Tag: featured
Is Your Book Book Club Material? Ask A Book Club!
Beta readers. How necessary they are, but how hard to find. At least they were for me. I didn’t have that “writing bestie” who was dying to read my copy and who could be that magical combination of brutally truthful yet rah-rah encouraging. Most of my relatives stick to history or political tomes. My friends […]
Sending the Elevator Back Down
Several years ago, I heard an author say that when a writer “makes it,” it becomes his or her job to send the elevator back down for those waiting their turn. It was a great way to encourage authors who’ve made it to the other side—who got the publishing deal or who’ve seen their book […]
Awakening the Muse Through Meditation
Many of us know the nature of meditation is to sit and relax, focus on one’s breath, and clear the mind, but I’ve found meditation can do just the opposite for creativity. By that I don’t mean I meditate to stress out and create a web of random thoughts, but rather to open a calm […]
Writing With The Seasons
As an author of six books (two memoirs, three novels and a children’s chapter book, all written and published in the last ten years) I found writing fun and enjoyable. I never got my MFA or went to a writer’s critique group, but I always loved telling stories and it came easy to me until last […]
How Book Reviewing Influences My Writing
Before I published my books, and before I understood the importance of book reviews for an author, I always tried to leave a few sentences on Amazon and Goodreads about my reading experience. I’m a great believer in leaving (and reading) reviews for restaurants, holiday resorts, hotels, and other products, so why should books be […]
Letting The Story Open The Door
I love short stories. Reading them, writing them, choosing them for Literary Orphans, the online literary magazine I have the privilege to spend time with. In many ways, although I’ve written two novels and am half-way through a third, I feel that short stories will always be my home, and first love. The submitted pieces […]
Sticking with It
When my contemporary YA novel, Wesley James Ruined My Life, hits bookshelves next July I will be 42 years old. Forty-two is not old (at least, I like to think it’s not!), but it did take me a bit longer than some to land a book deal. There are examples of authors who hits it […]
Writing the Unthinkable
When I first started to write, it was to escape. I longed, like a snorkeler, to slip beneath cool waters and linger below the surface of another world. Bangkok was a city burning on its fringes with protests, and I began by invoking these sights and smells. This grew into a novel, a portrait of […]
Reaching Back and Recovering Women’s Voices
My passion is bringing women back from the past. I wrote Wilde’s Women when I realised that (male, for the most part) biographers had largely ignored the brilliant women who helped make Oscar Wilde the man he was. That’s why, last Saturday, 26 November, having spent two intensive days sitting in a lecture theatre in […]
Why Would You Do That? Understanding Motivation
We ask a lot of our characters. We put them in situations where they must create magic, find love, battle terrorists, win back their crowns, navigate secret space portals, solve murders, and everything else we can imagine as writers. We also ask our readers to invest their time and money on the adventures of these […]
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