Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary fiction. Show all posts

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame: Blog Tour & Giveaway

Monday, June 22, 2026
 
They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

Fans of Raven Leilani, Lily King, and Xochitl Gonzalez won't want to miss our latest blog tour. Haili Blassingame joins us to celebrate the launch of her book, They All Fall in Love at the End. Join us as we interview the author about her incredible novel and give you a chance to win a copy for yourself.

Before we get to that, here's more about the book:

Cat St. Clair is ready for her messy love triangle era now that she’s in an open relationship. But she didn’t foresee a forbidden love triangle with the only two people who are off-limits: her boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend. Being a twenty-something writer who lives for plot, she falls for them anyway, with deliciously disastrous consequences, in this electric literary debut for fans of Xochitl Gonzalez, Coco Mellors, Lily King, and Raven Leilani.

It’s the fall of 2024, and twenty-four-year-old Cat isn’t asking for too much: all she wants is three boyfriends, to write her little novels, and to survive another chaotic presidential election. She’s in an open relationship with her college sweetheart Jay, but nonmonogamy isn’t just a hot trend she’s trying. It’s her sliver of freedom in a world eager to wrestle it from her for being a Black woman going after what she wants with reckless abandon.

While political tensions roil the campus where Cat is slowly earning her creative writing degree, she finds herself drawn to Jay’s best friend, Tristan, who’s smart, super hot, and…in a monogamous relationship. And then she meets Tristan’s girlfriend, Nia, a captivating art student with her own gravitational pull.

Friends and family urge her to just be happy with Jay, but Cat is determined to have it all—or blow up her life trying. As she falls for all the wrong people, racking up lies, betrayals, and terrible drafts of her novel, she tries to write her way to a happy ending. But in art, politics, and love, true liberation may take more than rewriting the old scripts. It may mean inventing something entirely new.

Publisher: Scribner
ISBN-13: 9781668204122
ASIN: B0D9DP6GDY
Print length: 384 pages

Purchase a copy of They All Fall in Love at the End on Amazon and Bookshop.org. Be sure to add it to your Goodreads reading list too.

About the Author, Haili Blassingame

Haili Blassingame

Haili Blassingame is a producer for the show 1A from WAMU and NPR. She writes literary fiction about love, desire, and the decisions that feel impossible to make starring plucky, loud-mouth female protagonists of color. Her debut novel is called THEY ALL FALL IN LOVE AT THE END. It has a hot-pink cover. She's also written a New York Times Modern Love essay about breaking up with her boyfriend and a piece in The New Republic about Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer. She’s also been a guest on the Modern Love podcast, NPR’s Life Kit, and NPR’s 1A. She previously worked on NPR’s Code Switch and Weekend Edition. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her 10,000 books and no bookshelf.

Find her online at:

Instagram: @hailiwroteabook
TikTok: @shutuphaili

-- Interview by Nicole Pyles

WOW: Congrats on your book, They All Fall in Love at the End. What pulls you towards writing romantic fiction?

Haili: I LOVE love! I don’t know if I know how to write about anything else—or I should say, I write about many things, but romantic love often is the center of gravity of it. I’m also someone who grew up bingeing RomComs, so that genre and its quirks lives deep inside of me.

WOW: I think loving your genre is so important. How did your book change from the first draft to the final draft?

Haili: It changed DRAMATICALLY. There was an iteration of the book where the heroine’s main love interests, Jay and Tristan, were not childhood best friends. There was also a version where Cat and Tristan’s girlfriend, Nia, were just friends and there was no romantic complication there. All the tension was drained from the narrative in those drafts, it was like, Who cares!!? We wouldn’t even be talking about it right now if I hadn’t rewritten the whole thing; it wouldn’t have sold.
 
WOW: The changes you made ended up being so successful. What an experience to be published with a major publisher! What has that experience been like for you? Any insights or lessons you can share?

Haili: I’m lucky in that my experience at Scribner was seamless. I had a FANTASTIC editor that I adore, a deeply committed publicity and marketing team, so much support, I mean, Scribner hasn’t been around for nearly two centuries for no reason. They are the home of Fitzgerald, Wharton, Vonnegut, Wolfe, Hemingway (a fact I offer unprompted to anyone who cares, I’m just Scribner-maxxing right now). And so the lesson here is this: you can’t always choose your imprint. I sold in a pre-empt, so my editor and I chose each other. But the imprint does matter. Each one has its own identity, culture, logic, resources, vision and that’s hard to understand when you’re just starting out, you just want anyone, someone, to take your book. But just look at FSG, they launched the f*ck out of Madeline Cash. Scribner was the absolute right imprint to launch my debut, I’m certain of it. As a fire sign, I am proud to have the imprint’s flame on the spine of my novel. It’s also electric green which is very hot.

WOW: It sounds kismet! Okay so I have to ask: 10,000 books and NO BOOK SHELF? I love it! But I wonder: where do you put them all? And can we see photos? :)

Haili: I own a bookshelf, I just haven’t put it together and never will! This is my nightstand:


WOW: I love it! Where do you like to write? 

Haili: I write in my bed! But my mattress is sinking in on one side, so I won’t show you a picture. Sometimes, when I’m feeling adventurous, I write on the sofa in my living room, which is an absolute mess.


WOW: Sometimes the messiest places are the best places. What are you working on now that you can tell us about?

Haili: I’m working on way too many things because I’m neurotic. I just finished a literary time travel novel that’s part domestic drama, part second-chance romance. Basically a loose 17 Again retelling (pray it gets published!!!). I’m also working on a friends-to-lovers campus Rom-Com, like Deep Cuts but with movies. And I just started a queer celebrity fan fiction featuring a narrator loosely based on myself and the hottest nonbinary actor on Earth. I want it to be a slender summer novel–but we’ll see what happens there.

WOW: I can't wait! Thank you so much for sharing more about your writing journey and your latest projects. Enjoy the blog tour!

They All Fall in Love at the End Blog Tour

-- Blog Tour Calendar

June 22 @ The Muffin
Join us at WOW as we celebrate the start of Haili Blassingame's blog tour for They All Fall in Love at the End. You'll also have a chance to win a copy of the book.

June 23 @ Just Katherine
Visit Katherine's blog to read an excerpt from the book. She also responds to our tour-themed prompt about why she loves reading romantic stories.

June 25 @ Sarandipity's 
Stop by Sara's blog for a spotlight of They All Fall in Love at the End.

