Hear us Roar

This week's interview is with Cynthia Bogard (A History of Silence, Atmosphere Press, March 2023). A former university professor, Cynthia's novel features six contemporary women grappling with issues of racism, misogyny, and societal challenges and she brought not only her background in Women's Studies but also sensitivity readers to vet her story. We discussed how the lack of response from agents...

This week we talk to Barbara Bellesi Zito (Lucky Stiff, Literary Wanderlust, January 2023). In an interesting twist to our usual interview, Barbara's debut features a male protagonist but one who exactly fits the WFWA definition of a "main character's emotional journey" as he processes his lottery win and what it means to his work, his family relationships, and his own growth as an individual. Wri...

Our feature podcast guest this week is Kyle Ann Robertson (White Picket Fences, Fulton Books, March 2023). Kyle shares how a children's story she imagined as a "book within a book" for an adult novel morphed into a series of ten published picture books she authored before coming back to her first love of women's fiction. She describes how journaling was her entry into writing and then we discuss t...

This week's guest is Patricia Bernstein (A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower, History Through Fiction, March 2023). The spark for Patricia's story occurred on a trip to Scotland where she heard the story of a noblewoman who used trickery and cunning to rescue her husband from the Tower of London before his execution. We discuss the rabbit hole of research, the challenge of writing dialogue...

In honor of Women's Fiction Day 2024, please join me for a special episode of Hear Us Roar featuring a roundtable discussion between the finalists for the 2023 Star Award for General Fiction – Erin Litteken (The Memory Keeper of Kyiv), Lyn Liao Butler (Red Thread of Fate) and Anna Collins (These Numbered Days). We talk about the genre of women's fiction and the alternative ways of categorizing thi...

This week's guest is Susan Carew (Take the Plunge, indie published, March 2023). Susan, who now resides in Ireland and previously lived for eight years in Spain, took up novel writing during the pandemic, following weekly instructional posts over Instagram by the best-selling author Marian Keyes. An open-water swimmer, Susan decided to create a protagonist with that same interest and has now penne...

This week's guest is Heidi McIntyre (Sea Magic, indie published, February 2023). Heidi's family background with antique shops provided the impetus for her series about a dealer with paranormal powers who undercovers a series of mysteries related to found objects in her small New England town. After trying her hand at a romance, Heidi realized her emphasis on relationships meant she was a women's f...

Our guest this week is Kimberly Young (In the Event of Death, Post Hill Press, February 2024). Tune in for a lively discussion about how Kimberly discovered her book idea of an event planner who morphs her wedding planning business into one for end of life memorials when the 2008 recession hits. We discuss the stable of talented women professionals who aided her in bringing her book into being, fr...

This week we talk to Lisa Williams Kline (Between the Sky and the Sea, DragonBlade Publishing, February 2023). Previously an author of books for younger readers, Lisa decided to switch to adult fiction and she's a proud pantser, even though she admits it takes more time to write without an outline. Her book was inspired by a real-life incident when a luxury liner (dubbed the "Titanic of the South"...

 My guest this week is D. Liebhart (House On Fire, indie published, March 2023). Debra, whose novel examines the turmoil in a family when a mother, struggling with her husband's dementia, asks her daughter for help in ending his life, is a speedy drafter, producing 2500 words per day, but a slow revisor, and a meticulous plotter who is nevertheless open to surprises as she writes. We discuss the c...

This week we're talking to D.K. Silver (The Weight of Flowers, indie published, February 2023). A costume designer for most of her career, Dana is a visual person so vivid descriptions come easily – in fact, the impetus to writing her debut was an image from a dream that was so striking it wouldn't let her go. Not only a terrible speller but severely dyslexic, she struggled in the beginning, produ...

Our guest on the podcast this week is Annie Cathryn (The Friendship Breakup, Alcove Press, February 2023). After three previous attempts at a novel, Annie hit the motherlode when, in four months, she wrote the story of a Mean Girls/Bad Moms mashup. A unique take on what it's like to be ghosted from your friends group as an adult, the novel struck a cord with new imprint Alcove and became one of th...

This week's guest is Audrey Burges (The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone, Berkley, January 2023). Audrey came up with the title for her book first, wrote it in one month during the pandemic, worked with her WFWA mentor to hone her manuscript, then quickly found both her agent and a Big Five imprint to publish it—a true fairy tale for a debut author. We discuss how she wrote humor essays to build a...

