Writing the Uncanny
How do we write a truly scary story? What unsettled us in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House? What tension building secrets did Stephen King employ when drafting the locker room shower scene in Carrie? It wasn’t…
Friday Feast: A Cooling Mist of NaNoWriMo Flavored Novel Writing Advice, How to Review a Trans Book as a Cis Person, Taking Your Writing Deeper, a Reading Guide for Those in Despair about American Politics, and Why Book Pre-Orders Matter
Sometimes, you think: there’s no way I’ll meet this deadline. My brain is fried. My eyes burns. My motivation is at a low point. My fingers feel like fists on the keyboard. And then something magical happens. 12 hours later,…
An Interview with Juliette Fay, author of The Tumbling Turner Sisters
Juliette Fay’s fourth book, The Tumbling Turner Sisters, is the story of four girls who try their hand as an acrobatic act in 1919 vaudeville, in an effort to save their poverty stricken family (Gallery Books 2016). Ultimately it is a…
So, Tell Me About This Novel You’re Writing!
I’m at a dinner party. My partner gestures to me and says to the man we’re making small talk with: “Rose is a writer. In fact, she’s writing a novel!” “Well, isn’t that something!” he begins. I take a sip…
Friday Feast: 10 Books Featuring Subversive Women, 10 Must-Reads for Donald Trump, on Receiving and Accepting Novel Feedback, That Uncomfortable Feeling When Writers Don’t Write, and What Happens When a Debut Author Won’t Join Social Media?
My Grandma Sue lived alone in the middle of a rice field in southern Missouri. The electricity would flicker if the wind blew too hard and the water smelled like lead. She stole all her dad’s savings and ran away…
On Rewriting
Here’s a tip for all aspiring authors: if you can survive rewriting your work, again and again, without collapse, without quitting, you will see your work published. Rewriting is often what separates the unpublished from the published. I attended The…