Hear us Roar

This week's podcast is with Melanie Mitzner (Slow Reveal, Inanna Publishing, May 2022). Melanie s tarted her writing career as a playwright and screenwriter but switched to the novel form for this story of an artist examining her life choices in 1990's New York. We discuss her decision to print with Inanna (renowned feminist press), differences when you publish in Canada, the research needed to ca...

Listen to this week's podcast with our guest Karen Winn (Our Little World, Dutton, May 2022). Karen's an example of how helpful writing conferences can be as she met her dream agent at a Muse and the Marketplace event in Boston and then worked with her on an extensive revision before going out on sub. Hear what it's like to publish through an imprint of the Big Five, including cover design, titlin...

This week's podcast is with Judith Brenner (The Moments Between Dreams, Greenleaf Book Group Press, May 2022).   An historical fiction which encompasses not only the polio epidemic but also issues of domestic abuse, Judith's novel is a homage to both her mother and grandmother as well as the sacrifices women made in the years directly after the war. We discuss her publisher's process for picking t...

This week's podcast is with Eileen Brill (A Letter In The Wall, Spark Press, May 2022). We discuss how fate dropped her story's inciting incident into her lap during a home renovation, the Facebook group her husband cultivated that wound up propelling her book to Amazon heights, and how she's learned an important lesson – that authors need to embrace being an active cheerleader for their own books...

This week's podcast is with Kimberly Nixon (Rock Bottom,Tennessee, indie-published, April 2022). Using an apocryphal family legend about her grandmother as the springboard, Kimberly set out to tell the story of an impoverished woman during the depression who went to prison for robbing trains. We discuss the delicate balance of giving yourself permission to change characters and details to further...

Our latest podcast episode features Kris Spisak (The Baba Yaga Mask, Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, April 2022). Kris, the previous author of three non-fiction books on writing, always knew her first novel would center around Ukraine, the country of origin of her grandparents and extended family. Little did she know that the initial concept would take 8 years to come to fruition and then, through an...

Listen here to our interview with Zoe Disigny (The Art of Traveling Strangers, Mascot Publishing, February 2022). Hear her story of initially querying agents with a 20,000 word manuscript, her thoughts on how her own self-perception changed during the writing of her novel, how she went about choosing a hybrid publisher, and how she was able to enrich her book through weaving in knowledge from her...

Here's our latest podcast with Sarah Branson (A Merry Life, Sooner Started Press, April 2022). Our discussion ranges from what it's like to build a world that's set 300 years in the future but still keep it character-driven ("Like historical fiction that just hasn't happened yet") to a wise coach's advice to Sarah about marketing an indie book ("No one can buy a book they haven't heard of") and wh...

Listen here to our newest podcast with Maggie Giles (The Things We Lost, Rising Action, April 2022). We discuss how her book's concept is a twist on the Sliding Doors trope of "what if our lives had gone differently" and took her seven years to write, how she took a chance and signed with a novice publisher as their very first author, and how it's imperative that writers discuss with their signifi...

This week's podcast is with Jen Gilroy (The Sweetheart Locket, Orion Dash/Orion Books, March 2022). Unlike most of our guests, Jen has been publishing since 2017 but in the romance category, so we discuss what's involved in switching to a new genre while still holding tight to your unique creative voice. As a writer who thinks strategically about her career, Jen shares insights into how British an...

Rundquist's book is an epistolary novel, written entirely in messages, primarily emails, between two friends, so it presented unique and tricky challenges in terms of dialogue and character development. We discuss Janet's belief in touching her current story on a daily basis to keep it fresh in her mind and how getting clear about what her goals were for her debut led to her decision to be her own...

This week's podcast is with Sita Romero (Words We Cannot Say, Red Adept Publishing, April 2022). Sita's background as a former doula informs her first novel, which she describes as a complex story of motherhood, infertility, and women's traditional roles. She purposely set out to explore narratives that are often quieted and found agents loved her book but struggled with how to sell it. It wasn't...

This week's interview is with Judy Lannon (Nine Days, Atmosphere Press, March 2022).A novice at writing, Judy was inspired to write her novel after advising a young woman about not only the emotions involved but the practical steps needed to deal with the passing of an aging parent. She describes herself as an undisciplined writer, not keeping to a regular schedule or setting word count goals but...

