Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

Dave and me, hanging @ The Experience Music Project, Seattle Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a massive Dave Grohl fangirl. (Grohl was the drummer for Nirvana, and created Foo Fighters.)  So when I heard Dave was keynoting South By Southwest 2013, I blocked out an hour on my day job's Outlook calendar so I could watch the webcast uninterrupted. Dave didn't disappoint. In an f-bomb-laden, highly personal speech, and sporting ridiculously sexy reading glasses, Dave brought us along on his personal journey, one in which he was inspired by punk music, protected his independence, and developed and nurtured his individual voice. Voice. It's an aspect of art that musicians and writers share. It's a tone, or a worldview, that makes a piece of work - or a body of work - belong uniquely to its creator.    "There is no right or wrong, there is only your voice. Cherish it. Respect it. Nurture it. Challenge it. Stretch it and scream until it's (exple...

I've been thinking a good bit about the concept of a writer's voice lately. Finding and honing your personal voice is so important, and yet explaining voice is so hard to do. Then I thought of this analogy...maybe it will help people understand voice (or my interpretation at least). Think of all the people you meet every day. Neighbors, co-workers, family, grocery store clerks, waitresses, friends of friends, people in line with you at Starbucks. Most of the people you know or meet are nice people, decent, upstanding, law-abiding citizens with pleasant personalities. They form a sort of homogenous average. These people are the average submission to an editor or the average book on the shelf. They are good books. Technically clean, well-thought out, interesting enough to keep your attention. But... sigh. No real spark. Nothing that makes them really pop and stand out. Nothing that makes them mocha chocolate chip instead of just vanilla. There is nothing wrong with these books. ...

Style & Voice: Markers of Greatness I recently reviewed The Mind of Your Story by Lisa Lenard-Cook, a hardcover writing craft book detailing how the brain creates Story for my book review site , and fortunately, you can teach an old dog new tricks. I may be a relatively new author, but I’ve been branding and marketing since big hair was in vogue. The book reminded me what’s so special about great writing and the mystery of creativity, whether that’s coming up with an idea for an ad campaign, a solution to a household problem or writing a novel. Basically Right Brain is the creative side while Left Brain tries to come up with all the logical reasons you aren’t creative. (Probably in annoying bullets.) Which is why a lot of editing takes place in Left Brain. The “new trick” or greater understanding I got from the book was the author’s view that stories come from three seeds: Direct personal impression (what you saw) + imagination (obsession) + writer’s resource of experiences (your...