Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers hosted by Mark Stevens

Jennifer Rose might have just what you need as you begin to ponder your writing goals and plans for 2018. On Saturday, Jan. 6 Jennifer is presenting RMFW’s free monthly workshop at the Sam Gary Branch library in Denver. It’s called "Level Up Your Mindset and Productivity." Jennifer is here on the podcast with a preview of some of the tools and tips she’ll be discussing. But, wait, there's more. Th...

Denitta Ward will tell you that she did it all backwards. But she got on the path to publication earlier this year when took RMFW’s online course about self-publishing, taught by Lisa Price Manifold. The result? The publication of her first novel, Somewhere Still, in November. Denitta is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association, the Historical Novel Society, and (of course) Rocky Mounta...

Pat Stoltey’s fourth novel comes out in just a few short weeks (Dec.20) and it’s been quite a ride. Revised and revised some more, Pat says that one point she realized she had written the life out of her characters. So she backed up and started over again until she got it right. Wishing Caswell Dead is set in the early 1800's in a village on the Illinois frontier. It’s a historical mystery about t...

This time, a story of going with the flow. After writing for more than a decade, Kevin Wolf won a major award in a writing contest and the prize included a contract with none other than St. Martin’s Press. Last month, Kevin Wolf published his second novel, Brokeheart, and he’s with a whole new publisher. Both books are set in Colorado and both were inspired by locations in the state that stem from...

Are you comfortable writing short stories? Have you thought about it, but don’t know how or where to begin? Saytchyn Maddux-Creech is here to help. Saytchyn is teaching a 15-day online class called, Write An Amazing Short Story in Two Weeks. The course is being offered online through RMFW-U beginning Dec. 2. On the podcast, Saytchyn gives a sneak peek at her approach to writing short stories—she’s...

Emily Littlejohn says luck may have played a small role in getting her first novel published, but so did hard work and listening to feedback from experts. As Emily puts it, books are not written in a vacuum. Inherit the Bones, published at this time last year, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. This week, A Season To Lie releases and it also features police detective Gemma Monroe solving...

Jayme H. Mansfield found fiction in her own family history. Rush, her second novel, launches Nov. 1 and it's based on the life of Jayme’s great-great grandmother and the details of her involvement in the Oklahoma Land Run of 1893. Using original letters from the era and her own research in Oklahoma, Jayme found out that “tall tales” about her ancestor weren’t so tall—and would make for a good nove...

Jennifer Kincheloe is back on the podcast and she’s got a brand new historical mystery coming out in just a few short weeks. The first book, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc, was a finalist for a slew of awards and also was winner of the Mystery & Mayhem Award for Historical Mystery. Earlier, it also won the Colorado Gold contest. So there’s lots of anticipation for book two, The Woman in the Camphor...

After listening to this episode with historical fiction writer Aimie K. Runyan, you might want to think about keeping an idea file. When things went flat with her first publisher, Aimie needed a Plan B and she was ready, dipping into a list of concepts she wanted to take from idea stage to full length novel. Now, 18 months after her first novel was published, Aimie is less than three months from t...

Shawn Harper calls it "the good kind of hurt." That’s the hurt from hearing a comment at your critique group that means there’s work to be done, that your work in progress is not quite ready for prime time. On Oct. 7, Shawn is one of four panelists leading RMFW'ss free monthly workshop called Getting the Most Out of Your Critique Group. On the podcast, Shawn passes along a few pointers and suggest...

Episode #100 of the Rocky Mountain Writer podcast comes down to three things: insects, noir and a preview of the upcoming workshop this weekend on bone forensics. The guest is writer Jeff Lockwood, who earned a doctorate in entomology and who has worked for 15 years as an insect ecologist at the University of Wyoming. But Jeff is also a writer of fiction and last year published his first crime nov...

We last checked in with Kerry Schafer way back in February of 2016 and she was on the phone from her home in Washington State. This time, we’ve got her for in-person chat, recorded last week at Colorado Gold, RMFW’s big annual three-day writing conference in Denver. We’re more than 18 months down the road since the last intervew, but Kerry Schafer is as busy as she was back then, with two new titl...

