Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved fairy tales, myths, legends, and fantasy. It’s something I responded to instinctively as a young reader, and something I took to easily as a young writer, too. In my imagination and my dreams, journeying to those magical worlds seemed to me as natural as breathing. Of course I was an imaginative child; but it’s only lately that it’s struck me that perhaps there was also another reason why I so took to those genres. For the classic fantasy themes of the journey between worlds, the sojourn in strange places, and the sudden irruption of a different reality into the everyday is at the very heart of my own lived experience.

I come from a family whose ethnic history is to say the least, complex. Taking in French, Basque, Spanish, Portuguese, and French-Canadian, our history was always more than a bit player in all of our lives. People to whom I’ve told even a fraction of the vivid family stories are thrilled by them; they say, No wonder you became a writer!

But it’s more than that, for three things happened to me as a child that were like fairytale gifts: First, though my parents were both born and brought up in France, I was born in Indonesia, as they were expatriates working there at the time; second, because of ill health, I was then taken as a ten-month old baby to live with my paternal grandmother in France for four years, was told many traditional stories by her–and did not see my parents in all that time; and third, I was then taken, at the age of five, to yet another new place, Australia, where I first discovered English. And what’s more the first book I read for myself in English was a Little Golden Book comprising three fairytales–Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Toads and Diamonds–in it (there it is, in the centre of the picture). Continue Reading »

• Finding a Good Title
• Writers’ Guides of the Past
• A Question of Description
• Writing an Outline
• Holiday Reading Then and Now

Tags: bilingual writers, fairy tales, fantasy, legends, Myths, Sophie Masson

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Erika Robuck’s novel HEMINGWAY’S GIRL (NAL/Penguin) was selected as a Target Emerging Author pick, a Vero Beach Bestseller, and has been sold in two foreign markets to date. Her new novel, CALL ME ZELDA (NAL/Penguin), published on May 7, 2013, and looks to be another successful blend of history, mystery and compelling prose. The book begins in the years “after the party” for Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Erika writes about and reviews historical fiction at her blog, Muse. She is also a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Hemingway Society.

Best of all, CALL ME ZELDA is receving fabulous advanced praise:

“You thought you knew everything about the Fitzgeralds, their drama, delight, dazzle and despair? This gem of a novel spins a different, touching story, drawing you right into their intimacy and fragility through the eyes of Zelda’s caring nurse, Anna. You will love it, as I absolutely did.” –Tatiana de Rosnay, New York Times Bestselling Author of Sarah’s Key and The House I Loved

Erika says, “I have great affection for Zelda Fitzgerald, and I have a strong desire to set her story straight in the eyes of readers everywhere, to bring attention to the pain of mental illness, and to give hope through fiction.” Check out the trailer HERE. And follow Erika on Twitter and Facebook.

Enjoy this Take 5 with Erika Robuck.

Q: What’s the premise of your new book? 

Held captive by her own tragic past, psychiatric nurse Anna Howard is drawn to her new patient, Zelda Fitzgerald—wife of the famous writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a woman whose raw pain mirrors that which Anna has long buried. As Zelda responds to Anna’s care, Anna becomes privy to Zelda’s most intimate confessions, written in a secret memoir meant only for her. Anna begins to wonder which Fitzgerald is the true genius, and longs to help Zelda find balance in her creativity and familial relationships. But in taking ever greater emotional risks to save Zelda, Anna may end up paying a far higher price than she intended…

Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself? 

I want readers to know that Anna is a fictional character based on the mention of “a nurse” who helped care for Zelda Fitzgerald during her stay at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore. While Anna’s story and search for healing from her past are fiction, Zelda’s story is true.

Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them? Continue Reading »

• Take Five: M.J. Rose and SEDUCTION
• Q&A: Juliet Marillier’s Prickle Moon
• TAKE 5: Anne Greenwood Brown and DEEP BETRAYAL
• Statement
• Writer Unboxed’s 1-Day Auction Begins…Now!