Our guest this week is Kimberly McMillan (Never Enough Time, Warren Publishing, January 2023). Kimberly's debut is squarely in the women's fiction genre, exploring the journey of a young girl who loses her single mother, only to discover the father she thought was dead is alive and well with another family in Texas. The book explores not only this new "found" family unit but gives a POV to the ste...

 This week's guest is Caitlin Avery (Life of Cyn, indie published, Dec. 2022). Tune in for one of our podcast's most raw and honest interviews as Caitlin and I discuss her decision to out her high school rapist in the pages of her women's fiction book, her inability to land an agent (who told her "MeToo" books were dead) and her determination to bring secrets like this out of the closet and into t...

Our guest this week is Barbara Boehm Miller (When You See Her, Red Adept Publishing, January 2023). We discuss learning to cut out extraneous back story, why she set her novel in a carnival, and why she chose a plus-size woman for her protagonist. On the marketing side, we talk about how she started out as a lurker on social media and had to get comfortable with what to post. Then we compare notes...

This week's guest is Allyson Rice (The Key to Circus-Mom Highway, indie published, January 2023). Allyson, a multi-hyphenated actor, producer, artist, jewelry designer, and writer penned her debut novel as a screenplay to begin with, then used that as a structured outline for shaping her novel, which falls into the "funny but sad" genre of Carl Hiaasen. Allyson also did her own audiobook narration...

My guest this week is Roxana Motiwalla Trabulsi (Of Mud and Honey, Ten16 Press. January 2023). Her debut is based on her parent's struggles in the late 1960's and early 1970's in Yemen as the country morphed into a Communist regime, her father was jailed as a political prisoner, and her mother and siblings were placed under house arrest. We discuss the emotional toll and responsibility of writing...

This week's guest is Brynn Barineau (Jaguars and Other Game, Orange Blossom Publishing, November 2022). After writing two YA novels that didn't find a publisher, Brynn tried her hand at adult fiction and, writing from her then-home in South America, penned a gender-flipped three musketeers story based in 1809 Brazil when the Portuguese royal court fled Napoleon's army and relocated to Rio. It's fi...

Our guest this week is Patricia Hudson (Traces, Firesign Industries, Univ of Kentucky Press, November 2022). Patricia's historical fiction debut centers around 3 forgotten women—the wife and two daughters of Daniel Boone, the famous explorer and an early "social influencer" who gained fame for opening up the Kentucky area after the Revolutionary War. Patricia, a former free-lance writer, set out n...

This week's guest is Kathy Maresca (Porch Music, Touch Point Press, October 2022) In her debut novel, set in 1950's Gainesville Florida, Kathy utilized stories from her Seminole family history to tap into a story of racial inequities, Southern culture, country music, and religious hypocrisy. Her research included not only books and museums, but also her own memories of working at Six Gun Territory...

Our guest this week is Georgia Day (Of Sand and Bone, Rhapsody Press, November 2022). Hear how a recurring nightmare, complete with a haunting, portentous image, led Georgia to the story that would eventually morph into her speculative fiction novel. Set in a unique world of undulating sand and daily life-and-death struggles, her two female protagonists set out on a journey and Georgia went on her...

This week's guest is Amy Watson (Closer to Okay, Alcove Press, October 2022). Amy and I discuss clinical depression (she and her husband both live with this) and how her goal in writing her debut was to give voice to this little-understood condition and ways to cope with it. Listen for the serendipitous path that led Amy to her agent and eventually to her publisher, how her biggest marketing succe...

Our guest this week is Linda Moore (Attribution, She Writes Press, October 2022). You'll smile at Linda's analogy of how introducing your book to your audience is a lot like offering them chocolate chip cookies and about how men are still getting it wrong in terms of the harassment present in academia.   And if you're interested in marketing to book clubs, you'll enjoy our lengthy discussion about...

This week's guest author is Karen Heenan (Coming Apart, indie published, October 2022). Our discussion ranges from what happens when the characters in your 1930's stand-alone historical novel have more to say (your book turns into a trilogy), what to do when as agent asks you to rewrite your novel in another author's voice (you part ways) to the unexpected and fascinating tidbits you learn when di...