Hey there word nerds! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Robert Dugoni. Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Internationally Best-Selling Author of 17 novels in The Tracy Crosswhite police detective series set in Seattle, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and the Charles Jenkins… Read more »
At last, we come to the end of my 14-column-series on James Scott Bell’s Signpost Scenes, as depicted in his wonderful book on craft, Super Structure. Signpost Scene #14–Transformation–might be short and subtle, but it’s wildly important for a story’s success. Essentially, the purpose of Transformation is exactly what it sounds like: a scene that… Read more »
Writing can be intensely rewarding, but each book is also a messy, long-drawn trek. Here are five practices that may help you to navigate through these journeys: 1) Treat your writing as a job It is of course your vocation, but if you wait for inspiration from the heavens, you’ll never get anything completed. So:… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Samuel Shem, a novelist, playwright, and activist. He is a Professor in Medical Humanities at NYU School of Medicine, and Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. His novels include The House of God, Fine, Mount Misery, In the Heart of the Universe, and… Read more »
The digital world is constantly evolving, and big shifts occurred in the social media landscape as we head into 2020. TikTok continues to grow rapidly, Instagram decided to remove its Like counts, Twitter changed up its format–and those are only a few of the changes that took place this year. For authors hustling to make… Read more »
There are times when I need to escape my normal routine and immerse myself in another world for a little while – to re-discover my inner child and head out on a mini-adventure… or, as I lovingly refer to them, field trips. I’ve discovered attending book fairs is a great way to get my “field… Read more »
Hey there word nerds! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Constance Sayers talking about her debut novel, A Witch in Time, which is forthcoming in February. A finalist for Alternating Current’s 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short stories have appeared in Souvenir and Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington… Read more »
When, if ever, is it okay to make pop culture references in fiction? And does that rule change when you’re writing for children or teens? This much-debated topic has no easy answer. First, an overview of the debate, then we’ll discuss how the dynamics shift when your target audience skews younger, and how to make… Read more »
It’s time for the final installment of our series on the WHY-WHAT-HOW of your writing life. In the first post, we discovered our writing purpose. In the second post, we turned that purpose into specific goals. Today’s focus will be on creating routines and habits that bring our purpose and goals into reality. Step One:… Read more »
I spent most of my working lifetime teaching students at London University, and, after immigrating to Southern California, at USC, UCLA and California State University, Long Beach. During that time, under pressure to publish, I wrote seven nonfiction books. Some were works of literary criticism, others included a biography, a genre study of autobiography, and even… Read more »