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photo by Josef Dunne

If you’re new to Twitter, you’ve likely already seen retweeting come up. If you’re about to jump on the bandwagon, this is one of the first things you’ll need to learn. And even if you’re a seasoned tweep, the intricacies of the mysterious retweet can be confusing. Don’t you worry; I’m here to help. Let’s walk through the details step by step.

What a Retweet Is

A tweet is 140-character message. When someone else publishes a tweet that you like, you can share it with your own followers by “retweeting” it – which you’ll commonly see abbreviated as “RT.” There are several ways to retweet someone, and we’ll cover those below.

What a MT Is

You might see “MT” floating around the twitosphere; it stands for “modified tweet.” A modified tweet is exactly like a retweet except it’s used when you’ve changed some of the original tweet. So if you have to cut out some of the original tweeter’s words or adjust their phrasing for some reason, you should use the abbreviation MT instead of RT to let your followers know you’ve tweaked something.

Why You Should Retweet

Retweeting is the heart of Twitter, which is why I’m dedicating a whole post to it today. The beauty of Twitter is in its brevity; the fact that tweets are so short make them easy to share and pass along. Retweeting excellent tweets does several things: it improves (and varies) your content for your followers, it supports the original tweeter by getting their content viewed by a new group of people, and it lets someone know you appreciate their tweet – an easy way to make steps toward connecting with others.

How to Retweet

There are two ways to retweet: manually or by pushing the retweet button. Continue Reading »

• Twitter: My 5 Unshakable Beliefs
• Be a More Confident Writer: 5 Choices That Might Be Hurting Instead of Helping

Tags: 'Social' Media, Annie Neugebauer, Twitter, Twitter Advice, TwitTips

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photo courtesy of flickr’s ahockley

I have just come off one of the most amazing months of my entire life. April involved traveling nearly the entire month, including a two week book tour,

teaching workshops and giving a keynote at a regional SCBWI conference, and attending the librarian paradise that is the Texas Library Association’s annual convention. It also involved one of my books being nominated for a RITA award, and another of my books even landed (briefly!) on the NYT list.

I have met hundreds of enthusiastic readers and librarians and booksellers and students and teachers, and my life has been enriched beyond measure by these connections.

The one thing I have not done is write a single word in over six weeks.

I know that some writers write on the road, but I am not hardwired that way. Being an extreme introvert means that as much as I adore meeting and connecting with all those lovely people, I also need recharging time. My brain is not able to produce words when it hits that level of exhaustion every day. Schlepping through airports does not feed my muse. Honestly, the idea of writing while I’m on the road feels like being asked to sing an aria while surfing an avalanche of rocks downhill.

Or maybe it’s simply my ADD kicking in and with so much stimulation on so many fronts (New city! New hotel room! New bookstore! Different high school!) my brain simply can’t get quiet enough. Continue Reading »

• Fortune’s Wheel
• The Play’s the Thing
• The Hidden Power of No
• Embrace the Naked
• A Promotional Strategy for Overwhelmed Introverts

24 Comments »

Here’s a piece of advice writers are universally given: if you want to learn to write, read good books. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this is almost always bad advice.

First, before your head explodes, I’m not suggesting that you don’t read good books.

Heck, reading good books is probably a big part of what made you want to be a writer. You’ve spent your life voraciously reading ‘em, right? So you know firsthand that when you’re lost in a compelling novel you’re transported to another world, and when the novel ends and you’re delivered back into our own dusty world, you see things a little differently. Or maybe a lot differently.

Stories change us. They inspire us, they give us insight into what makes people tick. Including ourselves. That’s their job. I’m not speaking metaphorically. I mean that literally: we’re wired to turn to story for useful intel. But, ironically, there is one kind of intel it’s very, very hard to gather from reading a great book. And that is information on how to write one.

Why? Because the first job of a good story is to instantly (and chemically) put your analytical brain to sleep. Here’s how a good story grabs us: it makes us curious. What’s going on here? What’s going to happen next? That curiosity triggers a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine that’s kinda like a chloroform soaked rag when it comes to figuring out how the story is working its magic on you.

But here’s the real killer: it doesn’t feel that way. It feels as if we can see exactly how the writer is doing it. After all, it’s right there in front of us in black and white: the beautiful sentences, the great metaphors, that luscious prose, the fresh quirky voice. It’s so easy to mistake the beauty of the delivery system for the actual content it’s delivering — a story.

