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I make female heroes badass AND believable

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Interview

Interview – Morgan R.R. Haze

August 24, 2019 by D. Hart St. Martin

Teragene symbol

Morgan R.R. Haze, three siblings collaborating under a single pen name, grew up in the middle of nowhere, literally an hour away from anywhere. Lived too far out to have cable, so had an aerial antenna which got 3 channels. Needless to say they grew up learning to be creative. Their parents have always encouraged art, music, writing and crafts. All of them draw (at least a bit), have dabbled in poetry/lyrics, and have active imaginations. The seeds of their current WIP began with an idea decades ago. It finally all started meshing when they put their ideas together.

Their profiles can be found on
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook
And their web site

Hart: What genre or genres do you write in? What attracted you to that genre?

Morgan R.R. Haze: Sci-fi, because it’s cool 😉 Really though, with this genre it offers endless possibilities for creating stories, characters, and worlds. We also grew up with Star Wars, Star Trek, X-men cartoons, Superman/Batman movies. They definitely influenced our enjoyment of the genre.

H: As a collaborative trio, how do you create together? Do you live close enough to meet, or must you communicate via email, text, etc.? I think this would be of particular interest to my readers.

MH: Two of us live within one hour from each other. We both live over twelve hours away from our other writing partner. So texting, email, and phone conversations are a must for us to work together. We are hoping we can get telepathy going sooner or later; of course teleportation would come in handy too. For now we use Google docs to share and leave comments.

H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?

RR: For me it’s listening to podcasts and reading articles regarding human nature. I find it fascinating how some individuals can have a certain set of morals that they think they completely abide by, but be completely oblivious to areas in their personality, preferences, or actions which are contrary to said values.
H (not Hart): I love YouTube! I have learned so much about the brain and psychology. The Medical Futurist and Sci-Show Psych are always interesting. I also like to ask myself why, a lot. People need motives, even if they don’t know what those are.
Z: I do much of the world building. I research historical cultures, and what we know of science and astronomy to see how we can use those influences.

H: How do you see the role of women in fiction, especially science fiction, these days? And how do you promote women in your work?

MH: So many times women are portrayed as one thing (the fighter, lover, victim, etc.) It is always good to see fully rounded characters, men and women. Good character design needs to be multi-faceted.

In our story, all the characters are important. We have tried to give everyone strengths and weaknesses. Even if we don’t share it, we have back stories for everyone. We want them to have internal consistency. Basically, we treat our characters equally when it comes to creating them.

H: Do you have a current release you’d like to promote? Tell us about it. And definitely provide a link.

MH: Alpha Dawn, book one of the Teragene Chronicles is currently available on Amazon and Audible. We are currently editing (more like scouring) book two. We don’t have a set date for release, but hope to have it out late this year.

H: Well, thank you so much, Morgan R.R. Haze siblings, for your time and in particular your insights on long-distance collaboration.

Filed Under: Interview, Uncategorized Tagged With: author interviews, collaboration, collaborative writing, Science Fiction, writer interview, writing, writing teams

Interview – Kelly Boyer Sagert

July 27, 2019 by D. Hart St. Martin

Kelly Boyer Sagert

As Kelly Boyer Sagert puts it, “It’s hard to believe (at least for me), but true—I’ve been working as a writer, mostly full-time, for 29 years.” She lives in Lorain, Ohio about 30 miles west of Cleveland, and is married to Don Sagert with two grown sons—Ryan, aged 29, and Adam, almost 27—and I met her online too many years ago to count as a fellow member of the Women Who Write message board on AOL.

She recently published her first poetry chapbook (she says there will be more about that soon), and here is the bio she used for that: “Kelly Boyer Sagert is a freelance writer and eager reader, as well as a chocolate lover, socks avoider, cemetery wanderer, summer preferer, moonlight advocate, baseball fan and fledgling poet. She does not crochet, study calculus or yodel. She is married with two grown sons—and all three of them are pretty cool people to have alongside you on your life’s journey.”

Hart: What genre or genres do you write in? I know you write in several as well as journalism projects. Tell us a little bit about the genre that makes you the most happy when you’re working in it.

Kelly: I get my energy from working on a wide variety of writing projects. I’ve written 15 books (or maybe more) and contributed material to dozens of other ones. I write plays, with the first one, Freedom’s Light: A Stop Along the Underground Railroad, nominated for a Governor’s Award for the Arts.

