Hear us Roar

Listen to how early on Leah struggled to find the magic formula for writing, how a chance encounter at Muse and the Marketplace switched her book's focus, and how she believes her most effective marketing efforts involve not fancy Facebook ads or BookBub offers but very personalized & cultivated relationships with influencers like Bookstagrammers.

Leah's writing has been featured in The Huffington post, Eligible Magazine, Simply Woman, The International Doula, and The Key, among others. She was the 2017 Story Circle Network LifeWriting first place winner. Leah is the cofounder of the nonprofit, Doulas of Rhode Island, and she led the fundraising efforts to build a medical center in Uganda. The mother of three, DeCesare lives with her family in Rhode Island and is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts at The Newport MFA.

To learn more about Leah, click here.

Hear Erin discuss her use of sensitivity readers, how important studying our country's history is to our understanding of current race relations, and why you should keep writing your second book while you're finding a home for your first.

Erin's a copywriter and freelance editor by day, a novelist by night, and a painter, poet, and photographer in between. Her second book, The Words between Us, the manuscript for which was a finalist for the 2015 Rising Star Award from the Women's Fiction Writers Association was published in September, 2019 and her third, All That We Carried, will publish in 2021. Her short story "This Elegant Ruin" was a finalist in The Saturday Evening Post 2014 Great American Fiction Contest. Her poems have been published by The Lyric and The East Lansing Poetry Attack. Erin lives in Michigan's capital city, nestled somewhere between angry protesters downtown and couch-burning frat boys at Michigan State University. And yet, she claims it is really quite peaceful.

To learn more about Erin, click here.

Romalyn's debut novel was inspired by the fifty-nine Carnegie libraries built in Kansas early in the twentieth century. Here about the research she accumulated for years before writing this book and the rich history she uncovered.

For over twenty years, she's worked as a free-lance consultant in the arts – conducting strategic planning, initiating audience engagement projects, and assessing grant programs for nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and private foundations. She's served on the boards of Americans for the Arts, Association of California Symphony Orchestras, and Western Arts Alliance, as well as on numerous national panels.

To learn more about Romalyn, click here.

Jennifer describes how she did research for her novel about an American lawyer helping a Syrian woman who seeks asylum, how her best marketing pay-off has come through Facebook Reader's groups and networking efforts like Authors18, and learn what a Noogler is. (You're have to listen to find out)

A Midwest native, Jennifer made stops in Dallas, Charlottesville, and Boston before settling for good in Maryland. While she has an appreciation for the expansive beauty of the plains states, she hopes never to live landlocked again.

Jennifer attended Southern Methodist University and the University of Virginia School of Law, her law degree guiding her through the worlds of corporate law, tech startups, and court advocacy for foster children. She is an ardent consumer of podcasts and books that challenge her with compelling and unfamiliar topics. When she's not writing or working her day job at Google, she's crossing things off a never ending to-do list and hoping to catch that next sunset. Jennifer lives near Annapolis with her husband and two kids.

To learn more about Jennifer, click here.

Listen to Leslie talk about writing in two different time-lines, the fascinating research she did about early Christianity in the south of France, her good (and not so good) experiences with developmental editors, and how she found the perfect image for her book cover (hint: it's her own painting!)

Much of what Leslie has done in life hasn't proceeded in the usual, expected way: she got married and had children before she attended The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Her first residency was in pediatrics, then a second psychiatry, and ultimately psychoanalytic training. It has been and continues to be an enormously gratifying endeavor. Bearing witness to another human being's life and watching them change is a rare privilege. It's also been quite a detour, but even a detour eventually leads you back to your original destination.

Ultimately she came back to the pleasure of story-telling, and wrote Discovery, a novel about coming of age in middle age, a love story, an exploration of how the past colors the present and the capacity of people to change. It has been her intention to make fiction and factual research, perception and invention swirl together and blur on the pages.

To learn more about Leslie, click here.

Give a listen and learn how a home remodeling project provided the idea for Sarahlyn's her debut novel, how doing improv has helped her writing, and how being an book coach continues to feed her creative spirit.

Sarahlyn grew up in the Bay Area and spent a great deal of time in Southern California, where she attended college before moving to West Hollywood. The years of living and working in L.A. gave her a taste for the fun, fast, ambitious, and creative people involved in the entertainment industry. When she and her family moved to Philadelphia in the summer of 2007, she fell in love with the east coast feeling of being close to the center of politics and culture, but she never forgot or lost her affection for the buzz of the entertainment industry. Her latest novel, Daytime Drama, was born of that love and the cold Philadelphia winter.

To learn more about Sarahlyn, click here.

Heather's first book, among other things, features a mother dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis, which played to her knowledge as a radiologist in real life and she's loved hearing from survivors that she "got it right." But that's not all Heather's up to – she writes book reviews, including a "Book Pairings" feature on her website and sings the praises of critique groups for keeping writers focused and accountable.

Heather's a book addict who is not even considering recovery. Funding her book habit as a radiologist by day, she reads over 100 books per year, especially enjoying women's fiction, psychological suspense, historical fiction and family stories. A reviewer for Books, INK, she also posts the occasional review of her own right on her website. In her day job, she's a physician—a radiologist specializing in breast imaging. When she's not interpreting mammograms and x-rays in a dark room, or reading/reviewing books, you'll find her writing.

Aside from books, reading, writing, books, and more books, she's an enthusiastic foodie. Travel is another top hobby since it opens up doors to new food and restaurants. A lifetime member of Hadassah, she's also a supporter of Pink Aid, an organization helping underserved breast cancer patients.

To learn more about Heather, click here.

Reyna worked for many years as an appellate attorney in New York and brings that knowledge to bear in a legal thriller/coming of age/romance story that follows a young female public defender as she navigates not only a case involving a possible miscarriage of justice but also personal challenges as she struggles to decide what kind of person she really wants to be. Reyna wrote her first draft in six weeks, but spent three years in revision, primarily using feedback through writing classes offered at Sarah Lawrence.

After graduating from Yale College and Yale Law School, Reyna Marder Gentin practiced as a juvenile rights attorney with the Legal Aid Society and then as a criminal appellate attorney with a nonprofit public defender's office for nearly eighteen years. That job, and a number of the clients she represented, inspired the story of UNREASONABLE DOUBTS. The novel is more than a legal thriller. It's the story of Liana Cohen, a young woman grappling to salvage her idealism in an often harsh world, and learning how to find friendship, faith, and love in the right places. Reyna keeps a hand in the law as a volunteer, representing women and men seeking restraining orders against their intimate partners. She has written and continues to write personal essays for a number of websites including Kveller, Mamalode, Grown & Flown and others. Reyna's short story, "A Reckoning," was published in the 2017 issue of the Westchester Review, and her psychological thriller, "Complicity," appears online at The Write Launch. She lives with her family in Westchester, New York.

To learn more about Reyna, click here.

Megan's debut novel is set in Nepal, and features a mother who wants nothing more than to be accepted and loved and a daughter who longs for the freedom the world outside her isolated rural village can offer. 2018 saw Megan produce not only her first full-length novel but also her first child.

She's an award-winning writer of literary fiction. She has a BA in English from Colorado College, a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne, and worked as a high school English teacher before becoming a full-time writer. The Burden of a Daughter is her first novel and its early manuscript won the Somerset Award at the Chanticleer International Book Awards in 2016. She loves travel and has lived and worked in Australia, Nepal, and the United States. She currently lives with her husband in California.

To learn more about Megan, click here.

Ann talks about the extensive research she did for this WWII novel (including reading the seven volumes of Winston Churchill's series TWICE), how her best marketing successes have been old-fashioned face-to-face contacts and using super-fans to spread the word, and how she's working on a two-part video series to share what she learned about self-publishing with others considering this route.

Ann comes from a family of adventurous women. An immigrant twice herself (to Canada and to the USA,) she understands from personal experience the challenges of being uprooted, either by choice or not, and remaking a life in a new place. She writes historical fiction, flash fiction, and short non-fiction. She has published three fictional articles in the news magazine of the British Home Child Advocacy and Research Association, and is a guest blogger for the award winning writers' blog, Writers in the Storm.

A dual Canadian-US citizen, she resides in Mesa, Arizona with her husband, Art, and their Old English Sheepdog. She spends summers in Toronto, Canada, with family. When not writing, she can be found at the golf course, or making music with her church choir.

To learn more about Ann, click here.