The Write Focus

July 9 means we’re in the 6th week of the Summer Writing Challenge. Returning to us in this episode is donalee Moulton, a great writer living in one of my favorite locations, Halifax, Nova Scotia. We open with a Quick Writing Tip on Using Twists then close with a Check-In, as usual. donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. A historical mystery, Conflagration!, wa...

Midsummer brings us to July, and we start July with an interview of Toronto writer Karen Grose. Before the interview, we have a Quick Writing Tip: Don’t completely panic when characters take over the story. It’s then that we cede control of the story to them. After our interview, we close with the 5th Check-In. We’re early days still for our writing challenge and the novella that I’ve chosen to wr...

The Summer Writing Challenge enters the 4th week of June with a slight tiptoe into July. How is your challenge progressing? Share your goal and project, problems and solutions, and successes in the Comment Section. Our interview this week is with Judy Penz Sheluk. As a Quick Tip, I chatter about writing a coherent story. We finish with the Check-in. A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Pe...

Welcome to our third week of June and our third week of the Summer Writing Challenge. How is your challenge going? Share your progress in the Comments, and hit the LIKE button whenever you enjoy an episode. Our interview this week is with veteran writer Al Sirois, based in North Carolina although he began writing in his home state of Connecticutt. We’ll conclude this episode with our check-in. How...

In this episode of the Summer Writing Challenge~ A Quick Tip on what you need before you start writing, the Interview with Joan Ramirez on Organizing and Prioritizing and Reaching into Characters, and our Check-in for the week. TIMINGS 00:40 Welcome 01:18 Quick Tip #2 5:00 Interview with Joan Ramirez Bio and The Write Rules, Challenges in Writing, Prioritizing Tasks, Solutions to Challenges, Allot...

Welcome to the Summer Writing Challenge which continues all through June, July, and August for 13 episodes. Join us for quick writing tips, writers talking about challenges, and goal check-ins. [The final check-in will occur the first Wednesday in September, in the 1st episode of the Fall into Poetry series.] In today’s episode, host M.A. Lee talks tech tools (only one with a cost) that create thi...

Writing in her car at midday is all Teresa Inge needs to create stories with strong protagonists. With 18 years of publishing experience, she keeps writing simple with laptop and trusty battery. Once she has a theme placed in her Outer Banks setting, she gives her sleuth a business so they can encounter and investigate murder. Teresa Inge is an award-winning mystery author in over a dozen antholog...

Linda Kay Hardie may appear as the classic cat lady, but a conversation quickly revealed the deadly mind for dastardly deeds that she applies to her fiction. Hardie is vice president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and is an award-winning author who has appeared in many anthologies, four in 2024 and three in 2023. She writes crime, horror, and fantasy stories but no romance. She tried once, a...

Lois Winston is a strong writer, best known for her Anastasia Pollock Crafting series of cozy mysteries. Early in her career, with Manuscript #2, she acquired an agent, but the roses of her writing journey still had thorns, a lesson to us writers that we control our success. Winston definitely controlled her success. She survived a bankrupt publishing house and the closure of a publisher’s entire...

While most writers settle into the comfort of one format, Elizabeth Zelvin explores the contrasting realms of poetry, novels, novellas, short stories, and flash fiction, all of them distinctly different in approach, situation, and writing style. Zelvin even loves writing cross-genre. She shares freely her writing, building a community, and writing tool tips. Elizabeth Zelvin is the author of two l...

Pamela Ebel offers a wealth of wisdom in this interview for our writer-focused series. She pursues writing with the drive and curiosity and wit that she devoted to her previous careers. Ebel has been published in Shotgun Honey, YELLOW MAMA EZINE, Kings River Life Magazine, The BOULD AWARDS 2020 and 2021 Anthology, Tomorrow and Tomorrow 2021 Anthology, and other venues. Her poetry has appeared in t...

Charlotte Morganti uses a variety of tech, tracking her words, editing to improve those words, and formatting, all the way into marketing and newsletters. She shares tech helps, including ones that I haven’t heard of, as well as her journey into indie writing and publishing. Before turning to writing award-winning mysteries, Charlotte Morganti was, at various times, a burger flipper, a beer slinge...

