin cornfield, all […]
Past Imperfect: the Complications of Historical Authenticity
People who don’t usually read historical fiction are often surprised to find out how much research goes into a historical novel. Yes, novelists use their imaginations to flesh out the details, but we also do extensive research to make the setting of our novels feel authentic to the reader. All good novels incorporate sensory details, […]
Writing Fiction based on Family History
My novel, When It’s Over, set in Europe during WWII, is based on a true story: the story of my mother’s experience as a refugee from the Holocaust. She was a young woman, an anti-fascist activist from a secular Jewish family, when she fled Czechoslovakia and then Paris, and spent the war years in the […]
Writing With Readers On The Mind
To write stories is always to be alone in a room, with only our characters for company. But what about readers? To write presupposes their eventual existence. Yet for a writer just setting out, doubtful of success, the reader is as fictional as the rest of it. We write for various reasons. To understand ourselves […]
How To Find Writing Time
Some days, I feel like a circus act, juggling a set of knives as I walk the tightrope, praying I don’t come crashing to the floor. But the truth is, I’m not employed by the Ringling Brothers. That job may be easier, to be honest. I am the wearer of many hats, the jack of […]
Darkest Moment In My Writing Career
The second darkest moment in my writing career was when I reached that awful juncture with my then-agent: she asked me if I had anything else to show her because my novel didn’t sell. Editors had overwhelmingly praised it, but they wanted the next bestseller, not a solid mid-list novel. It was a crushing disappointment, […]
How the Goddess Writes
As a writer, my writing is an extension of my life, my heart and my identity. Most writers can agree with the statement that writing isn’t something we do because we must. It’s something we do because we simply can’t not write. It’s an outpouring of our heart-mind onto paper, flowing in ways that are […]
Sexuality in Writing
If I recall how I first learned about sex, I would have to credit a variety of sources. For starters, it was my mother who taught me that sex led to pregnancy and periods were the start of the process. The period would happen soon, the pregnancy, God willing, not until I was married. Sex […]
The Needle and the Pen
When asked to write about how acupuncture affects my writing, I had to think long and hard on the matter. The two seem like strange bedfellows, and yet, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how they go hand in hand. Both are such a part of me, that they seep into […]
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