Craft

Interview with Lisa Barr, Author of The Unbreakables PLUS BOOK GIVEAWAY

Saturday, September 14, 2019
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  Lisa Barr is the author of The Unbreakables (HarperCollins) a delicious, sharp novel about a Chicago woman who jets off to France after her “perfect” marriage collapses, putting the broken pieces of herself back together while rediscovering her own joie de vivre—a lust for life, art, and passion. Artful, feminist, and emotionally gripping, The Unbreakables is a remarkable tribute to a woman’s strength in the face of heartbreak and adversity.        What’s one book that made…

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When The Muse Calls With Inspiration — You Listen

Friday, September 13, 2019
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You always hear people talking about muses whispering in their ear, as if in a trance, or their “characters” speaking to them. Well, I’m not a novelist so I don’t have characters to take over the heavy lifting of writing, but I will say that it feels like someone else wrote up my book proposal. I had been working for a while on a memoir about my infertility, based on…

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Bluebeard’s Drawer

Friday, July 26, 2019
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    I have two manuscripts in the drawer. Although they’re not actually in a drawer, and I have no idea where they went. They are so old now that I know not if any current software could even read them, so I’ve pretty much abandoned the idea of ever looking at them again. This may be for the best. The first time I wrote a book, I sat down…

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Just Write and Other Groups

Friday, June 14, 2019
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    I’ve moved around a lot in the past decade, and I’ve had to cull my writing friends from a number of different sources. The first time I joined an actual writing group was when I moved to the outskirts of Philadelphia and found one through Meetup that was only a few minutes from my children’s school. In many ways, Just Write changed my life. I had started a…

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The Manuscripts In Lara Lillibridge’s Drawer

Tuesday, August 7, 2018
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  I write a lot. I devote the majority of every day to writing, reading, and editing. (It really helps to have a work-and-home SigO who is always working.) I know I’m both incredibly lucky to be able to do so and also incredibly boring by most people’s standards.  I get antsy when I’m away from my work for too long. Even when I travel—and I travel a lot—I write…

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Research in Memoir

Tuesday, July 24, 2018
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  On the one hand, it’s easy to discount the need for research in memoir. I mean, who knows your life better than you do? There was actually a good bit of research that went into crafting Girlish.  I spoke at length with my siblings, various family members and had many conversations with both my childhood friends and some of my parents’ friends. I read a lot of memoir and poetry…

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The Quotes That Got Me Through Publishing my Memoir

Tuesday, December 12, 2017
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This was my laptop’s wallpaper through out the months of crafting my memoir:   I have posted it on Facebook too many times to count. When I wake in the middle of the night short of breath from anxiety, when the idea of my memoir coming into the world seems too much to bear, I chant it over and over. Your silence will not protect you. I had first read…

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Guest Blogger Adria Cimino on Character Likability

Saturday, May 21, 2016
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Author Adria Cimino is the author of several novels, including her latest release, THE PERFUMER’S SECRET. The quest for a stolen perfume formula awakens passion, rivalry and family secrets in the fragrant flower fields of the South of France… Perfumer Zoe Flore travels to Grasse, perfume capital of the world, to collect a formula: her inheritance from the family she never knew existed. The scent matches the one worn by…

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A Memory of Senses

Monday, May 16, 2016
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I have a wonky memory. I have purchased many novels, and have read twenty or thirty pages in only to realize that I had read the book before. I forget character’s names and movie titles and basically every plot point. My lack of memory goes for my own life as well as the stories I consume, so when I read that this week’s theme was childhood memories, I felt at…

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The Superpower of Seeing Beauty

Monday, May 9, 2016
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I have a secret to tell you. I have a superpower. And you can have it, too.* My superpower is that I see beauty everywhere. Now, I’m not talking about seeing beauty in a saccharine, Pollyanna kind of way, or in a Lego Movie Everything is Awesome way, or in a hippy, it’s all good kind of way—especially not the last one. You don’t need to know me very long…

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