Writers Authors On Fire podcast

Jane Daly is the author of two books on lives hard issues - the loss of a child and the challenges of caring for your elderly parents. Here is the link to the Show Notes page for Jane's interview with highlights, quotes, her books, and links to her websites and social media connections.

As a young mother she took a correspondence writing course and always knew someday she'd be a writer. She started writing seriously in 2008. Over the years she has written magazine articles, a column, flash fiction, a novel, and nonfiction. Writing articles and the column taught her to write tight and to specific short word counts. She describes flash fiction as fun and challenging because of the strict word count. Her writing has led to speaking opportunities about writing topics. In the interview, we talk about the hard issues she writes about - grieving through the death of their son from cancer and working through the seasons of caregiving elderly parents, which many of us will experience. We talk through gaining confidence to write, her writing processes, how life gives us topics to write about, the challenges of writing, the importance of a tribe for feedback and support, and more.

Christopher P. N. Maselli is the award-winning author of more than 50 books including Zonderkids' Amazing Laptop series. Here's the link to the Show Notes Page for Christopher's interview, highlights, quotes, his books, and links to his websites and social media.

Chris has been writing for 20 years and his experience includes children's writing, advertising, ghostwriting, online marketing and more. But more than anything, Chris loves helping put other writers on the fast track to success through his training at WritingMomentum.com. Chris started writing for children by winning a children's devotional writing contest. He tells us to always enter contests and reminds us we always need to pitch our work. Chris shares his idea splat method of story development and how it helps to draw the best possible story out of an idea. After he has his main idea, he moves to what he calls plot webbing where he fleshes out the story and introduces subplots. He admits to often spending more time on his plot web than on writing the story. His advice on pitching book ideas as a series is valuable. He shares some great candid advice on self-publishing that will help any writer. 

Luana Ehrlich is a fiction author with three books about espionage and covert operations with a faith element. Here's the link to her Show Notes page with show highlights, quotes, links to her books, and links to her websites and social media connections.

Luana read her first spy novel at age 11. After that, she was hooked on that genre. Her start came as a freelance writer for several Christian publications. After her minister husband retired, five years ago, she started writing. Her goal was to simply write a really good spy novel - what she enjoyed reading. She quickly found out that as a minister's wife and housewife without a platform, publishers were not interested in her books. She put her books through Amazon's platforms and like how she has the control and doesn't have to share the profits. Her main character, Titus Ray, is a culmination of lots of people she has known. As a news hound all her life, she calls herself a intelligence junkie. In addition to reading in her genre, she receives news feeds, and reports and briefings from think tanks and other sources. These help with fact checking and make her stories accurate. Her books have a faith thread throughout the story, but it is presented in a balanced non-intrusive way. Luana considers herself more a pantser than an outliner, writing from the seat of her pants. She says it's like watching a movie in her mind and writing it down. She takes us through her character development process. We talk about traditional publishing versus doing it herself and what motivates her to keep this under her imprint. Luana has done a great job at marketing her books and her brand, and shares how her websites, blog sites, devotional site, blessing box site all are designed to drive traffic to her books and help her get established as a writer and build her platform.

Jami Amerine never considered herself a writer. Her gift is in her unique voice as a blogger. Here is the link to the Show Notes page for Jami's interview with quotes, highlights, and links to her website, her viral blog posts and social media. 

On September 26, 2015 she wrote a blog post "An open letter to my children... you're not that great" that went viral. Her blog went from 69 blog views in August 2015 to over 680,000 views by the end of September and by the end of October the number was right at 1,000,000 views! She admits to going into blogging kicking and screaming but is now having the time of her life. Several blog posts during that time went viral. The Write 31 Days website challenge helped her focus. Jami stresses the importance of writing for an audience of one and talks about blog posts going viral. She shares her feeling on comments, both negative and positive. Not surprisingly, Jamie says writers who want to be published and want to be heard need to blog. She struggles being told she needs to be known for one thing. In part two of the podcast we talk about her challenges in writing, the best advice she's received, how syndication has helped her blogging, what success means to her, and much more. This is a lively interview that will inspire you to learn more about blogging and to check out Jami's popular blog posts that went viral.

Eva Marie Everson is an award winning author with over 30 fiction and nonfiction books published. Here's the link to Eva Marie's Show Notes page with show highlights, quotes, a sampling of her books, her websites and social media connections, and more.

Eva Marie Everson has accomplished much in her writing career. She has written over 30 books, is the president of Word Weavers International, director of the Florida Christian Writers Conference, Acquisition Editor at Firefly Southern Fiction, and loves coaching new authors through her company Pen In Hand. She's having the time of her life through writing and its related endeavors, and loves pouring herself into other writers. Her fiction carries a southern view. In this interview we talk about writing southern fiction and nonfiction, writing with a coauthor, the value of attending writers conferences, the challenges and obstacles of writing, the value of critique groups, and much more.

James Dziezynski has been a professional writer for about 18 years and writes Colorado hiking guidebooks, magazine articles, and blogs. Here's the link to James' Show Notes page for interview highlights, quotes, his books, and his website and social media connections.