June 27 @ Chapter Break
Stop by Julie's blog for an interview with Haili Blassingame about her book They All Fall in Love at the End.

June 27 @ Boots, Shoes and Fashion
Join Linda's blog for an interview with Haili Blassingame.

July 1 @ Writer Advice
B. Lynn Goodwin interviews Haili Blassingame about her book, They All Fall in Love at the End.

July 4 @ Brandy's Substack
Stop by Brandy's Substack for a review of They All Fall in Love at the End. She also shares her response to our open blog tour-themed prompt.

July 7 @ Caitrin C. King's blog
Join Caitrin for an interview with Haili Blassingame.

July 10 @ StoreyBook Reviews
Join Leslie's blog for an excerpt from They All Fall in Love at the End. 

July 11 @ 30 Days By the Sea
Join Amy for a review of They All Fall in Love at the End.

July 15 @ Hook of a Book
Visit Erin's blog for a review of They All Fall in Love at the End.

July 17 @ Afro Reads
Join Lynelle for her review of They All Fall in Love at the End. You can also check out an excerpt of the book.

July 20 @ A Wonderful World of Words
Stop by Joy's blog for an excerpt from They All Fall in Love at the End.

July 25 @ A Sip, A Shout, and A Sentence
Join Elle for her review of They All Fall in Love at the End.

July 26 @ Nikki's Book and Movie Reviews
Visit Nikki's blog for her review of They All Fall in Love at the End.

***** BOOK GIVEAWAY *****

Enter to win a print copy of They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame. Fill out the form below for a chance to win! The giveaway ends on July 6th at 11:59 pm CT. We will randomly draw a winner the next day and follow up via email. Good luck!

They All Fall in Love at the End Giveaway
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American Still Life by Jim Naremore: Blog Tour & Giveaway

Monday, January 06, 2025

American Still Life by Jim Naremore


Do you have any book related resolutions for 2025? Why not start with delving into the work of an author you've never read before? I might have just the author for you! We're launching a blog tour for American Still Life by Jim Naremore. Fans of Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn and Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis will find an intriguing read in this journey of loss and redemption. Join us as we celebrate the launch of his book with a giveaway and an interview with the author.
 
But before we get to that, here's more about his book:
 
We are all drowning, and we are all saviors.
 
Wresting with addiction, guilt, and self-loathing, gifted photojournalist Skade Felsdottir finds herself trapped in a web of her own creation when she is forced by circumstances to return to her hometown—the place that holds her crippling secrets. After screwing up her “big break,” a photo essay book about descansos—roadside memorials to people who have died tragically, Skade tries to salvage the project against a tight deadline. While simultaneously working and keeping her darkest demons at bay, Skade reconnects with an old boyfriend and befriends a unique but broken young woman named Kit. Their burgeoning friendship begins a process of healing for them both, until a devastating sequence of events plunges Skade into darkness, leaving her to decide between redemption and running away; between life and death. Set against a backdrop of the back roads of a forgotten America, American Still Life explores the crossroads of grief and artistic expression, of loneliness and atonement. A journey familiar.
 
Publisher: Regal House Publishing (December 17, 2024)
ISBN: 1646035054
ISBN: 978-1646035052
AISN:  B0CNTWJH98
Print length:  296 pages

Purchase your copy on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org. You'll also want to add it to your GoodReads reading list.

About the Author, Jim Naremore

With roots in the American deep south and the Midwest grounding his sense of place, Jim Naremore has published an array of short fiction and the award-winning novel The Arts of Legerdemain as Taught by Ghosts (Belle Lutte, 2016). He holds an MFA from the Solstice program at Lasell University in Boston and currently lives with his partner and cat in New York’s Hudson River Valley.

Instagram: @jim_naremore

--Interview by Jodi M. Webb

WOW: Welcome, Jim. We're all looking forward to the first blog tour for 2025 with your literary fiction American Still Life.

Jim: I’m so happy to be working with WOW on the launch of this novel. Thanks so much to the WOW team and to all your dedicated book-bloggers who really help push independent literature!

WOW: Yes, we love discovering indie books that might not have the promotional push of books with the Big Five. So tell us how you first learned about Descansos, and what made you want to include them in a book?

Jim: Just as Skade says in her book notes in American Still Life (ASL), I think I’ve been aware of
descansos as objects for as long as I’ve been riding in cars. I remember being fascinated by them when I saw them as a kid. They are one of the last real deeply-felt examples of pure folk art that most of us get to experience either as observers or as creators. That fascination was what led to the writing of ASL, and it kind of shows off my creative process. 

I’m always finding little ideas: lines of dialog, metaphors, images, plot ideas, character ideas, settings, etc. I jot all these down in notebooks. When I get ready to start a new book, essentially, I put a bunch of these little concepts in a bag, shake them up, and see what comes out. ASL started with the idea of someone doing a photo-essay on descansos. I guess I always thought that would be an interesting thing to do. Descansos are so uniquely visual, and they vary so much (I’ve seen some spectacular ones in the desert in southern California) that I think they lend themselves perfectly to that idea. 

Some of the other ideas that went into that bag included a plot idea about a group (not just one) of puppeteers and how they related to their puppets, the concepts of memorial tattoos, a character who was a very tall and awkward and traumatized young woman looking for a friend (“Kit is short for Kitten, my dad was an asshole” was probably the first line I actually wrote for the book), and Skade, who was in a short story I could never get quite right (I think I wanted it to be a short story and it wanted to be a novel… we’re still discussing it). Eventually, ASL grew out of all that. 

The novel I began to write was quite a bit different than the one that emerged, but that’s the writing process for a novel, I think. I think another answer to that question is that I am very, very interested in folklore and fairytales. I probably should have majored in folklore studies in college, but I didn’t think of it. As I said, descansos are unique performative pieces of folklore. Folklore and fairytales are parts of all my writing.
 
"Finishing a book is really hard. As such, we create ways to keep us from having to actually finish. And that research thing is one of those strategies… You just need to know enough to sound like you know what you’re talking about. No, that’s not lying or cheating. You’ve done enough research when you can effectively answer all the questions the book gives you."

WOW: Do you do research, or work with things you already know? When do you know when you’ve done enough research?

Jim: I do a fair amount of research. To me, it’s a big part of the fun of writing books, and the research can REALLY help in creating and advancing the plot! Of course, I usually start with things I’m already interested in and so I do know a little bit about the things I write about before I go in. For my first book, The Arts of Legerdemain as Taught by Ghosts (TAoLaTbG), I did a lot of research on stage magic and spiritualism, even though I already had a decent working knowledge of both, I suppose. 

