Tag: featured
The Challenges of Writing Women’s History
When I began work on Heroines of Mercy Street I assumed that there were already lots of books on the subject and I feared that there wouldn’t be anything new for me to say. After all, everyone knew what Civil War nurses looked like, right? In fact, I was wrong on both counts. Nurses on […]
Finding Inspiration: Why I Write In The Kitchen
A room of one’s own? It’s the dream of every writer. I have such a place. I spent years designing it, and it is perfect. Let me show you around. It’s up a flight of stairs. Mind the pile of books on the landing. They’re waiting for me to put them in neat rows on […]
Kindness of Strangers
I love the kindness of strangers. I don’t mean the grand gestures we read about on popular social media sites, I mean sure – we’d all love to pay for a family’s meal out of the goodness of our bank balance, or donate a large sum of money to a struggling person for something […]
The Inspiration Behind Sweet Lake
The inspiration behind a book—the impishly persistent idea that darts through my head demanding center stage—never arrives in quite the same way. For Sweet Lake, the frothy potion of the perfect “What if?” mixed with irresistible characters I couldn’t wait to bring to life came about quite by accident. During a busy November, I received a surprising […]
Scientist Turned Women’s Fiction Writer: How My Environmental Science Background Helped Me Find My Writing Voice
I’ve worked most of my twenty-five career, not as a writer, but as an environmental scientist. One of my first memories at age four is of the magnolia tree outside the shabby apartment complex on the outskirts of New Orleans where my family lived at the time. I can still feel the rough bark against […]
New Writers’ Scheme
It’s a truth universally acknowledged fact that, no-one ever succeeded by giving up. And that’s certainly true where writing is concerned. I would also add that no-one succeeded in writing without the advice and support of others. I’ve always been a bookworm and read a great deal as a child. It, therefore, seemed a natural […]
The Nine Month Gestation Period of a Digital Author
I never set out to be a digital author. In fact, between you and me I had only the vaguest of ideas of what that even meant. I was due to head off to a crime writing weekend in March 2016 when a friend posted that Killer Reads, a digital first imprint of Harper Collins, […]
Motivate Me!
My interest in alternative therapies, spirituality, and holistic health began when I was a young teenager. I collected crystals, dream journals, and books on every topic imaginable from palmistry to Zen philosophy. My first tarot card pack was purchased with my pocket money when I was just thirteen years old – I still use that […]
The City and the Island
Like most book ideas, Mussolini’s Island came to me by chance. I read an article on the BBC website which recounted a visit, in June 2013, of a group of LGBT activists to the tiny island of San Domino in the Adriatic Sea. They were there to commemorate and raise awareness of a moment in […]
Writing Team Spirit
Writing a book is a wonderful, yet often lonely business, especially when writing a book about togetherness and the power of camaraderie, like The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. After spending days laboring in front of a laptop in an empty room, I can quickly become fraught with plot-related anxieties, character qualms, voice worries, and that omnipresent […]
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