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by Kathleen Ernst

For over a decade, while I was developing my writing skills, I had the great good fortune to work at a large outdoor ethnic museum near Milwaukee called Old World Wisconsin. This historic site includes a crossroads village and ten working farmsteads, with restoration dates ranging from 1845 through 1915.

Old World Wisconsin is a place where Interpreters get their hands dirty, so my knowledge of historical domestic and agricultural processes grew exponentially. I learned how to warp a loom, how to milk cows, how to make rennet and lye soap. I prepared wine, sauerbraten, hops yeast, and Finnish egg coffee. And I’ve passed many of these skills, of course, on to my characters.

But hands-on experience brings much more to a writer’s toolbox than technical understanding. Living history sites and events can provide the specific sensory details that bring a scene to life. Continue reading »

Over a woe-is-me, three-martini lunch twenty years ago, a pal and fellow disgruntled stockbroker told me a tale that became the basis for my debut novel, Big Numbers.

A half-eaten olive spat from my mouth even before I heard the punchline. “Say that again?”

“Jim was a stock-jockey like the rest of us, living hand-to-mouth, until his richest client died,” my pal said. “One week after the client’s funeral, Jim started dating the rich new widow.”

I picked up my errant and twice-bitten green olive.

“And Jim married her?”

“Yup,” my friend said.

Bottoms up on my third martini. “That sounds like a novel.”

“A noir tale of greed.”

Maybe it was the times. The mid-1980s celebrated renewed and sharp economic growth, even greed in my opinion. Or maybe it was just my own greed, my desire to escape the dismally frustrating and soulfully repugnant stock and bond trade. Dialing for dollars, we used to call it. Income based solely on commissions. Believe me, avarice gets nurtured daily when you watch your salary go back to zero every month. Continue reading »

This article on collaborative writing was submitted by Heather Hepler, co-author of Scrambled Eggs at Midnight and Dream Factory

I was so happy a few weeks ago when a boy in the third row of a freshman English class raised his hand and asked us, “Where do you come up with your characters? They are so…um… random.”

I think that’s partly what attracts both Brad and me to writing. In what other vocation or avocation is it okay to know a whole lot about bottle cap collecting, and anachronistic role-playing, and Bob’s Big Boy? Not to mention Brad’s extensive knowledge of all things related to 50’s television and my somewhat unfortunate obsession with apples and chocolate.

I don’t think this obscure knowledge would even make us very good Trivial Pursuit partners for anyone. I mean, how often do you need to know that the first Ronald McDonald wore a food-tray hat, or that the Honey Crisp Apple is actually a cross between a Macoun and a Honeygold?

I was told something that I’m sure most writers are told when they are starting out. Write what you know.

The thing is no one told me that the things I know might not be the big ideas. I really don’t know how to stop global warming or how to heal a broken heart or how to get ahead in business. The things that I know are the smaller things that find their way into my everyday life. It’s in these obscure obsessions that I seem to find stories. Continue reading »

Over the past few months I have had the great pleasure of interviewing a fair number of authors, many of them first-timers. What I found interesting was a consistent theme, that of dissatisfaction and frustration with the publishing world.

Unfortunately most authors are unwilling to talk publicly about their experiences, no doubt wary that ‘stirring the pot’ will make their future projects even more difficult to bring to fruition.

Fearless stand-up comedian and writer Ian Coburn however broke the mold and agreed to discuss his experiences with the literary world. And a fascinating story it is.

On Getting Started
It doesn’t surprise me that authors would be reluctant to share their knowledge. In any art medium, artists often feel there is only so much work or space to go around; if they share their knowledge, they create more competition.

I often came across this mentality as a comedian. Many comedians did not want more people breaking into a business already oversaturated with acts. They were afraid someone better would steal their spots at clubs. So, comedians often recommended mediocre acts to clubs, in order to be certain there would still be work at those rooms for them.