James says anyone who wants to write does so to recapture something they have experienced, or thought about, or have been moved by. One of the keys to his becoming a professional writer was always that he always wanted to be better at it. He got his start writing for print magazines. He says if writers don't think that they can write better than what's out there, they probably shouldn't be writing. He wrote his Colorado hiking guidebooks by putting himself inside the hiker's mind and wrote in a narrative tone. He stresses that if you decide to become a professional writer, you have to write even when you're not inspired, when it's not your time of day, when you're not in a great mood - and be able to write quality content even when you're in those spaces. In the second part of the show, we talk about writing in general, his motivation, what he has learned about himself that has helped his writing, and more. James talks candidly about how publishing has changed and how it affects the writer in finding ideas, conducting research, and how your books are published and in what format. 

His freelance writing has appeared in magazines such as Outside, Backpacker, National Geographic Adventure, Women's Adventure, Elevation Outdoors and many more. As an avid adventurer, James has climbed in Greenland, Antarctica, the Canadian Arctic, British Columbia, Central America and throughout the USA. James also is a contributing blogger for several sites including Nileguide.com, Mountainsmith.com, The Adventure Post, Elevation Outdoors, Natural Habitat Adventures and his own outdoors blog, Mountain Air.

Emily Grosvenor is an award winning reporter, travel writer, essayist, children's picture book author, and blogger. Here's the link to her Show Notes page with highlights, quotes, links to her book, her websites, and social media connections.

Her recent successful Kickstarter.com crowdfunding campaign resulted in a new children's picture book, Tessalation!. She also identifies as a super sniffer with a heightened sense of smell, and has a book project on that subject being shopped by her agent as well as a project Scent in Literature. She attributes much of her success to her journalism and reported background. She calls herself an idea machine. She describes her six blogs, how she teaches blogging and that she loves it because of its immediacy. She's also a magazine junkie. We spent time talking about her book Tessalation!, the idea, how she wrote it, found an illustrator, and built her crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. Her process of identifying her Tessalation! audience is perfect for all writers. In marketing Tessalation!, she tried to give, give, and give in order to engage with the ideas in her book and different points of access. Emily shares many nuggets of wisdom for writers in this interview. We talk about the importance of the first sentence, knowing whether an idea is worth developing, writing as a career, a fun method for trying to become published, the importance of having multiple writing projects, writing as a practice, and much more. 

Sheila Slavich is the author of a novel about two boys who experience time travel back to the Civil War era in the 1860s. Here's the link to Sheila's Show Notes page with highlights, quotes, her book, and website and social media connections.

Sheila's novel, Jumpin' the Rails! was selected as a finalist in the Florida Authors and Publishers Association 2016 President's Book Awards. Sheila has a journalism degree from Auburn University and has worked as a newspaper reporter and the Public Information Officer for the Alabama Supreme Court. She found a strong pull to southern literature. Jumpin' the Rails! was a seven year writing effort. You'll be fascinated by her story of writing the book and the connection to their historic 1858 house, and her son as a central character in the story and on the cover. She says she's a writer that was put in a house with a unique and exciting history, which she witnessed as school groups toured the house. As you hear Sheila talk about what she loves about writing, you'll nod in appreciation of her description of the process of putting words on paper and seeing the reactions as they are read. Her story about choosing to publish on her own and finding a publisher for her book is valuable for writers uncertain about how to get their work out there.

Allyson Machate is a dedicated book nerd with a mission to help serious authors create better books. Here's the link to Ally's Show Note page with highlights, quotes, and links to her website and social media.

Ally has a Masters degree in English and Creative Writing, and has worked in book publishing for Simon & Schuster. She has a freelance business as a book collaborator, book editor, book doctor, and ghostwriter - often working with publishers on projects that need help. She dissects these terms and how they can help writers make their work better. In today's interview, Ally talks about book ideas, knowing your audience, becoming published, editing your work, selling your book, moving from writer to author, and more. She gives tough love advice on marketing your book. We talk about the muse and how we can help it work for us. And finally, she shares candid thoughts on investing in your writing, why it's important, and how you can help yourself.

Ginger Kolbaba is an accomplished and award-winning author, editor, and speaker who helps writers take the next step in their writing, whatever that might be. Here is the Show Notes Page for Ginger's interview with highlights, quotes, links to her books, and links to her website and social media connections.

As an accomplished author, Ginger has written, ghostwritten, collaborated, or contributed to 30 books, including Your Best Happily Ever After. She got started writing when she kept telling herself that she could do better than whatever she was reading. Her career took off when she started as an editorial coordinator and learned the craft, the business of writing, and what goes into a book or a magazine article. A line on her website declares that "behind every great author is one humdinger of an editor" - so editing is in her blood. Based on her vast experience writing and editing articles, she shares advice on the value of writing articles. Her advice on writing obstacles is spot on including to not compare ourselves with other writers. She gives solid advice on writing to word counts. Then we talk about knowing your writing voice. Ginger gives straightforward and candid advice on what holds many writers back from becoming published. I love her response about advice for struggling writers and how it has changed her as a writer. We can all learn from what she shares.