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

(Right-click to download.)

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 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 Lori and I discuss:

• What exactly Draft Zero is and what comes next.
• Finding a routine that works for you and how to keep it from getting stale.
• Why you need to practice finishing and what to do when you get stuck.

Plus, our #1 reading recommendation on craft books.

Link to Episode 470

(Right-click to download.)

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 470: Craft Jam: Draft Zero appeared first on DIY MFA.

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 M.T. Anderson and I discuss:

• Weaving events from your real life into a fantastical story
• Why you need to have rules for the magic you create in order for it to be fun.
• How to reverse engineer and perfect the opening of your novel.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About M.T. Anderson

M. T. Anderson has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, graphic novel adaptations of ancient French tales, and several books for older readers (both teens and adults). His satirical book Feed was a Finalist for the National Book Award and was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize. Both Time Magazine and National Public Radio have included it on their lists of the best 100 YA novels of all time. Another satirical science fiction novel, Landscape with Invisible Hand, has been turned into a movie starring Tiffany Haddish and Asante Blackk. 

The first volume of Anderson’s Octavian Nothing saga, The Pox Party, won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe / Horn Book Prize. The second volume, The Kingdom on the Waves, was a New York Times best-seller. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, a tragicomic spy story for young goblins written with Newbery-Honor winner Eugene Yelchin, was a Finalist for the National Book Award in 2018. 

Anderson’s nonfiction book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad was long-listed for the National Book Award. 

He has published stories for adults in literary journals like The Northwest Review, The Colorado Review, and Conjunctions. Several of his stories have appeared in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collections. His nonfiction articles and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Slate, and Salon. 

He has curated concerts that bring together text and classical music all over New England. 

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

Elf Dog and Owl Head

From the singular imagination of National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson comes a magical adventure about a boy and his dog—or a dog and her boy—and a forest of wonders hidden in plain sight.

Clay has had his fill of home life. A global plague has brought the world to a screeching halt, and with little to look forward to but a summer of video-calling friends, vying with annoying sisters for the family computer, and tuning out his parents’ financial worries, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. From the moment the elegant little dog with the ornate collar appears like an apparition among the trees, Clay sees something uncanny in her. With this mysterious Elphinore as guide, he’ll glimpse ancient secrets folded all but invisibly into the forest. Each day the dog leads Clay down paths he never knew existed, deeper into the unknown. But they aren’t alone in their surreal adventures. There are traps and terrors in the woods, too, and if Clay isn’t careful, he might stray off the path and lose his way forever. Graced with evocative black-and-white illustrations by Junyi Wu, Elf Dog and Owl Head is heartfelt and exhilarating, wry and poignant, seamlessly merging the fantastic and the familiar in a tale both timely and timeless.

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 468

(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 468: Raise Your Story’s Stakes with Tension and Surprise – Interview with M.T. Anderson appeared first on DIY MFA.

Before diving in, I wanted to make a quick note. Our wonderful guests are the co-hosts of a fantastic podcast that has a particular word in its title. It would be impossible to talk about their show without saying this particular word, so consider this a heads-up that there will be salty language in this episode. If you’re listening in public or have little ones around, now would be the time to put on some headphones.

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 Bianca Marais, CeCe Lyra, Carly Watters, and I discuss:

• Common myths about writing and publishing and what’s actually true
• Writing groups, beta readers, and how to find them
• What happens after you sign on the dotted line

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About Bianca Marais

Bianca Marais is the author of the bestselling The Witches of Moonshyne Manor, as well as the beloved Hum If You Don’t Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh, and the Audible Original, The Prynne Viper.

She taught at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies where she was awarded an Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing in 2021.

She is the co-host of the popular podcast, The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers become published.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Instagram.

About CeCe Lyra

Cecilia (“CeCe”) Lyra is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, representing adult fiction and non-fiction. A long-term strategic thinker, CeCe prioritizes the creative reach and sustainable longevity of her authors’ careers, and she is actively looking for clients with whom she can build fruitful, lasting relationships. As a mixed race Latinx immigrant, CeCe understands the power of seeing oneself reflected in books, hence her passion for championing under or misrepresented voices and narratives that contribute to a larger cultural conversation. The popular podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, for which CeCe is a co-host, has over one million downloads. 

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

About Carly Watters

Carly Watters is a SVP and Senior Literary Agent at P.S. Literary and the sitting VP of PACLA, the Professional Association of Canadian Literary Agents.

Carly Watters has a BA in English Literature from Queen’s University and a MA in Publishing Studies from City University London. Her masters thesis was on the social, political, and economic impact of literary prizes on trade publishing. She began her publishing career in London as an assistant at the Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency. Carly joined Toronto-based P.S. Literary Agency in 2010 and has sold over 100 books during her career. She represents award-winning and bestselling authors in the adult fiction and non-fiction categories, and select children’s books.

