In case you haven’t read about this already, I’m giving away a free chapter of The Renaissance Club, due to be published by Fiery Seas Publishing in January 2018. You can claim one from Instafreebie here, or simply by going to my website. Would you give up everything, even the time in which you live, to be with your soul mate? May Gold, a college adjunct teacher, often dreams about the subject of her master’s…
I finished my 10-day Do-It-Yourself At Home Writing Retreat, and I learned some new things about my creative process . I got a lot done: Edited the first third of my novel manuscript Wrote three new poems Prepared ideas for cover art for my forthcoming novel Wrote a couple of blog posts and some tweets Finished the script for a musical Had some fun days in nature and in town It was an experiment, as…
Twitter — with all you have to do writing an entire novel, and then spendig nearly as much time finding a publishing house and marketing it after publication — why jump into this fast-moving river that is Twitter? Why grab your 15 seconds of attention in the feed to try and sell your book to readers? The simple answer is because any social platform gives you the chance to benot just an author to potential…
Magical realism in women’s fiction gives the reader and writer a broader canvas of possibilities. When you’re reading about women and their relationships (the broad definition of women’s fiction), elements of magic provide visual ways to describe a character’s feelings, frame internal events, and create adventures. Magical realism in women’s fiction can be small touches or big events, such as time travel. I used two magical realism elements in my novel The Renaissance Club ,…
I’m calling mine a StayWriCation, because I plan to host my solitary writer’s retreat here in the most comfortable, lovely place I can work — home. Many writers escape to rural retreats where they often share solitude (how is this possible?) with other writers in an unplugged, calm setting, in order to make progress on whatever they’re starting or working on. I can’t afford travel, hate planes and airports, miss my dog when I leave…
Should be easy, right? After all, many of us set a word count quota for the day’s writing, somewhere in the thousands of words. Surely we can spare 200 or so for a short blog. But deciding what to write about is what always stops me from blogging. Who am I as a writer? Do you really want to hear about the Green Veggie Smoothie I just made with my food processor, throwing in fresh…
Writing Tips from Jane Austen? Yes, please! Virginia Woolf observed about Austen, “Of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness”, and that made me study Jane Austen for writing tips. I’m a devoted Austenite (for example. I have upstairs and a downstairs complete sets of her work). I’m writing a book whose characters are based on the Dashwood sisters from Sense and Sensibility. I’m not the first…
It’s the best of times — having a book or two or more out in the world, for people to read. It’s the worst of times — feeling the constant pressure to get books into readers’ hands and Be An Author, publicly. I’m feeling the best and worst times right now, as I prepare to have two new books launched in 2018. What to do today? That’s the first thing I think of, not the…
Happy Fourth! But this post isn’t about our national celebration of Independence — unless I can conflate America’s with my own independence as a writer. There. Done that. I’m celebrating today and in general because 2018 will see TWO OF MY BOOKS PUBLISHED! Both my fourth book of poetry and my novel The Renaissance Club (forthcoming from Fiery Seas Publishing, 2018) will appear next year on Amazon and other places you can buy books, in…
If you’re picky about history, but love a time-traveling heroine going back in time, if you love love stories and romance, but don’t like the formulaic romances the major publishers put out, you might find it hard to locate books you like. I do. My must-haves for a time-travel love story include: good historical research, a well-defined sense of place, believable characters, and love that goes deeper than just a steamy attraction. That’s a lot…