WRITE NOW! Workshop Podcast: Write a Book, Change the World with Kitty Bucholtz

Today's author, Nancy Naigle , is a delight to talk to! She's got such great stories about how she started writing, how she got involved with Hallmark Publishing, the excitement of seeing Hallmark movies adapted from two of her books ( Christmas Joy and Hope at Christmas , published by St. Martin's Griffin), and how fun it is to have three completely different Christmas trees in her house! She sta...

New author Alys Murray joins us today to talk about her first book, The Christmas Company , released by Hallmark Publishing in October 2018. Alys shares her journey from finding Hallmark's call for unagented writers to submitting her manuscript to finding an agent to selling two more books - all in short order. Quite the exciting journey! Since she found both Hallmark's call and her agent via Twit...

Stacey Donovan is back as today's guest - but this time as an author! Stacey wrote the first original novel published by Hallmark Publishing, Sunrise Cabin . She also writes under the name Bryn Donovan . Last time we talked to Stacey, she told us about her job as Director of Hallmark Publishing and what kinds of stories Hallmark is looking for. Today we're talking about Stacey's life as a writer....

Today, we're back again with Shawn Smucker , but this time we're talking about nonfiction and his new memoir, Once We Were Strangers . It's the story of how Shawn came to have a friendship with a Syrian refugee in Shawn's hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and how their friendship changed both men. This book moved me like no other book this year. I felt like I needed to reexamine my thoughts and...

Advent is here, and many people around the world are preparing for Christmas! Others are preparing for Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and New Year's Eve. Families are making plans to get together, to bake a lot, cook a lot, shop a lot. There's a lot going on this month! In addition to the holiday planning, many of us are beginning to consider our goals for 2019 - writing goals, health goals, business and re...

Jane Kirkpatrick writes historical fiction from a different angle. She researches fascinating real people and then writes what's missing from history -- their personal stories. Everything She Didn't Say is the latest of Jane's novels. It's about the real and imagined life of Carrie Strahorn, a pioneer woman and journalist of the late 19th century. Jane used Carrie's real memoir, Fifteen Thousand M...

Some things stick in your head and you can't stop thinking about them. That's what happened to me this week with a Michael, Jr. YouTube video. He's a comedian, and he was explaining to a group how it's different to know what you're doing, to be good at something, versus being good at it and knowing why you're doing it. Here's the video if you want to watch. (It starts about 9 minutes in.)   I...

Today's guest is author Thomas Locke , also known as Davis Bunn . Thomas has a brand new book out this week, the dystopian novel Enclave . In today's interview, we walk through Thomas/Davis' career as he tells us what he's learned over twenty-plus years of highs and lows. The first thing he talks about is discipline. The discipline to keep on writing as you wait for your books to sell. The discipl...

Editor Stacey Donovan joins us today to tell us about Hallmark Publishing! I've been talking about this new publisher of sweet romances and cozy mysteries for months now. Stacey talks about pitching the idea to the Hallmark CEO, getting the first books written as novelizations of existing Hallmark movies, and then her own romance novel being the first original novel published by the company. She t...

Sometimes I have to stop and ask myself, is God trying to get my attention? Because it sure seems like I keep running into this or seeing that lately. That happened this week, as a matter of fact. When I was interviewing Stacey Donovan of Hallmark Publishing, she was talking about her main character in her new book, Sunrise Cabin , and how she starts each day saying aloud everything she is gratefu...

Today's conversation with Lynn H Blackburn is so interesting! Not only do we talk about fun stuff like writing and stories, but we start our conversation with a very serious problem in the world - human trafficking. Her book,  In Too Deep , has an element of human trafficking in the plot that makes it both compelling and chilling. Lynn tells us how better research helped her improve one of th...

Sometimes we feel stuck. Maybe a little, like walking in a bog. Maybe a lot, like waist-deep. Maybe we sometimes even feel we're totally buried, cold, in the dark, alone. Imagine, though, that you're not buried but...planted. Like a seed that gets planted in the spring, maybe this is a very temporary season, one which will soon show signs of life as the seed breaks down and a plant springs up. But...

