Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers hosted by Mark Stevens

For decades, Jeanne Winer was a successful criminal defense attorney based in Boulder. Over 35 years she represented thousands of individuals and her cases have included murder and kidnapping and a death row case. Jeanne Winer also played a key role in a landmark civil rights case that worked its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. All along the way, Jeanne harbored a dream to write fiction...

Recently, RMFW started recognizing its Honored Guiding Members and this time on the podcast we’ve got the 2018 honoree, Janet Fogg. Janet joined RMFW in 1993 after placing third in the Colorado Gold contest. Rising early every day to write before heading off to her day job as CFO and Managing Principal of an architecture firm, Janet wrote four manuscripts before receiving a contract for her first...

Warren Hammond is never lost in space. In fact, he’s quite at home away from planet Earth His KOP trilogy was set on a planet called Lagarto and his standalone, The Tides of Maritinia was set on, you guessed it, a planet called Maritinia. This time around, Hammond’s sci-fi storytelling shifts to Mars and features a female detective named Denver Moon. The opening entry in the series, co-written by...

Kerry Anne King’s Whisper Me This officially launches on August 1 but it’s already being reviewed on Amazon and is ranked way up there among all top fiction – in fact, when we recorded this interview, ranked at number 12. That is one of the advantages of being a Lake Union author and, in this case, an author who receives the Reader’s First Pick promotion that sends your title out to the vast Amazo...

As Carol Berg puts it, the difference that a single word can make is “pretty amazing.” And Carol should know. She has written 15 epic fantasy novels that have won national and international awards, including three Colorado Book Awards and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. Her stories have appeared in the BlackGuards anthology (2016) and the Hath No Fury anthology (2018). She has a...

Eragon. Eldest. Brisingr. Inheritance. Those four titles should ring a bell, specifically the name of writer Christopher Paolini. Christopher, with 35 million books in print, is one of the keynote speakers at the 2018 edition of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold conference and we’ve got him on the podcast for a sneak peek of his themes and messages. For those who don’t know, Christophe...

Fresh off the publication of her highly-praised first novel Transference last year, Kate Jonuska turned around right this year with release of a book she wishes was available before she first started writing. It’s a dictionary. More specifically, The Dictionary of Fiction Critique: How to read like a writer in order to give and receive constructive critique. The idea was borne as Kate shuttled bet...

As a fiction writer, Teresa Funke celebrates ordinary people. In fact, she takes a very unusual approach to her stories—they are all based on interviews with real people. Teresa’s latest is War on a Sunday Morning. Written for readers age nine and up, War on A Sunday Morning is about a 13-year-old girl named Rose Williams. Rose has trouble fitting in. She is shy. Every time her family moves to a n...

Dacia M. Arnold is an author of adult dystopian and dark fiction. She enjoys writing main characters who are otherwise normal people with extraordinary abilities. Dacia is also a ten-year Army veteran who served two tours of combat as a medic. She didn’t start writing fiction, in fact, until a few years ago. However, she wrote what she wanted to read and first novel was a winner—it drew attention...

Writer of the Year nominee Mandy Mikulencak lives outside Durango but grew up in Texas. She has set one published novel, The Last Suppers, in Louisiana and the next one, due out next year, is set in Mississippi. Her first book was a gritty young adult novel set in Durango called Burn Girl, a title that was honored with a 2016 Westchester Fiction Award. Mandy Mikulencak has been a writer her entire...

Brian M. Taylor is a 41-year-old writer who lives outside of Denver. As he puts it in his official bio, Brian has spent his life learning new skills in order to tell better stories. Brian’s first novel was released in 2016 and today he has three novels under his belt with many more to come. Brian writes science fiction and fantasy and the over-arching title for his series is 12 Blackened Petals. I...

Writer of the Year finalist Gwen Florio, interviewed by Natasha Watts, talks about her writing influences, the differences and similarities between journalism and writing fiction, her most recent mystery releases and her novel Silent Hearts, set to release in July. Gwen Florio grew up in 250-year-old brick farmhouse on a wildlife refuge in Delaware, with a sweeping view across a mile of tidemarsh...