For ASL, I dove into descansos, puppets and puppetry, and tattoos and tattooing. I learned a good amount and found some great books and resources. I also spent time in and around real descansos when I got the chance. They can be quite powerful to sit with. 

That question about when you’ve done enough research is a killer. In a vacuum, the answer is never, and that can be absolutely paralyzing. I’ve taught workshops on writing novels, and something we talk about are roadblocks. Finishing a book is really hard. As such, we create ways to keep us from having to actually finish (write “The End.” I won’t go into why that is now, it’s an essay in itself). And that research thing is one of those strategies… “I don’t know enough yet, I need to do more reading! It’s not perfect!” 

The best example of this is writing mysteries (I’m working on a mystery now, actually). If you’re doing a mystery, chances are (unless you have rare personal experience) you have no idea beyond what you’ve seen on TV or what you’ve read in books about how the police actually work or how a detective actually solves crimes. The desire to not look like an idiot by writing something that a reader could poke a hole in is really strong, so it’s really easy to get lost in never-ending research into police procedure and the wonkiness of being a private detective. But here’s the thing: the vast majority of your readers don’t really know much more than you do. Yes, the more you know, the better you can create, but you are not (should not) go into crazy amounts of procedural detail in your writing. You just need to know enough to sound like you know what you’re talking about. No, that’s not lying or cheating. You’ve done enough research when you can effectively answer all the questions the book gives you. There will ALWAYS be more to know, but you don’t have to know it for the purposes of story.

WOW: What appeals to you about the themes of what people leave behind and reinventing yourself?

Jim: It’s funny, with both TAoLaTbG (That’s a hell of a title. Not going to do a long one like that again, I don’t expect!) and ASL, and the stuff I’m working on now, I feel like I keep writing the same story over and over again. I’m just beginning to explore that. Obviously, there are psychological reasons for it in my life. My books are full of people I “know” or recognize. It’s a lot easier to write people you are familiar with at some level. So, I think these themes are part of the lives of a lot of people I was close to. Beyond that, I think I’m also trying to write about myself to a degree.

While I was shopping Legerdemain to agents, I got some real interest from one agent in particular who ultimately decided not to pick it up, but who did make a key suggestion: that I put more of me on the page. Steve Kozwa from Legerdemain is like me, but he’s not me. Skade Felsdottir is a LOT more me. Skade and her journey are really much more of my own. I was in active addiction for a very long time. I think the best definition of sobriety has very little to do with abstinence (really important, don’t get me wrong!), and more to do with establishing or re-establishing a relationship with your true self. 

This notion of reinventing yourself is really closer to the theme of finding your true self. Rather than creating something new, it’s more coming home to yourself. I think that’s the big umbrella theme I keep writing: Figuring out who you are and coming home to it from a thing you are not.

WOW: Have you ever reinvented yourself?

Jim: As above, yes, very much in a general context. I got sober. I started trying to get comfortable with myself and who I was and my own place in things. That’s a massive reinvention, even if its more letting go of a lot of things I was not or things that were not serving my essential self anymore. A very long hard road. Rather than “reinvention” I might say “rediscovery.”
 
 
"You don’t need to use much craft or technical skill in the first draft, you shouldn’t, because it slows you down and gets in the way. But the rewrites are where you actually get to be a 'writer,' where your skill and technique come to play."
 

WOW: Did you learn things from the first book that helped you write the second?

Jim: For sure. A big thing was that I could do it, and not just do it, but do a fairly okay job of it. That’s huge. In terms of practical process, I’m still learning. I have a way of organizing and creating the story that works for me, even though it’s tough to explain and very inefficient, probably. 

One thing I did come to understand, there are two very, very different stages in writing long fiction: the first draft and the rewrites. The first draft is all about creativity, it’s just organically getting the ideas and words out onto the page. Its very free and explosive and artistic. There are very few rules associated with it, and it requires a certain mindset or part of yourself to do it. 

The rewrites, on the other hand, are where the actual writing begins. You don’t need to use much craft or technical skill in the first draft, you shouldn’t, because it slows you down and gets in the way. But the rewrites are where you actually get to be a “writer,” where your skill and technique come to play. I really enjoy the rewrite part. The creative first draft is hard for me. But both are absolutely vital to the creating of a good novel.

WOW: One piece of advice for a budding novelist?

Jim: I’m going to cheat and give two masquerading as one. Get tied into narrative artforms. Read, read, read. Watch movies and TV shows. Listen to narrative music forms. Go to plays. Try to pay attention not just to the stories, but how they are being told. Look for the patterns in both the “what” and also the “how.” Then do one for yourself… AND FINISH IT. Don’t worry about how good it is. Finish it.  Don’t give up. If you give up and stop before you finish you are training yourself to not complete something. If you finish something, even if it’s not any good, you are training yourself to complete something. 

A third one: keep a notebook with you at all times. Write down any little thought or idea, no matter how disconnected or odd or unimportant it is, even if it’s just a word you discover that you like (I wrote down the word “skein” in my notebook. I love the way that word sounds, how it feels to say, ad the metaphorical meanings in it).
 
 
"Don’t worry about how good it is. Finish it. Don’t give up. If you give up and stop before you finish you are training yourself to not complete something."


WOW: What are you working on now?

Jim: Long answer: I’ve got three things I’m toying with and a fourth idea. I love mysteries and always swore I’d try one, so I’m playing with a mystery novel. I read a lot of Raymond Chandler and other American noir detective fiction growing up, and I think my voice lends well to that form, so I’ve got a start, but I also discovered that the novel I was writing was not working the way I wanted it to, so I sat it aside and thought about it for a while, got some distance from it, and now I think I’ve got a better start for it. 

Then I’ve got two novel ideas that are the lit-fc I normally write, one is based on a short story I wrote several years ago that I think would work nicely in a longer form about a broken-down carnival-circuit professional wrestler who finds himself stuck with a cat named Spike after the young woman who owned Spike took off with the wrestler’s money. The other idea is a much more complicated story of interwoven plotlines but its essentially a pair of parallel love stories, romances, laid over themes of family trauma. I recently discovered that those last two ideas were trying to get at the same story, actually—notions of self and self-esteem and why and how we love—so I needed to pick one and set the other aside. I sat the wrestler aside for now and began concentrating on the other story.