I want to break in here and say, in no uncertain terms, that I am not saying that beautiful writing isn’t important. What I am saying is that beautifully written novels – like all novels — get their power from the story they’re telling. Great writing heightens it, deepens it, and makes it more memorable, more compelling, and more filled with what feels like magic. But make no mistake, it’s not the words themselves that are doing it, it’s the “it” – the story – that the words are bringing to life.

So, given that, when it comes to improving your writing, is there a way that reading great books can help? Continue Reading »

• What is a Natural Storyteller?
• Does Your Protagonist Have Amnesia?
• 5 Reasons Why Readers Love Your Story
• 9 Tips for Writing a Really Good “Shitty First Draft”
• How To Keep Your Story On Track: Chart “Who Knows What, When”

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First, a caveat: this is a post about the craft of fiction, and I don’t have the first clue about how to teach the craft of fiction.

From my years as a high school English teacher, I could teach you how to write an essay on the symbolism found in The Great Gatsby. I could teach you the joy of diagramming a sentence. I could give you some tips on what to do when you run into an iambic pentameter in a darkened alley. But teach you about the craft of fiction? Bah. No way.

So instead of trying to teach you, I’ll simply share something fiction-crafty, something about which I am very excited.

My friend, Schmidtie, does this when she discovers something life-changing (an ergonomic garlic press, Corn Salsa from Trader Joe’s, those little mini peanut butter cups, also from Trader Joe’s). She wraps these discoveries in tissue paper, puts them in a cute paper bag, and says to me, “Here’s a little something you HAVE to try.” She shares because she knows these things will change my life. And they do.

But what if once I share this life-changing, share-worthy discovery about craft, you think, “Huh? That’s not life-changing. That’s Craft 101.” Kind of like when, just last week, Schmidtie joyfully shared her latest, brand new discovery: Goodreads! Yes, Schmidtie was ten to fifteen minutes late to the party on that one.

Maybe you’ll think the same thing of me. Maybe my new discovery will leave you bored and unimpressed, and you’ll promptly email the WU Mamas and call for my demotion. Maybe in sharing my new discovery, you’ll also see I learned/stole this idea from Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story, chapter seven, pages 129-139. That’s right! I stole the idea of a fellow WU contributor!

OK, but this week I sat in church and we learned about Loving Your Neighbor. For the hundredth or thousandth time. For good reason. We humans need to be told and retold to love one another because we forget to do it. Likewise, preschoolers must be reminded, over and over, to share. Dogs must be reminded, over and over, to heel. So maybe I should share this not very original idea in case you are as forgetful as I . . . but will my ego and I look stupid? Ack! To share or not to share?

Friends, it is this tension, the emotional stress, the feeling of suppressed, palpable anxiety found in all good stories, that I’d like to share with you today.

So let’s talk tension. Continue Reading »

• Getting Comfy with the Discomfort
• The Writer as Inventor
• Rogue Novels
• You Can Get (Almost) Anything on EBay
• Imagine Saving a Life: An Indie Bookstore Pledge

61 Comments »

photo by Constance1912

We’re so pleased to bring you today’s guest–long-time WU community member and Reader Unboxed reviewer, Amy Sue Nathan. Amy lives and writes near Chicago where she hosts the popular blog, Women’s Fiction Writers. She has published articles in Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune and New York Times Online among many others. Amy is the proud mom of a son in college and a daughter in high school, and a willing servant to two rambunctious rescued dogs.

Amy’s debut novel, The Glass Wives, releases next Tuesday, on May 14th. What’s the book about?

Evie and Nicole Glass share a last name. They also shared a husband.

When a tragic car accident ends the life of Richard Glass, it also upends the lives of Evie and Nicole, and their children. There’s no love lost between the widow and the ex. In fact, Evie sees a silver lining in all this heartache—the chance to rid herself of Nicole once and for all. But Evie wasn’t counting on her children’s bond with their baby half-brother, and she wasn’t counting on Nicole’s desperate need to hang on to the threads of family, no matter how frayed. Strapped for cash, Evie cautiously agrees to share living expenses—and her home—with Nicole and the baby. But when Evie suspects that Nicole is determined to rearrange more than her kitchen, Evie must decide who she can trust. More than that, she must ask: what makes a family?