Paul Toth’s interest in science fiction may have started in an extremely remote town in Alaska where fantasy role playing helped add to the variety of life. But through moves to San Francisco and Boise and now Omaha, Paul has kept up his interest in science fiction and today he is shopping his first book. On the podcast, Paul talks a bit about a recent guest post on the RMFW blog about where scien...

Every Spring, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers puts on a day-long education event. This year, the event will be held on Saturday, May 12 and it’s a two-parter. In the morning, it’s The Art of Storytelling and in the afternoon, The Art of Author Branding and both are being presented by Kristen Lamb. For a sneak peek at both topics, we’ve got Kristen this time on the podcast to give us a sample of the...

Last summer, Shannon Baker was named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Writer of the Year – for the second time! So life as a published writer should be on a never-ending upward spiral of success, correct? Well, Shannon Baker is a survivor of the wild and ever unpredictable publishing-world roller coaster and on the podcast she talks about the bruises and how she managed her way through the sometime...

Sue Hinkin, interviewed by Natasha Watts, talks about her debut thriller, "Deadly Focus." The chat covers writing realistic, diverse characters, the importance of critique groups and community, and her book signing coming up with Becky Clark on April 20th. Raised in Chicago, Sue Hinkin is a former college administrator (most recently at DU), TV news photographer, and NBC-TV art department head. Wi...

When Sue Duff started writing The Weir Chronicles, she knew she wanted an out-of-the-ordinary super hero. She came up with Ian Black, an illusionist with a talent for keeping secrets. She also came up with the Weir, a magical race who struggle to prevent Earth from self-destructing. With the publication last month of the appropriately-titled Dim The Lights, Sue Duff closes the books on her five-bo...

Every now and then, writing gets “sidetracked by life.” Just ask John Stith. After a productive stretch of writing mystery-tinged science fiction novels in the 1980’s and 1980’s, life got in the way. So writing took an understandable hiatus. But now, John Stith is back and looking forward to the publication, later this year, of his first full-fledged mystery, a novel called Pushback. John E. Stith...

This coming Saturday—March 3—the Colorado Book Festival descends on the downtown Denver Public Library with over 100 authors and a whole day of talks and panels and writers with their books on hand to sale. The day is organized by the Colorado Authors League but there is good representation from Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, including Chris Goff moderating a panel at 2 p.m. It’s called Why Myste...

Award winning writer and WritingStrides coach Alissa Johnson is the guest. Alissa recently presented to the Western Slope group in Grand Junction and she will give RMFW's free monthly talk in March, "Writing Reset: Setting Achievable Goals." (Her workshop is Saturday, March 17 in Denver.) On the podcast, Alissa talks with guest interviewer Natasha Watts about her WritingStrides community and how t...

Mike Houtz just signed a deal with Wild Rose Press to publish his first novel, Dark Spiral Down. The deal wouldn’t have happened had Mike not signed up for one of the key features at every Colorado Gold conference—to pitch to the many agents and editors who fly into Denver every September for the express purpose of meeting new talent. One thing to led another and Mike signed the deal with Wild Ros...

In the words of Pamela Nowak, there are “tough decisions” ahead. That’s because she and her committee will receive three times as many proposals for workshops at Colorado Gold than she has room to book. Yes, planning for the 2018 edition of September’s Colorado Gold conference is well underway and that includes determining the topics and presenters for the 70 or so hours of programming that is bei...

On Saturday February 17, Jason Evans is leading RMFW’s free monthly workshop and if you have trouble developing and writing your bad guy, this session might be just what you need. The program is about writing memorable villains and on the podcast we’ve got Jason Evans here for a preview of what he’s going to cover—and exactly how he’ll inspire you to get it right. Your villain, Jason says, needs t...

As soon as we turned the corner into 2018, the conference planning for 2018 kicked into gear. In fact, planning started much earlier but RMFW members and others were notified a couple of weeks ago that they now have the chance to apply to present during one of 70 or so workshop slots that will be offered during 2018 Colorado Gold in September. That prompted a check-in with conference co-chair Susi...

Last summer, Wendy Terrien was named Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Independent Writer of the Year. In August, she published two novels on the same day. Both were sequels to her first novel, The Rampart Guards, which just happened to be named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2016. In December, she was elected president of RMFW. Today, she’s busy working on a new novel and she's got an agent w...