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Our podcast guest this week is Hadley Leggett (All They Ask is Everything, Lake Union, August 2024). We discuss the intensive research Hadley did to learn about the foster system, how she changed from first to third POV and the difference in made in the novel's narrative voice, and how winning the Rising Star contest help her find an agent. Then we delve into the collaborative process after signin...

This week's guest is Melissa Collings (The False Flat, Montlake/Amazon publishing, June 2024). Melissa talks about learning to filter conflicting feedback from an early writing group that stifled her flow, how she edited her debut as though it was someone else's, and how she's a fickle fan of social media. Don't miss the end where Melissa describes finding your "why" as a writer, and how writing a...

Our guest this week is Kim McCollum (What Happens in Montana, Black Rose Writing, January 2024). Kim discusses how writing was her first love but she was told it wasn't a "practical career", how imposter syndrome interfered with her writing process and how she dealt with it, and how the best writing advice she received was to write the ending early on so you know where you're going. And don't miss...

This week's guest is Wendy Haller (The Flannigan Girls, Stillwater River Publications, June 2024). Because Wendy's debut centers around sisterhood, we discuss sibling bonds, birth order research, and the experts she turned to both professionally and in her personal life when writing An author who writes out of order and skips around in various genres (she's written both a children's book series, a...

My guest this week is Catherine Matthews (Releasing the Reins, indie published, June 2024). Catherine describes writing a first draft of your debut as "building the airplane while flying it" but got lots of help and support from various writing groups she joined and classes she took. Her mash-up novel blends western, women's fiction, and mystery genres as well as a complicated structure with dual...

This week's guest is Jaclyn Westlake (Dear Dotty, Avon Books/Harper Collins, June 2024). Jaclyn signed up for Stanford's 2-year Novel Writing Course and emerged with the first draft of her debut, a humorous women's fiction centered on a young woman finding her true path following the example of an unconventional aunt. After querying over a hundred agents, Jaclyn received offers from several, and l...

 Our guest this week is Amy Dressler (How to Align the Stars, Egret Lake Books, June 2024). Amy's biggest challenge in writing her debut was finding the self-confidence to believe she was qualified to tackle a beloved Shakespeare story and update it for our current time. She was helped in that effort by a supportive critique group and a brand-new publisher who took a chance on her after a fluke me...

This week's guest is Darlene Corbett (Visible, WordCrafts Press May 2024). A psychotherapist for over 30 years, Darlene used a therapy group as a stepping-off point to her debut, featuring five people with disparate challenges and a counselor with problems of her own. We discuss the misconceptions people have about therapy, how she used contest entries to get valuable early feedback, and how a cha...

In this special podcast episode we feature the five finalists for WFWA's 2025 Rising Star Award for unpublished debut women's fiction in a roundtable discussion about their manuscripts, their greatest challenges as new writers, how the organization has helped them in their writing journey, and where they'd like to be five years from now. They also share a glimpse into their books and what inspired...

Our guest this week is Nancy Taber (A Sea of Spectres, Acorn Press, May 2024). A former member of the Canadian military and now an academic, Nancy's debut novel was inspired by her own family history as well as the culture and folklore of Prince Edward Island. A three-person POV covering distinctly different time periods, the story was restructured several times before publishing in its current fo...

This week's guest is Shayla Dugan (Learning to Swim, Egret Lake Books, May 2024). We discuss how adding humor can provide a more grounded emotional experience for a reader. what it's like writing a character at a life stage you haven't yet experienced, and how a background in helping professions like nursing, social work, and psychology contributes to understanding complex family dynamics in a nov...

Our guest this week is Linda Sachse (Inheriting the Shackelford Ranch, indie published, February 2024). Linda, who switched from romance to women's literature with this book, discusses the difference between the two and how she went about learning the tropes of this new genre. We explore the getaway writing retreats she creates with her best writing buddy, why she decided to self-publish, and her...

 This week's guest is L. L. Kirchner (Florida Girls, indie published, May 2024). We discuss taking fascinating historical facts and weaving them into a fictionalized narrative, deciding what to leave out and what to highlight, and how getting media attention can often come through developing tangential talks related to your novel's time period or themes. (in her case, the Florida Mafia and swimsui...