My first drafts are almost comically over-done and packed with too many ideas and this one is no different. I’ve got two love stories, both with enormous problems (one is unrequited the other involves a character who is engaged to another person) an autistic character, a character with a terribly disfiguring congenital condition, a character having strange premonitions of the future, a long sad fairytale, a camel, Camille Longday is in this one, too (she is in all my novels. Don’t know why), a lawyer named Porkchop, a haunted grocery store, a character with a terribly dysfunctional relationship to his extended family, a dying grandmother, and department store mannequins. I’m hoping it is both sad and funny. We shall see. 

I’m researching historical barn building, American stonewall construction, scarecrows, the history of carnival sideshows, and a few other things. It’s a lot. We will see what actually makes it into the story.

WOW: Thanks for giving us a peek inside a writer's mind. I think we can all identify that "I've got all these ideas but have no idea if they'll all fit together" feeling.
 
American Still Life by Jim Naremore Blog Tour

-- Blog Tour Calendar

January 6th @ The Muffin
Join us as we celebrate the launch of Jim Naremore's literary fiction American Still Life. Read an interview with the author and enter to win a copy of his book.

January 7th @ C.C. King
Author Jim Naremore stops by with a guest post about how you transform an idea into a full blown story.

January 9th @ Some Thoughts - Everything Creativity
Jim Naremore, author of American Still Life, share his thoughts on the MFA: what do those three letters get you?

January 10th @ What Is That Book About
The spotlight's on American Still Life by Jim Naremore. Could this be your weekend read?

January 12th @ Knotty Needle
Judy reviews American Still Life by Jim Naremore.

January 13th @ Tracey Lampley
Author Jim Naremore wants to talk about sex...and the challenge of writing a good sex scene.

January 14th @ A Storybook World
Want a cup of tea and a good read on this winter day? Check out the spotlight on Jim Naremore's American Still Life.

January 14th @ Tracey Lampley
Author Jim Naremore is back with Part 2 of the challenge of writing a good sex scene.

January 15th @ Choices
Jim Naremore stops by with the ABCs of a good writers' group.

January 16th @ Words by Webb
Thoughts on the novel American Still Life.

January 18th @ Boots, Shoes and Fashion
Meet writer Jim Naremore in today's interview.

January 21st @ Word Magic
Before you “kill your darlings”, what does that misunderstood axiom really mean? Author Jim Naremore shares his thoughts on darlings and their demise!

January 23rd @ Lisa Haselton Book Reviews and Interviews
Lisa has some intriguing questions for Jim Naremore in today's author interview.

January 24th @ A Wonderful World of Words
What's the first thing Jim Naremore tells students in his Novel Class? Stop by and find out! 

January 29th @ The Faerie Review
Discover author Jim Naremore with a review of his latest: American Still Life.

January 31st @ Nikki's Book and Movie Reviews
Looking for a new book for next month? Check out Nikki's review of American Still Life. 

February 4th @ Writer Advice
Stop by for some tips from Jim Naremore on ways to find and maintain (and recover!) your “voice” in writing.

February 7th @ Boys' Mom Reads!
American Still Life is reviewed by Karen of Boys' Mom reads!

***** BOOK GIVEAWAY *****

Enter to win a print copy of American Still Life by Jim Naremore! Fill out the Rafflecopter form below for a chance to win. The giveaway ends January 19th at 11:59 pm CT. We will randomly draw a winner the next day via Rafflecopter and follow up via email. Good luck!

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July and Everything After by Allie Nava: Blog Tour & Giveaway

Monday, November 11, 2024
 
July and Everything After by Allie Nava

We're back with another awesome blog tour for an amazing book you don't want to miss. Allie Nava is launching a blog tour for her book July and Everything After. Fans of Paolo Coelho, Amy Tan, Vaddey Ratner, and Khaled Hosseini will be captivated by July and Everything After, a modern tale of resilience and transformation against extraordinary odds. Join us as we celebrate the launch of her book with a giveaway and an interview with the author.

But before we get to that, here's more about her book:

Maya’s journey from America to her birth country was meant to be a nostalgic visit. Instead, it became a fight for survival.

On the eve of Maya's 22nd birthday, civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka. During what will become known as “Black July,” Maya is targeted and attacked in the organized massacres and pogroms against minorities, and she barely escapes the genocidal chaos.

Haunted by the horrors she witnessed, Maya returns to the US and tries to rally a diverse group of allies to help expose the atrocities in her birth country, among them her Norwegian-American best friend, a magnanimous Catholic nun, and a gifted young man from her past.

Bent on justice, Maya isn’t prepared for the unexpected twists and turns and confrontations with a nemesis that will test her resolve. As the war and humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka intensify, so does Maya’s disillusionment, but contact with a mysterious mentor whose wisdom she once ignored holds the key to her future.

Fans of Paolo Coelho, Amy Tan, Vaddey Ratner, and Khaled Hosseini will be captivated by July and Everything After, a modern tale of resilience and transformation against extraordinary odds and war.

Publisher: DartFrog Books (September 16, 2024)
ISBN: 1965253059
ISBN: 978-1965253052
AISN:  B0DHFWGP1P
Print length:  238 pages

Purchase your copy on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookshop.org. You'll also want to add it to your GoodReads reading list.

About the Author, Allie Nava


Allie Nava is an American writer who survived the violent anti-minority massacres of 1970s Sri Lanka. A former executive and writing advisor, she’s been a board member or advocate for several mission-oriented organizations including Bellevue Literary Review and Golden Seeds. She has been an invited speaker at several ideas festivals, universities, and conferences, an expert panelist for WNYC (The Brian Lehrer Show), and has been recognized for her work  by several organizations including Amazon, Harvard, and Asia Society.  She is a member of The Authors Guild.


--- Interview by Jodi M. Webb

WOW: Congratulations on July and Everything After. Were you ever concerned that readers would be unfamiliar with the events of the Sri Lankan civil war featured in your book?

Allie: The story is as much an American story, as it is one with events that take place across both the US and South Asia. It is the story of human resilience and transcendence, based on an American citizen’s experience with oppression and terror in her birth country in 1983, and how she tries to grapple with the fallout while attempting to rally personal US allies. I wanted to introduce an overlooked chapter of human history as a vessel for telling this story of resilience against extraordinary odds, to underscore that the themes are universal. I hope readers get something meaningful out of the story, whether it be a view into human resilience, or the action-packed excitement of the story itself, or even a bit of romance.

