I’m delighted to welcome this guest post by Northwest author Terry Persun on the writing of Sweet Song, a historical novel which, like The Inheritors, deals with a mixed race hero. I would never have guessed I’d write an historical novel. After writing science fiction short stories and a few mainstream novels, historical fiction just […]
An eight year old boy was blown to bits, yesterday, as he waited for his father to finish the Boston marathon. Two others died and a hundred more were injured in the explosions that littered the sidewalk with dismembered legs. Who would, could, do such a thing? Foreign or domestic, political or deranged? We want […]
Have you ever met a basenji? We ask that question at least once in response to curious looks every time we take our quartet out walking. These barkless hounds from the Congo are still fairly uncommon, probably because they are “different.” It’s an attitude thing. Catlike, they have their own agenda and live on […]
This blog falls into the category of snippets–bits and pieces triggered by pictures, writing prompts, incidents–anything that brings pen to hand. One of my favorite triggers when I was teaching was a book called WINDOWS by Val Clery, http://www.amazon.com/Windows-A-Feast-Eye-Imagination/dp/0770515835/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1363403109&sr=8-5&keywords=Val+Clery A window gives a peek–imagine what lays beyond. The picture below, by John Visser, brought this […]
Award winning author, Heidi Thomas, shares her story of the women who inspired her. I grew up in Big Sky Country, eastern Montana where the deer and the antelope roam. My grandparents bought me my first horse, and I helped my dad with chores, rode with him to gather cattle for branding and shipping, and […]
We all read because we have to–to bake a cake, to put together a bookcase, to pass a test. But why do so many of us become addicted to that other kind of reading–to stories? We became bookworms as children. As escape? To cure loneliness? Boredom? Because books took us on adventures in distant […]
“Where did you get the idea for that novel?” I’ve heard authors answer that question in dozens of ways, including, “I haven’t the faintest idea.” More often than not, my answer would come close to that. How, in the first novel I wrote, did the image of a peacock rising from the prairie only to […]
BOOK REVIEW: JUST TOSS THE ASHES By Marta Merajver One of the great gifts of the Internet is the ease with which we can connect with like-minded others across the globe—people whose existence we would never have discovered before. In honor of that I’d like to introduce Argentine translator and author Marta Merajver (Just Toss […]
As promised last week, poet Jane Alynn ( http://janealynn.com/) joins to our conversation on the role of the imagination. Jane, a friend and colleague, is a frequent contributor to Skagit Valley Writers League workshops on creativity and poetry. I’m delighted to have her here. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Like the two mischievous characters in The Cat in the […]
“You’re imagining things!” How often have you heard someone respond this way? A husband to a wife, maybe? One friend to another? A parent to a child? In any case, it’s clearly a put-down. When I was teaching writing my college freshmen assured me the imagination is a thing of childhood—fairytales and Winnie the Pooh—given […]
In a previous blog (“About the Inheritors”), I talked about how the themes of my life emerge as I write, and more specifically, in The Inheritors, the very American experience of moving between cultures and classes. As I wrote about Carla, Alicia’s mother, I suddenly had a vision of my own mother standing at the […]
One of the fascinations of writing fiction is creating characters “out of whole cloth”, then recognizing in them attitudes and dominant traits of myself, the people who shaped me, my children, or others who have left some mark. I remember creating Carla in The Inheritors and puzzling over her familiarity. Then I woke up […]
Judith Kirscht lives and works in the beautiful Puget Sound area. She is the author of four published works of fiction with more to come soon!