This logic is totally backward. As a comedian, I can only work one club at a time. When I’m not at a club, I want the best possible act working there. I want the crowd to think he’s hilarious. That way the club will stay open. Hopefully, more clubs will open. If people see mediocre acts, they’ll stop going to the clubs. Clubs will close. Continue reading »

Contributed by Linda Weaver Clarke

Step into the early days of the Wild West and be a part of another culture, time, and place. The historical/fiction novel, “Melinda and the Wild West,” encourages the reader to be a part of history, and feel the tenderness of romance. This story blends fascinating characters with Idaho’s Bear Lake history and is based on several true experiences, published by American Book Publishing, for both adult and young adult alike.

Lloyd E. Reid, Library Director of Washington County Libraries, wrote, “Linda Weaver Clarke has a writing style which opens the mind in a way that lets us see what her character sees, and allows the reader to feel the thoughts and emotions of the characters. It is impossible to avoid becoming part of the story she so skillfully develops. She writes historical fiction as if she were taking the reader back in time.”

Melinda and the Wild West takes place in 1896. Melinda is from Boston and has come to Idaho’s Bear Lake Valley. The idea of going to the Wild West appeals to her. She wants to do some good in someone’s life and maybe she could do it by teaching school. Intertwining fact and fiction, Melinda is confronted by many obstacles, such as a bank robbery by the notorious outlaw Butch Cassidy, a rebellious student that is marked as a trouble maker, an irritable grizzly bear, a blinding blizzard in the tops of the Rocky Mountains, stinging nettle, and the most rugged and stubborn rancher she has ever met in her life.

Melinda and the Wild West is not only filled with adventure, but has the tenderness of romance. A rugged rancher and a determined schoolteacher from the east tend to butt heads and clash with each encounter, but at the same time there seems to be an underlying interest in one another. Why Gilbert is guarding his heart is a mystery to Melinda. In this story, she is desperately trying to help a rebellious student through acceptance and love, and at the same time, she is trying to understand her own heart.

Melynda Gascoyne of the Amherst Bee Newspaper in Buffalo, New York wrote, “Clarke was able to write about love in a soft fashion, not full of the same type of sexual writing of most romance novels. I was impressed with the eloquence in which Clarke spun her story. It was dramatic in some spots and yet contained simply placed bits of humor. I would recommend this to anyone.”

Betsy Brannon Green, best-selling Suspense Author, wrote, “Linda Weaver Clarke is a fresh new face in the fiction market. Her vivid descriptions, engaging characters and clever word-usage make reading her work a pleasure. I look forward to enjoying her books for many years to come.” Continue reading »

This article is contributed by Lisa Silverman

With the tremendous success of such memoirs as Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes,” Mary Karr’s “The Liar’s Club,” and Dave Eggers’s “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” the 1990s and early 2000s saw an explosion in the genre.

The boom was seen in the number of memoirs acquired by publishers, the number of titles shelved in the memoir section in bookstores, and, as a result, the number of memoirs unfolding on writers’ computer screens across the country. But the brutal truth is that without a few crucial elements, your memoir will have no chance of finding a literary agent’s representation, never mind becoming a bestseller.

It might help to consider a question that’s always puzzled me: What’s the difference between a memoir and an autobiography? Webster’s defines a memoir as “a narrative composed from personal experience” and an autobiography as “the biography of a person narrated by himself or herself.” (The second definition of “memoir” is “autobiography,” indicating just how blurry the line is.) I think of a biography as a life story–a full life, that is, unofficial “biographies” of Paris Hilton or Justin Timberlake aside. Most memoirs, by contrast, don’t begin at the author’s birth and provide a thorough chronological history of a life now in its twilight years.

Memoirs are, of course, written by authors of all ages, and their narratives can encompass fifty years or one week of experience. The first element necessary to a successful memoir is that experience. Continue reading »

Author of Silent Battlefields

The premise of this article is that imagination is the fuel of good fiction writing. To be sure, there are many other important, even necessary components that the author must possess and bring to bear, but they all emanate from imagination, without which creative writing is unattainable. When all are present and put into action then there is a synergistic effect, such that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. These include motivation, discipline, commitment, perseverance, grammar, practice, and, of course, talent. Without such elements as motivation and perseverance, talent will lie dormant. But without imagination, talent will lack the spark to spawn a captivating or mesmerizing story.

