Hear us Roar

This week's guest is Beth Uznis Johnson (Coming Clean, Regal House, January 2024). Beth turned her lifelong interest in what people's belongings say about them into a novel centered on a cleaning lady at a crossroads and how one week with 5 different households helps her make life-altering decisions. We discuss the value of WFWA's weekly virtual write-ins, how continuing education is a mantra for...

Our guest this week is Kathryn Dodson (Tequila Midnight, indie published, July 2023). We discuss how being a book coach gave her a leg up when she decided to publish on her own, the tricky parts to writing a series in terms of backstory, and the writing process she uses to produce 3 books a year. Hear about her decision to concentrate on building an online audience vs. personal appearances and her...

This week guest is Raven West (Vashti's Daughter, indie published, July 2023). Before there was Esther in the Bible there was Vashti, whose story provided the impetus for Raven's women's fiction novel set in 366 AD. We discuss why sometimes it's good when a book takes a long time to germinate, the difficulty in finding comps for certain novels, why she went the indie route, and the four best piece...

This week's guest is Marie McCurdy (The Wolf Queen, indie published, November 2023). Marie's novel, set in the Year 1 AD was five years in the making and involved a deep dive into historical records dating back to the height of the Roman Empire and its attempted invasion of the Germanic territories of Europe. We discuss the challenges of writing an historical women's fiction about a female charact...

Our podcast guest this week is Sheila Athens ( Neena Lee Is Seeing Things , indie published, January 2024). Sheila and I discuss how her book started with a famous person and a setting near her home and grew from there, how she thinks storytelling differs from writing, and how the thing readers love best about her novel is the older protagonist. Hear why she opted to spend her money on a book coac...

This week's guest is Gayle Brown (A Deadly Game, Black Rose Writing, December 2023). We why you might want to consider hiring a book coach, how a TV show provided the spark for this suspense book, and how Gayle re-wrote her ending numerous times to make sure it hit the sweet spot between satisfying but also surprising. She gives us her take on publishing with the Big Five vs. a smaller press, the...

My guest this week is Olivia Sparrow (Secret of the Sassafras, indie published, October 2023). Olivia's someone who dived into the writing world with the attitude of "I'll figure it out" and has done just that, including initially penning a 175,000 word debut (a Beta Reader taught her about word count), turning to Google and the library for Query Tracker and agent contacts, using Fiverr and Reedsy...

My guest this week is Amy Hagstrom (The Wild Between Us, Lake Union Press, November 2023). If you've ever wondered whether to keep working on a manuscript or put it in a drawer, this episode will resonate with you. Amy's debut was one that got rejected by over a hundred agents, but she kept revising this dual-timeline, dual POV story of lost kids in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and after landing an...

This week's guest is Kerry F. Freeman (Sedona: A Novel, The Wild Rose Press, November 2023). Kerry's book, a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz set in present-day Sedona, was written as an antidote to COVID-isolation and has proved a hit with book clubs as they chase down the Easter Eggs Kerry planted from the original source material, including who's the lion, the tinman, and the scarecrow. We discu...

Our guest this week is Karen Klink (At What Cost, Silence? She Writes Press, October 2023). Karen's novel grew out of her desire to explore bi-sexuality but in an historical setting – in this case, pre-Civil War. We discuss how her writing journey began when she contributed to a fan-fiction internet site and subsequently received encouragement from a writing professor. Unable to find an agent and...

Our guest this week is KJ Fieler (Shadow Runner, Black Rose Press, June 2023). Fieler set out to write a short story for an anthology but soon found her tale ballooning past the standard word count, eventually becoming a 3-book series. We discuss where this epic trilogy belongs on the shelf—it straddles historical fantasy, women's fiction, Victorian adventure and Gaslamp (this last a truly niche g...

This week's guest is Janie Emaus (The Advice Columnist, Bombay Circle Press, October 2023). The inspiration for Janie's book was a flip on the "notes to your younger self" trope as she imagined it's the older protagonist being given life lessons instead. Janie's childhood dream to become a songwriter faded when she discovered she couldn't carry a tune but she soon segued into telling stories, gain...

This week's guest is Cheryl Walsh (Unequal Temperament, American Buffalo Books, September 2023). We discuss her writing process, which entails months of thinking and writing about what she  wants to write about before she starts, and how the concept of unequal temperament in baroque music became the central metaphor for her main character's situation as well as providing her unique title. Our wide...

