This month’s episode is a deep dive into how to revise your writing like a pro.

Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA. You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also start getting Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode, Christa and I discuss:

• Key aspects and methods to focus on during the revision process.
• The importance of feedback from others during revision.
• A helpful type of mindset to keep throughout your progress.

Link to Episode 473

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If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 473: Craft Jam: Revise Your Writing Like a Pro appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for March is Voice and Narration, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Patricia Leavy and Lori discuss:

• The neuroscience behind reader engagement.
• How her sociology background influences the way she develops characters.
• Exploring the beauty of writing by muscle memory as opposed to convention.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Patricia Leavy

Patricia Leavy, PhD, is an award-winning, best-selling author. She was formerly Associate Professor of Sociology, Chairperson of Sociology & Criminology, and Founding Director of Gender Studies at Stonehill College. She has published more than forty books; her work has been translated into many languages, and she has received more than forty book honors. She has also received career awards from the New England Sociological Association, the American Creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the National Art Education Association. In 2018, she was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and SUNY-New Paltz established the “Patricia Leavy Award for Art and Social Justice.”

You can find her on her website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Hollyland

What happens when a seemingly ordinary woman with a passion for the arts falls in love with a Hollywood star known for his bachelor status and quick temper with the paparazzi? Something extraordinary.

Dee Schwartz is a writer and arts researcher. Ryder Field is a famous actor descended from Hollywood royalty. On the night they meet outside a bar, their connection is palpable. Ryder’s mother—legendary actress Rebecca Field, half of Hollywood’s golden couple when she died—was kidnapped and murdered by a crazed fan in a shocking event that forever tarnished Tinseltown. Dee’s mother, too, died when she was young. Bonded by this loss, the two embark on a love story that explores their search for magic—or “gold dust”—in their lives. Everything changes, however, when Dee mysteriously disappears after an awards ceremony. Is history repeating itself? Can there truly be a happily ever after in Hollywood?

Set against the backdrop of contemporary Los Angeles, Hollyland is a poignant novel that moves fluidly between romance, humor, suspense, and joy.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 455

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 455: The Magic and Science of Writing – Interview with Patricia Leavy appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for March is Voice and Narration, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

Correction: During the interview, the author mistakenly identifies butter chicken or murgh makhni as a British dish invented in the UK by Indian immigrants. He later clarified that butter chicken was in fact invented in New Delhi. Chicken tikka masala is actually the British dish.

In this episode Jinwoo Chong and Lori discuss:

• Immigration as synthesis.
• What it means to blend speculative fiction and neo-noir genres
• How the immigrant experience helped to shape his book.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Jinwoo Chong

Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novel Flux, coming March 21, 2023 from Melville House. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, CRAFT, and Salamander.

He received the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Fiction from The Southern Review and a special mention in the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology, as well as recognition from The Sewanee Review, Tin House and Zoetrope: All-Story.

He received an MFA from Columbia University and is an editorial assistant at One Story.

You can find him on his website or follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Flux

A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are covering up a string of violent crimes.

Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family.

So begins Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling, time-bending and surreal literary debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself. Intertwined with them is the saga of an iconic 80s detective show, Raider, whose star actor has imploded spectacularly after revelations of long-term, concealed abuse.

Flux is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 454

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 454: Exploring Themes of Grief and Loneliness in a Neo-Noir Speculative Novel – Interview with Jinwoo Chong appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for January is Career Shifts, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Iris Yamashita and Lori discuss:

• How culture has affected the trajectory of her career as a screenwriter and novelist.
• The way her screenwriting background informed her process for maintaining tension and keeping readers on the edge of their seat.
• Using a multiple voice format to make a shifting, close third POV work across characters with very distinct personalities.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Iris Yamashita

Iris Yamashita is an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter for the movie Letters from Iwo Jima.

She has been working in Hollywood for fifteen years developing material for both film and streaming, has taught screenwriting at UCLA, and is an advocate of women and diversity in the entertainment industry.

She has also been a judge and mentor for various film and writing programs, and lives in California.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

City Under One Roof

A stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone winters in the same high-rise building, in this gripping debut by Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Iris Yamashita.

When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own reasons for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel.

After an avalanche causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as icy as the weather. Cara teams up with Point Mettier police officer Joe Barkowski, but before long the investigation is upended by a gang from a nearby reservation who are seeking shelter from the snowstorm.

Cara soon discovers that everyone in this town is keeping secrets. If there is anything as elusive as the residents themselves, it’s answers.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 444

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 444: Lies, Secrets, and Tension in a Closed-Setting – Interview with Iris Yamashita appeared first on DIY MFA.

About Rudy Ruiz

Rudy Ruiz is an American author, advocate, and social entrepreneur. The son and grandson of Mexican immigrants, Rudy Ruiz was born in Brownsville, Texas and raised along the US-Mexico border, living in Matamoros, Mexico for extensive periods of time. 

He did not speak English until he entered school at the age of five. Once in school, he excelled and dreamt of growing up to be a writer, an entrepreneur, and a contributor to the wellbeing of immigrants and minorities, as well as to positive relations between diverse cultures and nations. 

He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Harvard. Ruiz now resides in San Antonio with his wife, Heather, and their two children, Paloma and Lorenzo.

You can find Rudy on his website, and follow him on Twitter.

About Valley of Shadows

Solitario Cisneros thought his life was over long ago. He lost his wife, his family, even his country in the late 1870s when the Rio Grande shifted course, stranding the Mexican town of Olvido on the Texas side of the border. He’d made his brooding peace with retiring his gun and badge, hiding out on his ranch, and communing with horses and ghosts. But when a gruesome string of murders and kidnappings ravages the town, pushing its volatile mix of Anglo, Mexican, and Apache settlers to the brink of self-destruction, he feels reluctantly compelled to confront both life, and the much more likely possibility of death, yet again.

