Hear us Roar

Elissa and I discuss how her book was informed by her lived experience of having MS as well as going through ALICE training at her job, how the Twitter events Pitch Wars and PitMad led to her finding an agent, how she wrote 2 other books before clicking with the third, and how her best marketing move has been interfacing with readers in private FB groups. Elissa is a former journalist who now work...

Libby Hubscher describes her writing process as seeing pivotal scenes, fully formed, in her head, then writing in and around those to fill in the missing pieces. Libby landed an agent through a Twitter connection but hadn't fully realized there was a bigger hurdle ahead – being on submission and ultimately not finding a publisher. Her first six novels, some contemporary romance, some literary fict...

Debra and I discuss how her book, featuring two sisters from Mexico who cross the border illegally to find their father, avoided the controversy that enveloped American Dirt through her attention to authenticity, her background with immigrant groups, and her use of well-vetted sensitivity experts. Another highlight of Debra's writing journey with Luz was winning Story Circle's  Sarton Book Award f...

Our latest interview is with Sarah Penner (The Lost Apothecary, Park Row/Harper Collins, March 2021). Starting with the high-concept hook of an apothecary who provides women in 18th century London the means to take revenge on predatory men, Sarah received offers of representative from half the agents she queried and sold her book in one day.  A true-life success story, she landed a spot on the NY...

Jill's dual time-line debut is loosely based on her grandmother's story of life during the depression and finding her way into a creative career, much the way Jill has since leaving her high-tech career. And if there ever was a testimonial for what the Women's Fiction Writer's Association can offer a novice writer, Jill's story qualifies – she's a member of a critique group, she's participating in...

Hear how an unexpected encounter in a grocery store line became the impetus for Christina Consolino's novel and how she did a major rewrite late in the process to give both her POV characters more agency. We also delve into her decision to publish with a small press, how her best marketing tool has been word of mouth advertising from groups like WFWA, and about our mutual love for the November phe...

We discuss KD's debut, a fictionalized version of a small-town murder in the late 1920's that wound up garnering world-wide attention.and took place only two counties over from KD's home base in southwestern Wisconsin. KD credits the advice she got from a former student as well as support from local bookstores and mentoring from women authors in our association with giving her the support she need...

Jeannee delves into her love for the rich heritage of Afghanistan, which forms the backdrop of her debut and how, even at an early age, teachers singled her stories out for praise, so she's always considered herself a writer despite years as a professor as well as a photographer. You'll learn how she re-wrote her book several times based on feedback from both agents and other writers and why she o...

Beatryce and I discuss about how she purposely wanted to write a book about boomers finding a soulmate rather than millennials, how she found the perfect hybrid press to teach her about launching a debut, How she lets her characters take her on a roller-coaster ride if they want, and her unique technique for capturing those novel ideas that come to all of us at 4 in the morning.   Beatryce Ruby ha...

Gina spoke to us from Australia only hours after a major earthquake shook her town, but she's used to living in danger zones. In fact, her real-life experience of living in Baghdad at the time of Hussein's toppling and discovering a good friend was an informant for the Iraqi government was the springboard for Gina's debut which subsequently became a Target Book of the Month pick. Moving from her p...

Even though her fiction often has speculative and magical elements (she's a life-long fan of monsters and snakes) Tiffany considers her primary goal as an author to dive deep into the "why" people behave the way they do, rather than contriving intricate plots. When it came to publishing, she took a gamble and went with a small publisher just starting out that she heard about through a member annou...

Elizabeth and I discuss her experience with PitchWars (thumbs up), losing her first agent (thumbs down) and how she had to segment her marketing approach to appeal to divergent audiences (historical fiction, steampunk, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and yes, women's fiction) since her debut didn't fit neatly into one genre. Even though she signed with a small publisher, her novel would up topping the c...