Our guest today is Jan Drexler , a historical novelist whose stories often feature Amish characters. Today we talk about the challenges and choices Plain folk faced during the Civil War. Jan is a Civil War buff and traces her family history back through the Amish of the 1700s, so she brings a unique take to her stories. She used census records and Ancestry.com to find out more about her family, an...

Our guest today is Melody Carlson , the award-winning author of over two hundred books. Despite having so many, she does tend to be known for her many Christmas stories. Today we talk to her about her latest Christmas book, A Christmas by the Sea . Due to the timing of publishing, Melody mostly has to write her Christmas books in July with the air conditioner on. It's fun to hear how some of the p...

The lovely Lisa Harris talks to us today about building a romantic suspense novel from the ground up. She explains how she organizes her information (she loves Scrivener and Excel!), what she needs to know before she begins, and how she starts writing. She also talks about setting a word-count goal that works for you, and things you can do if you miss a day or two and need to catch up. She even cr...

Suzanne Woods Fisher joins us today for a riveting and fun conversation about Nantucket , its amazing history and people, and the trilogy of Quaker books she set on the island. Did you know that the Macy family (from the Macy's department stores) and the Folger family (from Folger's coffee, what my mom drank) both come from Nantucket island? So did Benjamin Franklin's mother. Suzanne says it's ama...

Ever since I was a teenager, I've enjoyed reading the second half of Proverbs 31 about the Wife of Noble Character. I've always looked at that passage as an example of who I'd like to become, what I strive to be. But recently I've read it again with a new perspective. This is not about a woman who doesn't rest. It doesn't say that she never failed. When it says that her lamp doesn't go out at nigh...

We writers love stories, and some of the most exciting are stories of getting THE CALL - from an agent who wants to represent our books (and with whom we're now working happily ever after), and from our agent or an editor who wants to buy our books. Claire Eliza Bartlett , our guest today, tells us about the excitement of both calls! Claire is on the journey toward publication of her first novel,...

Today marks the 100th episode of WRITE NOW! Workshop Podcast! Woohoo!!! :-D Very exciting day for me! To celebrate, I asked Christine Munroe, Director of Kobo Writing Life , if she would be our guest today. :-D She graciously agreed, and we had a wonderful time talking about all the many things Kobo is doing with and for writers. The newest announcement is that Kobo has partnered with Walmart in t...

Jennifer Dornbush is a screenwriter, author, speaker, and forensic specialist. Today we talk about her new movie, God Bless the Broken Road , and the novelization she wrote by the same title. Jennifer says both the making of the movie and the release of the novel had aspects of a "broken road" as both had obstacles that seemed insurmountable at times. One of the things that helped her with her (fi...

Today's guest is editor Tisha Martin ! Tisha edits for a couple of publishing companies, has private clients, and judges books for Writer's Digest. Today she gives us tips on how to self-edit our books with style. She starts with characters, asking what we can do with our characters to help move the plot forward. Then she moves into scene building, how action and conflict affect how the reader int...

Summer is about over and I've decided that while I do need to continue guarding my time and my work so that I don't fall into the bad patterns that led me to burnout, I miss doing the Encouraging Words episodes! So I'm going to do at least one a month. Here are my encouraging thoughts for September. :-) I was reading my Bible this morning and read from Ecclesiastes, a book of wisdom in the Old Tes...

Today's guest is Kathryn R Biel , author of chick lit, romantic comedies, women's fiction, and more - and probably no relation to actor Jessica Biel, although she's asked that a lot. Due to a horrendous Internet connection that was constantly going out the day before, when we recorded the interview a second time we were so relieved to not have to repeat every sentence that we forgot to look at the...

Do you wish you had a writers group? Here are some steps to create your own. Step 1: Look around Who do you know at work or church or in your neighborhood who writes? Check out local libraries and bookstores to see if they already have a group going, if anyone has posted a notice that they're looking for a group, or if you can post a notice that you're interested in starting a group. Maybe even tr...

Over the last couple of months, I've been trying to figure out how to recover from burnout. I've found some information on the Internet, but it's been pretty vague and not as helpful as what I needed. So as I've made my own path to recovery, I wanted to make sure I share my experiences with you in case it helps you to recover from or avoid burnout in your own life. One of the things that helped a...