Another of my plays, Emma Gatewood: Are You Out of Your Bloomin’ Mind?!?, was used as the basis for the documentary, Trail Magic: The Grandma Gatewood Story. These both told the story of Emma “Grandma” Gatewood—the first woman to solo-through-hike the Appalachian Trail, doing so at the age of 67. The documentary was shown on PBS and was nominated for an Emmy Award. We didn’t win, but I have the coolest plaque ever hanging on my wall because I have sole writing credits for the documentary.

I ghostwrite content for company blogs, which I love because I love to research and learn, and I ghostwrite memoirs for people—which I love because people are fascinating, and I appreciate the chance to help them tell their life stories. I love to write poetry, and a couple of years ago, I had a short story published in Kansas City Voices that focused on finding emerging fiction writers. I also enjoy writing for encyclopedias.

H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you? I imagine with all you do you must be disciplined in order to accomplish all of it. How do you keep it going?

K: I write about 50 hours a week, on average, a bit more if I’ve got more than usual going on. Five or six days a week, I’m writing by 8:30 or 9 a.m. I typically write until late afternoon, taking breaks for lunch/errands, and then I write again in the early evenings. Although I don’t have hours that are 100% strict, I follow that schedule pretty closely each day and don’t typically take days off, at least not Monday through Saturday.

I keep track of what I need to get done each day on a spreadsheet, creating one for each month. If something is getting close to a deadline, I change the color to red. If it’s due that day, then it’s changed to bolded red.

H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic? Now that’s a question I ask fiction writers, but you concentrate on history, I believe. I’d love to hear about your methods of research and any exceptional lengths you ever had to go for a project.

K: I have a true passion for writing about history and I use a variety of sources to find information, ranging from online databases for newspapers, Questia.com (which gives me access to books, journals and more), Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, and so forth. I go to libraries to research their collections, talk to experts, and so forth.

One time, I was hired to write three encyclopedia entries about little-known historic Native American professional baseball players. When I contacted the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which normally charged about $25 for copies of the files they had on a player, they told me they had so little that we bartered. They’d send me what they had, and, when I was done, I’d sent them my info for future researchers.

Because I had some birth certificate and death certificate information for these players, I started there, seeing what else I could find about each of them in the places where they were born and where they died. I worked my way from both ends to meet in the middle.

H: How do you see the role of women in literature (fiction and nonfiction) these days? And how do you promote women in your work?

K: I write about strong women who overcome challenges to accomplish extraordinary things. One example is Grandma Gatewood, mentioned above. She had an 8th grade education, raised 11 children while in an abusive marriage, and went on to become the first woman to complete the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail hike by herself. She became the first person, man or woman, to complete this trail three times, and she also accomplished much more.

I wrote about Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, an “extraordinary woman of color” in my play, Bound Together: One Great Bundle of Humanity. Born in 1825 when much of her race was enslaved, Harper was a poet and abolitionist, an essayist, public speaker, journalist, suffragist and published fiction writer. She raised money for the Underground Railroad through her writing. In my play, Harper and Hannah, a fictional white nurse with a history of her own, get snowed in—and they each discover extremely upsetting things about the other person. To paraphrase a quote by the woman who plays Harper, we believe that this play will bless you, make you think, make you laugh, make you cry—and make you realize that, at the heart of it all, we’re all more alike than different.

I’m also collaborating on a film about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to publicly address a Congressional committee (1871) and the first to run for president of the United States (1872). In 1870, she and her sister, Tennessee, became the first female stockbrokers on Wall Street.

H: This is wonderful—all these amazing women I’m only hearing of now for the first time. Thank you. Now on to the business. Do you have a current release you’d like to promote? Tell us about it.

Speak the Name

K: I recently finished my first chapbook. Titled Speak the Name, I wrote poems and snippets of prose where I share the names of my ancestors, along with those of multiple people largely forgotten by history. My goal is to give them a voice, thereby recognizing the importance of both speaking the name and honoring the process of naming. If this sounds interesting to people, they can contact me at kbsagert@aol.com. I’m still in the process of setting up online sales, but they can purchase an autographed book through PayPal for $8 plus shipping.

H: That sounds great. Thank you, Kelly.

