Christopher Lentz It came to me as I watched the musical Gypsy, the story about Gypsy Rose Lee, the top stripper of her day: great writing is a lot like a great strip tease. Before you think I’m vulgar or just plain creepy, think about it. The stories you love best—and your best stories—do an […]

Piper Bayard First, I will speak as a writer . . . I know I’m not alone when I say I’ve done it. I started out thinking, “I’ll just pop onto Facebook for a few minutes before I hit the WIP.” Then one post leads to another, which leads to an article, which leads to […]

The blank page doesn’t scare me. I’m one of those writers who has dozens of story ideas, plenty of partially written projects, and fully drafted manuscripts in various stages of editing. However, the daunting task of getting a book all the way to “done!” is more frightening than a weekend marathon of Wes Craven movies. […]

Little did I suspect that texting a non-writing work friend of mine the first pictures of P.R.I.S.M. arriving on my doorstep would start a wonderfulcascade of events. She was at a birthday party for one of our colleagues when she looked at the text. She started squealing and people wanted to know what was going […]

Ann Griffin When, in my fifties, I learned of two cousins and an aunt I had never heard of, their story was so compelling that I decided it needed to be written, and I assigned myself the task. The protagonist and antagonist were both deceased, making it impossible to write it as biography, so I […]