This week's interview is with Lisa Roe (Welcome to the Neighborhood, Sourcebooks, April 2022). Describing herself as too anxious to be a pantser, Lisa describes how, for her, embracing a story structure frees her creativity, her rule of thumb for when to put a novel in the drawer and start over, and how her publisher used focus groups to not only choose her book's title but also its final cover de...

Our interview this week is with Erin Flanagan (Deer Season, University of Nebraska Press, September 2021). With four previous novels in the drawer, Erin dug into her childhood memory of her father moving their family from Chicago to a small midwestern town of 1200 residents, and crafted Deer Season, a haunting story of the ripple effect of an act of violence on a close-knit community. We discuss h...

Our podcast guest this week is Shirley Novack (The Story of … , Fulton Books, March 2022). Here how this project started as a homage to her Polish immigrant father but evolved into a sweeping saga of the hardships and triumphs of Eastern European families building a new life in America. An interior design career is an unlikely background for a novel writer but Shirley pursued her dream and can now...

Listen to our podcast guest Kathy Strobos (Partner Pursuit, Indie published, October 2021) as we discuss how she quit her job as a corporate attorney to have better work-life balance which was not coincidentally the theme of her first novel. She loves the control that comes with publishing your own work, even while she admits it's a lot of work and you'll love her hands-on marketing approach which...

Our podcast guest this week is Harriet Cannon (Exiled South, Koehler Books, January 2022). Hear how Harriet, who has dyslexia, works around this in her writing, including using foam story boards and memorizing passages to read at presentations. Her background as a family therapist and work with addictions helps her dig deep into character's motivations and she also writes a detailed study of the l...

Our interview this week is with guest Tammy Harrow (All the Salt in the Sea, Red Adept Publishing, January 2022). We discuss the long gestation period this novel went through before Tammy started the querying process, her best marketing advice to beginning writers, why she has become a die-hard outliner, and the unique bucket list she just completed after working on it for two decades. Tammy Harro...

In this podcast, Kerry Chaput and I discuss how researching her genealogy inspired her trilogy of historical fiction, how she's a big believer in writers being clear about their branding and positioning in the marketplace, and why she's crazy about TikTok.   Kerry Chaput is an award-winning historical fiction author. She believes in the power of stories that highlight young women, first love, and...

This week's podcast is with Cheryl Corriveau (The Demanding River, Fulton Books, July 2021). We discuss how Cheryl tapped into her own experiences running a boat dealership in Florida when she outlined the plot of her debut including dealing with hurricanes, drug dealers and blatant misogyny, her persistence in searching for a way to publish her novel, and why she's known in her neighborhood as Mr...

Our podcast guest this week is Tonya Mitchell (A Feigned Madness, Cynren Pres, October, 2020) who was inspired to write a novel based around an historical figure from the 1880's, Nellie Bly, who went undercover for ten days at the infamous Blackwell Insane Asylum in NYC to expose the abusive conditions there. Hear about her research process, her decision to work with a boutique press, and her newe...

This week's podcast is with Kimberly Sullivan (Three Coins, indie-published, October 2021). She zooms in with us from Rome where she's lived for over 25 years and where her novel is set. Our discussion ranges from the 1954 classic film that provided her inspiration, what the publishing world looks like in Italy, her participation in the WFWA Historical Fiction group, and what made her decide to go...

Our podcast author this week is Dawn (D.W.) Hogan (Unbroken Bonds, Woodhall Press, October 2021). Her book tells the story of four teenage girls facing ostracism and hardship when unwanted pregnancies force them to a home where their rights are stripped and their babies snatched away, a dark period in US history during the '50's and '60's. Dawn was determined to honor the stories of these young wo...

Our guest this week is Georgina Key (Shiny Bits In Between, Balance of Seven, June 2020).  Georgina's novel explores the grief of a mother losing a child and finding solace in both the natural coastal beauty of the Bolivar Peninsula near Galveston as well as human connections with others also mourning a loss. Though she debuted during the worst months of the pandemic, Georgina was supported by fri...