Shail  Rajan woke up on December 9 th , after a difficult few months for her family, and decided to publish the novel she'd had in the drawer for years. And not just sometime in the future after she'd gotten an agent and found a publisher, but that very day . She followed the KDP instructions step-by-step, worked with her teenage daughter to fashion a cover, and before the sun went down, she hit p...

This week's guest is L. Bordetsky-Williams (Forget Russia, Tailwinds Press, December 2020) whose historical fiction debut is framed around many of her family's experiences from 1900-1980 during the Russian Revolution, the pogroms in Ukraine, and her relatives' eventual immigration to America, and later return to their mother country once the depression hit in 1931. She's a big believer that we're...

Christina comes out of a copy-editing background but caught the novel-writing bug when a vivid dream presented her with a story she couldn't shake. She believes young writers shouldn't be afraid to write the book they'd want to read and that an author owes it to herself to push the envelope in terms of imagination, sensuality, and intricate plot lines instead of following trends and standard trope...

After years of non-fiction and business writing, Judith Teitelman fell in love with the more creative side of the craft after a friend dragged her to a regular writing group. In this interview, we discuss how her magical realism tale is an amalgam of both her German grandmother's life story, a long-forgotten journal from an early relationship, and Judith's longtime interest in eastern religion. An...

In this interview, Kathy and I discuss how writing this book meant Kathy had to revisit painful memories from her own childhood as well as the breakup of her marriage, why she decided to take the hybrid route rather than endure the long wait of traditional publication, and her goal to write a book to not only satisfy her creative spirit but also to help others going through the same life challenge...

This novel was eight years in the making after starting life as an award-winning short story but Joyce felt like she had to grow both as a writer and as a student of human psychology before she could do it justice.  She described parting ways with her first agent and switching to a small publisher as well as tips to increase pre-orders and suggestions for turning a novel to a possible screenplay....

It's our 100th podcast and it's with Denny S. Bryce (Wild Women and the Blues, Kensington Books, March 2021). A former professional dancer as well as a marketing entrepreneur, Denny first got acquainted with agents who judged RWA writing contests she entered and eventually chose her agent over others because she was much more interested in Denny's over-all writing and career goals rather than with...

Kathryn's book got a new cover only days before release and published in the middle of not only the pandemic but the post-election furor and the post office debacle (it took some readers two months to receive their books). This historical novel is set in northern California in the 1960's, with the first stirrings of the computer age (Kathryn's brother was a classmate of Steve Wozniak), a rich Sili...

In this interview with Melissa Hunter, we discuss how this story, a fictional quasi-memoir of her grandmother's experiences as a teenager in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was one Melissa felt compelled to write but couldn't fully embrace until she became a mother herself. Through the years, she wrote it as a series of joined short stories and even a screenplay until finally settling on wom...

Florence's background in social work as well as her own large extended family informed her decision to write a wide-ranging saga, spanning a century-worth of events, secrets, and history of a close-knit Jewish immigrant family with themes of resilience, mental health challenges, and how decisions made at a point in time cycle through and effect subsequent generations. After finding it difficult to...

When Geeta Schrayter first signed with a small press ten years ago, little did she realize she'd have to eventually wrest back control of her debut, rework the cover and formatting including left-out pages, and re-issue it on her own through Ingram a good decade later. Her story of perseverance will inspire writers whose books deserve a second chance at success in a marketplace where indie publish...

Listen to my interview with Densie Webb where we discuss the pluses and minuses of working with a small press, the value of writer networks, how readers often prefer true-to-life endings over happily-ever-afters, and how not every writer works best with an outline. Densie Webb (not Denise) has spent a long career as a freelance nonfiction writer and editor, specializing in health and nutrition, an...

In my interview with Bhaswati, we discuss how her grandmother's short stories about life as a Pakistani during the partition of India in 1947 provided the seed for her story, how she had to drop a fascinating plot line because she could not locate the necessary historical research, and the difference between the non-fiction writing she's done throughout her career and the tools she needed to learn...