A writer does more than work with words. The heart becomes involved, often draining us emotionally. The logical side of our brain helps balance out emotions. When we venture beyond our desks and interact as Writer with the world, the ways we present ourselves and the opportunities we explore enrich us when we return to our little corner desks. Joan Ramirez discusses all of the above and more in th...

Does a life in law enforcement give a special insight into crime? It certainly seems that way to me after interviewing O’Neil de Noux. His first books were police procedurals, following his career in law enforcement just outside of New Orleans. Now he’s writing about private investigators and semi-retired detectives … and pursuing his stories in historical fiction as a satisfying challenge. Like m...

Fellow Podcaster (and fellow former English teacher) talks technology, writing, and his Haunted Shores mysteries. We delve into ways to avoid anachronisms when writing historical fiction before venturing into his writing process, linear rather than a mix-match puzzle process. Overbeck’s novel Cruel Lessons was categorized as “one of the best mysteries of 2023” and “ene of the best thrillers I’ve e...

Business by day, fiction by night, writer Denise Forsythe is constantly looking for new ways to bring her writing into the world. She’s pursuing her longtime dream of writing fiction around the corners of her world and finding the vast differences between fiction and nonfiction, writing short vs. writing long, pantstering vs. outlining. Creativity comes with all of it. Denise Forsythe is an awarde...

Jam-packed with goodness is this interview with Paul O’Connor, a writer of short stories and novels. You’re going to take tons of notes and bookmark this episode; the guidance is that fantastic. (No, that’s not hyperbole; that’s reality.) Paul O’Connor came into writing after he left the data-driven gaming industry. Gaming’s focus on productivity, Agile Planning, Return on Investment, and more to...

First-time author Deede Blake shares the story of her first novel, The Russian Orphan. This epic thriller was a ten-year journey, required tons of research, and tells a story that demanded to be told. And we’re all over the world of writing in this interview. Deede is new to publishing although she’s been working on writing projects for years. While her training is in science, her greatest passion...

The mystery writer and seasoned audio broadcast pro Kathleen Kalb joins TWF for this episode. We have a wide-ranging conversation, touching on tech, the writing community and social media, her process, and changes in software. We end with her next release featuring Grace the Hit Mom, a consecrated assassin. That I have to read. Kathleen Marple Kalb describes herself as an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in...

The whimsy on a coffee cup is Rebecca Olmstead’s motto for her writing life. In an interview about that technology that started with a tech failure—a laptop crash—Rebecca Olmstead begins by discussing her bravery in moving from Word to Scrivener to Atticus to bring the best experience to readers of her fiction and nonfiction. Rebecca Olmstead is the award-winning author of the Gabrielle Dorian Mys...

In cold Halifax, we meet writer donalee Moulton, who talks all aspects of technology. It’s everything tech: from the tech that we take for granted to knowing how detailed our tech descriptions have to be, and from the depths and limits we have on understanding tech to the practicalities of tech that’s helpful in our daily writing lives. donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was publ...

A Couple of Bees came for an interview, and we laughed all the way through. Elise Brown is a young writer who has reached the pinnacle that some never achieve: a book on the verge of publishing and another book in revision, an agent who loves her work and a publisher eager to get the books out. Elise Burke Brown comes from a family of detectives, including a grandfather who filled her childhood wi...

Travel and Death. We don’t normally put these two topics together unless we’re talking tragic accidents, but Dawn Barclay has found a way to create entertaining mysteries and relate true crime stories. After talking about Tech and tools, the writing process and productivity, she shares with us the two publications she will have this winter. In January she’ll release her newest domestic thriller, D...

Coming in this episode is a wealth of technology resources which only someone with a tech background can provide. Sarah Smith presents a powerpoint packed with resources. From assists in idea generation and organization, to plot and structure, formatting manuscripts and crafting covers, book descriptions, and audiobook development (so necessary in today’s marketplace), Sarah explains the riches av...

Two fountain pens and specific paper to encourage creativity. Computer systems like Linux as best tools. In a wide-ranging interview with everything from fonts to covers, John Connor with the UK press Murderous Ink shares it all. A connectivity glitch smack in the middle of the interview didn’t derail Connor. We continued on, with manuscript format and the concerns of publishers about document fil...