I once pointed a creative writing student in search of mystery story ideas to a Twitter feed that aggregates crime news from across the country. “That’s going to depress me all day,” he said. That wasn’t my intent of course….
Guest Post: Out of Time by Beth Sherman
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn’t behave that way you would never do anything. – John Irving We must use time creatively. – Martin…
Guest Post: The Importance of Being a Bookworm by Katie Schwartz
Like a lot of people who scribble in notebooks constantly and wear their library cards thin, my early childhood was defined by books. There were books in every room at my grandparents’ house, where I lived until I was six….
Choosing Settings for Your Writing by Christa Carmen
Think of the last place you visited that really stuck out to you. What was it about the locale that made you connect to the experience? What details of the place did you retain and recall at later, unexpected moments,…
Guest Post: The Quarrel by Debra Young
It never fails. I sit down to write and the blue screen of death flares up in my head, the gears grind to a halt and it’s quiet up there, but for the voice, irritable and argumentative. What? You want…
Guest Post: MFA Myopia: The Pain is in the Details by Elizabeth Mastrangelo
I’ve always had trouble stepping back and seeing the big picture. “Well, no wonder you’re struggling,” my tenth-grade U.S. History teacher said when we met about my failing grade. “You’ve underlined every single sentence in this textbook. You don’t know…
Plot: How to Drive Your Story with Impossible Situations by Betty Krasnik
In order to write a good plot, you need to take big risks. Often times when we write, we fall into the usual patterns of building suspense. We are not being unique in our choices, because in that moment, we…
Guest Post: Dishwater and Death: The Writer’s Promise by Willow Becker
I’ve been a hobby writer since I was 5 years old. It was never a goal to make writing my living. I wanted to be an actress, an FBI agent, a witch. Writing is something I picked up along the…
A Conversation with C.S.E. Cooney
An interview by Alicia Cole. C. S. E. Cooney (csecooney.com/@csecooney) is an audiobook narrator, singer/songwriter, and author of World Fantasy Award Winner Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015). Her work includes the Dark Breakers series, Jack o’ the Hills, The Witch…
A Conversation with Lisa Aldridge
An interview by Alicia Cole. Lisa Aldridge lives in the magical Ozarks. She is the author of The Dangerous Impressions Series (NA, Suspense/Romance). Her forthcoming works include: The Ring O’ Callum Brodgar (Melange Books, 2017), Fiery Impressions, Be a Grass…
Guest Post: Making Piñatas and Making Time by Eva Langston
When I was a kid, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas stretched, becoming magical and seemingly endless. Each day my brother and I opened a paper window on our Advent calendar to reveal a tiny square of the hidden picture….
A Conversation with Sharanya Manivannan
An interview by Alicia Cole. The poet Sharanya Manivannan’s first book of fiction, The High Priestess Never Marries, has been described in The Establishment as “a tour de force of language, desire, and ancestral heartbeats.” It has just been published…