Hear us Roar

Mining her personal knowledge of the Balkans from a long-ago adventure, Michele's debut braids historical events with a young woman's personal journey to find her roots, a journey which rang to the author personally because of her own explorations into her own Jewish cultural heritage. Praised for its lyrical beauty, her manuscript nevertheless was deemed "hard to market" before finding a home wit...

Anita, an Ottawa resident, describes the difference between Canadian writers and those in the US, how she channeled her own grief experience into her main character, how she believes writing is rewriting, and how embracing bookstagrammers was her single best marketing decision.   Kushwaha's road to publication included a fulfilling career in academia, where she studied human geography at Carleton...

).  Barbara describes how her age influenced her decision to go with a small press, how her year-long engagement with reader Facebook groups proved invaluable to her book launch, and the story behind how she landed a spot on the USA Today best-seller list four months after her book release. And as a final tidbit, how a random remark she made on Twitter led to a top-drawer blurb. For many years, Ba...

J.L. is new to writing but she's determined to build a career, so if you're a younger writer, or have a teenager interested in what it takes, she'll inspire you to start right now learning your craft and putting your story down on paper. Plus when was the last time you heard a writer say they actually liked the querying process? Jenna Hanger writing as J.L. Cole resides on an ranch in Alberta, CA...

If you're a pantser, this interview is for you!  Susan is squarely in the camp of letting your characters tell you their story and she's got the books to prove it.  She's a prolific romance novelist who is now venturing into women's fiction, specifically historical tales from late 1800's America.  Her best advice? Stay true to your unique vision.  Every trope started with a writer who said "but wh...

Learn how the convergence of knowing someone in a women's prison, the popularity of Orange is the New Black, and overheard conversations at her law firm about whistleblower monetary rewards came together to inspire this best-selling novel which her agent sold in less than three weeks.   A.H. Kim is an immigrant, practicing attorney, cancer survivor, community volunteer, and proud mother of two son...

In this podcast, Tricia and I discuss how a question her daughter posed was the "what if" inspiration behind her debut, how her background in screenwriting both helped and provided challenges when she turned to novel-writing and how, despite the fact she'd landed a top agent, she eventually decided to self-publish.   Tricia's writing career started in 1992 after the tragic loss of her brother to A...

In my interview with Amanda Brainerd, we discuss how her debut novel started out as an oral history before morphing into a fictional examination of her years at an elite boarding school and then NYC in the mid '80's, how Fran Leibowitz was an early fan, and a fascinating story of the evolution of her book cover design. Amanda lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her husband and three chi...

In our interview with Lindsey Rogers Cook, we discuss  how she decided after a year to leave her first agent because they clashed over editorial changes, how her training as a journalist for first US News & World Report and now The New York Times, informs her fiction writing, and how she was able to take two months off from her day job on "Book Leave" to finish her second novel which releases next...

Desperate Housewives meet Mean Girls in Dr. Stephanie Newman's debut novel, which examines mother-daughter relations, the pervasive nature of social media in kid's lives and school bullying.  Stephanie, a successful psychotherapist, discusses how she had to learn the difference between writing therapy notes and writing fiction, what it's like to debut on a social media black-out day, and using blo...

During her career as a high school English teacher, Pamela always enjoyed the units on writing more than those on literature so when she retired, she put her skills to use to pen her debut novel. It's the story of a woman hoping to build bridges between the tourist population and the long-time residents of a small island off the coast of Florida and in the process, discovering it's impossible to e...

Twenty years ago, Anju Gattani saw a fully-formed scene in her dreams and it turned into the last scene in Book 2 of what is planned as a 5-book series, Winds of Fire.  She tells how she cycled through four agents and 200 rejections before finding the perfect publisher (Scarsdale Publishing), and the exciting news of her story being optioned for a long-form television series by by Justin Shenkarow...