This week our guest is Lisa Fellinger (The Serendipity of Catastrophe, indie published, March 2024). Lisa's educational background in mental health counseling has proved handy as she moved in her current work as a book coach, developmental editor, and debut novelist, since digging deeper into what makes a character tick is one of the biggest problems she sees in her client's manuscripts. We discus...

Our podcast guest this week is Lucille Guarino (Elizabeth's Mountain, Black Rose Press, March 2024). We discuss how this book, which came to her in a dream, launched her second career as a writer, how she teamed up with her small publisher to publicize it, and how one of her most successful strategies was entering writing contests, bringing not only recognition but also outside validation. We cove...

 This week our guest is Carolyn McBride (The Cicada Spring: A Potomac Shores Novel, indie published, April 2024). Hear how her parents' dream house finally became reality—in the pages of Carolyn's debut novel. We discuss the argument in favor of getting an MFA in Creative Writing, how publishing on her own does not necessarily mean not ever pursuing a traditional deal, how personal appearances hav...

Our guest this week is Susan Wadds (What the Living Do, Regal House Publishing, March 2024). Susan describes her biggest writing challenge as taking all the disparate pieces of her story and organizing/structuring them into a coherent whole and shares the various techniques she's tried (including an atelier in France!). Later we delve into how cultivating dream agents can pay off and the one thing...

This week we welcome Jann Everard (Blue Runaways, Stonehewer Books, March 2024) to the podcast. In a switch-up to our regular fare of novelists, Jann's women's fiction debut is a collection of twelve short stories instead and we spend time talking about how one goes about first picking the selections (including looking at themes and cohesion), then ordering them for flow and pace, and finally the...

Our guest this week is Melissa Bacon (Through Her Lens, Atmosphere Press, April 2024). What if you aren't setting out to build a career as an author but instead have one fascinating book you're dying to write? Where most of the writers on the pod hope to write more books, Melissa, a fine art photographer and statistician, took 10 years to research and write her historical novel set in Britain duri...

This week we welcome Gail Priest to the podcast (Soul Dancing, Red Adept Publishing, May 2024) Gail comes out of a theatre background and her previous work included plays so the first thing she writes is all the dialogue, then goes back and adds in scene, description, action, and all the rest of the connecting tissue. Her debut is a tale of an unusual love triangle with more than a hint of magic r...

 My guest this week is Jayna Sheats (Hanna's Ascent, Bedazzled Ink Publishing, June 2023). Growing up a poor boy in rural Colorado, Jayna went on to receive a Ph. D. in Chemistry from Stanford, founded 3 companies, and holds several patents, but her biggest achievement was embracing her core identity as a trans woman 20 years ago and writing a literary novel that explores the trauma and triumphs w...

My guest this week is Micki Berthelot Morency (The Island Sisters, BHC Press, June 2023). Her book is a perfect adjunct for Women's Fiction Week as her inspiration for putting pen to paper was to give voice to the often-unheard from victims of physical and mental abuse—women she encountered growing up in Haiti as well as women she worked with in her career as a care manager in the U.S. We explore...

My guest this week is Marcy Lane (A Mercy of Widows, indie published, August 2023). Hear how two life events – serving on a jury and losing a partner – formed the basis of Marcy's debut novel. We discuss the MAID initiative in Canada (Medical Assistant in Dying), her very personal reason for determining early on to self-publish, and how her second book is springing not from what she knows but what...

Our guest this week is Rosey Lee (The Gardins of Edin, Waterbrook Press, January 2024). Rosey, whose alter ego is as a float physician and health equity advocate, first began with flash fiction, which eventually helped her complete a rough draft of her novel in only 6 weeks. We discuss finding an agent and publisher for crossover "Christian" fiction, her use of a mental health sensitivity reader,...

This week we talk with Lorraine Norwood (The Solitary Sparrow, Atmosphere Press, February 2024). Lorraine fell in love with the Middle Ages at a young age and carried that interest paired with her love of research into adulthood where, as a young mother, she started writing a book about a fictional peasant girl who aspired to be the first woman doctor in 14 th century England, a novel which took h...