posted by guest blogger Jessica Conant-Park

I admit it: I’m driven by food. I’m married to a chef, I write culinary mysteries, and nothing delights me more than a visit to Russo’s upscale market in Watertown, MA. The heroine in my Gourmet Girl mysteries, Chloe Carter, jokingly theorizes that she operates under Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, fulfilling basic physiological needs (food, , sleep, breathing) before she can move on to other needs, like love, in order to reach the goal…

Thug Lit's newest issue contains a short story, "These Two Guys," about a couple of Ohio working men, dieting, and the end of a long and storied relationship.

The new story rounds off a cycle of shorts that have appeared in various venues around the web, each one advancing a slightly larger story that climaxes in the Thug Lit short.

The cycle begins with…

Vicki here. I'm writing this sitting in a Starbucks in Phoenix waiting until it's time for me to go for my TV appearance. This evening I'll be at Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, and I'm really looking forward to that. The book tour is coming to an end, and I'll be glad to be heading back North. To the cold and snow. Yummy. (BTW that is not a sarcastic comment). The highlights: Four Eyed Frog books in Gualala, California (pronounced Wallawalla). A delightful store in a lovely little…

Posted by Guest Blogger, Kate Flora

My recipe box is a trip down memory lane. I can thumb through it and find not just food that I associate with special people and special occasions, but also familiar handwriting. There are even some small blue cards with my own early and awkward cursive. I’ve had the box since I was about eight, and over time, the cardboard dividers have disintegrated so that I have to thumb through the whole box whenever I want a recipe.



The other…

We all know that the news has become a cutthroat business these days, with stations everywhere vying for the attention of viewers. As a result, things have become "newsworthy" that are somewhat laughable when you think about it.

The weather. You'd think that knowing to the half mile where the next rainshower will fall is an essential part of every person's life. We have a whole channel dedicated to weather, of course, but then we have local stations trying to edge each other out by…

Made my NaNoWriMo quota today. 1,697 words.

I'm anxious to start at the beginning and read what I've written. I don't think I'm accomplishing much toward solving the crime. I seem to be creating too much havoc. I have 35,000 words left to write. I need to remember this is supposed to be fun. Shouldn't take myself too seriously. If nothing else NaNoWriMo is helping me get in the habit of daily writing, and that's a good thing. I just don't want to be wasting my time. Am…

Loved it. Gorgeous, controlled, poetic writing. Loved the pacing and the structure of the short sections. Loved that the flashbacks have punctuation because punctuation=civilization, and the present post-apocalyptic sections have minimal punctuation=breakdown of civilization. The charaterization through dialogue and the slow revelation of the themes was fabulous. Such an interesting voice. It's been a long time since I encountered unfamiliar vocabulary in fiction.

Grim, though, very…

It's not necessarily a good thing, but it's the way things happen for me. A book springs into my head almost like the goddess rising fully formed from the sea. I know who the characters are, what's going to happen, and what mood I want to create.

Unfortunately, I have a zillion things to do besides write all that down, and I know from experience that it's an all-absorbing process that takes weeks, even months for just a first draft.

How do authors write while they're marketing…

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

We have these really good friends who have been part of our lives since 1977. So when they said they were going to Hawaii for three weeks and would I like to pet- and house-sit while they were gone, I said sure! I have borrowed their house in the past when they were away, since I can set up my current writing project, leave it spread around, and tackle it whenever I have time without all those pesky home interruptions. What could go wrong?

Evil…

Accomplished nothing today. 526 words. I got side-tracked reading writer's guidelines on the internet, and brainstorming NF articles. By the time I started writing my creativity was shot. My head was filled with NF ideas, not my wip. I noticed right away that my heroine's voice sounded completely different. It threw me, made me feel like I should go back and read everything I've written. I don't dare do that. It'll make me want to start rewriting. I've got to forge ahead without slowing down…

posted by Doranna Durgin

Seems like it's pretty straightforward, really, or it should be: Write the book.

Okay, maybe that's glossing over the whole book-writing process just a teensy bit, but let's go with it: Write the best book you can, follow it through the production process, meet your deadlines along the way. Because being a good writer is not the same as being a good blurb crafter, a typesetter, or a publicist...and there's no reason those skillsets…

I got my ARCs a week ago so I'm reading Macbeth's Niece one more time. My husband is surprised by the number of times it's been read, by me, by amateur helpers, by agents, editors, and who knows who else. (The worst part is that we're still finding things to fix!)

I've had people contact me and say, "I just finished writing a book and I'd like you to take a look at it." I always disappoint them by telling them to put it in a drawer for six months and then read it again.…

NaNoWriMo project hit 12,137 words today. I was afraid I'd written as much as I can without knowing where I'm going. I picked up a couple of How To books and started thumbing through them, reading a sentence here and there. Came across a statement suggesting I start a fire, burn down a house or something. Nice suggestion. I didn't do it but it started me thinking and writing.

I might burn down the family home next week :-)

~jess