And you can learn more about Kelly at her website, where you will find a long list of this prolific and hard-working writer’s credits, and she’d love to have people connect with her on social media:

Facebook
Twitter 
LinkedIn 

Filed Under: Interview, Uncategorized Tagged With: professional writer, women who write, writer interview, writing

Interview – J. Conrad

June 29, 2019 by D. Hart St. Martin

J. Conrad

J. Conrad, a fiction author who was born in St. Louis, and I have been following each other for years on Facebook and now Twitter. About ten years ago, when she started writing her first fantasy series, she only knew she wanted to write. After finishing a lot more books and doing a little soul searching, she realized a subconscious desire to teach lessons about human nature was what dragged her to the keyboard every day. That’s where her primary inspiration comes from, and she’s found putting it to use is the best feeling in the world.

J. and her brilliant husband currently live in Louisiana, but she dreams of moving back to Texas where they’ll live forever in a cute house amidst a field of bluebonnets.

J. loves connecting with readers and other authors. Feel free to contact her in the following ways on Facebook, Twitter, and, in particular her great website.

Hart: You write in several genres. Tell us a bit about how that works for you and what attracted you to those genres.

J.: Writing in several genres actually came about as an experiment. I consider myself a young adult fantasy author, but young adult is a much smaller market than some others, such as mystery, thriller, and romance. Thriller was the larger genre in which I could tolerate writing, so in 2017 I wrote Blood Red Winter. Interestingly, because I didn’t love it as much as fantasy, it was easier to be more objective about my own writing. My experiment was a success and that book outsold every other book combined I’ve written to date. I learned so much about writing and marketing from the experience it was worth the effort. I might even do a new thriller series, but I’ll always come back to fantasy.

H: My favorite genre (she says with a smile). Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?

J: For the most part I try to stick to a schedule. Currently I’m writing in the afternoon, and I have a minimum daily word count quota of two thousand words. If I stick to this routine, I can have a rough draft in about two months. This has been workable for staying productive while not getting burned out, but I’m trying to develop an even better schedule which will allow me to write in the morning as well, with a break in between. I’d love to become proficient at writing great books faster over the next couple years.

H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?

J: It depends on the story, but with my fantasy novels I think one of the biggest points is researching the time period in which the story is set and making sure I don’t accidentally add anachronisms. Especially in the dialogue, it’s incredibly easy to do and sometimes tricky to spot, because we don’t always realize how relatively new some of the phrases we use in everyday speech are.

For example, my Cinderella retelling series, The Joining, is set in an imaginary place, but the time period roughly corresponds to what we might think of as the late 18th century—but without firearms. They don’t have guns in Edim. I have to be mindful not to use common idioms which have derived from the use of firearms (there are more than one might think!). Also, the main character has telepathic ability with animals and Fae, but the word “telepathy” didn’t come about until the late 19th century. So, I use the term “thought-speak” instead. Since Edim isn’t a real place, I have some liberty, but it wouldn’t feel the same to readers without the right language.

H: I totally get that. Things like the verb “trigger” are out in my books as well. Tell me, how do you see the role of women in fiction these days?

J: I see the role of women in fiction as one which teaches that because women are insightful and observant, they often find their own unique solutions to complex problems. Might isn’t always right, and sometimes actually giving a damn about the opposing party wins the day. Exhibiting emotional depth and looking beyond the surface manifestations of life isn’t a sign of weakness, but humanity. Women often exemplify the most human quality of being able to emphasize with others. Yes, there are differences between women and men, but different doesn’t mean better or worse. I believe our female fictional characters help to show that.

H: So true. In depicting battles and wars in my books, I’ve endeavored to give them the “feminine” edge, showing a battle, but then opening up negotiations. That sort of thing. And how do you promote women in your work?

J: With the exception of one thriller novel, all my books center around women and their relationships with one another. I think in some ways, women bond more deeply with other women than they do with men. Think of that best friend you’ve had since high school, a sister you’re close to, or a mother and daughter. Those bonds are unbreakable. Growing up, I loved reading stories such as The Mists of Avalon, a story of King Arthur but told only from the viewpoint of the women. Now in my own writing, I love to teach lessons through the interaction of female characters and the strength of their spirit.

H: Yes, The Mists of Avalon was a real eye-opener for me as well. Do you have a current release to share with us?