Imagination is unique. It is unconquerable, as even a person confined to a cell can take leave by conjuring up its magic. Yet, paradoxically, its possessor must choose to release it, to allow it to roam freely beyond the world that surrounds us; to pull together elements we are already familiar with and assemble them in ways that we are unfamiliar with; to invent new characters that had never existed before and endow them with their own personalities; and to create stories that never happened, yet which have the power to move the reader to tears, anger, inspiration, action, and transformation.
Continue reading »

You are free to duplicate or distribute the following information to your blog, Web site, ezine, newsletter, or friends. We would appreciate a link back to BloggingAuthors.com. If you would you like to review this book for your site, blog, or ezine, email nancy at bloggingauthors dot com

Author of Passion, and Sins and Secrets

Writing erotic romance is certainly a sexual liaison with my muse. Anticipation starts the juices flowing, and then imagination takes over. What is hotter than the expectation of tingles and whispers, caresses and sighs, and finally, skin against skin. The mind, after all, is the most potent erogenous zone. Much like spending a hot night with a lover, foreplay begins while walking up the stairs, or in this case, turning on the computer!

Before computers, writers stared at a blank page in a typewriter. Now, it is a white screen on a monitor waiting to be filled. My muse helps me find the sensual space in my imagination, from which sexy stories appear. Sometimes when I need him, my muse has to be enticed to come out and play. I tease him, pursuing him until he can no longer resist.

My muse is certainly masculine, a commanding presence when he emerges. To coax him out of the private sanctum where he lives, I bait him. He loves music, especially the blues. Oh baby, yes, the blues will lure him out every time. He absolutely cannot resist Etta James.
Continue reading »

You are free to duplicate or distribute the following information to your blog, Web site, ezine, newsletter, or friends. We would appreciate a link back to BloggingAuthors.com. If you would you like to review this book for your site, blog, or ezine, email nancy at bloggingauthors dot com

Author of Cryptid, The Lost Legacy of Lewis and Clark

Literature holds a special place in our hearts, fiction in particular. The art of fiction has been a part of civilization nearly as long as writing itself. But in this day of text messaging, Internet surfing, satellite television, and in-home theaters the act of reading fiction has much competition. And yet, in spite of technology’s pleasures, we continue to read with no foreseeable end in sight.

Why? How can it be that reading a book can hold a candle to blowing an evening playing Halo or letting the hundreds of satellite and cable TV channels wash over us?

It is because stories told with the written word offer the consumer what technology and no other media can—an intimate and uniquely personal emotional experience. An experience that is a cooperative creative effort between both author and reader. And this experience has four distinct and foundational elements.
Continue reading »

You are free to duplicate or distribute the following information to your blog, Web site, ezine, newsletter, or friends. We would appreciate a link back to BloggingAuthors.com. If you would you like to review this book for your site, blog, or ezine, email nancy at bloggingauthors dot com

Author of Silent Battlefields

Let’s begin by uncovering the hidden premise of the title, which is that characters lead the author. But do they? I think we are faced with a paradox here. That’s not necessarily bad or surprising, since some of life’s most challenging questions imply paradoxical answers. Those with a black and white cognitive mindset may be disappointed at this suggestion, but I believe it’s true.

In writing fiction, there can be no doubt that the words, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth, emanate from the author. Similarly, the author is responsible for the plot and characters of his or her novel, as well as the extent to which it generates tension and conflict. If the book is not well received, the author certainly can’t claim, “It’s the characters’ fault.”

Many fiction writers report that they always know where their short stories and novels are going and how they’re going to end. I have no doubt that for those authors their assertion is true and if it works for them, that’s fine. Agents and publishers aside, ultimately it is the outcome of the work and the judgment of the reader that counts, as nice as it might feel to be self-satisfied about one’s own work.
Continue reading »