You see this meme repeatedly on Facebook—a Venn diagram showing the small intersection between what the author meant and what the English teacher thinks the author meant. Usually it’s posted by an author who’s convinced that English teachers are evil witches distorting an author’s true meaning. English teachers, say the authors, should just stick to […]
1. It’ll make you hungry for some interesting things. For some reason, several of my books include a lot about food and drink (maybe because I like both), and Saison for Love is no different. My heroine, Ruth Colbert, owns a deli/lunch counter that serves the goat cheese she makes. Ruth’s a whiz with sandwiches […]
At the end of Finder, Emma Bull’s author bio has a neat thing: the soundtrack for the book. She lists the songs she listened to while she was writing, and it’s pretty extensive (also, from my point of view, sort of obscure). Bull is obviously one of those writers who likes to listen to music […]
Found, Book 3 in my Folk series, has been nominated for a Prism award by the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter of Romance Writers of America. To celebrate, let me tell you a little about the series itself. I’ve written lots of series in my day, both contemporary (Konigsburg, Texas; The Salt Box Trilogy; Brewing […]
The billionaire plot has been a familiar romance trope for a lot of years. In the usual plot line, the ruthless billionaire falls in love with a decidedly less rich heroine who teaches him that money isn’t everything. In its bare outlines, it’s close to a fairy tale: a poor woman (it’s almost always the […]
The willing suspension of disbelief was Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s description of the interaction between readers and writing. In general, readers have to suspend their knowledge that they’re reading fiction. They have to enter into a kind of agreement with the writer to withhold any innate skepticism and allow the author to make her case. It’s […]
So I just finished reading a book about a serial killer. Sigh. There are a lot of books about serial killers out there. In fact, there may be more books about serial killers than there are actual serial killers. The attraction of these villains is obvious—they give an author license to come up with particularly […]
Female anger is a powerful thing. Think of all the social strictures that argue against it. Think of all the Facebook memes about it. Consider that there are actually expletives in English to describe an angry woman—shrew and bitch come immediately to mind. Given the wildly conflicting emotions female anger inspires, it’s an emotion that […]
