writing process

Interview with Kirstin Chen and Giveaway for BURY WHAT WE CANNOT TAKE

Saturday, April 20, 2019
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  I could not be more thrilled to welcome this week’s guest, Kirstin Chen, to the debutante ball! Kirstin Chen’s second novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, was named a best book of the year by Entropy, Popsugar, and Book Bub, and a top pick of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners. She has received awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, the…

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You Say It’s Your Birthday…

  …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…

Friday, April 12, 2019
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Researching Dreams

Friday, April 5, 2019
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  I have to admit, the research for The Dream Peddler wasn’t particularly intense, and that’s probably just because I chose not to do tons of research. Despite the historical setting, I had read enough books from the time and learned enough in school to at least sketch out what the world of my characters would be like. I stopped writing now and then to google things like images of…

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Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: A Perfect Day

Tuesday, March 26, 2019
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Aloha. What a perfect day? A day to organize, a day to catch up, a day to relax, a day to write, and a day to read, a day to edit, and another day to read (because you really can’t have enough days to read). So the perfect day is really a week. So…. So there’s no such thing as a perfect day. I may not be able to have…

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Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: The Perfect Assassin is….Well, Perfect

Tuesday, March 19, 2019
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I’m so honored to be with these debutante ball authors this year – terrific writers with stellar books coming out. Today is Kai’s launch day!!!!! K.A. Doore has written a page-turner of a novel: The Perfect Assassin. Happily for all of her readers, it’s the first of a trilogy — so we have a splendid continuation to look forward to. Book Two will be out in October! I’m not your…

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The World of THE DREAM PEDDLER

Friday, March 15, 2019
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    When I was in the stage of getting feedback on early drafts of this book, more than one reader told me they wished I would just come out and say precisely when and where the story takes place. “It’s obviously American,” they said. “Why not just name the town? And why not just say what year it is? Why do we have to guess?” Well, because I said…

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When Shy Writes A Book

Friday, March 8, 2019
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  In some ways, I really had to overcome my personality in order to write a book. I’m a hopeless introvert, so I’m still marveling at how an introvert who doesn’t really want to talk to anyone was ever able to write an entire book full of reasonably believable characters. Especially since I had to come up with a lot of things for them to say. This is a tough…

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Interview with Kristin Wright and Giveaway of LYING BENEATH THE OAKS

  I am absolutely thrilled to welcome our fellow debut author Kristin Wright to the debutante ball this week. Her southern gothic suspense Lying Beneath The Oaks was recently released in January, and I know I’m not the only one who’d been looking forward to that for many months! Kristin is a native Midwesterner and a graduate of Michigan State University and the University of Michigan Law School. She works…

Saturday, March 2, 2019
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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…

Friday, February 15, 2019
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I Thought Branding Was Only For Livestock

Friday, February 1, 2019
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    Publishing my first book in 2019, I often find myself daydreaming about what it must have been like to do this a hundred years ago when there was no internet, no blogosphere, no Twitter or Facebook or Instagram to manage. I don’t know why, because I have absolutely nothing in common with him, but I always picture F. Scott Fitzgerald, scribbling away at his writing desk, blissfully ignorant…

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