Inspired by Life ... and Fiction

Novelists bound by the pen, sisterhood, & more

Audiobooks? A few ways to give them a try.

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I loved reading Tammy's audiobook post from earlier this week. A few years ago, I couldn't imagine listening to audiobooks for any length of time. Partly this was because of cost. Partly it's because I love the feel of a book. Partly because I don't always love the narrators. But I reached a point where I wanted to redeem the time walking across campus, driving all over town. Audiobooks … [Read more...]

The Story Behind the Story

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In April I have a novella releasing in a new collection Across the Shores. But the germ of this story came to me years ago. I was trying to find the original proposal idea and I'm going to guess it was about 2011 or 2012. I'd written two series of WWII novels for Barbour -- Cornhusker Dreams set in Nebraska and the Ohio Brides set in Ohio. Stars in the Night was about to release, and Shadowed by … [Read more...]

Talking to My Friends

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The last two weeks I've been chatting with many of my writing friends as I've been recording new episodes of Book Talk. It has been such fun! Two weeks ago I chatted with Kristy Cambron and Jill Eileen Smith. Last week it was Lisa Phillips and her team of authors as well as Mary Connealy. And this week I had a blast connecting with Melanie Dobson, J'Nell Ciesielski, Lynn Blackburn, Lynnette Eason … [Read more...]

Writing, Swimming, and Giveaways, oh my!

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Last month I participated in NANOWRIMO, a race to write 50K words in the month of November. It gave me the competitive drive to write 44,000 while also macro and line-editing a novella that will release next year. But the result of writing that fast was a sequence of chapters and scenes that might -- or might not -- actually mesh together. This fast writing was an important part of the … [Read more...]

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