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This week's guest is L. Bordetsky-Williams (Forget Russia, Tailwinds Press, December 2020) whose historical fiction debut is framed around many of her family's experiences from 1900-1980 during the Russian Revolution, the pogroms in Ukraine, and her relatives' eventual immigration to America, and later return to their mother country once the depression hit in 1931. She's a big believer that we're destined to meet certain people in our lives and has stories to prove it. And because her book covers multi-generations, we discuss finding the correct structure to use, which in her case included journal and diary entries as well as the use of both first and third-person points of view.

Forget Russia is an Editors' Choice Book of the Historical Novels Review. Lisa has also published the memoir, Letters to Virginia Woolf, The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf, and three poetry chapbooks. She is a Professor of Literature at Ramapo College of New Jersey and lives in New York City.

To learn more about her, click here.

Christina comes out of a copy-editing background but caught the novel-writing bug when a vivid dream presented her with a story she couldn't shake. She believes young writers shouldn't be afraid to write the book they'd want to read and that an author owes it to herself to push the envelope in terms of imagination, sensuality, and intricate plot lines instead of following trends and standard tropes. She also relished the freedom to make her own decisions on marketing and book design that going indie offered.

Christina Tsirkas grew up in New York City and has since migrated to the beautiful beaches of sunny South Florida where she lives with her partner and the most amazing cat, Kitty. She received her B.S. degree from Skidmore College in 2009 and went on to earn a full scholarship from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. She is licensed to practice law in New York State (though she has yet to exercise that right!) The Night Sender is her debut novel.

To learn more about Christina, click here.

After years of non-fiction and business writing, Judith Teitelman fell in love with the more creative side of the craft after a friend dragged her to a regular writing group. In this interview, we discuss how her magical realism tale is an amalgam of both her German grandmother's life story, a long-forgotten journal from an early relationship, and Judith's longtime interest in eastern religion. And if you think getting an agent means your book is set, listen in because Judith eventually had to go hybrid after two years of not finding a publisher who'd take a chance of her novel.

Judith has straddled the worlds of arts, literature, and business since she was a teenager and worked her first job as a salesperson at a B. Dalton/Pickwick Bookstore. Life's journeys took her from bookstores to commercial fine art galleries to the nonprofit arts and cultural sector, in which she has worked as staff, consultant, and educator for more than three decades. Throughout this time, Teitelman continued her pursuit of all things literary, and over the years her writing has been published in a variety of formats and publications. Guesthouse for Ganesha is her award-winning debut novel. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three beloved cats.

To learn more about Judith, click here.

In this interview, Kathy and Idiscuss how writing this book meant Kathy had to revisit painful memories from her own childhood as well as the breakup of her marriage, why she decided to take the hybrid route rather than endure the long wait of traditional publication, and her goal to write a book to not only satisfy her creative spirit but also to help others going through the same life challenges.

Kathy's eighth career as an Award Winning Author, draws from her first seven careers. From dishwasher to civilian female educator on an aircraft carrier (before women were on ships), to owning her own consulting business, Kathy has met many characters and traveled to some exotic places. For now, she is content to stay put in San Antonio, TX with her husband and crazy cat Toby and create stories out of all those experiences. Currently, she is writing the sequel to the Award Winning novel, Success Is The Best Revenge.

To learn more about Kathy, click here.

This novel was eight years in the making after starting life as an award-winning short story but Joyce felt like she had to grow both as a writer and as a student of human psychology before she could do it justice. She described parting ways with her first agent and switching to a small publisher as well as tips to increase pre-orders and suggestions for turning a novel to a possible screenplay.

Joyce was born in the SE Bronx, escaped to Manhattan as a teenager and now lives in Seattle with her husband and son. Along the way to becoming a full-time author, Joyce has worked as a screenwriter, singer-songwriter, multimedia performance artist and most recently, a member of the world music vocal ensemble, Abráce.

Joyce is a Pushcart nominee, whose stories and poems have been widely published. Her first Jo Epstein mystery, Ask the Dead was selected by The Poisoned Pen as a Recommended First Novel and hailed as "Bronx noir". The second book in the series, The Last Matryoshka was praised by Library Journal and takes place in Brooklyn and Moscow. Ms. Yarrow co-authored her third book, Rivers Run Back (Vitasta 2015), with Indian writer Arindam Roy and it was launched at The American Center (US Embassy) in New Delhi.

Ms. Yarrow considers the setting of her books to be characters in their own right and teaches workshops on "The Place of Place in Mystery Writing."

To learn more about Joyce, click here.

It's our 100th podcast and it's with Denny S. Bryce (Wild Women and the Blues, Kensington Books, March 2021). A former professional dancer as well as a marketing entrepreneur, Denny first got acquainted with agents who judged RWA writing contests she entered and eventually chose her agent over others because she was much more interested in Denny's over-all writing and career goals rather than with a single book. We discuss how it's important to get your name out in the writing community long before you finish your book, how you should always be writing other books while your first is on submission, how having her publication date delayed because of the pandemic turned out to be a blessing, and how both her grandmother's old photos and her boss at a NY restaurant provided the inspiration for her debut. And stay tuned to the end to learn about her two upcoming novels and the now famous actor she once went out with.

