The Debutante Ball, established in 2007, is a group blog for authors making their debut in the literary world. We are now in our twelfth season of celebrating up-and-coming authors. Former Debs include bestsellers in the genres of women’s fiction, mystery, literary fiction, nonfiction, young adult, and more. Click on any of the photos above to learn about The Debutante Ball Class of 2019 and their books. Read about the bestselling…
TEMPER: The Movie
Coming up with a dream cast for my book is one of the first steps in my writing process. Maybe it’s my theater background, but I don’t feel like I fully understand a character until I have an idea of the actor who could play them. Sometimes I even come up with whole book ideas based on actors I’m into (like the Gothic family drama I currently have on the…
Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: And the Oscar goes to….
If The Atlas of Reds and Blues were a major motion picture….Let’s see. (BTW, I love this:) Archie Punjabi as Mother with makeup to make her have a few wrinkles and graying hair, and, Brad Pitt as hero, in soft-focus to make him look a little younger. Shabana Azmi as as Mother’s mother. Glenn Close as Mother’s mother-in-law. Priyanka Chopra as the Baby Sister, with makeup to make her look…
I’m Not Really a Fancaster
How am I going to get around fancasting, I thought to myself when I saw this topic months ago. Surely I will think of something clever. Fancasting is the fun daydreaming that some writers do where they mentally cast a certain actor or actress as their characters in a maybe someday movie. Fancasting can be a convenient way to solidify what your character looks like, or what kind of mannerisms they might…
[News Flash] February 17, 2019
Thank you so much to yesterday’s guest, Bushra Rehman! If you haven’t already, enter the #DebBallGiveaway to win a copy of Marianna’s Beauty Salon. You can enter by sharing our post on Facebook and/or retweeting the following tweet (make sure you follow @DebutanteBall on Twitter too!): “Don’t Compromise.” Bushra Rehman on the revolutionary power of writing + GIVEAWAY of Marianna’s Beauty Salon. RT to enter the giveaway! https://t.co/rGxB5DNHZl pic.twitter.com/mf6ob9LCh3 — The…
“Don’t compromise.” Bushra Rehman on the revolutionary power of writing + GIVEAWAY of Marianna’s Beauty Salon
This week, we are thrilled to welcome Bushra Rehman, author of novel Corona and poetry collection Marianna’s Beauty Salon (May 2018, Sibling Rivalry Press). Bushra’s work, which I first came across as a college student while I was living far from home, was like nothing I’d ever read before. Despite writing about the gritty realities of New York City with exquisite authenticity, her writing overflows with so much empathy and compassion that…
Dear Lucy Maude
In many ways, The Dream Peddler is a love letter to L. M. Montgomery. I can’t think of any author whose work I spent more time reading during my adolescence. Eventually I collected every novel she ever wrote, and read many of them over and over. Back then I never gave any thought to the opportunities to read something new that I was squandering every time I picked…
What Do Writers Really Love?
I would like to be able to say that what I love most about writing is being able to share it with other people… but I don’t think that’s actually true. This week my short story “Ocean Jumper” was published on Joyland Magazine. The story, at only 4,000 words long, took many rounds of workshops and revisions to complete. In fact, its first iteration was written for a workshop hosted…
Writing What You Love
I often say I don’t love writing, I love having written. As I’ve refined my process and gotten more confident as a writer, I’m learning to love the act of writing a bit more. But that statement was definitely true for my debut. Writing Temper was a long, painful process. There was crying, tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth. I wondered—not just once, many times—whether I should quit. But something…
Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: Love-hate relationship
Aloha! What I like about my debut novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues: it’s short. Also, I think it’s full of suspense. What I love about writing in general: I get to tell stories, I get to try out new writing techniques. I get to read books about craft. I get to write poems. I get to attend writing conferences and workshops, where I meet other writers and poets…
Love Letters to Fictional People
This week we have the choice to talk about what we love about our debut novels or what we love about writing in general. I’ve already gone on at length about why I love writing, but I’ve rarely confronted what I love about my own book – at least not in such a blatant and forthright way. Since it’s just a little over a month until publication now, this would…
