Under an Indiana Sky Denise has never trusted her sister Angie’s boyfriend, Brock—not only because Angie pulls away from caring for their disabled mother, but because something about him doesn’t add up. Brock’s mother, Nora, has doubts of her own, even as she tries to begin a new chapter in her life. Meanwhile, Mercedes, a […]
My Turkish mother once ran away from an arranged marriage. I shared this information about her often, proud of her courage at such a young age. Her father wanted her to marry a relative who was like an older brother to her. She didn’t want to, so she ran away to Istanbul, where she met […]
For the first-time, historian Rachel Greenfield recovers the facinating story of Rose Knox; one of America’s most famous 20th century business woman who pioneered gelatine as a cooking staple, including the iconic mid-century salad gelatin craze! In 1908, after her husband’s death, Rose secretly took control of his struggling gelatine company and went on to […]
Engineering a Love Story, Kathleen Reidy At the height of the boom, ambition is easy —love is the real gamble It’s the year 2000—dot-coms, Bush v. Gore, and sky-high San Francisco rents. But while the country swoons with irrational exuberance, Chelsea Lefevre’s life is deflating faster than a tech bubble. She’d had everything she thought she […]
Under an Indiana Sky Denise has never trusted her sister Angie’s boyfriend, Brock—not only because Angie pulls away from caring for their disabled mother, but because something about him doesn’t add up. Brock’s mother, Nora, has doubts of her own, even as she tries to begin a new chapter in her life. Meanwhile, Mercedes, a […]
In Wild Pivot: Notes from a Political Life Rewritten (She Writes Press; September 22, 2026), Jen Thompson shares her profound journey from being a celebrated Republican strategist in Washington, D.C., to abruptly abandoning her career in search of authenticity and deeper meaning. Drawing on her years as a top congressional lawyer and campaign manager for […]
My Turkish mother once ran away from an arranged marriage. I shared this information about her often, proud of her courage at such a young age. Her father wanted her to marry a relative who was like an older brother to her. She didn’t want to, so she ran away to Istanbul, where she met […]
For the first-time, historian Rachel Greenfield recovers the facinating story of Rose Knox; one of America’s most famous 20th century business woman who pioneered gelatine as a cooking staple, including the iconic mid-century salad gelatin craze! In 1908, after her husband’s death, Rose secretly took control of his struggling gelatine company and went on to […]
A IS FOR AGE For pro-athletes, runway models, rock and rollers and dancers, age is the enemy, but for writers, it’s the opposite. Margaret Atwood’s latest book came out when she was eighty-five. Wallace Stegner published Crossing to Safety at seventy-eight. Patti Smith wrote her luminous memoirs in her seventies. Toni Morrison and Cheryl Strayed […]
You Can Be a Disaster and Still Get Invited to the Fish Fry: At the beginning of Love and Other Incurable Ailments, Serenity Tomczyk doesn’t emerge from loss with newfound wisdom or enviable resilience. She nurses a cat. She attends group therapy. She catastrophizes every headache with a late-night Google search. Years after losing her […]
I played with paper dolls and stuffed animals aplenty as a child, and both provided many hours of entertainment and story-building fun. One of the great joys of being a writer is creating characters, too. Let’s take a look into what makes a believable character and how we can develop characters that readers will long […]
Last month, my six-year-old novel The Violin Maker’s Daughter woke up to new life, with a brand-new cover and brand-new energy. It’s been updated, edited, polished. It’s as if a whole book’s out there: except this time, I didn’t spend hours, weeks, and months writing 100,000 words from scratch. Getting here was a long-winded learning-by-doing […]
I floated through hallways crammed with floor-to-ceiling shelves teeming with books. My first editorial job in book publishing had landed me in a sprawling single-story building in Chicago’s north suburbs, and everywhere I looked I saw books. I remember thinking “I can’t believe I get to work here!” After having spent four years as a […]
In Love With Your Ghost: A Cozy, Spooky, Slow-Burn Fall Romance (Sugar Pine Springs) Hartley and Levi fell in love, and it was magic. Until Levi ghosted her. No goodbye, no explanation. He didn’t die. He just left her haunted. Which is ironic, since Hartley can legit see ghosts. Thirteen years later, Levi’s grandmother and […]
BAD WINNER Bad Winner is an epic, unsettling and darkly comic adventure thriller set between a stifling England and the wilds of Colombia. Black sheep Bea craves freedom as much as her populist dad craves power. Intent on estranging her bigoted family, Bea’s embroiled herself in debt working a dead-end job planning competition prizes, gambling […]
Cassie Navrone is the main character of my new book, Silver Lady: The Invisible Captain. My novel is a standalone sequel to Silver Lady: Travels Along the River Road. This one takes place a year later in 2034. Cassie is able to leave New Orleans following a six-month civil war aboard the luxury houseboat. She […]
Rodgers had Hammerstein. Lerner had Loewe. Moss had Hart. When we think of great collaborations, we typically imagine two creatives hunkered down in a room and spending more time with each other than with their respective families. Technology, however, has given birth to more inventive devices to pool respective skill sets and resources and spin […]
Ariadne: A Greek Tale of Labyrinths and Legacies For fans of Madeline Miller, a retelling of the tale of a bold, resilient woman from Greek myth who transforms heartbreak into fierce strength, weaving a new legend where sanctuary rises from betrayal and the Labyrinth is reborn. In a world shaped by gods, kings, and ancient […]