J: Yes, Cinders and Fae is the second book of the current series I’m working on. It’s a Cinderella retelling with fairies, shifters, witches, animals, and lots of magic. The main character Elin Kendrick is part Fae, and her prince Trystan is a wolf. Elin is telepathic, but only with animals and Fae. Trystan is a shifter who hides this fact from most humans, including his own father King Odswin. He was raised in secret by his mother, the queen of the wolves. In book 2, Elin and Trystan plan on marrying, but the Fae Queen is challenging Elin’s lineage since she’s only one-quarter Fae—she must prove herself by manifesting her inborn Fae abilities which thus far have eluded her. This is a clean fairy tale telling and not a steamy shifter book, suitable for just about anyone who likes fantasy. Cinders and Fae is currently up for preorder and will release on July 11th. Here’s the blurb:

What really happened after the ball?

My bloodline is in question, my marriage to my wolf fiancé forbidden by the Fae Queen unless I pull off near-impossible feats of magic to prove myself. Can I truly change my stepmother into a human… and turn her evil heart to good?

As time slips away toward my deadline of the spring equinox, I’m losing hope. But after the castle is attacked, I meet with Trystan secretly and make wedding plans against the queen’s orders. All I have to do is show up at the appointed time.

But I still need a way to escape my assignment, and I’m terrified what our decision means. If I marry Trystan now, I might be imprisoned—or worse. But if I play by the rules and fail the Fae queen’s test, she swears she’ll marry my fiancé to a more suitable bride—my own mother! How can I make a choice that won’t end in losing the two people I care about most?”

Thank you so much for interviewing me on your blog, Hart! I absolutely loved your  Lisen of Solsta series and I’m looking forward to reading more of your books in the future!

H: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. And thanks for the kind words.

Filed Under: Interview, Uncategorized Tagged With: fantasy, female hero, writing, writing fantasy

Interview – Julie Weston

May 25, 2019 by D. Hart St. Martin 12 Comments

Julie Weston

Julie Weston is a long-time online friend from our AOL days, and I’m pleased to welcome her to my blog today. Idaho is in Julie’s background and foreground. She grew up in a mining town in the panhandle and now lives in south central Idaho. In between, she attended law school in Washington and practiced law for over 30 years in Seattle. When she began writing (other than as a lawyer), she took classes at the University of Washington to get rid of the legalese. There, she met a group of women writers. They met every week for ten years and then slowly went their separate ways. Two of them are still her readers and she is theirs.

Her first published book was a memoir of place, The Good Times Are All Gone Now: Life, Death and Rebirth in an Idaho Mining Town (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009). It won Honorable Mention in the 2009 Idaho Book of the Year Award. Her next two books, Moonshadows and Basque Moon, soon to be three with the publication of Moonscape, are mysteries set in Idaho in the 1920s, featuring a young woman photographer and her black Labrador dog—Nellie Burns and Moonshine. She has also written several short stories, many of them published.

Both she and her husband practiced law. Now he is a photographer and she writes. They live a lucky life in the mountains, skiing, biking, hiking, photographing and writing. Her husband’s photographs have been used by her publisher for the covers of all her mysteries.

Hart: Welcome, Julie. So tell me. What genre do you write in? What attracted you to that genre?

Julie: For now, I primarily write historical mysteries, set in Idaho. I have on the back burner a couple of other historical novels and a novel about law school. I began reading mysteries in about the 6th grade and have never stopped. When I was unable to sell a novel about a mining town and a labor union, I decided to try my hand at mysteries because I felt I knew so much about them. I learned a lot more as I began writing mysteries. Favorite mystery writers right now are Louise Penny, Anne Hillerman, Craig Johnson, Marvin Walker and Donna Leon.

H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?

J: For my first book and short stories, I tried to write regularly—about three days a week for certain—and attended to other matters on the other two. The weekends were up for grabs. Now that I am retired, I have much more time available, but it gets filled up with other activities, e.g., skiing in winter, other sports in summer. I love the outdoors. I aim for 1,000 words of new writing or revision three to four days a week. I spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out plot ideas in my head. When I sit down, I often have full scenes pretty much ready to go. I often begin a scene or write a scene long hand. When I input that writing into the computer, I usually am able to keep going for some time.

H: You, like our mutual friend Jan Maher, write about a place you know well, in a time long gone. What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?

