I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS GOING CRAZY….by Debra H. GoldsteinI am the mother of twins.  My daughter slept through the night almost immediately.  My son functioned on two non-consecutive hours of sleep in a twenty-four hour period.  I thought I was using my time effectively putting a laundry in at 2 a.m. and changing it […]

The One Thing That Defies Organization by Terry Shames With the lead-up to publication of my debut novel, A KILLING AT COTTON HILL, came months of unaccustomed work preparing for marketing and promotion. I had heard how much time and effort it took, but I was unprepared for the fact that everything else pretty much […]

Would We? Could We? by Debra H. Goldstein Picture a group of women sitting around a fireplace celebrating a special event in their lives.  Good food, friends, sips of wine, and conversation that slips from the present into the past.  While most share memories of happy times, children’s antics, and first romances, at some point in […]

Researching the Lowly Hot Dog by Judy Alter We all do a lot of research on setting and other things to make our novels accurate. For the Kelly O’Connell series I studied Craftsman design and the Craftsman movement, because Kelly is a real estate agent who specializes in restoring the priceless Craftsman houses in her […]

BSP AND BEING A WRITER by Debra H. Goldstein Creativity, diligence, networking, engaging in BSP, and a lot of luck characterize most successful writers.  Although a writer can’t predict luck, the other factors are all within a writer’s control. Every story, poem, or novel begins with an idea.  The key is whether the writer has […]

Writing Creepy Mysteries for Children – Anne McGee’s Backstory by Anne  McGee I felt so excited when Debra asked me to write an article for her blog. Then I went blank, and for a writer, that’s a really, really nasty feeling. Undaunted, I went for a walk, played some music, nibbled on some cashews, and stared […]

It’s Not Where You Start (It’s Where You Finish) by Debra H. Goldstein Recently, I listened to Barbara Cook’s rendition of the Cy Coleman and Dorthy Field’s signature song “It’s Not Where You Start, It’s Where You Finish” from 1973’s Broadway show, Seesaw. Forty years after the song debuted, the words remain true. Whether one is […]

The New? Maybe not.  by Michele Drier Long ago, as the earth was cooling, people used odd machines called “typewriters” to compose notes to one another. These machines were developed after the discovery of electricity, but they were powered by a different source, human fingers. And they were called “manual” because of this. They were […]

Final Beginnings – How I Met Your Mother and My Life by Debra H. Goldstein Last night, in the final minute of its eighth season, How I Met Your Mother’s audience met the mother. Ted, the main character, didn’t meet her, but in that moment, we knew that the stage was set for an entirely […]

  Follow That Thread!   by Victoria Weisfeld “Out the back door and under the big ash was a picnic table . . . I lay down on it for nearly two weeks, staring up into branches and leaves, fighting fear and panic, because I had no idea how to begin a piece of writing.” […]