She is known for her long-term vision for her authors and being an excellent collaborator with a nose for commercial success. She has close ties to publishers in the major markets, is a member of the AALA, and works directly with film agents to option film and TV rights to leading networks and production companies. Her clients’ books have been translated into 40 languages, optioned for TV and film, adapted into podcasts, and have been on every bestseller list from coast to coast, including the New York Times, USA Today, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail. Carly is also an annual judge for the Women’s Fiction Writing Association Rising Star Award.

The popular writing podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, for which Carly is the co-host, has over one million downloads. 

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

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Podcast

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing is a podcast for emerging writers, who are looking to improve their work with an aim to having it published, or for anyone who would like a behind-the-scenes look at the publishing industry.

Bestselling author Bianca Marais interviews authors, agents, editors and just about anyone and everyone who’s involved in bringing a book to market. She’s joined by her cohosts, literary agents Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra from P.S. Literary Agency, who read and critique query letters and opening pages in their Books with Hooks segment, and who will occasionally answer your burning questions in their Q&A segment in bonus episodes.

You can learn more about The Shit No One Tells You About Writing on their website or follow them on Instagram.

Link to Episode 466

(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 466: An Inside Look at the Publishing Industry – Interview with Bianca Marais, CeCe Lyra, and Carly Watters appeared first on DIY MFA.

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! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode Ginny Kubitz Moyer and Lori discuss:

• Why she prefers the term “discovery writer” instead of “pantser.”
• The importance of reading widely and re-reading books.
• How she picked up the tone of her novel, The Seeing Garden.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Ginny Kubitz Moyer is a California native with a love of local history. A graduate of Pomona College and Stanford University, she’s an English instructor and avid weekend gardener. 

Her articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including Bella Grace and America Magazine, and she is the author of several books on women’s spirituality. 

She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and one adorable rescue dog. The Seeing Garden is her first novel. 

You can find her on her website or follow her on Instagram.

The Seeing Garden

It’s 1910, and Catherine Ogden is aching to live a creative and meaningful life. That’s not easy to do when her aunt and uncle–and all of New York society–consider a good marriage to be the pinnacle of feminine achievement. But when Catherine visits Oakview, the Northern California estate of handsome bachelor William Brandt, she thinks that it might be possible to satisfy her family’s hopes as well as her own. In that beautiful place, she finds the promise of a new start and the opportunity to use her artistic gifts in designing the garden.  But as Catherine is drawn into William’s hidden life, as well as the secrets of his estate staff, she discovers that Oakview holds both more opportunity and more risk than she ever imagined. It will take all her courage—and the lessons of some shocking revelations about the past—to choose the path that leads to real freedom. 

Full of rich period detail and complex characters, and set against an unforgettable backdrop, The Seeing Garden explores what it takes for a woman to discern her most authentic life.

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 461

(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 461: Start with a Setting: Creating a Rich World for Your Story – Interview with Ginny Kubitz Moyer appeared first on DIY MFA.

Yep. Just gonna leave that visual there.

Meanwhile, I had promised to give you a deep dive into the reasoning behind taking your time to understand where your work sits in that SFF morass. You remember, the whole, “it will help you land the agent that’s right for your book / tailoring your query letter / finding comp titles” spiel?

Mmm. Yeah, that one. 

Well, you are in luck, people! Because not so long ago, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jonathan Oliver, officially not that John Oliver since 1978, editor extraordinaire, and all-around awesome guy. He’s also the author of The Language of Beasts, a book every SFFH fan should have on their shelves. 

I’ve worked with Jon for a couple of years now, and when DIY MFA asked me to do a column on SFF, I couldn’t think of a better resource. Full disclosure, my reasons were totally selfish. The man knows his stuff, and the insight he’s able to provide into the publishing world is gold. I hope you guys find a nugget or two in here for yourselves. 

About Jonathan Oliver

Jonathan Oliver is an award-winning editor and writer. For almost thirteen years he was the Editor-in-Chief of Solaris and Abaddon Books, and also worked as a graphic novels editor for 2000 AD. After a short stint commissioning non-fiction, he decided to go freelance and now specializes in editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror for a variety of international clients. 

He has worked with such authors as Audrey Niffenegger, Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, and Yoon Ha Lee. Jonathan lives in the UK in Oxfordshire with his family and their cat, Minnie.

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

About The Language of Beasts

Those dark, glistening jewels—stomach, kidneys, liver—whispered as they fell. I only caught a few words, but what they conveyed… well, it was profound.

In a slaughterhouse a group of men find they can tell fortunes from entrails; an invisible shark haunts a children’s book author; redemptive magic is discovered in the ancient chalk horse of the Oxfordshire hills; a woman vicar is possessed by the soul of a reactionary priest—in these seventeen stories of the weird, uncanny and fantastical, British Fantasy Award winner Jonathan Oliver takes the reader into imagined lives and worlds. Horrifying, weird and darkly humorous, The Language of Beasts is the first collection of stories from this critically acclaimed editor.

