I have had such a ride this year in publishing The Goddess Twins! There’s no way I will ever forget this journey of launching my debut novel – it has stretched me more than I ever thought possible in a multitude of directions. Out of all the highs and lows, I feel most grateful for the reader feedback. After years of work and insecurity and secret hopes about what this…
I’m so pleased to present Alia Volz, our guest blogger this week! She is the author of Home Baked, a humorous memoir of a ‘sticky’ family business, which launched April 20th. I met Alia at AWP, pre:pandemic, and her energy and storytelling talent have burned bright in my mind since. I’m honored she will share some stories with us. About Alia Volz: Author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and…
I honestly feel like my editing process, while admittedly draining, was pretty positive. I never felt like my final editor hated the book, and I have heard some horror stories of writers who felt their editor was not honoring their book in the editing process! I am super grateful for my editing team at SparkPress and their confidence in my writing ability and in the strength of the story of…
I am excited to introduce our guest author for this week, Suzanne Nugent! Suzanne Nugent is a writer committed to exploring women’s lives and relationships through poignant comedy and drama. She holds a dual degree in journalism and film from UMass Amherst and studied screenwriting at UCLA. She was shortlisted for the prestigious Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting and has received accolades from the Denver Film Festival and the San…
I am pleased to introduce Martina Reaves to the Debutante Ball this week! Martina Reaves grew up in a Navy family and lived in thirty-four places before she finally settled in her current home in Berkeley. She became a mediator in 1986 and in 2007, she dropped writing legal documents and began writing fiction and memoir. She loves creating serenity in her home with her wife, Tanya, and their son,…
Recently, I read a post on someone who found out that not everyone has a running inner dialogue in their minds. I was as shocked as the original poster at this discovery. My mind has always been a chatterbox; I just assumed it was the same for everyone! My inner world is constantly questioning, observing, judging, apologizing, and taking stock. I’m like a ringmaster, struggling to bring peace to a…
I have a love-hate relationship with scenes that establish setting of the story. I find these scenes the hardest to write, but also the most rewarding. When I write them well, my readers tell me that they feel as if they are there, perched somewhere in the scene itself, having a bird-eye view of the action. They can visualize the scene, experience it along with the characters. Setting is the…
Oooh, I love this game! If they made The Goddess Twins into a film, here’s my dream for who would work well with casting, directing and rating: Director – Ava DuVernay – I loved what she did with A Wrinkle in Time, and I feel confident she could reflect the goddess dynasty vibes from behind the lens through to the big screens. Rating – PG13 (it is YA after all!)…
I’ll be honest, friends, the concept of personal branding used to genuinely frighten me. I related branding to ‘the aim to sell something to an audience’, so personal branding sounded like selling myself to the world. I, of the natural introvert clan, do not seek to sell myself to others. That sounded exhausting and false. And so, I was shut down to the concept for quite a while. But a…
There are definite challenges to the path of being a creative writer. A lot of them are so widely agreed as horrible, that most humans are against the entire profession because of them! I love when I’ll meet a new human and I tell them I’m a writer, and they’ll immediately tell me how the have an idea for a screenplay or a novel and any day now it might…
