• Tackling the second novel. From climbing a hill to scaling a mountain.

    Writing a book is hard work. I didn’t realize how hard until I started writing my second one. Writing my first book was fairly easy – like walking up a steep hill and slipping and falling a few times along the way. But that was all right, because no one was looking. I didn’t nurture…

  • Misty Dreams

    Misty Dreams

    Originally posted on Jael's Reviews: Misty DreamsJosephine Strand Rating: 💙💙💙💙💙/5 How could words have the power to both melt my heart and hurt me at the same time? she asked herself. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Review:Nineteen year old Richard’s medical mind took over while the reindeer and sleigh came crashing down…

  • My author interview on March 19, 2022, courtesy of author Jill Piscitello

    https://jillpiscitello.com/ INTERVIEW: What was the inspiration behind your latest release?  The idea for the story came from a series I wrote in my late twenties. In between caring for my daughter and helping my husband in his business, I wrote several novellas set in a vacation resort on a tropical island. It was superficial, frivolous…

  • An Unexpected Visitor

    Taking a page from an article I read on The Writer blog: Resurrect your darlings: How to recycle deleted material from your manuscript, I decided to ‘resurrect’ some of my deleted material from the original MISTY DREAMS draft and post it here. This is the second in the series. For those who have read the…

  • Fields of Poppies and Other Childhood Memories

    How many times do we come across an image that reminds us of something we experienced in the past? Imagine a vast green field scattered with bright red poppies as far as the eye can see. It may sound unoriginal and travelblog-ish, perhaps, but for me it has great meaning. Poppies represent one of the…

  • Book Review

    The Midnight Library, By Matt Haig (Spoiler alert!) As a fiction reader, I want to read books that are all-absorbing and make me forget the negativity of real life, stories that even if they aren’t all smooth sailing, pull me in and uplift my spirits. It has never crossed my mind to read a book…

  • A Home For Misty

    This month’s post is a piece I deleted from the first draft of my book Misty Dreams. For those of you who have read my book and have heard my story of how the first draft turned out to be a massive 360,000 words, this is one of the many scenes I regretfully had to…

  • THE DESK

    Dad, I thought of you today, and for some reason my memory whirled back to the first few days we settled in a new country, after mom and I joined you there. We were so happy to be reunited! We hadn’t seen you in ten months, but it had felt like an eternity. You wanted…

  • Things I Wish I Knew Before Writing a Book

    There are so many things I was unaware of when I started writing my romance novel, things that would have saved me a lot of time. But at the time I was writing for my own enjoyment. Not that I didn’t aspire to become a published author; I just didn’t think I had what it…

  • A Writer’s Nostalgic Musings

    “Cape Town, 22nd June, 1974: My life changed the minute I boarded the M/V Europa on a cold Saturday in Cape Town Harbour, on my way back to Italy after thirteen years in South Africa. Laden with coats and bags, my family and I made our way through the crowds, followed by the group of…

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