WOW: Was it difficult writing a fictional account of a world event that you lived through?

Allie: While I wasn’t physically present in South Asia in 1983, I was attacked there during the events in 1977, and was fortunate to survive, while hundreds of others died. That experience did provide me with a unique lens through which to try to tell this story as authentically as possible through a fictional format, what a character might go through and feel moment to moment, before, during, and after such incidents, and the various personal issues that one might grapple with. The characters' experiences also include the triumphs in life, the friendships, the romances, the lighter moments, and a path that the journey of resilience might take. I did also conduct research and interviews to learn more, and I believe this was a powerful and important aspect of being able to develop and tell the story.

WOW: Sorry, I mixed up the events of 1977 and 1983. Just like Maya, and indeed yourself, it seems most people have some degree of trauma in their past. What have you found to be the best advice for moving past trauma?

Allie: My observation is that while many people learn to move past trauma through their own life experiences grappling with it, for those that continue to struggle, a mentor figure can play an important role in helping that person move past that trauma, whether that mentor figure be a friend, or therapist, or religious figure, or something else. Many people also have shared with me that their exposure to philosophies that focus on self-awareness, learning, truth-seeking, analysis, and personal responsibility, also can expedite this healing process.

WOW: July and Everything After has been a success. Can you tell us something surprising about being the author of a bestselling book?

Allie: I am in awe of the generosity of readers and friends who have supported the book or said they gained something meaningful from it. I’ve also been surprised by the amount of time it takes to move from a fully written manuscript through a revision process, especially the one I embarked on myself before I even showed it to an editor. I appreciate the process though, because I witnessed how a book can improve through those many revisions, as well as benefitted from perspectives of beta readers and an outside editor.

WOW: Can you tell us a little about your life beyond your writing?

Allie: When I’m not writing for my next book, I dedicate myself to work that moves opportunity forward for women in various ways. Through my prior career, my current projects, and my volunteer endeavors, I focus on working with organizations that advance economic, leadership, and creative arts opportunities for women. Outside of that, I enjoy discovering new restaurants, new walking trails, and new travel destinations, though there are many places I also enjoy returning. I love learning about the history of the places I visit. And yes, I appreciate reading new books and of course a great romance (be it film or book)!

WOW: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today. Good luck with your next book!

July and Everything After by Allie Nava Blog Tour

-- Blog Tour Calendar

November 11th @ The Muffin
Join us as we celebrate the launch of Allie Nava's novel July and Everything After. Read an interview with the author and enter to win a copy of her book.

November 13th @ Create Write Now 
In today's spotlight, learn more about July and Everything After by Allie Nava.

November 14th @ Pages and Paws
Stop by for a review of  July and Everything After.

November 17th @ Just Katherine
Novelist Allie Nava writes about Carving a Tunnel of Hope.

November 18th @ Tracey Lampley
"Expect to self-rescue. No help is coming.” Learn more in today's guest post by writer Allie Nava.

November 19th @ The Faerie Review
Need an addition to your TBR pile? Check out today's spotlight of July and Everything After by Allie Nava.

November 20th @ Pages and Paws
Author Allie Nava will also be sharing a guest post on kindness as the antidote to anger.

November 21st @ Some Thoughts - Everything Creativity
Novelist Allie Nava is writing about drawing your own conclusions.

November 23rd @ Words by Webb
Celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday with a new author. Read a review of Allie Nava' July and Everything After.

November 25th @ Chapter Break
Julie interviews author Allie Nava. Learn more about her and her novel July and Everything After.

November 27th @ A Storybook World
Today's guest poster, Allie Nava, writes about The Choice to Heal.

November 30th @ Nikki's Book Reviews
Stop by for Nikki's review of July and Everything After, a novel by Allie Nava. 

December 4th @ What Is That Book About
Start out a new month with a spotlight on a new book: July and Everything After.

December 7th @ A Wonderful World of Words
Allie Nava is visiting with a post about Positive Growth.

December 10th @ Choices
Author Allie Nava, author of July and Everything After, guest posts about Being Overlooked or Ignored.

December 15th @ Jill Sheets
Learn more about author Allie Nava and her novel July and Everything After in today's interview.

December 15th @ Boots, Shoes and Fashion
Linda is chatting with Allie Nava about her novel July and Everything After.


***** BOOK GIVEAWAY *****

Enter to win a print copy of July and Everything After by Allie Nava! Fill out the Rafflecopter form below for a chance to win. The giveaway ends November 24 at 11:59 pm CT. We will randomly draw a winner the next day via Rafflecopter and follow up via email. Good luck!


a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Friday Speak Out!: You Oughtta Write a Book! (Part 1— Discover Your Style of Writing)

Friday, December 26, 2014
by Heather Heyford

If you want to write a book, it’s essential to understand where your natural style falls within the wider realm of literature. “What genre do you write in?” is one of the first questions asked when writers, editors and agents convene.

There’s a practical reason for being familiar with your style, too. You have to know which publishing houses and editors to target. It won’t do you much good to send your mystery manuscript to a romance publisher!

Literary fiction is character driven. It’s been described as distant, serious, often dark. It is slower paced, concerned with beautiful writing, and intellectual. Focused more on broad themes, such as human suffering, than on plot. Literary style encompasses the 3Rs: reflection, remembering, and reaction. Examples of literary fiction and its sweeping themes are:
The Great Gatsby — the quest for wealth, the American dream
Romeo and Juliet — star-crossed love leads to tragedy
Catcher in the Rye — alienation as a form of self-protection, the phoniness of the adult world, it’s painful to grow up.
In contrast, commercial fiction is considered to be plot-driven. It is pro-active, fast-paced, emotional, and personal. Usually broken down into genre (romance, thrillers, etc.). Examples of commercial fiction are:
Gone Girl — the wife in what appears to be the perfect couple disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary
The DaVinci Code — an ingenious code is thought to exist in the works of Leonardo DaVinci
Outlander — a WWII combat nurse falls into a standing stone and lands in 1743 Scotland
Mainstream fiction falls somewhere in the middle of literary and commercial. To go a step further, the type of contemporary, emotional, universally appealing, mainstream fiction that occasionally becomes a blockbuster is often referred to as high concept. High concept novels and films can be explained in a quick elevator pitch. For example, here’s a pitch for the high concept movie, Jurassic Park: What if we could build dinosaurs?