As Solitario struggles to overcome not only the evil forces that threaten the town but also his own inner demons, he finds an unlikely source of inspiration and support in Onawa, a gifted and enchanting Apache-Mexican seer who champions his cause, daring him to open his heart and question his destiny.

As we follow Solitario and Onawa into the desert, we join them in facing haunting questions about the human condition that are as relevant today as they were back then: Can we rewrite our own history and shape our own future? What does it mean to belong to a place, or for a place to belong to a people? And, as lonely and defeated as we might feel, are we ever truly alone?

Interview with Rudy Ruiz

Sara Farmer: How do you decide how much Spanish to put in the book? (I’ve been working on my Spanish and was proud I understood most of it!)

Rudy Ruiz: Weaving Spanish into the fabric of my stories has always come very instinctively to me as I write. I feel that the Spanish words or phrases bubble forth from the characters and I decide to keep them in Spanish rather than translating them into English if they have a particular cultural resonance, if they convey a unique emotion, sentiment, or verbal tradition. Or, if they accentuate a particular relationship or dynamic. I also like to use Spanish words that might be familiar to non-Spanish speakers or very similar to their English counterparts. Using this approach, along with always putting Spanish words in context, helps me ensure that a non-Spanish reader will still get the gist of what is being said, which is very important to me as a writer who respects his readers and wants them to stay engaged with the characters and their stories.

SF: This book checked so many of my boxes – Mexico/Texas history, Gothic, some magical realism, mystery. How did you come up with this story? Are any of the characters/events based on real life? Is Olvido a real town?

RR: So many sources of inspiration merged to motivate me to create this setting, characters and story. 

For starters, my son asked me to write a Western horror story. This was an interesting challenge to me. I’ve written quite a bit of magical realism, but never ventured into these two genres. That said, I come from a family with a history of ranching and grew up around cattle and horses, watching classic Westerns and Mexican charro movies with my father. I thought it would be amazing to take all that inspiration and apply my voice and my style of magical realism to it, and create a new type of American hero that turned the Western genre on its head: A Mexican-American lawman paired with heroic Mexican and Native American partners. It was way more immersive and exciting than I could have imagined. 

Researching the history of the era, I was also driven by some of the oft-ignored social injustices and atrocities inflicted upon the Native American and Mexican-American inhabitants of the Southwest. In particular, the tragedy of the Porvenir Massacre of 1918, an event forgotten for a century after Texas Rangers executed 15 Mexican and Mexican-American boys and men for unproven allegations of cattle rustling, motivated me to shed light on the troubled history of Texas and the border, and imagine an alternate reality in which the presence of diverse leaders and heroes makes a difference in saving lives and achieving justice for all. 

Lastly, creating Olvido, a mythical border town along the frontier of West Texas and Chihuahua, Mexico was a dream as a writer. In my previous book, The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez, I set the novel in a mythical border town based on my own birthplace, calling it La Frontera. This is likewise the birthplace of Solitario Cisneros, the protagonist in Valley of Shadows. But Olvido is a dusty, forgotten town on the edge of nowhere, where Solitario has unsuccessfully attempted to elude the family curse that haunts him. Olvido turned out to be a magical place that grew into a character of its own. I was delighted that Blackstone Publishing even helped turn my rudimentary sketches of the town and its layout into beautiful, antique-style maps. I hope readers can really lose themselves in this magical and remote place and connect with the characters and their lives.

SF: Did any authors inspire you in the writing of this book?

RR: I looked to Gabriel García Márquez and Laura Esquivel for the magic and cultural depth, William Faulkner for the Southern Gothic flare, and Cormac McCarthy for the grit, solitude, and sparse aesthetic of cowboy life in West Texas.

SF: You delved deeply into a brief pocket of time in a small place in a very particular era. And yet, the story has an epic feel due to the time period, the setting, and the stakes. Not to mention the emotions driving it all. How did you produce this blend of intimate and epic?

RR: I’d like to think that is magic, part of the intangible creative process. But, truth be told, what helped make this formula work was starting out with archetypes yet being determined to explore and subvert those archetypes. For example, the classic Western sheriff is a monumental American hero. Putting a Mexican-American widower who is grieving, cursed and lonely in that role turns the Western on its head. Fighting against stereotypes helps render complex and nuanced characters that feel authentic and real. This is what I aimed for in Solitario, Onawa, Elias, and other key characters in the novel, to make them more than what would be expected of a traditional tale. In doing that, I think I hopefully portray them as multifaceted human beings with universally relatable emotions. So regardless of who they are, or where they come from, my wish is that any reader can connect to them, feel their pains and their aspirations, and root for them. In the end, yes it’s a sweeping saga in an epic setting and a classic time, but it’s more importantly a story about imperfect people struggling to come out of the shadows of grief, loss, personal tragedy, isolation, and injustice and reaching for help from each other to find healing and hope in a rather inhospitable environment.

SF: Finally, the question I ask all of my interviewees – Do you have drawer novels?

RR: Do I! I have several manuscripts ready to go. These include a border Bildungsroman based on my own coming of age on the border, a novel about an extended family of undocumented immigrants pursuing the American Dream in Los Angeles, a magical realism family saga set during the days of the Mexican Revolution, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller about a trio of resourceful librarians striving to save the last books on the planet, and a couple of sequel concepts for Valley of Shadows. I can’t wait to see what gets the green light next!

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Sara Farmer lives in Austin, TX, with her husband, three kids, and two cats. When she’s not chasing kids and cats, she reads and writes mysteries. You can find her at www.kittymomma.com and on Twitter @avonlea79.

The post Cozy to Cold-Blooded: Interview with Rudy Ruiz appeared first on DIY MFA.