Denny S. Bryce is an award-winning author and three-time RWA Golden Heart® finalist, including twice for Wild Women and the Blues. The former professional dancer and public relations executive is a book critic for NPR Books and also has written for Frolic Media, USA Today, and Harper's Bazaar. A member of the Historical Novel Society (HNS), Women's Fiction Writers Association (WFWA), Novelists, INC., and The Tall Poppies, the former Chicagoan currently resides in Savannah, GA.

To learn more about Denny, click here.

Kathryn's book got a new cover only days before release and published in the middle of not only the pandemic but the post-election furor and the post office debacle (it took some readers two months to receive their books). This historical novel is set in northern California in the 1960's, with the first stirrings of the computer age (Kathryn's brother was a classmate of Steve Wozniak), a rich Silicon Valley setting, and a plucky heroine who learns to carve her own way in life despite family pressures. Kathryn's previous work had been in the short story genre but now that she's discovered the novel, she's off and running with two more books nearing completion.

Kathryn's short fiction has appeared in over twenty online literary magazines and print anthologies. She is the author of a collection of short fiction, FLATLANDERS, Shire Press 2019. She received the Grand Prize in the 2020 Eyelands International Short Story Contest.

To learn more about Kathryn, click here.

In this interview with Melissa Hunter, we discuss how this story, a fictional quasi-memoir of her grandmother's experiences as a teenager in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was one Melissa felt compelled to write but couldn't fully embrace until she became a mother herself. Through the years, she wrote it as a series of joined short stories and even a screenplay until finally settling on women's historical fiction as the ideal structure. We discuss working with a small specialty publisher, using the novel as an educational tool to educate young people about the Holocaust, and how a Facebook group resulted in a filmmaker using the book in an upcoming documentary.

Melissa W. Hunter is a writer and blogger from Cincinnati, Ohio, with a passion for telling stories about her family and her own life experiences. Her articles have been published on Kveller.com, LiteraryMama.com, Booksbywomen.org, and her short stories have appeared in the Jewish Literary Journal. She is a contributing blogger to the Today Show parenting community, and her novella Through a Mirror Clear was published as a serial installment on TheSame.blog, an online literary journal written for women by women (now available in its entirety on Amazon.com). Her debut novel What She Lost is inspired by her grandmother's life as a Holocaust survivor and is the subject of an upcoming episode of the documentary Generation to Generation (Fall, 2021). When not at her computer, Melissa loves spending family time with her husband and two beautiful daughters.

To learn more about Melissa, click here.

Florence's background in social work as well as her own large extended family informed her decision to write a wide-ranging saga, spanning a century-worth of events, secrets, and history of a close-knit Jewish immigrant family with themes of resilience, mental health challenges, and how decisions made at a point in time cycle through and effect subsequent generations. After finding it difficult to land an agent, she decided to publish with a quality hybrid press, and has been successful interfacing with book clubs across the country as well as using Book Bub and Facebook ad placements to publicize her debut.

Florence was raised and educated in New York City. With a BA in English and a Master's degree in Social Work, she served for over thirty years as a clinician, a family therapist and eventually CEO of a family service agency before retiring to write and travel. Her own close family of 26 aunts and uncles and 27 first cousins and listening to stories around the kitchen table, coffee klatches and family parties inspired her to write her fictional, multi-generational family drama, How to Make a Life. She has published stories for children and teens, romance stories for national magazines, literary stories, and personal essays for the Westchester section of the New York Times. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as The Evening Street Press and SNReview.

To learn more about Florence, click here.

When Geeta Schrayter first signed with a small press ten years ago, little did she realize she'd have to eventually wrest back control of her debut, rework the cover and formatting including left-out pages, and re-issue it on her own through Ingram a good decade later. Her story of perseverance will inspire writers whose books deserve a second chance at success in a marketplace where indie publishing is possible given a few dollars, some ingenuity, and a lot of hard work.

Geeta fell in love with the written word as soon as she could read. As a child she crafted pretend newspapers and fashion catalogs and penned short stories.

In fifth grade she won her first writing competition, decided she was going to be a writer, and never faltered in that decision.

She received her undergraduate degree in communications with a journalism concentration, and over the years has been a blogger, magazine intern, freelance writer, reporter, and assistant newspaper editor.

Along with the above, she's always had a love of fiction writing—ideas are constantly swirling around in her head and have come about from random events such as stopping at a stop light, being stranded at a bar, listening to music, and working on a puzzle with her daughter. She loves to observe the world around her, and her favorite writing quote is, "Be careful, or you may end up in my next novel."

When she's not writing, Geeta loves to travel, read, cook, run, and savor the magic in the everyday. She currently resides in New England with her family and is working on her next two novels.

To learn more about Geeta, click here.