Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers hosted by Mark Stevens

You’re not going to want to miss the RMFW day-long education event coming up in April in downtown Golden, Colorado. But in case you’re on the fence we have Terri Benson this time on the podcast to answer questions and explain how it’s going to run. The event is called Book in A Day and it's being held Saturday, April 13. Terri details the morning and afternoon sessions, including the many opportun...

Way back in 2009, the book was called This Side of Crazy. It was Mandy Mikulencak’s first attempt at writing a novel and it drew, in all, 96 rejections. So Mandy turned to two other writing projects. First, was Burn Girl and then The Last Suppers, which came out in late 2017. Now here comes a new version of that first story from 2009 only it has been given an overhaul and a brand new title: Forgiv...

Colleen Oakes says there were many points of inspiration for her novel The Black Coats. In fact, she says, the came out of a “giant cauldron” of inspiration. There was a vision in her head of a group of girls holding baseball bats, a black pea coat lying on the side of the road in Nebraska and Colleen’s fascination with vigilante justice. At the time she first stirred the pot on this particular no...

Sandra Murphy says she has one goal when she’s recording an audio book - to tell the truth of what her authors have written. In fact, Sandra brings many years of acting experience to her production process. It's an acting career that began at the ripe old age of two with a fairly dramatic moment. Sandra is well versed in everything from managing companies of actors, overseeing budgets, organizing...

LS Hawker’s new novel, publishing on January 22 and due for a major launch event on January 26, was a long time coming. In fact, it started out as a short story and then was developed into a full-length novel – her first – and subsequently tucked away in a drawer. Since that first book, Lisa Hawker’s writing career has produced three major standalone thrillers that have been translated into eight...

Shannon Baker is coming off what a year, as she puts it, when she let her attitude slip. Writing is a business, as Shannon also says, where there are plenty of opportunities to get your ego bashed. Now Shannon is climbing back out. Shannon recently announced that she has sold an option to the film rights to her Kate Fox Mystery Series and, for many reasons, Shannon is turning the page into the new...

Whether because of NaNoWriMo or New Year’s Resolutions, January is a common time for writers to begin querying. Many are tempted to simply dive in and mass email every agent they can find. Please allow Natasha Watts to give you a bit of advice: don’t. Do your research first. Find agents who are open to your book’s genre and age category. Read their websites and manuscript wish lists. Study their s...

If you happened to set some resolutions about writing for 2019 and you want to dive right in, RMFW-U has got you covered with a brand new online course, Anatomy of Emotion, kicking off this coming Sunday, January 6. The course will be taught by Natasha Watts and we’ve got her here on the podcast with a preview of the course, which is designed to help you observe body language and think about how n...

This time on the podcast we’ve got Rachel Delaney Craft with two worthy topics of conversation. Rachel is co-editor, along Natasha Watts, and of the next RMFW short story anthology and she’s here with an announcement about the anthology’s theme. If you’re planning on submitting a short story for this collection, which will be published in 2020, you’ll want to hear this. Also, Rachel recently atten...

David R Slayton grew up, as he puts, in a town where Norman Rockwell meets the Twilight Zone. That town was Guthrie, Oklahoma—and it’s place where David said finding fantasy novels was challenging and finding fantasy novels with diverse characters was downright impossible. So what else to do but write your own? The first attempt ran to 200,000 words. It was a bit unwieldy. Years later, David found...

"Reading is a political act." That’s the tag line for Colorado Resistance Reads, the brainchild of RMFW’s own Kate Jonuska. Colorado Resistance Reads curates books by Colorado authors that engage with themes relevant to today’s tumultuous political climate, including climate change, the free press, LGBTQ+ rights, the me-too movement, the refugee crisis, authoritarianism and more. Rather than prese...

Dacia Arnold’s first novel, a science fiction entry called Apparent Power, launches next month. It’s the first in a trilogy and it has already received a knock-out advance review from Kirkus, which called the book’s main character, Valerie Russell, "an exceptional protagonist." In Apparent Power, a dormant gene awakens in a quarter of the world’s population and the effects are apocalyptic. With an...