In preparation for bumping into a potential editor at a national writer’s conference, I pared my current 4-book series down to this: “The Napa Wine Heiresses is a series about the lives and loves of the daughters of the most notorious vintner in the Napa Valley.” I feel sure this exercise helped me get multiple offers from publishers.

Sometimes the entire premise of a high concept story is evident in the title:
Snakes on a Plane
Try distilling your idea into 1-3 sentences. Even if you have more of a literary bent, boiling your book down to its essence is a great exercise in clarifying what it is you are trying to say.

Whatever your style, good story transcends genre. To paraphrase literary agent and writing coach Donald Maass, the reason fiction exists is to use a stranger in strange circumstances to surprise us with ourselves. Personally, I aim for both powerful story and beautiful writing.

[In Part 2 of You Oughtta Write a Book, I’ll explain the myriad methods—print, digital, indie, and so on—by which you can consider publishing your book. And be sure to stay tuned for Part 3 — The Importance of Social Media in Helping Your Book Get “Found”.]

* * *
Heather Heyford is the author of Wine Heiresses Series: A Taste of Chardonnay,  A Taste of Merlot, A Taste of Sauvignon, and A Taste of Sake, from Kensington Publishing. She is represented by The Nancy Yost Literary Agency. Visit her at HeatherHeyford.com, https://www.facebook.com/heatherheyford1 and http://www.pinterest.com/Romance_Writer/.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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Author Lisa de Nikolits Launches her novel A Glittering Chaos

Monday, May 27, 2013
& giveaway contest!

A terrific, smart, funny and incredibly wise story about marriage, secrets and lies and unusual sexual proclivities.

A German woman in her early-forties insists on accompanying her husband to Las Vegas, where he has a business conference. Unknown to her the conference is a pretext; he's there to find a psychic who will help him contact his sister who vanished at fourteen.

A key theme is how one person's psychiatric problems can move like a destructive whirlwind through other people's lives and within the confines of a curious and shifting family dynamic.

Melusine (protagonist) is a passionate and creative woman with a high tolerance for the eccentric expressions of human frailty. From suppressed wife and librarian to nude model; to writer of an erotic Sapphic novella; and finally to pastry chef and adoptive mother of a baby boy, she has a good sense of self-discovery-she embraces her erotic desires with self-love after she realises, with surprise, that she even has an erotic self.

A Glittering Chaos is a novel about empowerment and new beginnings at every stage of life, with a diverse cast of unconventional characters of all ages and sexual orientations who find themselves in intriguingly unusual situations.



Paperback: 300 pages

Publisher: Inanna Publishing (May 30, 2013)

ISBN-10: 192670892X

ISBN-13: 978-1926708928

Twitter hashtag: #GlitteringChaos

A Glittering Chaos is available as a print and e- book at Amazon, Amazon Canada, and Indigo.

Book Giveaway Contest:
To win a copy of A Glittering Chaos, please enter using the Rafflecopter form at the bottom of this post. The giveaway contest closes this Friday, May 31 at 12:00 AM EST. We will announce the winner the same day in the Rafflecopter widget. Good luck!

About the Author:

Originally from South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits has been a Canadian citizen since 2003. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy and has lived in the U.S.A., Australia and Britain.

Her first novel, The Hungry Mirror, won the 2011 IPPY Awards Gold Medal for Women's Issues Fiction and was long-listed for a ReLit Award. Her second novel, West of Wawa won the 2012 IPPY Silver Medal Winner for Popular Fiction and was one of Chatelaine's four Editor's Picks. Lisa has also written poetry, short stories, magazine articles and children’s books. She also spent many years as the art director for fashion magazines around the world.

Find out more about the author by visiting her online:

Author website: www.lisadenikolitswriter.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/lisa.denikolits

Twitter: @lisadenikolits

-----Interview by Jodi Webb

WOW: Lisa, you're a WOW veteran. This is your third WOW blog tour so we'd love to pick your brain about novel writing. You're touring with A Glittering Chaos this time. How do you feel your three books are alike? How are they different? Do you feel all your books will appeal to the same audience?

Lisa: In the most obvious sense, the three books couldn’t differ more; The Hungry Mirror has an unnamed protagonist battling with body image and eating disorders within the world of fashion and beauty magazine; West of Wawa sees Benny, neurotic self-medicator and new immigrant to Canada take an extensive back-packing trip across the great North, shedding emotional baggage and pain along the way and learning that life’s not so bad, even with all the hard knocks; and in A Glittering Chaos we have Melusine whose marriage of twenty years is under threat by the increasing impact of her husband’s dark secret.

Thematically, the books could not be more different but if you were to take the three novels and black out the covers and give them to a focus group of readers along with six other blacked out books, and ask them to identify any three written by the same author, I’m confident they’d recognize mine. This is because in spite of story or theme changes, my writing style is somewhat unique (something I both deplore and like) and it’s easily recognizable and while the plots and set-ups change dramatically, each book features a female protagonist who is faced with a life-changing challenge; she gets knocked down but she gets back up again and she triumphs and by that I mean that she learns to find joy and inner peace by living life her way, without lies, without deception.

So yes, even although the themes are very different, I believe that people would be able to say (quite quickly) that yes, this is a Lisa de Nikolits' book.

In terms of appealing to the same audience, the answer to that is a surprising yes! And I say surprising because I myself have been surprised; a number of readers started with West of Wawa, then read The Hungry Mirror and have already responded with enthusiasm to A Glittering Chaos—and that’s men and women alike! I wouldn’t have thought the books would have that sort of general appeal and that they do, speaks to the above mention of the commonality within my books; a message of hope with a journey of growth and triumph and redemption in the end.

WOW: If you could go back and tell yourself something you now know about novel writing before you even began your first novel The Hungry Mirror, what would the lesson be?

Lisa: Find someone you trust to give you feedback very early on in the process. I worked solo for many years and I kept making the same mistakes without even knowing that I was making them. My writing only grew and changed when I received feedback the hard way, by rejection. The biggest gift was rejection letters that came with some explanation; this way I gleaned pointers that I could identify as weak spots in my writing.

WOW: Yes, we all need to realize that rejection is a necessary evil. Of course, in the moment rejection doesn't feel very helpful, does it? Do you have any tips for seeing yourself through rejection?

