Congratulations to our winner of our #DebBallGiveaway of The Frame-Up. Thank you so much to yesterday’s guest, Desiree Cooper! If you haven’t already, enter the #DebBallGiveaway to win a copy of Know The Mother. You can enter by sharing our post on Facebook and/or retweeting the following tweet (make sure you follow @DebutanteBall on Twitter too!): Interview with Desiree Cooper, Author of Know the Mother @DebutanteBall #ClassOf2020 #guest #author @descooper…
Interview with Desiree Cooper, Author of Know the Mother
I am so excited to welcome Desiree Cooper to The Debutante Ball. Desiree and I are both Kimbilio fellows. Kimbilio is a national residency for fiction writers from the African diaspora. Desiree is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, former attorney and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. Her debut collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, is a 2017 Michigan Notable Book that has won numerous awards, including 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award. Cooper’s…
On Having — and Doing It All
I used to date this famous author — it was when he was actually on the cusp of being famous — and he would take two weeks off from all of life to write. All of life. Including me! He would hunker down in the library and not have any social obligations just to write his literary fiction. I guess he didn’t have to make a living. Or hang out…
Balancing Writing, Work, and Life
When I say that I’m a writer, people often assume, “Oh, you must write a lot, every day!” For sure, there are some writers who do, who commit to morning pages, or who write just before bed, or who have scheduled blocks at a regular time. But I have found my writing energies are hard to pin down to a distinct rhythm or schedule. I do not write every day,…
I don’t do balance.
I don’t do balance. I mean, I wish I did. I’d like to. A balanced life seems appealing, in its own special way—tranquil and well-ordered, like an apartment lovingly curated by Marie Kondo. I’m not being clever or facetious. I’d love to live in a place like that. Life would unfold in shades of delightful Instagram pink, in eustress rather than stress, in coffee mugs on back porches, in variations…
Balance? What Balance?
We’re writing about balance this week, and, gosh, I sure hope no one clicked through today hoping for an advice column. The unfortunate truth is, I have very little sense of balance. I go-go-go, basically until I have some kind of health problem or mini breakdown. This has been a life-long pattern, and though it’s occurred to me many times to try to be different than how I am, I…
In the Face of Illness, Balancing Writing, Work, and Life
On May 1st I entered a diagnostic imaging center to undergo a biopsy. For the procedure, I had to lie face down in a tunnel MRI machine and not move for close to two hours. I was rolled in and out of the tunnel throughout the procedure and had to endure the obnoxiously loud screeching and honking noises of the machine’s magnetic fields as well as the whirring motor of…
Interview with Meghan Scott Molin, Author of The Frame Up and The Queen Con
I am so excited to welcome Meghan Scott Molin to The Debutante Ball! Meghan and I share an agent (the excellent Joanna MacKenzie), and I was on the preorder train for both of Meghan’s published novels, The Frame-Up and The Queen Con. These books truly have something for everyone: smart writing, clever mysteries, swoon-worthy romance, and the most wonderful nerdy bad-ass main character, MG Martin. Meghan promises a third book…
My Bumpy Path to Publication
When I was pregnant and so nervous about it — I’d had previous losses — the doctor told me I wouldn’t be happy until I have the baby in my arms. And so it will be with publication. I am “pregnant” now — with a baby ready for publication, but this baby’s a book. I suspect I won’t really believe it until I am holding it (her?) in my hands….
The Path to Publication for The Goddess Twins
What is that thing they say about luck? That it’s when preparation meets opportunity? Then yes, this is the lucky story of how my novel, The Goddess Twins, found its path to publication. When I finished my novel, there was no sudden feeling of completion. I was mentally exhausted and dizzyingly proud, but I knew it needed to be edited. Then edited again. Then possibly another fifteen rounds of more…