By Carmen Amato “We’re going analog,” he said. “Analog?” I echoed. I was speaking to David Bruns, who with J.R. Olson co-writes the military-espionage Command and Control series. He explained that they’re skipping a digital-first playbook. Instead they’re leaning into an analog marketing strategy built around thematic speaking engagements, such as with veterans’ groups. It’s […]
Your dream finally came true. You wrote a book, you found a publisher who loved it as much as you do, and now, your book is in your hands. You’re officially a published author. After the unboxing and the champagne, you sit back and wait for the royalties to roll in… And that’s where the […]
By Carol Hoenig If you’re like me, you worked on your novel for a number of years before it’s ready for publication. Then once it is published there’s the feeling of accomplishment and celebration along with upcoming events and interviews. But about six months later you discover you’ve had your opportunity to get readers but […]
By Zelly Ruskin I thought the hard part was going to be finishing the book. Then I published. The image of an author is often one of someone chewing a pencil, with wads of papers beneath their chair. Maybe they’d be deep in thought, or frazzled—or both. In today’s world, they are sitting uninspired at […]
It’s impossible to forget the thrill of the moment when you come across a great idea for a novel. For me, the idea was a child with past life memories of being a soldier in Vietnam and the challenges this presented his mother as she looked for answers. As I wrote, this grew into alternating […]
Q&A with Literary Agent ERIN NIUMATA Folio Literary Management, VP and Literary Agent Erin Niumata has been in publishing for over three decades. She started as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster in the Touchstone/Fireside division for several years; then moved over to Harper Collins as an editor, and then she went to Avalon […]
Three years ago, I was a freelance writer with an extremely long Word document chilling on my hard drive. Today, those 98,000 words mark my shift from aspiring writer to fiction author: The Lost Night is coming out from Crown. My novel is a thriller about a woman uncovering the dark truths surrounding her best […]
A few days ago I did an interview and one of the questions was did I think having an agent was crucial in this business. The answer for me was a huge, resounding yes. My agent is Carly Watters at P.S. Literary Agency, and I literally wouldn’t be where I am now without her patient […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series Part One Part Two | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION ELEVEN Historically, how many story ideas do you […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series. Read Part One HERE | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION SIX Did your first agented manuscript sell? If […]
If someone had told me it would take twenty-one years to write a book, I would have told them that they were crazy. But that’s exactly what it took. It all started at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference (SBWC) in 2005, when I came up with the seeds of what would become my memoir. I […]
The seed of my novel arrived unbidden, wafted toward me in a dream ten years ago, carrying with it a compulsion to help it grow into a tree. I hadn’t gone looking for a writing project; the story somehow had found its way to me. Now that my tree is waving its branches, asking for […]
When I decided to write a memoir about the transformative year I spent in Northern Kenya, living with the semi-nomadic Samburu and Rendille tribes, I had little experience writing creative nonfiction. After almost 10 years, I completed my first draft of Living with Strangers, which covered my childhood and teenage years in foster care, as […]
I didn’t start out to write a book or a memoir. It began with me jotting down memories of my son as they popped into my head. Michael, who was forty-five when he was found dead in his apartment, was my only child, my greatest joy, and I adored him. He was whip-smart, and he […]
THE PLUS ONE LIST From New York Times bestselling author Amy Ewing comes a steamy new vacation romance perfect for fans of Christina Lauren’s The Paradise Problem. Eloise, who struggles with anxiety, strongly prefers the company of her senior rescue dogs to people. But when her best friend announces she’s getting married in Mexico City […]
From the age of 6, my dream was to become a writer, though my path to writing a novel was anything but straightforward. I’m sharing my own journey to show that it is, indeed, possible to switch from one focus to another — in my case, from writing bestsellers packed with career advice to writing […]
“I’m very picky about romance, but Melissa completely won me over—her writing is sharp, charming, and just incredibly readable in the best way.” —Mindy Kaling THE LOVE OPERATION What if you could step back into your memories and experience them exactly as they happened? Dr. Cordelia Wren (Cord) has always trusted science more than sentiment. […]
As a child, I wanted become a writer. I had no idea what I would write about, but the idea of putting part of me onto a page that would last forever was heady. I got older and read like mad. Lots of novels, a few story collections, almost no poetry or non-fiction. When I […]
A teacher told me at a young age that I had empathy. Empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. That holds a lot of weight for a young person, that a person of authority recognizes something inherent in them. I had never thought about it before, but I found it true. Whenever […]
Writing a book is hard. That’s the truth. Finishing it is a tremendous accomplishment. Fact. Taking that personal effort, the words you’ve created and taken great care to string together, and offering them to be viewed by the public? Terrifying. Glorious. Nerve-wracking. Exhausting. Still, we sit back down and subject ourselves to the process all […]
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