Lisa: I really do try to be zen about this in the sense that there is good and there is bad in life and I tell myself fine, it doesn't feel nice, in fact it feels horrible BUT (and I do talk to myself in CAPS at times like these), good has happened before and therefore, logically speaking, good MUST happen again! I combine a stern self-talk with logic and Buddhism and then I have a bubble bath and eat chocolate! And if none of that helps, I remember the bad dates I went on before I met my husband and I thank the heavens that I never ended up with any of those fellows and I apply the same principle to the rejection; that it must have happened for some reason I may never understand but I have to trust the unseen and know that it’s for the best. And when we think that we will never be able to acknowledge well, that was for the best, then the only thing left to do is make the best of it, which usually means carrying on, one foot in front of the other. Never give up, never surrender—and that’s never more important than when it comes to your dreams.

WOW: Does novel writing get easier? Do you feel more confident about your talent?

Lisa: I think it does get easier. It’s like anything—you improve with practice. That is, as long as it’s focused practice, with intent to improve. There’s that trending saying right now, about 10,000 hours; that all you need is 10,000 hours and you’ll be a superstar in your field of choice—but let’s say you want to win the high jump and you practice by jogging kilometers each day, telling yourself that it will all go towards your high jump, that you’re building stamina . . . well, you can easily see that that wouldn’t do any good at all.

In much the same way, when I was younger, I wrote reams and reams but I never got any feedback; I simply finished one thing and then barreled on to the next and in a sense, I kept writing the same thing in different way; the same unpolished, unpublishable things. I have learned the hard way that quality definitely wins over quantity!

With regard to talent, I think that anybody with a grain of talent and a truckload of unstoppable determination will succeed, as opposed to an individual with mountains of talent and little discipline or resolve. I truly believe that talent is less important than resolve and hard work. If you have resolve, and focus on doing the right work, then your talent will multiply of its own accord.

One of the worst things that happened to me, writing-wise, was that teachers told me I had talent! Due to that, I didn’t think I had to do anything more than put words on a page—I had talent, I was good to go!

Lots of people are talented in lots of things and they think that should be enough to guarantee success but my money’s on the person with limited talent and mega resolve—that person will win the race!

WOW: The main characters in your three novels are different. So different! But many people say that writers put a bit of themselves in their characters. Do you subscribe to that theory? Despite their differences are each of your characters you in disguise?

Lisa: This question makes me smile! No, my characters aren’t me in disguise! It’s funny that readers are always so keen to try to draw parallels between author and character and they get excited when they can point to their conclusions and say "you see, you are so-and-so . . . !"

I’m not quite sure why there’s such a keen interest in the connection between author and character—perhaps it’s because people want to know where characters come from?

I most do certainly use my experiences—and the experiences of others—to create my characters and I use the ‘walk many a mile in other people’s shoes’ by way of imagination, and I think that’s how I get to my characters. I might use myself as a starting point but then say, well, what would so-and-so do and then, on the basis of their utterly different reaction to what mine would be, draw a character from that. I would say that a lot of my characters do the exact opposite to what I would do, so I might start off with my reaction and then double back.

I can see where people can draw parallels between me and some of my characters; in The Hungry Mirror, the protagonist works in the world of fashion magazines and Benny (West of Wawa) is a graphic designer but this was more a case of ‘write what you know’—it was easy to makes those worlds believable. Also, the world of fashion and beauty was integral to the plot of The Hungry Mirror. So I definitely use circumstance—another example is that I did Benny’s cross-Canada trip and when I wrote the first draft of West of Wawa, the story was largely based on me and I received the feedback that the character was ‘vacuous and banal and her that her story was not engaging’. So I ditched myself, made up Benny and ended up with a much better book!

And now, in A Glittering Chaos, I am amazed by Melusine (protagonist). There is nothing about me that can even relate to her. Except her perhaps her love of poetry, so there you go, I guess there is something! I admire Melusine—perhaps I wrote about someone I wished I could be . . .

I think it's more a matter of me living vicariously through these characters—they all work through some issue that I am intrigued by—I might not have the courage to do the things they do and also, I can experience any kind of situation through them that I wouldn’t, in real life.

WOW: At what point did you say to yourself, "I'm not just going to be a person who wrote a novel. I'm going to be a novelist and write book after book." When did you realize THAT was who you were?

Lisa: When I was about twelve! What I didn’t realize was how hard it would be and how long it would take. If I had known, I might have given up. Actually that’s not true, I wouldn’t have given up, I would have tried harder to make it happen sooner by working on it more sensibly, with help and direction from a trusted source.

WOW: You've stayed with the same publisher, Inanna, for three books now. What about this small publisher appeals to you?

Lisa: We make a great team and we work so well together. I love what Inanna stands for and who they are, I have such great respect for all the authors they represent and the work they publish. My editor-in-chief, Luciana Ricciutelli is amazing; she’s one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met and she’s a woman who really makes a difference in this world. She brings out the best in me as writer and she has faith in my writing even if I don’t get it right the first time. For example, I sent her a novel then titled The Corner of the Desert and she came back to me with two pages of feedback; that the novel had great potential but that it still needed work and she highlighted all the areas. I went back to the book and worked on it for a year, also changing the name to The Witchdoctor’s Bones (as the other title was considered too weak) and now the novel is due to be released next year. Luciana’s feedback and insights are invaluable to me as a writer, I would feel lost without her, I know I can trust her to guide me to become a better writer.

And it’s thanks to Luciana and Inanna that I’ve won the awards I have, and received the reviews I have, so I have nothing but gratitude for this small powerhouse publisher and I envisage we will be together for a very long time!

WOW: Any sneak peeks for us about what you and Inanna are cooking up next?

Lisa: Between The Cracks She Fell is my next work and it's about a girl in her early 30s who loses her job (in a corporate environment) and then she loses her house, because her boyfriend has a nervous breakdown and can't help her make the payments and she can't sell the property. Her boyfriend moves back home to live with his folks and she (Melody Fair - although as I write that, I realize I might have to change it because A Glittering Chaos has Melusine!) ends up without a job or a place to stay and she decides to move into an abandoned old school that she found while on a walk. The school is out in the countryside and summer has just begun and so she figures she will have some time to regroup and get things together by Fall. But then she falls in with an odd bunch of characters and gets caught up in their antics, which involve robbery and possibly murder.

WOW: Ooh, I always love a good murder!

Lisa: Thank you for having me as a guest on The Muffin, and you’re right, I am a WOW veteran because you do such a great job! I look forward to this blog tour for A Glittering Chaos and I hope we’ll be together for The Witchdoctor’s Bones next year!

