Writers are People, Too

Name/pen name: Sherrie Lynn Clarke/S. L. Clarke Location: Cache Valley, Utah Genres: I’m what I call genre-fluid. Out of all of my books/ideas for books, none of them are the same genre. I currently have a domestic suspense novel out and am working on a memoir and a cozy mystery (when the memoir gets too heavy). Do you have a particular writing ritual when you sit down to work? If so, describe…

In this week’s blog post I’m trying something a little different. My domestic suspense/thriller, When Love Won’t Die debuted in 2014 with Splice Publishing. It’s the story of a woman desperate to keep her past a secret and how obsession fuels the nightmare she is about to endure. My protagonist is Eleanor Bennett, a suspense author living an idyllic life writing novels and living in the country…

No matter what I’m writing, feedback in invaluable. I request feedback at different stages of working on my novel manuscripts. Critique partners I have been so lucky to have belonged to an online critique group for well over fifteen years. We started after finding one another on a writing website where folks could sign up and be placed in a group. We named ourselves The Blue Quills. Over the…

When I first embarked on writing my debut domestic suspense novel, I toyed with ideas for books in other genres, but nothing grabbed me enough to actually start creating a draft. I have always read a wide variety of genres including suspense, thriller, horror, cozy mystery, romance, generational drama, light fantasy and some sci-fi so my *idea* journal had snippets of material for many of…

Name/pen name: Debra Hunt (goes by Debbie with friends/family) Location: Colorado Springs, CO Genres: Women’s Fiction with suspense elements, book club fiction Do you have a particular writing ritual when you sit down to work? If so, describe it. I have a strong procrastination ritual, and I need to exercise extreme discipline or I’ll sabotage myself with the most inane “must-do” task on my…

I have been a fan of mysteries, suspense, thrillers, and even some horror for longer than I can remember. There’s nothing like a book where the author takes me on a thrill ride, and I can’t help but keep turning the pages. I became a fan of the suspense genre after reading my first Mary Higgins Clark book, Where Are The Children? The way she interwove the characters through the plot, hurling…

I was figuring out my schedule for this past week, as I do at the beginning of every new week, and I was actually surprised at home much of my day is spent focused on some aspect of writing. Even though I’m a creative at heart, I am also someone who cannot thrive without pre-planning and being organized. When tasks are scheduled into my week, they are almost certain to get done. So here’s what…

Have you ever been rolling along churning out words and then, out of nowhere, when you sit down to your next writing session, you find yourself procrastinating and using almost anything else to avoid putting words down on the page? Whether you’ve had a book (or several) published, or you’re writing your first, when I find myself avoiding the writing, it’s usually because of one of these…

Here’s the second part of my interview with J C Spark. What does author success look like for you? For me, success as an author means not only writing good books, but also publishing them and having them find readers – more than just a handful. It also means being able to make a living from it. An essential part of that is that I personally like my own books. I want readers to talk about them…

Name/pen name: JC Spark Location: Ranum, Northern Denmark (born in Germany) Genres: (Near Future) Sci-Fi, Speculative Fiction, Sci-Fi Thriller (Mystery, RomCom, Historical Adventure, LitRPG planned and partially drafted) and had already decided to self-publish even before the first book. Do you have a particular writing ritual when you sit down to work? If so, describe it. I don’t have a…

***image from FreePik.com*** I’ve had so many writers tell me that they struggle with dialogue. When I first began writing novels, I did, too. I would get feedback from my critique group saying, “A lot of the characters sound the same,” or, “A lot of the characters sound like you.” In the late 1990s, I began teaching drama and working with kids and teens. The more I interacted with them, the…

Are you a writer struggling to stay focused? Do you sit down to write and feel overwhelmed? Does your busy life schedule crowd out regular writing sessions? If you haven’t heard about Pomodoros before, let me introduce you to something called The Pomodoro Technique, named after the tomato shaped timer the inventor of this efficient system used in its application. Why a tomato shaped timer?…

Writing a book is a huge undertaking. A work containing three hundred plus pages means it’s a LOT to overwhelm a writer’s mind. No matter how many times I go through my drafts, there are things that are easy to miss. That’s where beta readers come in. They provide feedback from different perspectives and are a necessary step to help refine and polish a book manuscript before getting all the…

I had the pleasure of interviewing horror author Lenore Butcher for my first author spotlight post. I will be featuring more authors in the months to come, many in the suspense/thriller/horror/mystery genres, but I plan to include other genres as well. Stay tuned… Name/Pen Name: Lenore Butcher Location: Woodstock Ontario (Canada) Genres: My preferred genre can best be explained by the…

As an avid reader of multiple genres, (suspense/thriller/horror/mystery) I have so many favorite books that it’s definitely difficult to narrow down my top 5 in any genre. And it may seem cliché to some that 2 of my favorite horror books are by prolific horror author, Stephen King, but what can I say? That man knows how to get inside my head and keep me turning pages. So, here they are, in no…

*image by rawpixel.com on freepik* Although it might seem to non-writers that writing is a solitary task, and the process of actually putting words down on the page is most often done alone, most writers thrive when they are part of a writing community. Whether it’s a group that meets regularly to write together (in person or online), or one or two writer friends that I can meet for coffee and…

I find myself filling more and more files with ideas for novels, stories, and even a series, the more I write. It doesn’t hurt to have a very active imagination, either. But how did my head get so full of everything from simple, one sentence ideas, to character sketches, to more complex plots and settings? Inspiration. Here are the top 5 things that inspire my writing: BOOKS Having been a…