This novel is wonderfully laced with cultural references, as we view life and mourning through the eyes of protagonist Evie Glass. It lends the novel an air of cultural authenticity that’s rarely seen in women’s fiction.

Said Amy:

When I read a novel I love reading about traditions and cultures both similar and different from my own. Feeling like I “almost” understand what it’s like to be in the characters’ home or situation or life often makes me wish I was there, if even for a moment. Knowing I felt this way when I read, meant I wanted to incorporate a lot of my own Jewish culture into my main character’s life, while at the same time reassembling and inventing traditions to fit her world, not mine. Using Yiddish words and sayings was probably one of my favorite parts of writing The Glass Wives. I often think (and say) only Yiddish will do. The funny thing is, I don’t really remember anyone in my family speaking Yiddish, but it was very important to me it be an integral part of Evie’s character.

We’re so pleased Amy is with us today to talk more about writing with a dash of culture.

Learn more about Amy on her website, her blog–Women’s Fiction Writers–and by following her on Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy!

A Dash of Culture

When I started writing my novel, several people suggested that only Jewish readers would like it. They thought I should nix the Yiddish words and replace the rugelach with biscotti. (You know, because that’s not ethnic.) Or, they said, I should set aside space within the chapters for lengthy explanations, because otherwise, no one would get it. I was taken aback. Had these people never heard of or read Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel, Chaim Potok or Jennifer Weiner? Or a zillion other authors or books that impart a little Yiddishkeit, or Jewishness?

I stuck to my aspiring author guns (which look remarkably like colored Flair pens) and kept writing as if I’d never received this “advice.” I convinced myself that these people were from another planet unlike most readers—that most readers would embrace shiva and rugelah, a bubbe and a Passover Seder, even if they’d never heard of them. Or perhaps, especially if they’d never heard of them. I set aside my misgivings. I was determined, not to write a Jewish book or a book about being Jewish, but to write a book where the Jewish culture was ingrained in my characters’ fictional souls.

In my novel, culture means Jewish heritage and traditions. But, culture can be religious, racial, socioeconomic, geographic or even be the nuances of one particular family or person. My helpful hint to myself, as I strove to blend Jewish heritage and culture into either the background or foreground of my story, was to remember two things: Continue Reading »

• Ten Ways To Torture Yourself As A Writer
• Six Core Issues Facing Writers Today
• Win-Win: Promotional Opportunities for Writers through the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes Research
• Funny Oxymorons for Writers
• When to Hold Em’ and When to Fold Em’: Knowing If Your Manuscript is Worth Fighting For

39 Comments »

M.J. Rose’s new novel, SEDUCTION, is out tomorrow. It’s an Indie Next List pick, and has garnered fantastic reviews. Here are just a few:

“The 1843 drowning death of Victor Hugo’s beloved eldest daughter, Didine, provides the catalyst for Rose’s well-crafted paranormal novel of suspense. Rose is especially good at recreating Hugo’s despair…making his abandonment of rationality all too plausible.” —Publishers Weekly

“What sells the book—what sells all of Rose’s books [is] the author’s boundless enthusiasm for the material… and we can’t help getting caught up in that enthusiasm.” —Booklist

“Threads of past lives and malevolent spirits… combined with Rose’s vivid imagination and beautiful writing make this a book to savor.” —RT Top Pick 4 ½ stars

“A luxurious, sensual experience for the reader. This atmospheric tale of suspense is fully engrossing.” —Library Journal (starred review)

We’re so pleased M.J. is with us today to answer a few questions about her novel.

Q: What’s the premise of your new book?

In 1843, novelist Victor Hugo’s beloved nineteen-year-old daughter drowned. Ten years later, still grieving, Hugo initiated hundreds of séances from his home on the Isle of Jersey in order to reestablish contact with her. In the process, he claimed to have communed with Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, Dante, Jesus—and even the Devil himself. Hugo’s transcriptions of these conversations have all been published.

