Hey there word nerds!
Today’s show is our last episode of 2018 so Happy New Year everybody!
And this episode is an especially awesome one because it features three members of my awesome DIY MFA team. I am so excited to have DIY MFA columnists Melanie Marttila, Brenda Joyce Patterson, and Stacy Woodson on the show!
I also want to take a moment to mention that these three amazing women are only a tiny sample of the awesome members of DIY MFA. We currently have 21 members on our team, from columnists who contribute articles to people who work their magic maintaining our archives and helping to curate all the voices we feature on our site. So a big thank you to all the members of the team for another awesome year!
Now, let me introduce the three amazing ladies I’ll be chatting with in this interview.
Melanie Marttila is a certified corporate trainer by day and fantasy writer by night. She writes the DIY MFA column Speculations, which is all about science fiction and fantasy. Her own works of scifi and fantasy have appeared in several places such as Bastion Science Fiction Magazine and On Spec Magazine.
Brenda Joyce Patterson is a poet, writer, librarian, and lover of short writing forms. Her column at DIY MFA, Writing Small, focuses on the various different short forms of writing such as short stories, poetry, and essays. She is a mentee in the Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ Writer to Writer Mentorship Program for Fall 2018—which is a very prestigious and selective mentoring program—and her poetry and flash fiction have been published in numerous literary magazines such as Vayavya. She has also had a travel essay published (along with works by Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks) in the anthology Go Girl: The Black Woman’s Guide to Travel and Adventure.
Stacy Woodson writes crime fiction and is the columnist behind Hook, Line, and Dagger, which dives into all things thriller and mystery. She is a U.S. Army veteran and memories of her time in the military are a source of inspiration for her writing. Stacy is a Daphne du Maurier winner and a Killer Nashville Claymore finalist. She also has several short fiction pieces forthcoming in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Edible, and Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder.
Didn’t I tell you my team was amazing?!?! But I’ll stop gushing and let you hear from these fabulous women themselves. So listen in as Melanie, Brenda, Stacy and I chat about the aspects of genre writing and give you a sneak peek at the behind-the-scenes of DIY MFA.
In this episode Melanie, Brenda, Stacy and I discuss:
- An inside look at the Speculations, Writing Small, and Hook, Line, and Dagger columns.
- The different conventions within genres and writing forms.
- Why reading with purpose in your genre is so important.
- Pitfalls to avoid when writing thriller, scifi/fantasy, and short forms.
- Book recommendations to help you dive into each of their genres.
Plus, all these lovely ladies’ #1 tip for writers.
About Melanie Marttila
During the day, Melanie is a certified (insert joke-of-choice here) corporate trainer, and by night she is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She writes the DIY MFA column Speculations which is all about science fiction and fantasy.
You can find her short science fiction in Bastion Science Fiction Magazine (“The Broken Places,” June 2014), On Spec Magazine (“Downtime,” Fall 2014), and Sudbury Ink (“Cicadas” and “Molly Finder,” 2016).
To connect with Melanie check out her website melaniemarttila.ca.
And you can read Melanie’s most recent Speculations article here.
About Brenda Joyce Patterson
Brenda Joyce Patterson is a poet, writer, librarian, and lover of short writing forms. She is a mentee in the Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ Writer to Writer Mentorship Program for Fall 2018. She writes the column, Writing Small, for DIY MFA extolling poetry and short stories, literature’s mild-mannered superheroes.
Her poetry and flash fiction have been published in Vayavya, Gravel Magazine, and Melancholy Hyperbole. Also, along with works by Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Alice Walker, her travel essay, “The Kindness of Strangers”, appeared in Go Girl: The Black Woman’s Guide to Travel and Adventure published by Eighth Mountain Press in 1997.
To connect with Brenda check out her website at brendajoycepatterson.com.
And you can read Brenda’s most recent Writing Small article here.
About Stacy Woodson
Stacy Woodson is a crime fiction writer as well as a U.S. Army veteran, and memories of her time in the military are a source of inspiration for her stories. She is a Daphne du Maurier winner for best romantic suspense, in the single-title, unpublished category and a Killer Nashville Claymore finalist. She reviews books for Publishers Weekly, and writes the column Hook, Line, and Dagger for DIY MFA which dives into the thriller and mystery genre.
Her short fiction will appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in 2019, as well as in two forthcoming anthologies: Malice Domestic’s Mystery Most Edible from Wildside Press also due out in 2019, and Chesapeake Crimes: Invitation to Murder due out from Wildside Press in 2020.
To connect with Stacy check out her website at www.stacywoodson.com.
And you can read Stacy’s most recent Hook, Line, and Dagger article here.
Link to Episode 232
(Right-click to download.)
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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!