J: Because I write mostly about Idaho, I have much history in my head or through family stories. My forebears came to central Idaho in the 1870s. A great aunt wrote a book called Generations (Caxton Press, no idea of date) that also serves my writing well. The most helpful are those books written about towns and areas by local writers, photographic archives, old newspapers, and local libraries and museums. These have all been invaluable to helping keep my stories authentic.

I have a book Flappers 2 Rappers with language details that I consult regularly. My husband and I have regularly hiked around the areas where I set my mysteries. We have visited Craters of the Moon in Idaho, the setting for my new book, a number of times, and I did research in the Visitor Center library.

H: I used Flappers 2 Rappers for Soul Doubt, my paranormal romance set in the 60s. It’s a good one. So tell me, as a declared feminist on your web site, how do you see the role of women in fiction these days?

J: For years and years, mysteries were always solved by men, even when written by women, e.g., Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and others. A few women detectives or amateur sleuths began showing up, and now there are a plethora of women in mysteries, both as protagonists and villains. Publishers finally “get it,” I think. I belong to Women Writing the West which emphasizes women’s roles. Although male authors still use men in the lead roles, I am doing my part to be certain strong women are featured in mysteries.

H: Do you have a current or earlier release you’d like to promote?

J: My two earlier mysteries, Moonshadows (2015) and Basque Moon (2016), both published by Five Star Publishing/Gale Cengage Learning, are still available. The former was a Finalist in the May Sarton Literary Award and the latter won the 2017 WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction. My new book, Moonscape, is due out this June and is available for preorder. Same publisher, same characters plus a few more, and same setting: 1920s Idaho. This one takes place mostly in Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho (named a monument in 1924), an eerie lava-filled location with caves and tunnels. I am working on a fourth mystery set in the mines of North Idaho.

This year is the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing on July 20. Astronauts trained at Craters of the Moon on the supposition that the landscape there would mimic that of the Moon. I am going to be a featured speaker at the anniversary at Craters of the Moon, talking about Moonscape!

I always encourage readers to buy my book at local bookstores. Ebooks are available through Amazon. And you can find me at my website here.

H: Well, thank you, Julie, for participating in my blog this week. It’s been a pleasure. And to all my readers, the comment section is open again. Let’s give Julie some great comments.

Filed Under: Interview, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: feminist fiction, historic fiction, mystery fiction, women detectives, writing

Interview – DeVonna R. Allison

April 27, 2019 by D. Hart St. Martin

DeVonna R. Allison

DeVonna Allison is a freelance writer/speaker and a Marine Corps veteran who grew up in Los Angeles, moved to rural southern Michigan in 1983 where she currently lives, but will soon be heading to Florida to reap the benefits of warmer climes. Her husband, Earl, is also a Marine veteran, and they are the proud parents of four children and four grandchildren. Her website and samples of her work can be found here.

Hart: What genre or genres do you write in? What attracted you to that genre?

DeVonna: I write essays, or Creative Non-Fiction, because it allows me to record my real-life events into articles that encourage, educate or inspire my readers. The first book I ever read that incorporated this style of writing was Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl. That, of course, is the memoir/diary of a young girl during the days of the Holocaust. I was gripped by the realization that reading one person’s life struggles could affect millions of readers.

H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?

D: I’ve made it a habit to write daily at the beginning of my day. I am a devout Christian, and I have a morning ritual that incorporates devotional and scriptural reading with prayer/meditation. After I’ve spent time renewing my mind and spirit in this way, I find it easier to spend time writing, either on assignment or extemporaneously.

H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to your work?

D: I read memoirs and essays by writers in my genre as well as other literary works. I enjoy reading for pleasure; it just works out that it also helps me to hone my craft.

H: How do you see the role of women in literature, fiction or nonfiction these days? How do you promote women in your work?

D: I think as a woman author it is important for me to represent well, and therefore I always try to submit my best work. To that end, I am always seeking to sharpen my skills through reading and attending writers conferences.

H: You were involved in the creation and editing of Grit and Grace: A Women Writing Anthology as well as contributing to The Upper Room Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions 2019. Tell us about your experiences working on these two books.

D: Grit & Grace is the work of my all-women writer’s group and is a project I’m quite proud of. We decided to keep the book an all-female endeavor because women have a unique voice in our society, and we wanted to highlight that voice with this book. Grit & Grace became available in February 2019 and can be purchased here at our website.