Or so it has been believed…

Recovering from a great loss, mythologist Jac L’Etoile thinks that throwing herself into work will distract her from her grief. In the hopes of uncovering a secret about the island’s mysterious Celtic roots, she arrives on the Isle of Jersey and is greeted by ghostly Neolithic monuments, medieval castles, and hidden caves.

What she doesn’t anticipate is that the mystery surrounding Victor Hugo will threaten her sanity and put her very life at stake.

Seduction has a ghost story at its heart, and a mystery that spans centuries.

Q: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

A lot of it is based on the truth.

Q: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

Hugo is offered what he wants more than anything in the world in my story but to obtain it he has to betray everything he believes in. It’s a very seductive offer. At the same time, my main character in the present, Jac L’Etoile has to overcome her ambivalence and fear about her own abilities- something she has been avoiding for a long time.

Q: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any? Continue Reading »

• TAKE 5: Erika Robuck and CALL ME ZELDA
• Q&A: Juliet Marillier’s Prickle Moon
• TAKE 5: Anne Greenwood Brown and DEEP BETRAYAL
• Statement
• Writer Unboxed’s 1-Day Auction Begins…Now!

5 Comments »

photo by Alex E. Proimos

Somebody will tell you no.

It’s going to happen. It has probably happened already. It might happen today, or tomorrow, or every day next week and then some. Maybe it happened five minutes ago and the pain is still searingly fresh, or maybe it’s on its way, looming dark and ugly on the horizon, five minutes from now.

Somebody will tell you no.

It could be any one of a thousand people, for any one of a thousand reasons. The magazine editor doesn’t give you the assignment. The journal doesn’t accept your short story. Your beta reader breaks the news to you, gently, that your work-in-progress isn’t compelling in the way it needs to be. The agent doesn’t think your edits have made the book better, only different. The editor can’t convince the publisher to make an offer. The famous author doesn’t give your book a blurb. The papers don’t review you. The sales just aren’t where they should be. The award committee chooses someone else. The agent says no. The publisher says no. Barnes & Noble says no. The readers say no. The little voice in the back of your head says no, as much as you wish it didn’t, as much as you try to drown it out with your confident internal yes.

Somebody will tell you no.

Some days it feels like the world is wallpapered with nothing but no. Like there will never be anything but rejection. The worst of it is, no is a renewable resource. There are always more nos out there.

And what do you do with that? It’s up to you.

Some writers will counsel you to turn every no into a yes, but that isn’t really how it works. Some nos are temporary, but others are permanent. Not every story will find a home. Your dream agent may remain always and forever a dream. Not every writer gets published. Not every book finds its readers or earns out its advance. Not every writer who sells a first book sells a second one. Even a yes can be followed up by no, surrounded by no, overwhelmed by no.

Depressing? It doesn’t have to be.

Because as many nos as there are in the world, that isn’t all that’s out there. No isn’t the answer to every question.

The only way that no ends your journey is if you let it. If you stop at no. So don’t stop. Keep going. Keep learning. Keep writing. Hone your craft. Expand your reach. Get better and do better, and keep asking. There are other stories. Other agents. Other publishers. Other readers. Other books. If you’re smart and motivated, you’re already headed toward it. There’s no telling which direction it’ll come from, who will say it, what question it’ll be answering, but it is most certainly out there, maybe just over the horizon.

Somebody will tell you yes.

• The Foolish Writer and the Wise
• Choose Wisely: Metaphors in Character
• Who’s on Your Team?
• The Finishing Touches
• Synopsize Me

32 Comments »

photo by macropoulos

Back in December we received a note from author Kim Boykin, whose debut novel The Wisdom of Hair was set to release in March. We book WU guest slots far in advance, and had to let her know that we would’t be able to offer anything in March, however something Kim said to us sparked another idea. She spent a good deal of her own money on promotional opportunities offered through the Brenda Novak Auction last year–opportunities that have and will help her to market The Wisdom of Hair. The Brenda Novak auction, which raises money for diabetes research and has become very popular among all in the writing community, was kicking off again in May. Maybe there would be an opportunity to talk about it then?