Our guest this week is Ann Marie Jackson (The Broken Hummingbird, She Writes Press, October 2023). After stints at the US State Department in Southeast Asia and China, Ann Marie and her family immigrated to San Miguel de Allende, a thriving ex-pat town in central Mexico which also became the setting for her debut. Ann Marie has been active in non-profit organizations in the area, first building ho...

This week's guest is Deborah King (Glory Bishop, Red Adept Publishing, June 2019). A prompt in a writing class set the stage for what became Deborah's trilogy of The Bishop Women, two books that follow the named character and eventually a prequel which narrates the tale of her mother. Hear Deborah describe her creative process, including the voices that "speak" to her, her experience querying a 13...

Our guest this week is Lynne Golodner (Woman of Valor, Scotia Road Books, September 2023). Once Lynne decided to stop writing fiction "on the side" and make it her focus, she leaped in with both feet, moving from a pure pantser to a more hybrid plotter, and solidifying her author brand as "creating compelling Jewish characters" which also drives her marketing focus. We discuss how this niche infor...

This week's guest is Delise Torres (One Tough Cookie, Alcove Press, July 2023). Described as a Latina Fleabag, Delise's novel is both a women's fiction and a romance and she purposely made choices in both character and venue to make it more appealing in the marketplace before she queried. We discuss the revisions both her agent and later her publisher asked for, the challenges of marketing a book...

Our guest this week is Kristin Kisska (The Hint of Light, Lake Union Publishing, August 2023). Listen to hear how two revisions at the tail end of the publishing process unlocked deeper meanings in her novel, how the grief in the story had to be toned down, and the thought-provoking question Kristin uses at book clubs to promote discussion. We discuss the pluses and minuses of publishing with an A...

This week's guest is Jude Hopkins (Babe in the Woods, The Wild Rose Press, June 2023). We discuss how women often make poor life decisions when it comes to relationships, how finding the right developmental editor led to rearranging her opening chapters which led to an offer and how challenging it is to market a debut novel. Then we segue into the phenomenon of people "wanting" to write a book but...

Our guest this week is Nigar Alam (Under The Tamarind Tree, G.P.Putnam & Sons, August 2023). We discuss the ten years she spent educating herself about writing before finding her agent in an unusual way (it involved Twitter). Hear how her first conversation with her editor took place while Nigar was stranded in Turkey during a snowstorm, and how writing a book set in Pakistan had the serendipitous...

This week's guest is Joanna Monahan (Something Better, Blue Ink Press, June 2023). Initially starting out to write a YA novel about a reunion, Joanna worked with a book coach and eventually decided to switch to a coming of (middle) age novel about second chances. She discovered her small press through networking channels including the weekly WFWA newsletter and social media contacts and was realis...

This week's guest is Cindy Maynard (Esperanza's Way, Historium Press, June 2023). The inspiration for Maynard's book came from her 500-mile trek of the Camino de Santiago in Spain at the age of 67 and her curiosity about what it would have been like for a woman making the same journey in the 13th century. Combining her love of history with her avid interest in the natural world, she fashioned a st...

My guest this week is Barbara Dullaghan (Secrets in the Hollow: A Sleepy Hollow Novel, MindStir Media, March 2023). Hear how her home town of Tarrytown, renamed Sleepy Hollow to revitalize the town's tourist industry, serves as the backdrop to Barbara's coming-of-age debut novel, how her local writing group's format based on prompts led to her initially writing in vignettes, and how she pitched he...

Our guest this week is Donna Norman-Carbone (All That is Sacred, Red Adept Publishing, June 2023). Hear how two separate events, one with a well-known medium, came together to provide the inspiration for this award-winning debut, the advice Donna got from a famous author, and how the timing of her publisher's offer caught her off-guard. We discuss what she did to create five different major charac...

 This week's guest is JJ Elliott (There are No Rules For This, She Writes Press, May 2023). We discuss how a family tragedy formed the backdrop for this debut which JJ wrote to challenge herself rather than with an eye to being published, how picking up a random book to read led her to a retreat that reawakened her love of writing, how she resisted the lure of big-name publishers who wanted to cha...