Pretty frickin’ cool, right?

I was seriously excited to pick his brain. I’ll spare you all the bits of banter where I jumped between topics like a squirrel in a trail mix factory and get right to the good stuff*…

AK Nevermore: Can you explain why comps are so important?

Jonathan Oliver: When you get your manuscript out on query, the comps are important because the agent, like the sales rep, wants a hook and a reason to read your book. If they just have a letter that sounds like generic fantasy, whatever. They see a hundred of those a day. It’s gonna be easy for them to pass.

Agents aren’t evil. They’re not like, looking for reasons to shoot your book down immediately. But because agents get so many submissions, they’re looking to see if there’s a quick reason for them not to pick up your manuscript. That’s easy for them. It’s the same as commissioning editors. As a commissioning editor, I would give it 50 pages to grab me, which is quite generous, I gather. People say you can tell from a first page, and sometimes you really can, but if a story hadn’t grabbed me within 50 pages, then usually it was a no from me.

They were exceptions to that. Sometimes I’d be engrossed in a novel three-quarters of it. And then the author would completely break the ending and you just spent four days reading the manuscript of your work time, and you thought, oh, got something here, and then the car went off the road in the direction you weren’t expecting. That can be very frustrating. So, yeah, when getting a query your comps are important, a short punchy synopsis is important, and clarity is important.

AK: I’ve also heard agents and publishers are looking for something that’s different, but the same.

JO: Yes, to a degree. I mean, I pushed against this a little bit. I did commission titles that occasionally go to a sales meeting and the US distributors, or even the UK Distributors occasionally said “What is this?” “Well, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” and they’re like, “Yeah, but we don’t want nothing we’ve ever seen before, we want Game of Thrones. Is it like Game of Thrones?”

You’d write these sales sheets, tip sheets, and you’d have to put marketing points on them. If you were doing Epic Fantasy, what they didn’t want to see was like, you know, “Deeply artistic expression of internal struggle,” or something. What they wanted to see was “Will appeal to fans of George RR Martin, is a bit like Game of Thrones,” because they can sell that easily.

What book reps are looking for when they’re looking to sell your title is that hook. So if you present them with something that’s a bit out there—which I sometimes did and I’ll stand by them, they’re still good books—it’s hard to give them a hook.

So, for example, one of my absolute favorite books I commissioned, and I can say this now that I’m not commissioning editor for Solaris anymore—so I can have favorites now—we published a book called Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem. He’s a World Fantasy Award-winning author. I’ve known his work since I started reading horror. So when Steve’s novel came to me through his agent, it was a name I recognized and I was like hell yes, I’ll read this.

It’s a haunted hotel novel, but it’s about family and it’s about relationships and it’s really beautiful. It’s got the air of Ray Bradbury or someone like that. It’s just gorgeous. And so when we were pitching to that, we wanted it to be unusual. 

You can play that line as a commissioning editor, depending on how much power you have. And by power, I don’t mean like you’re being paid loads of money and you lord it, because Solaris was quite a small publisher. I was the Editor-in-Chief and there were only about five of us there and the owner of the company loved publishing and took a lot of commercial risks. They weren’t about to say, well these five books didn’t succeed, so let’s shut this down. It’s a passion project as well as a business. I was really lucky to have that.

But not every commissioner is going to have that especially at the very big houses. They are conservative and they don’t take risks. And yes, you’re going to get big advances for projects, but they tend to go to already tried and tested authors. 

If they do go to new authors, if they spend serious money behind new authors and you see a lot of marketing, that book’s gonna have to earn out pretty quickly. A lot of titles just don’t earn out, and that’s where the mid-list publishing houses it’s not so much a problem, because the advances are more modest, the costs are more modest. But with someone like Penguin Random House, they spend 50,000 pounds, or whatever that is in dollars, on a new book and it doesn’t make that back within six months, that author’s probably gonna have to change their name or go elsewhere.

So commissioning editors at different houses have different restraints on them. I had a lot of freedom at Solaris. Whereas when I moved to nonfiction, two years of strange religious nonfiction, I had to sit through sales meetings and justify each book. That was difficult because they were always like, “Oh, what do you think it will sell in two years?” I’m like, “5,000 copies or so.” “Are you sure that’s going to sell that?” “No, this is a projection. There’s no guarantee here that how much it’s gonna sell or not.”

