Historical Fiction Freak-Out
This could be you if you watched Hidden Figures or Dunkirk, had your socks knocked off after reading Crystal King’s Feast of Sorrow or Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, or managed to keep pace with the 166 ghosts in…
Category: Real Life Struggles
When Your Work in Progress Becomes Middle Aged
I never lie about my age, but I’ve started lying about my book’s age. You see, I’ve been working on my novel for so long that it’s getting, well, a bit embarrassing. It wasn’t always this way.
That Western Lens That Filters Our Words
At the Muse and the Marketplace conference a few days ago, someone said American publishers were looking for stories not filtered through the American lens. I almost laughed out loud. Well said, but it was a false statement. I wasn’t…
Timeout for Teachers
Dear Teacher, By this point, you’ve survived the flu, the stomach bug, and emotional outbursts from that one student in your classroom who never, ever misbehaves at home. “No problem,” you tell your principal as you wonder if the bottle…
Young Adult Round-up: The Power of Online YA Police
As an American who’s written a novel about an American girl caught up in political turmoil in Honduras that includes Honduran characters, I’m particularly concerned about controversies like the one blowing up on the Twittersphere over the YA book, A…
An Interview with Shobha Rao, Author of Girls Burn Brighter
Shobha Rao’s stunning novel, Girls Burn Brighter, is just out in paperback (Flatiron, 2018) and you should run, not walk, to your local bookstore and buy a copy. It was named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR…