Writers Authors On Fire podcast

Arlene Miller is the Grammar Diva with eight books published about grammar. Here's the link to Arlene's Show Notes page with highlights, quotes, and links to her website and social media. 

Arlene wrote a book about common grammar mistakes after being a teacher and seeing people repeating the same writing mistakes. That led to a second book, then a book on grammar lessons,, a big workbook, them turned blog post into another book, She repurposes content. She then did a second edition of the first book and a little workbook with that. She has all kinds of ideas for future books. She publishes the books herself but has the covers and interior design done for her. She currently has eight books on grammar, a niche market in which she has a strong presence. Arlene has been a technical writer, technical editor, author, editor, credentialed school teacher and school administrator, blogger, speaker, tap dancer, and most important, a mom.

Lynne Thompson writes books  and lots of articles. Here's the Show Notes page with quotes, highlights, and links to her website and social media.

Lynne's first book was The Official Soccer Mom Devotional: A Book of 50 Brief and Inspiring Devotions. Two more have followed, written for teens - Wag the Mouth and Wag the Teacher, with more in the series coming. Lynne got her start as the editor of her high school newspaper. Later she wrote articles, lots of articles- over 500! Her newsletter led to Focus on a Family radio show stint where she read some of her works, which turned into The Official Soccer Mom Devotional. The book is filled with fun stuff for busy moms. Lynne's Wag series is written to capture some of the silliness off high school with little nuggets of truth and value. They are about what's important in life - friendship and family and faith. Substitute teaching helps her keep in touch with how kids talk and helps her think young in her writing.

Holly Johnson is a professional writer and blogger. Here's the link to Holly's Show Notes page with quotes, highlights, and links to Holly websites and social media connections.

Holly and her husband Greg tell it like it is, "We've been able to ditch our 9-5 jobs, travel the world, and take control of our lives…all because we learned to manage our money. We want to help you do the same! In 2016 she earned $270,000 - $225,000 from freelance writing and $45,000 from blogging. Holly is "obsessed with money, travel and budgeting" but stresses she also loves frugality and using your money wisely. This focus has helped her become a staff writer at Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar, Frugal Travel Guy, and U.S. News and World Report Travel. Her work has been featured on The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Forbes, Lifehacker, Yahoo!, and many other online publications. She loves freelance writing because she starts a piece, finishes it, and gets paid. She currently writes about travel fifty percent of her time and money the other fifty percent.

Here's the link to the Show Notes page for Susan Stewart that features highlights, quotes, and links to websites and social media.

Susan Stewart says she's been writing since she could hold a pencil. She's written in journalism, ghost writing, collaborative writing, editing, blogs, magazines, and written books. She's also written for homeschooling, preschool, and family markets. Her first books were written for niche homeschooling markets so she discovered Kindle and ebooks. That led to doing her own ebook formatting, after which she wrote Formatting e-Books for Writers. Today's ebook markets have opened many publishing opportunities for authors. There are tricks to formatting a high-quality ebook including what to do with tabs, paragraph breaks, your table of contents, links, sidebars, and more.

In this podcast episode, Getting the Most Out of Your Writers Conference, I talk about my tips for attending writers conferences. Here's a link to the Show Notes page for the show.

I've taught this a several conferences to first timers, but there's something here for even seasoned writers. Topics covered include meeting and pitching editors and agents, planning, submitting manuscripts, tips on one sheets, books and articles, networking, rejection, after the conference, seven of the most important things to do at a conference, and much more.

If you'd like a PDF of the tips in this week's episode, drop me an email and once it's finished, I'll send it along.

Judy Cornish is an attorney who specializes in elder care and has become an expert on providing dementia care. Here's the link to the show notes page for Judy's interview and her book.

Judy is the author of The Dementia Handbook: How to Provide Dementia Care at Home and a second book going deeper into the intricacies of dementia care. In this interview, Judy explains what dementia is and that it's a condition, not a disease. She talks about the differences between providing care versus treatment. Her book is unique in how it looks at dementia as a psychological condition rather a medical condition. Providing care and keeping a loved one safe while helping them maintain a high quality of life is an important factor. Judy stresses how we have accepted childhood and adulthood as stages of life, but we've forgotten that elderhood is equally as valuable and is different than adulthood.

Elizabeth M Thompson shares from her years of experience of forming and guiding critique groups. Here's the link to her Show Notes page with quotes, and links to her website and social media.

As the founder of Inspire Writers in Northern California, Elizabeth developed a community of writers who supported each other. Inspire offers critique groups, workshops, conferences, a newsletter and website, and a publishing arm. In this interview, Elizabeth talks about starting her first critique group, starting Inspire Writers, setting group guidelines, group size and meeting times and frequency, and the value of having your writing critiqued. We also talk about in-person and online groups, reading your work, who can be in the group, who is in charge, the length of what can be submitted, and more. In the second part of the interview, we talk about Elizabeth's writing, her best advice, favorite writing book, and being successful as a writer.

Kara Swanson is a young 20-year old up and coming writer with one book out and many more in the works. Here's the link to her Show Notes page with highlights, and links to her boo, website, and social media.

Kara was raised in the jungles of Papua New Guinea by her missionary parents. No electricity, no Internet, no cars, no roads, just a small tribe of native people. Being immersed in a third world culture for so long shaped her view of what living really is. That gave her a great imagination, which influences her writing. She got her start by writing articles for magazines. At a camp for children of missionary parents, she met Charis Smith, and discovered they shared the same writing interests. That led to a co-authored book. In 2015 she was chosen as the most promising teen writer at the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference. Kara writes stories that defy boundaries and push you to think beyond black and white. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease just before she was to start college, which affects her energy levels and brainpower, and how she schedules time to write. She likes being busy so she also blogs and guest blogs on several websites, is a virtual assistant to Kathy Ide, and offers a critique service to other writers. In the second part of the interview, we talk about the best advice she's ever received, her advice for struggling young writers, and what being a successful writer and author means to her. Kara shares lots of good advice through the eyes of a young writer.

Katie Vorreiter works as a copy editor, proofreader, and fiction author. Here's the link to Katie's Show Note page with highlights and quotes, and links to her book, website, and social media.

In this interview we spend the first part talking about editing, the types of editors that may be involved in the book creation process, and where proofreaders fit it. Katie shares information for those interested in becoming an editor. We talk about a few pet peeves editors have when reading manuscripts and she shares some writing tips from a copy editor's perspective. Then we transition to her writing and No Turning Back, her new just released book. We discuss her writing process, what sets her writing apart from others, how she tells if an idea is worth developing, and the most important thing in writing. Her advice on ideas to help struggling writers is excellent. Katie shares lots of great information and tips to help any writer, whether one writes fiction or nonfiction.

Forest Benedict is the author of Life After Lust, about overcoming sexual addiction. Here's the link to the Show Notes page with quotes, highlights, and links to his websites and social media.

Forest is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in sexual addiction treatment - and has come out of recovery in this area. Part of his mission is to protect children from pornography. With the Internet everywhere, there's a huge need for this work. Forest is very vulnerable about his recovery as he describes the book and whom it's for. He describes how he collected 25 quality endorsements from high profile people in the specialized field. Life After Lust is intended for both male and female readers. Forest takes us through writing articles, which became the start of the book, its three sections, and writing "essentials" key steps in each chapter. We discuss the difficulties of writing about one's own personal recovery in such a hard subject and the faith component of recovery. Forest shares how he laid out the book's content and the importance of the 52-week recovery roadmap. He explains how he learned the importance of getting permissions for quotes and what he could and could not use in the book. We talk about how to judge if your book is a success.