I spent the month of June in Ireland, at the end of which I attended the 2016 Dublin Writers Conference, put on by Laurence O’Brien and the crew at booksgosocial.com. It was a lovely three days’ worth of inspiring and informative sessions put on by successful writers, instructors and publishers. I’ll be sharing some of the writing tips I learned there (and at this month’s RWA Convention in San Diego) in the next few blog posts. The first batch is from Conor Kostick, an author and ... VIEW POST
What Does A Veronese Eat?
I love food (too much, it turns out). And one of my favorite cuisines is Italian. So when writing a novel based in Verona, Italy, of course I had to include some dining scenes with characters enjoying dishes that were at least Italian, if not precisely from Verona. I had to do a bit of research about what a Veronese (a person from Verona) eats. I had some fun with it. My main character, Dani Dunn, who is originally from Verona, runs an inn and restaurant in the bayside village of Little Eden ... VIEW POST
The Many Challenges of Writing The Lair
My latest contemporary romantic suspense novel, The Lair, now available for pre-order, stands on its own, which means you don’t have to have read my other books to immerse yourself in the story. However, the main characters and part of the plot are connected to the other volumes in my far-reaching “Sinner’s Grove” series. Writing a multi-faceted, even genre-crossing story whose books are independent yet interwoven, poses a whole host of challenges, but for The Lair, that was only the ... VIEW POST
Yes, You Still Need an Editor … and here are five reasons why
[portions of this post were originally published as a guest blog for donnacookauthor.com in 2014. Check out Donna’s award-winning fantasy novel, The Gift of the Phoenix http://donnacookauthor.com/book/gift-of-the-phoenix/ ] I had just finished the manuscript for book number four. After going over it several times, I was feeling pretty darn good about my work. My best one yet, I thought. I’ve got this novel-writing thing down. I turned it over to my editor, thinking she’d probably ... VIEW POST
Leaving The Waiting Place
Fans of Dr. Seuss know very well the infamous Waiting Place described in his classic children’s book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go. It’s the state of mind we all get stuck in at some point in our lives—a time of “in between,” where we think we want to move in one direction, but we’re not sure, so we wait for something to happen, or for things to stop happening, before we move. For me, the elusive goal has been fiction writing. For years I worked in marketing and wrote in many forms, none ... VIEW POST