The story of how I came to be involved in the 2019 The Upper Room Disciplines is an interesting one of self-promotion. I have been writing for the Upper Room’s daily devotional since 2009, but I wanted to do more for them. I know they publish books and one in particular sparked my interest. I emailed my editor at the Upper Room, expressing my interest in writing for the book but was told the contributors were chosen by specific invitation only. I was not deterred. I wrote back, thanking her for letting me know how the process worked and including an example of what I would submit if I were chosen to write for them. It worked! My next email was from the editors of Disciplines, formally inviting me to write for them! Never give up.

H: That is excellent advice, DeVonna. And an excellent note to close on. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.

Filed Under: Interview, Uncategorized Tagged With: Christian writer, writing, writing process

Interview – Wendy Steele

March 23, 2019 by D. Hart St. Martin

Wendy Steele

Wendy Steele is a writer, dancer, healer and advocate of love and kindness to all living things on this magical planet, including the earth herself. I met her years ago via Facebook during one of those mad rushes for author page follows, and we haven’t looked back. She’s a friend and confidante as well as a great beta reader. She has her own blog which includes posts about her books, her dancing, her life journey and her whole-food, plant-based diet. You can find it on her web site here. (And have I mentioned she lives in Wales? I am so jealous.)

Hart: Your work falls predominantly in the Witch Lit genre. What attracted you to that genre? Do you read more books in that genre, or do you indulge in genres outside your specialty?

Wendy: I read both inside and outside my speciality. After devouring Moon Magic and The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune, I wanted more books about real people and real magic, but I couldn’t find any, so I decided to write them myself.

I’d already penned over 100k words of another novel I knew needed work, but I had a new idea and two years later, I published Destiny of Angels (the first book in The Lilith Trilogy), the story of Angel Parsons, a successful woman despite a difficult past, who returns to the scene of her childhood trauma to face the perpetrators and offer them the chance of redemption.

I enjoy historical fiction, mysteries and fantasy, but shy away from crime and violence.

H: With Witch Lit being a genre based more in the feminine, how do you see the role of women in fiction these days?

W: Female characters in fiction are sometimes the heroes we know they can be, but like the film industry, there are fewer “juicy” parts for women. Often a woman still needs a man to save the day.” I write about women who have confidence and belief in their own lives and don’t need a man to define them.

H: Do you schedule time for your writing? Or do you just grab the odd minute or hour when it makes itself available to you?

W: If you’d asked me last year I would have said “yes, writing time is scheduled,” but I’ve started 2019 in a different mindset.

Book four of my six part Lizzie Martin Series is written, leaving me two more to write, but I want them to be right and I’ve a lot of loose ends to carefully tie up. With plans needing to be put in place for work on our property, a new dance class and expansion of our dance performance wise, I’m writing short stories, articles and blog posts while I get plans underway and get through the paperwork.

I’ve attempted novel writing before under pressure and I get exhausted and run down, so I’m being kind to myself. I’ve handed in my latest story, “The Butterfly Door,” for the Witch Lit anthology, and finishing another for Zimbell House at the moment.

H: What research do you find absolutely necessary to keeping your story authentic?

W: I love research! At my twenty minute careers interview when I was sixteen, I grasped the card marked ‘BBC Researcher’ and thrust it before the teacher, but she suggested I become a secretary and got married instead!

Research is a big part of my writing process. I may not have visited every place I write about, but most of them, and when my MC (main character) needs to instigate a spell, prayer or ritual, if I haven’t personal experience, I’ll scour books for ideas, often performing the spell or prayer myself first to see how it feels.

While researching The Lilith Trilogy, I walked the kabbalah paths before writing about them.

H: Do you have a current release you’d like to promote? Tell us about it.

First 3 books of the Lizzie Martin series

W: My latest book is book three of the Lizzie Martin Series, The Flowerpot Witch, but why not start at the beginning? The Naked Witch is available as an ebook for less than the price of a skinny vanilla spice latte. Enjoy.

The Naked Witch Amazon UK

The Naked Witch Amazon.com

H: Thanks, Wendy. It’s been great talking with you.

Filed Under: Interview, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: author interviews, lifestyle, witch lit, writing process

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