Commissioning editors at the big houses will have to convince all their departments, like the marketing department, finance, etc. They’ll have these big sales meetings where everybody has to agree to a title because they’ve all got to get behind it to make money. Whereas with smaller houses, it tends to be a bit more sort of, not off the cuff, but the decisions are slightly more intuitive and more creative and more sort of testing the boundaries. So that’s why, for me, you’ll see a lot more interesting fiction. The home of interesting SF and Fantasy is the mid-list and the independent publishers. No, there’s not a lot of money there, but there’s a lot of good books being produced.

Want more insight into the world of SFF publishing?

The above was edited to stay within article length restrictions, but if you want the full monty, you can check out the rest of my interview with Jon on my blog, where we talk more about his book, The Language of Beasts, his stint as a stand-up comedian, what commissioning editors are looking for, a host of SFFH authors and their work, various publishers and imprints, new trends in SFFH, how romance is influencing the genre, the rise of audio books, ebooks, the importance of being able to market yourself, literary fiction as a genre, pitching series, leaving readers on a cliffhanger, cadavers, and a boatload of other stuff.

AK Nevermore writes science fiction and urban fantasy with spice. She enjoys operating heavy machinery, freebases coffee, and gives up sarcasm for Lent every year. Unable to ignore the voices in her head, and unwilling to become medicated, she writes about dark worlds, perversely irreverent and profound, and always entertaining.

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

The post Let’s Talk SFF: An Interview with Jonathan Oliver 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 April is Word Choice and Micro Craft, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Anne Marie and Lori discuss:

• Choosing poems for a collection and deciding on their chronology.
• Using poetry as a way to deal with grief and its power to heal.
• The significance and symbolism behind white space.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Anne Marie Wells

Anne Marie Wells (She | They) is an award-winning Queer poet, playwright, memoirist, and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. She is a faculty member for The Community Literature Initiative through the Sims Library of Poetry and Strategic Partnership Fellow for The Poetry Lab. She earned the 2021 Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award in Poetry, the 2020 Wyoming Writers Milestone Award, and was a 2021 Wyoming Woman of Influence nominee in the arts for amplifying the voices of the LGBTQ and disabled communities with her writing. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems, debuts with Curious Corvid Publishing on April 30, 2023. 

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

Survived By: A Memoir in Verse

Anne Marie Wells’ debut collection of poetry, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems, chronicles her experience coping with her father’s terminal cancer diagnosis, his death, and her subsequent bereavement. She will be traveling this summer on tour with her book as well as a writing workshop, Finding the Poem in the Pain, in which she provides participants writing prompts to process and explore their grief.

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 459

(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 459: The Power of Poetry to Survive, Heal, and Connect – Interview with Anne Marie Wells 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 April is Word Choice and Micro Craft, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Donnaldson and Lori discuss:

• The impact of secrets on multiple generations.
• Starting a project with an image and painting it into prose.
• Directing a reader’s imagination through clues and cues.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Donnaldson Brown

Donnaldson ‘s debut novel, Because I Loved You, is due out in April 2023 with She Writes Press. An attorney and former screenwriter, she worked with Robert Redford’s film development company for several years. Her spoken word pieces have been featured in The Deep Listening Institute’s Writers in Performance and Women & Identity Festivals, and in the Made in the Berkshires Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She’s been awarded several residencies.

A longtime resident of both Brooklyn, New York and western Massachusetts, Ms. Brown grew up riding horses on a family ranch in East Texas as well as in her native Connecticut. She is a facilitator and trainer with The Equus Effect, offering somatic-based experiential learning with horses for veterans, first responders and others struggling with PTSD, and is also certified to teach meditation and several forms of yoga. 

She is a proud mother, and loves to sing, cycle, and hike with her dogs. 

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

Because I Loved You

At sixteen, Leni O’Hare Dreams of escaping her family’s rundown East Texas farm to become an artist, but that means leaving behind both her grey mare, Foggy, and her beloved older brother, Foy. When she rescues and returns Caleb McGrath’s horse from a storm out on the chaparral, this second son of the largest rancher in the area catches her heart with his gentle nature and his own big dreams. Together they begin to imagine and plan a future beyond the limiting confines of their small town. But Leni’s hopes soon run as dry as the land itself, driven by a family tragedy for the O’Hare’s and a secret that Leni stores deep in her heart. Hastily, Leni makes a decision that she believes will protect Caleb’s future. Her ill-conceived and painful choice transforms not only their lives but impacts the next two generations.

In this epic love story and rich family saga, Donnaldson Brown takes readers from the East Texas chaparral in 1972, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, to New York City’s vibrant downtown art scene in the mid-1980’s, to the (pre-pandemic) present day, and from dreams lost to dreams rediscovered. Brown weaves together a powerful story of abiding love—romantic love, parental love, and the kind of love that sets a person free to choose one’s own path and maybe, hopefully, return.

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 458

(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 458: Intuitive Writing: Capture Your Character’s Energy and Paint with Your Words – Interview with Donnaldson Brown 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

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

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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.