The guest on the podcast this time is the only person in Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers with the title of “dean.” Peggy Waide is the dean of RMFW University, an online learning program that is offering an increasingly rich series of classes. In fact, there’s a class coming up in mid-September with Sharon Mignery titled The Art and Craft of Building Great Conflict. Classes this year have already co...

Okay, friends, we did this in 2015 and 2016 and here it is again—the live taping from the panel at the Tattered Cover with the Writer of the Year and the Independent Writer of the Year finalists. This event was taped on Wednesday, August 23 at the Tattered Cover on East Colfax. The moderators are 2016 Writer of the Year Mark Stevens and 2016 Independent Writer of the Year Lisa Manifold. The paneli...

When she finished writing her novel Transference, Kate Jonuska came to a fork in a road and, as Yogi Berra once said, she took it. The question was how to publish? Traditional? Or independent? Kate was surprised that her views on the choice had changed and it was a choice she said was informed by her time in RMFW. A Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers member since 2014, Kate Jonuska is a writer and aut...

Two years ago, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers started a new tradition of recognizing Honored Guiding Members, those individuals who have significantly contributed to the success of the organization over the years. Honorees are selected for their talent and abilities, as well as the leadership they've shown. This year, it’s Alice Kober. Alice Kober has been a member of RMFW for over 20 years. She h...

The first million words are practice, right? Many times on the podcast we’ve had examples of patience and dedication and hard work, and this chat with Curtis Craddock is proof again of the notion that you just need to keep writing and keep getting better. It also doesn't hurt to attend Colorado Gold. We’ve had stories in the past about chance meetings at the conference and again a very random enco...

The interview with Fleur Bradley, a.k.a. F.T. Bradley, was recorded one day before the news circulated that all spots at RMFW's Colorado Gold Conference in September are now taken. If you’re going to the conference, this chat with Fleur will give a taste of the three workshops she is presenting—one on marketing, one that provides an overview of the children’s fiction market, and one about the adva...

"Deep Revision - Making the Good Even Better" is the title of a master class being taught by Heather Webb at Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's Colorado Gold conference in September. On the podcast, Heather talks about the topics she’ll cover in those four hours of in-depth learning. Heather also gives us a peek at books she has coming out later this year and early next. The first is an epistolary lo...

Corinne O’Flynn is the unflappable conference chair for RMFW’s big three day conference, Colorado Gold, coming up in early September. But of course, she is also a writer of fantasy and mystery. So this time on the podcast it's a dual-purpose interview, to catch up with Corinne’s writing and find out about the new features and some of the guests arriving from all over the country and, in fact, worl...

Writer Mario Acevedo has written what he considers to be his favorite book. It’s called University of Doom and it’s a young-adult thriller from Hex Publishers. On the podcast, Mario talks about the fairly wild premise of University of Doom, featuring thirteen-year-old Alfonso Frankenstein and his father Eugino. Mario also fills us in on what he calls a re-boot of the Felix Gomez series, and all of...

Peter Eichstaedt has written non-fiction books based on his reporting all over the world, from Kosovo to Armenia, Afghanistan and Uganda (among other stops). He also published a book called The Dangerous Divide: Peril and Promise on the US-Mexico Border and that title won the 2015 International Latino Book Award for Best in Current Affairs. It might not come as much of a surprise, then, that Peter...

An interview with award-winning Denise Vega, who writes for teens and toddlers. Denise talks about what inspired to write for young adults, how she keeps current with the world of teenagers, and how she draws from her own high school experience for the right emotional connections. Denise is the award-winning author of seven books including Click Here, Access Denied, Fact of Life #31, and Rock On....

This time on the podcast we check back in with Laurence MacNaughton, whose new urban fantasy A Kiss Before Doomsday is set to launch in a few short weeks, one year after he debuted his new series with It Happened One Doomsday. We are back with Dru Jasper and her crystal shop and her magical powers and sorcerers and major problems trying to stop, yes, another impending apocalypse. Laurence MacNaugh...

What makes a story horror? If you ask Shannon Lawrence that basic question, be prepared for some thoughtful analysis. The genre, she will tell you, extends beyond jump scares and slashers. Shannon recaps the recent free workshop she gave for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers in Denver and explores one her favorite topics – the world of writing horror. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t always or necessarily in...