This time on the podcast, a special conversation with former RMFW Writer of the Year Susan Spann—currently immersed in a non-fiction project in Japan. Susan is in the middle of a personal journey, one she is documenting for a book based on her ascents up the 100 highest summits in the land of rising sun. The adventure is based, in Susan’s own words, on the desire to stop doing what was safe and wh...

Futhark, the Runic aplphabet, is a key component in Marc Graham's process known as Runes for Writers. The ancient system helps storytellers more easily access the realm of ideas, the world of the Muses, the Source of Story. By integrating left- and right-brain activity, Marc’s process seeks to open your awareness to the subconscious levels where true creativity takes place. On the podcast, Marc gi...

This episode of the Rocky Mountain Writer is a live recording of the event held at The Tattered Cover in Denver on Oct. 25th to celebrate the release of "False Faces," the latest short story anthology from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. The hosts for the evening were editors Angie Hodapp and Warren Hammond. Writers at the event include Travis Heermann, Terry Kroenung, Amy Draper, Anne Therese Mac...

Tim Weed’s recent short story collection, A Field Guide to Murder & Fly-Fishing, was recently released as an audio book, following the paperback release earlier this year and the hardback release in 2017. The collection made the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize Shortlist and was a finalist in the short story category for both the 2018 American Fiction Awards and the 2017 International Book...

It’s not often we get an excuse to include discussion of the theremin here on the Rocky Mountain Writer, so we had to jump at the chance when Laurence MacNaughton mentioned he’s been fiddling around with the strange musical device. However, we would have Laurence on for any reason but in addition to the theremin, his new book No Sleep ‘Til Doomsday launches this month—the third in his fantasy seri...

Todd Leatherman, who writes as TH Leatherman, published the third book in his ongoing sci-fi series earlier this month. It's called Son Rise and it follows Marque of the Son, published last year, and The Burning Son, which debuted in 2016. Todd makes his home in Firestone, Colorado. He enjoys science fiction, fantasy, wine making, and the Rocky Mountain lifestyle. When not busy writing his next bo...

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' 2018 Colorado Gold Conference was held from Sept. 7 - 9 at The Renaissance Hotel in Denver. This year, podcast host Natasha Watts brought along her trust recorder and tracked a trio of newbies. She checked in with them on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to see conference through the eyes of first-time attendees. Natasha's three conference newbies were EJ Gore, Herb Har...

This time on the podcast, two short stories and an interview with the writer, David S. Atinkson. David, who was last on the podcast more than 18 months ago, is the author of the brand new volume of flash fiction, Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep. He is also the author of Apocalypse All the Time, and the Nebraska book award-winning Not Quite so Stories....

Every year, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers runs a contest for unpublished writers. It's called Colorado Gold and the winners are announced during the annual conference (coming up this weekend, Sept. 6 through 9). There are five categories in the contest and, for each of the categories there are five finalists and, as a result, 25 finalists in all. This year, savvy contest watchers will notice one...

The first short story Maggie Smith ever wrote, "The Devil You Know," is being published in the brand new short story anthology, False Faces, from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. Maggie is also giving a workshop next month at Colorado Gold—How to Get the Most out of A Developmental Edit. In addition, Maggie has a novel or two in the works and she is also the host of a new podcast that includes inte...

Liz Roadifer writes in two completely different worlds. One work is dark thrillers. The other is romantic fantasy. It’s the romantic fantasy that’s making news. Liz recently learned that The Trouble With Fairies won a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award in a major contest sponsored by First Coast Romance Writers. As you’ll hear, it took a fair amount of persistence and working through das...

Recorded live at The Tattered Cover on Tuesday, August 14—the annual panel for the finalists for Independent Writer of the Year and Writer of the Year, this year moderated by current Independent Writer of the Year Wendy Terrien. Panelists included Sue Duff, Corinne O’Flynn, Bernadette Marie, Gwen Florio and Curtis Craddock. Mandy Mickulencek was not in attendance, alas. Corinne is the Independent...

Linda Hull is the author of the Mrs. Frugalicious Mystery Series, a couple of romance novels, and The Big Bang – a book that Library Journal called a fun, sexy suburban soap opera with a touch of mystery. Linda, who lives in Denver, is a former Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer Writer of the Year. Keir Graff is the Chicago-based author of several middle grade novels and he also writes crime and suspen...