Category: BEHIND THE SCENES

  • Finding inspiration in the simple things

    About a year ago I posted about my own experience finding inspiration in the places I visit: Have travel, Will write. That was at the height of the pandemic, when traveling was still a distant vision. But by this spring, my wanderlust was suffering severe withdrawal symptoms. One trip to Italy last September hardly qualified…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Monkey Business

    Writers love using pets in their novels. Not only is it great for character development, but it adds an extra element of emotion and makes the story more enjoyable. Even some book or movie villains are dog or cat lovers, though they tend to prefer cats, perhaps because cats are not as heroic as dogs,…

  • The Elusive Plot

    Originally posted on Hope, Hearts, & Heroes: Photo from Freeimages.com How many authors or aspiring authors have a pile of unfinished manuscripts stacked in a drawer or on their computers? How many of them were so sure each one of these would be their best work yet, only to lose interest after a few thousand…

  • Christmas in July

    Okay, this title has nothing to do with this article, but I couldn’t resist using it, even though it’s August. Every time I hear this expression I’m reminded of my Christmases in South Africa, where the seasons were topsy-turvy and a ‘white Christmas’ was some ridiculous idealistic illusion we compensated for by ‘dressing’ the branches…

  • Have Travel, Will Write

    Ever since I was a little girl I have loved traveling to new places. I believe traveling and living in different parts of the world has helped shape me and my writing and impacted the way I see the world. Family outings and vacations were always a source of inspiration for me. Even at school,…