Damn, these debutante ladies are really teaching me some stuff. Constantly reminding me that I need to get out of my literary fiction rut and read books like this more often. This book is absolutely page-turningly fascinating and delicious in every way. Layne’s characters are so real that it feels like they might leap off the page and bite me, and I’m not sure if the bite will…
I’m so thrilled the world is now able to get their hands on Layne Fargo’s excellent novel, Temper. It is a masterful thriller, suspenseful and so well-written. It deserves all the accolades it’s going to get. I was hooked from the opening pages, it was cinematic! And I felt I was witnessing an epic battle between the two main characters, Kira and Joanna. These are two strong-willed, deeply-flawed women and…
Beware of jealousy. It creeps up on a debut writer like that unexpected knife-wielding plot twist that she threw into chapter sixteen just for fun, never considering how it might feel if the knife was suddenly plunged into her sensitive debut heart. Or something like that. When I first noticed that we were going to cover the topic of jealousy this week, I pictured my post being thousands (and…
How will I limit this post to a reasonable length? The list of authors I fangirl over is long. Really long. So I’m just going to start with those at the top and stop when I think you may have passed out from reading too much gushing. You may remember, way back in September when our group took over this blog, that our very first guest…
A debut year for any writer is exciting and joyful. And it can also be stressful, frightening, frustrating, and lonely. In my little corner of the world, it’s been hard for me to find other writers to connect with, although I’m lucky to have a small circle. Even if you live in a big city, though, with lots of different writers’ groups available, the odds of…
This week’s topic: “MFA vs NYC vs Choose Your Own Adventure.” Aloha. What if my writing education has been all three? I confess I’m a bit of a professional student. I love to be in a class, I love to have homework and get direction. The underlying motivation all throughout my writing life has been my desire to find community and gain skills, to chip away at a steady pace….
Aloha. I started writing poetry when I was nine years old. I remember writing in bursts. I had a wonderful teacher that year, and she was encouraging us to write beyond what the class assignments required us to do for the poetry unit. I first learned about haiku and sonnets and I was hooked! I wrote anywhere and anytime, and on any surface — from napkins to spiral notebooks. By…
…It’s my birthday, too. On Tuesday this week, when my book officially came out, I also turned forty-four years old. Now, I am not a person who believes in signs or astrology or anything like that, but I am sort of a neat freak. I like it when things line up. So this little coincidence really does please me no end. I’ve received many wonderful and thoughtful birthday gifts…
As a Deb this year, I’ve had the enormous privilege of working with four amazing, super-talented writers. And I’m so pleased to be able to finally sing the praises of Martine Fournier Watson’s debut novel, The Dream Peddler. I love this novel so much! It is dreamy, spooky, suspenseful. A sleepy town awakens when a young boy goes missing and the Dream Peddler arrives. The intertwining stories between the townspeople…
In my novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, I tried to capture the real world — the nonfiction world of the main character — from her earliest memories to the day she is shot by police and lays bleeding in her driveway. It’s a short novel. I tried to capture what she remembered, what she lived through — it was a pleasure to include such iconic moments as Woodstock…