Absolutely.

Said Kim:

I believe writers make a difference just by telling stories. Winning the right item for your writing on Brenda Novak’s Auction For Diabetes Research can go a long way toward advancing your publishing career AND go a long way towards saving lives.

Last year, Kim came away with many useful wins, including an AUTHORBUZZ Package from Author M.J. Rose and more. (She’ll tell you more about them below.) Wonderful buys, and it’s a win-win-win for Kim as the cause hits close to home. She said:

Both of my husbands parents are diabetic and my grandmother was too. Brenda Novak’s son is 15 and insulin dependent, it’s a cause close to many hearts.”

You can learn more about Kim and The Wisdom of Hair on her website and blog, and by following her on Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy, and bid, WU’ers; this is a great cause.

Doubling Down

Recently, I told a group of aspiring authors that there’s never been a better time to be a writer, and it’s true. Even with traditional publishers still trying to figure out the industry and Amazon’s continued march toward domination, I believe this is the best time in the history of storytelling to get your story out.

As a novelist, I thought nabbing a publishing contract would be the hardest part of the process. I was wrong. Whether it’s your first or your fifty-first, getting your book noticed today is like meeting a blind date at a massive cocktail party in the middle of Times Square and telling him to look for the girl in the little black dress.

So, what’s a traditionally published or self-published author to do? Coming from a marketing background, I looked for ways to maximize the advertising and promotions budget I set for myself and found bestselling author Brenda Novak’s Annual Online Auction For Diabetes Research.

Continue Reading »

• Ten Ways To Torture Yourself As A Writer
• Six Core Issues Facing Writers Today
• A Dash of Culture
• Funny Oxymorons for Writers
• When to Hold Em’ and When to Fold Em’: Knowing If Your Manuscript is Worth Fighting For

8 Comments »

Any caption suggestions? Please post below in the comments section – please post one caption at a time, and let someone else post a comment before posting another. Vote for the caption(s) you like by clicking on “Like.” Caption suggestion with the most Likes by Sat. May 18th gets a selection of writer-focused greeting cards from my Zazzle shop. I reserve the right to veto a caption if I consider it inappropriate or offensive.

My recent exciting news: I have a two-book illustration deal with Random House Children’s Books! Details here. Thanks to all of you, especially Writer Unboxed, for your continuing support of my illustrations.

• Comic: Writer At Tax Time
• Comic: A Good Hook
• Comic: Writers’ Resolutions
• Writers: Enjoy Every Success, No Matter How Small
• Comic: A Writer’s Journey

Tags: comic

42 Comments »

photo HoneysuckleSalvage, via Etsy

On a recent flight to Dallas, I read a short biography of Thomas Edison put out by Time Magazine that I’d bought at an airport kiosk. I learned that Edison’s first invention was a commercial failure. He invented a vote tabulator so that votes could be counted efficiently and quickly. When he took the invention to politicians, he realized that the losing side wanted a slow head count so that they could gather support; and at some point or another, every politician is on the losing side of a vote. No one wanted it.

And so Edison decided he would never invent another product that didn’t have a built-in demand.

When I first started out, I would have never applied this lesson to writing. In fact, I would have seen this kind of thinking to be sell-out thinking, and I’d have street-fought against it thuggishly.

I believed in writing what I now call heart work. I think most novelists have heart work – the things they must write because they’re bound up in the pistons of the heart itself. It’s part-exorcism, part-translating-the-senseless-world — part-respiration, breathing in some organically necessary way.

I’ve written a lot of my heart work, that stuff that needed out, but, at a certain point in my career – and it wasn’t a dramatic shift, it was a slow dawning – I realized that I’d written much of the stuff I needed to write, for my own sake, and I started to think about what readers needed and wanted to read. The novel as a collaboration between writer and reader – the incredible translation of the worlds I’ve created then inked on a page that then become images in the reader’s mind, that fascination took hold. I wanted to collaborate. I wanted to be read. Continue Reading »

• Musicology of the Novel: A Lesson in Structure and Pacing (with some charts…)
• The Secret to Writing a First Novel

19 Comments »