My last column addressed how we writers of historical fiction see a modern setting and then imagine our way backward to how it might have looked at the time of our story and what events might have happened in that place. Now let’s focus on the place itself. There’s no substitute for actually visiting the… Read more »
When I was first trying to develop a more cohesive author brand and platform for myself as a writer and creative writing coach, I struggled to visualize exactly what I liked and wanted. I mindlessly clicked through sites that I admired and tried to imitate what I saw. But I found that I wasn’t creating… Read more »
Two of my favorite things to do are travel and spend time in bookstores. Every trip to a bookstore holds the possibility of discovering my new favorite book, author, or both. When I walk into a bookstore, I am happily transported into another world, even if just for an hour or so. Pair this with… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Cadwell Turnbull. His novel, The Lesson is a work of speculative fiction is about what happens when a spaceship arrives at the US Virgin Islands with a race of super-advanced aliens on a research mission on board. This story grapples with the tensions between… Read more »
My kids will be officially young adults in a few weeks, when my son turns eighteen. This threshold into adulthood has stirred up memories from their early childhood. How I sang nursery rhymes to my daughter and had to change the genders of all the heroes in her bedtime stories as I read. How my… Read more »
On the back of every book you’ve bought in a bookstore, you’ll find a string of numbers, usually punctuated with dashes. It looks something like this: 978-0-9997003-0-3. This mysterious code is an International Standard Book Number, or ISBN. If you’re a self-publishing author, you should consider having them for your books. What Is An ISBN?… Read more »
Any list of tips for writing complex, flesh and blood LGBTQ+ fictional characters should mirror the list for writing complex, flesh and blood LGBTQ+ human characters. Whether you identify as a member of one of the groups represented by the capital letters+ or not, it takes passion, knowledge, empathy, imagination, skill, and love to write… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today, we’re doing another one of our live-from-a-conference interviews, this time from RWA annual conference, where I have the pleasure of interviewing Nisha Sharma. But first, some backstory. The RWA conference is the big event that the Romance Writers of America put on each year. I had the pleasure of speaking… Read more »
“Everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory’s waters drowns a little.” –Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir I remember sitting at the desk in my hotel room in Philadelphia one Saturday afternoon a few years ago, putting some time into working on my memoir but making zero progress. I was trying to write… Read more »
The importance of readability in a novel is an exhaustive conversation, but a necessary one for writers wanting to sell books. Word processing and editing programs offer a wide variety of grade level and reading ease scales to determine who might be able to read and understand your work. Some writers analyze this closely while… Read more »
