Hear us Roar

If you're a pantser, this interview is for you! Susan is squarely in the camp of letting your characters tell you their story and she's got the books to prove it. She's a prolific romance novelist who is now venturing into women's fiction, specifically historical tales from late 1800's America. Her best advice? Stay true to your unique vision. Every trope started with a writer who said "but what if I did it differently?"

A voracious reader her whole life, Susan Payne loves the written word. When reading more than fifty books per month wasn't enough, she decided to allow her mind to take flight and write all the many stories that kept intruding in her life. She blended her love of history and her love of words to create over eighty stories. All historical and centering on a couple finding love and a happy ever after together.

To learn more about Susan, click here.

Learn how the convergence of knowing someone in a women's prison, the popularity of Orange is the New Black, and overheard conversations at her law firm about whistleblower monetary rewards came together to inspire this best-selling novel which her agent sold in less than three weeks.

A.H. Kim is an immigrant, practicing attorney, cancer survivor, community volunteer, and proud mother of two sons. She lives in San Francisco with her husband. A Good Family is her first novel. Excerpts, interviews, and more (including blog entries about the ups, downs, and in-betweens of being a debut author) can be found on her website.

To learn more about A.H., click here.

In this podcast, Tricia and I discuss how a question her daughter posed was the "what if" inspiration behind her debut, how her background in screenwriting both helped and provided challenges when she turned to novel-writing and how, despite the fact she'd landed a top agent, she eventually decided to self-publish.

Tricia's writing career started in 1992 after the tragic loss of her brother to AIDS. Wanting to make a difference in the fight against HIV, she turned to her love of writing and wrote a dramatic play to take to high schools. The play was performed over 450 times and inspired Tricia to continue writing. She studied screenwriting at UCLA, and Rodeo Girl, a screenplay she co-wrote, is available on Amazon, Netflix, and UP.

To learn more about Tricia, click here.

In my interview with Amanda Brainerd, we discuss how her debut novel started out as an oral history before morphing into a fictional examination of her years at an elite boarding school and then NYC in the mid '80's, how Fran Leibowitz was an early fan, and a fascinating story of the evolution of her book cover design.

Amanda lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her husband and three children, blocks from where she grew up. She attended The Nightingale-Bamford School and was expelled from Choate Rosemary Hall, before going on to graduate from Harvard College and Columbia Architecture.

To learn more about her, click here.

In our interview with Lindsey Rogers Cook, we discuss how she decided after a year to leave her first agent because they clashed over editorial changes, how her training as a journalist for first US News & World Report and now The New York Times, informs her fiction writing, and how she was able to take two months off from her day job on "Book Leave" to finish her second novel which releases next year.

Lindsey Cook is a data journalist at The New York Times and a graduate of The University of Georgia. She lives in Hoboken, NJ with her husband and a small zoo of rescue animals.

To learn more about Lindsey, click here.

Desperate Housewives meet Mean Girls in Dr. Stephanie Newman's debut novel, which examines mother-daughter relations, the pervasive nature of social media in kid's lives and school bullying. Stephanie, a successful psychotherapist, discusses how she had to learn the difference between writing therapy notes and writing fiction, what it's like to debut on a social media black-out day, and using blog posts and non-fiction op-ed pieces to help promote your novel.

Stephanie Newman, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst/psychologist, Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and public speaker. She has practiced in New York over 25 years, treating adults and adolescents and families struggling with anxiety, depression, workplace concerns and more recently Covid-19 stress. She is the also the author of Madmen on the Couch (a psychological romp through the TV show Madmen) and is a contributor to the on line edition of Psychology Today magazine.

To learn more about Stephanie, click here.

During her career as a high school English teacher, Pamela always enjoyed the units on writing more than those on literature so when she retired, she put her skills to use to pen her debut novel. It's the story of a woman hoping to build bridges between the tourist population and the long-time residents of a small island off the coast of Florida and in the process, discovering it's impossible to escape our past without facing it first.

Pamela is a former teacher turned writer whose love for words turned into a love for stories. She lives in Florida where she finds inspiration for stories in everyday life. Once she discovered the writing bug, she willingly adopted it and nurtures it today. When not weeding through ideas, she loves reading and spending time with her family. She's a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and bardsy.com which feed her love for writing.

To learn more about Pamela, click here.

Twenty years ago, Anju Gattani saw a fully-formed scene in her dreams and it turned into the last scene in Book 2 of what is planned as a 5-book series, Winds of Fire. She tells how she cycled through four agents and 200 rejections before finding the perfect publisher (Scarsdale Publishing), and the exciting news of her story being optioned for a long-form television series by by Justin Shenkarow, Double Strings Inc. for adaptation to film / TV series only days before we spoke. Who says persistence doesn't pay off?

Gattani is a fiction author, freelance journalist, writing instructor, blogger and former newspaper reporter, She was born in India but grew up in Hong Kong. She has also lived and published cover stories, short fiction, features, news stories, interviews, travel articles and and opinion pieces in Singapore, India, Australia, New Jersey and Connecticut. She has finally put her roots down in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, where she lives with her husband, two dashing boys and a rebel lion-head rabbit.

To learn more about Anju, click here.

Tracey's debut novel centers around Emily Roebling, a real life woman and ardent suffragette, who honchoed the building of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband found himself unable to complete the project. In this podcast we discuss her decision to postulate an affair between Emily and P.T. Barnham based on three documented facts from the history of New York in the 1880's, how she initially queried too early and wound up pulling her story back for revisions, and how her experience as a playwright paid off when faced with crafting believable dialogue for her novel.

Tracey Enerson Wood has always had a writing bug. While working as a Registered Nurse, starting her own Interior Design company, raising two children, and bouncing around the world as a military wife, she indulged in her passion as a playwright, screenwriter and novelist. She has authored magazine columns and other non-fiction, written and directed plays of all lengths, including Grits, Fleas and Carrots, Rocks and Other Hard Places, Alone, and Fog. Her screenplays include Strike Three and Roebling's Bridge.

Other passions include food and cooking and honoring military heroes. Her co-authored anthology/cookbook Homefront Cooking, American Veterans share Recipes, Wit, and Wisdom, was released by Skyhorse Publishing in May 2018, and all authors' profits will be donated to organizations that support veterans.

To learn more about Tracey, click here.

Hear how Jacquline uses private Pinterest boards to help flesh out her characters, how she had great fun fashioning her antagonist by channeling every person in her life who'd wronged her, and how her previous work at a health club, with its behind-the-scenes intrigue, inspired the setting for her debut novel.

When not spending her time creating make-believe people and places, Kang lives in Kirkland, WA with her very real family of 1 husband, 2 nephews, 3 children and a dog. In her past life, She's has held jobs as a personal trainer, a spa manager, a dental assistant, and an office manager, but her true love is writing and sharing a well-crafted story. She is a member of The Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and The Women's Fiction Writers Association.

To learn more about Jacquline, click here.