Author Insights • Uncategorized
July 22, 2021
This interview was originally published in Dead Darlings Liz Hauck’s dad loved to eat. He also co-directed an agency that served teenagers in state care. Four years out of college, Liz suggested they start a cooking program at one of the group homes. When her dad died unexpectedly, she decided to push past her grief…
I’ve screwed up so many Manuscript Mart meetings at GrubStreet’s Muse and the Marketplace conference, I’ve been through Hell. I have been disconsolate, heard Satan’s calumnies, been scorched by the Inferno’s great heat. Speaking of Inferno, Dante’s nine circles of Hell is a useful, albeit morbid, way to frame my venial sins and how to improve—for the blessed day I…
This could be you if you watched Hidden Figures or Dunkirk, had your socks knocked off after reading Crystal King’s Feast of Sorrow or Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, or managed to keep pace with the 166 ghosts in George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. You finish and say to yourself, I could do that. I could definitely write that. If…
“A person lacking bones is a jellyfish—an aimless, floating blob.” – Anon An earlier post discussed this cool idea I had one Christmas vacation for a science fiction trilogy, and how I began by finding pictures of my imagined characters on the internet and summarizing them in a character outline. Each one had their own…
Cam's Process • Cam's Research • Writers Writing
September 11, 2018
My question seemed simple: what fauna flourished around Rome and Ostia in the first century? Creating the world of my historical novel depended on getting the right answer, so I did what any good fiction writer does—I googled, purchased and read a variety of books (above), and even traveled to the place. Obsessing the details is…
My wife and I were sitting down to lunch in Greece at a rooftop restaurant shaded by a vined trellis. It was summertime, about 90 degrees F. Sweat dotted my forehead. Dogs lay on their sides in the road then lumbered onto all fours and ambled away lazily, without purpose. The numerous feral cats were…
The White Rabbit appears at the very beginning of Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. When he races down the rabbit hole, Alice follows him into Wonderland, thus beginning her fantastic journey. Carroll’s setting is other-worldly, but he evokes it with such aplomb it becomes a character in its own right. Where a story…
Author Insights • Cam's Research
June 30, 2018
Randy Susan Meyers found the subject for her latest novel in the morning news. She read about an immense Ponzi scheme that effected thousands across the nation and realized she could tell the story the right way. Her bones resonated sympathetically with the notes plucked by the subject matter. So that’s what she did. The…
Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Now that I’ve been writing novels for several years, I couldn’t agree more. When I began my first book, Nicole Kiernan, a colleague at work who had contributed to several screenplays, advised me to put quality time…
It’s tough living in a family of writers. It can make a person feel downright inadequate. My sister, Psychiatrist Roxanne Dryden-Edwards, published a book on infertility and one on developmental disabilities. My cousin, the former newscaster Naomi Pringle, wrote a couple of books chronicling my family’s immigration from Jamaica to the U.S. The book Freeing…
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