----------Blog Tour Dates

Monday, May 27 (today!) @ The Muffin
Stop by for an interview of Lisa de Nikolits and giveaway of her latest novel A Glittering Chaos!
http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/

Tuesday, May 28 @ Lit Endeavors
Stop by for a review of A Glittering Chaos, the story of a woman's journey to reinvent herself.
http://www.litendeavors.com

Wednesday, May 29 @ Words by Webb
Curious about A Glittering Chaos? Don't miss today's review.
http://jodiwebb.com/

Friday, May 31 @ Lit Endeavors
Don't miss a fascinating guest post by Lisa de Nikolits, author of A Glittering Chaos.
http://www.litendeavors.com/

Monday, June 3 @ Steph the Bookworm
Want the 411 on A Glittering Chaos? Check out a review from Steph the Bookworm.
http://www.stephthebookworm.com/

Thursday, June 6 @ Tiffany Talks Books
Learn more about the mind behind A Glittering Chaos with an interview of author Lisa de Nikolits!
http://tiffanytalksbooks.com

Monday, June 10 @ Books I Think You Should Read
Today we peek at the joy (and angst) of writing with novelist Lisa de Nikolits as our tour guide.
http://booksithinkyoushouldread.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, June 11 @ CMash Loves to Read
Learn what makes author Lisa de Nikolits tick with today's interview.
http://cmashlovestoread.com/

Thursday, June 13 @ Books I Think You Should Read
For some authors one day just isn’t enough! Lisa de Nikolits is back with a review of her latest novel A Glittering Chaos.
http://booksithinkyoushouldread.blogspot.com/

Thursday, June 20 @ Broken Penguins
Stop by today for a review of Lisa de Nikolits' latest novel A Glittering Chaos then return on June 24 for an interview.
http://brokenpenguins.wordpress.com/

Monday, June 24 @ Broken Penguins
Return to Broken Penguin for an interview with author Lisa de Nikolits.
http://brokenpenguins.wordpress.com/

Wednesday, July 10 @ Literary R & R
Last chance to read a review of A Glittering Chaos by Lisa de Nikolits on the WOW Blog Tour.
http://literaryrr.blogspot.com

To view all our touring authors, check out our Events Calendar. Keep up with blog stops and giveaways in real time by following us on Twitter @WOWBlogTour.

Get Involved! If you have a website or blog and would like to host one of our touring authors or schedule a tour of your own, please email us at blogtour@wow-womenonwriting.com.

Book Giveaway Contest: Enter to win a copy of A Glittering Chaos! Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below. We will announce the winner in the Rafflecopter widget this Friday, May 31.

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Friday Speak Out!: Sneetch School, Guest Post by Melissa Olson

Friday, April 15, 2011
Sneetch School

by Melissa Olson

For years now, I’ve been told that there are two kinds of fiction writing: “popular” or “commercial” fiction, and “literary” fiction. (Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that both terms are insulting to the other kind of writing.) Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with either kind of book--I probably enjoy commercial fiction the most, but I definitely read both. Somewhere along the way, though a line was drawn in the sand, and now everybody seems to have these…attitudes.

I’m not necessarily talking about the readers, though there are plenty of literary snobs and commercial junkies who fight about this stuff. No, I’m referring more to the writers themselves. Very few authors have worked in both literary and commercial fiction, and each side seems to snort at the other. It’s like (to reference a great commercial writer) the Dr. Seuss story with the Sneetches. Some have stars on their bellies, and some don’t, but both sides look down upon the other, which can only be described as pointless. Commercial writers have a lot of insecurity that their work isn’t as good as literary writers, and literary writers are embarrassed that their so-called "superior" books don’t sell nearly as much. Writers don’t like having their egos challenged.

This quiet feud has been around for decades, but it’s only recently that I’ve really been forced to get involved. Even though I haven’t sold a book yet, I’ve always thought of myself as a commercial writer, because that’s the kind of stuff I produce. My first book was a PI whodunit, and my second was a vampires and werewolves fantasy. Somewhere along the line, though, I started to wonder if I was capable of more “literary” writing. I don’t have a problem with being a commercial writer--I’ll never win the Pulitzer, but I might keep food on the table--but I just really wanted to know, for me. Which, combined with my desire to be able to teach in a pinch, is how I ended up in grad school working on a master's in Creative Writing. And after two uncomfortable semesters, I think I’ve finally figured out why I don’t seem to fit in there: nobody crosses the line. There are great commercial writers and great literary writers, but you can’t have a star on your belly and no star on your belly at the same time.

I guess if I’d really thought about it, I would have realized that by even going to grad school I was heading straight into literary-only territory, but my focus was just on learning to write better--I really thought about just how snobbish it would be. My professors and all my classmates have been really cool, interesting people, but nobody wants to write genre fiction: it’s lit or bust. For these people, writing isn’t about having fun or having a career, it’s telling important messages in detailed and well-developed ways. It’s more about great art than great stories, and that’s taking some getting used to.

Sometimes I feel like I’m sneaking around behind enemy lines, and at any moment someone is going to read this blog or critique some of my writing, and I’ll get tossed out of here on my rear. And I have to admit, by about week two I was wondering if I should just drop out and focus on my book. I thought I couldn’t write literary fiction because I’ve never been taught, but maybe it’s just because I can’t write literary fiction.

The smart thing would probably be to cut my losses and walk away from grad school, but historically I'm not known for doing the smart thing, which is how I ended up trying to be a full-time student and mommy to a toddler at the same time. I'm going to go for it, but I'm going to try to remember that life is too busy and too full to worry that I might be holding onto a star, trying to figure out if/how/when to put it on my belly. The whole division thing is silly. Seriously, it's a Dr. Seuss book. Things don't get much sillier.

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Melissa Olson grew up in Chippewa Falls, WI (home of Leinenkugels) before attending the University of Southern California , where she earned degrees in English Literature and Cinema-Television. She worked as a features and reviews writer, columnist, and film editor for the Daily Trojan newspaper. After graduation, she spent a brief time in the Hollywood studio system before moving to Madison, WI. Melissa is currently pursuing her MA in creative writing and working on publishing her two completed novels. She is an occasional film columnist for the Chippewa Falls Herald Telegram, and also writes blogs on entertainment, motherhood, and writing at her website, http://www.melissafolson.com/ . Academic interests include film studies, fantasy/magical realism, feminist literature, and screenwriting.

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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!

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