Tracey's debut novel centers around Emily Roebling, a real life woman and ardent suffragette, who honchoed the building of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband found himself unable to complete the project. In this podcast we discuss her decision to postulate an affair between Emily and P.T. Barnham based on three documented facts from the history of New York in the 1880's, how she initially querie...

Hear how Jacquline uses private Pinterest boards to help flesh out her characters, how she had great fun fashioning her antagonist by channeling every person in her life who'd wronged her, and how her previous work at a health club, with its behind-the-scenes intrigue, inspired the setting for her debut novel.   When not spending her time creating make-believe people and places, Kang lives in Kirk...

In this free-wheeling interview with Carol LaHines we discuss what led her to decide to attempt a novel, pre-Bach musical theory, her best writing advice, and how she injected deadpan humor into a story that centers around her protagonist's grief at the death of his mother. Hers novel was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award.    Carol's fiction has appear...

Diane comes to women's fiction after publishing three romance novels but feeling like this story didn't revolve around a interpersonal relationship so much as a woman discovering her true self through transforming not only her body but her inner essence as well. A big fan of NaNoWriMo, Diane intends to participate again this year and gives new writers this simple piece of advice – just stay in the...

William's debut has been described as Where the Crawdads Sing meets Ghost and definitely fits in the women's fiction/book club fiction space. He shares with me how listening to his editor's ideas resulted in expanding a part of his novel which has since become a moving touchstone for readers. And if you've ever wondered about the differences between a screenplay and a novel, this is the podcast to...

Dianne relates how she began writing to figure out how to integrate emotions into the philosophical theories she had studied and taught as a professor, how she decided to go with a hybrid publisher, and how, while doing research for her book, she learned to play the trumpet and has now "blown her horn" during travels to Paris, Venice, and Tuscany.   Dianne grew up in Missouri and studied philosoph...

A long-time journalist, Lisa began writing her debut novel ten years ago, although her themes of gentrification, intra-racial tensions and the struggle of recent immigrants, told through the eyes of three residents of a Massachusetts community, seemed ripped from the headlines. As Lisa so aptly puts it: "These problems never seem to go away." She found her publisher, a feminist press based in Cana...

Sherri took over a decade to write her debut novel, primarily because life intervened.  With a spouse and three daughters, something always needed to give and that thing was often her book.  Hear how being a finalist in the 2015 Rising Star contest through WFWA helped her hone her manuscript through feedback from agents, urging her to change the novel's structure from a chronological one to one th...

Hear how over a hundred agents rejected Lainey's book, saying they didn't think they could sell a novel about women in the workplace putting aside their conflicts and coming together to support and nurture each other. Lainey's answer to writers who ask her how to get people to review their books will surprise (and probably delight) you.  Her innovative marketing ideas about leveraging the power of...

Marolyn is our first international podcast, coming to us from across the globe in New Zealand, where she lives with her wife and two children.  A journalist from her early twenties, Marolyn decided to try her hand at a novel after the U.S. 2016 election left her frustrated.  Her heroine struggles with whether to stay away from protesting or dive back into life as a full-time activist. Not only did...

If you're thinking of self-publishing, you'll want to listen to Shawn's interview and hear about the professionals she hired to help her launch. This novel centers around long-standing female friendships and one of the most moving aspects of this interview was hearing how book club members have told Shawn that after reading and discussing her book, they felt more comfortable opening up to each oth...

Liz's novel, loosely based on snippets of family lore about her paternal grandfather, encompasses American life in the 1920's in Vermont and is rich in historical detail about early vaudeville and small town America.  She found a home for her novel with a small press which had earlier published several of her short stories. Elizabeth Gauffreau  holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion Unive...

Ever wonder whether your novel would make a good audible book? Kelly's the one to listen to since her book is ONLY available in that format, through Audible Originals. Hear how this came about (she got the offer, THEN found an agent), why Audible thought it was a perfect fit for them (5 POV characters), and how marketing an audiobook both differs and resembles publicizing print and e-book formats....