Patricia Stoltey

Author

How to Write Good Historical Fiction for Children or Adults … by Teresa Funke

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Apologies to anyone who adores Philippa Gregory, but I almost had to put down her book The Other Boleyn Girl when I was halfway through. She had a line of dialogue that read something like, “Oh Anne, you’re such a drama queen.” And I was gone. I finished the book, but she had lost all …Read More

HEROES: Standing the Test of Time … by Joylene Nowell Butler

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I’m often asked how I create strong protagonists for my suspense novels. I love answering that question because in the initial stages, my protagonists are anything but strong. When introduced for the first time, Valerie (Dead Witness), Brendell (Broken But Not Dead), and Dakota (Break Time), tortured my beta readers with their blandness. My weakness …Read More

Know When to Quit … by Liana Brooks

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“Never give up. Never surrender.” That’s my writing motto. Write regularly. Write through the bad days, the rejections, and everything else, and eventually you will write the books that you can build a career on. But there comes a point where you need to quit. Not quit writing, but quit writing that story, or that …Read More

Fame, Fate, and Fun With Words … by Kathy Lynn Emerson (aka Kaitlyn Dunnett)

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Back at the end of August, I had what most people would call my “fifteen minutes of fame” after Jimmy Fallon, on the Tonight Show, held up one of the cozy mysteries I write as Kaitlyn Dunnett, Ho-Ho-Homicide, and announced that “It’s got two things everyone likes—Christmas and murder.” I was stunned when I saw …Read More

Writing Beyond Expectations … by Matt Hilton

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When writing my first (published) novel – Dead Men’s Dust – I made a conscious decision to write something very different from other crime/thriller books on British bookshelves. There are traditions in crime fiction set in the UK where amateur sleuths or damaged Detective Inspectors tend to be the norm, and I was infinitely aware …Read More

No Glass Ceiling … by Richard Godwin

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I have chosen to title this post no glass ceiling because it sums up the main reason why I am an author, and why I write: there is none in writing. That is because writing is a process, it is an act of engagement with the subconscious. You can never reach the top. There is …Read More

How Much My Book is (Not) Like Real Life … by Laurel S. Peterson

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Thanks so much, Pat, for having me on your blog. I’m delighted to be here. In talking about writing, the question of whether what’s written is “true” seems to come up a lot, and what our responsibility is to those we love. Anne LaMott has written somewhere (in her witty and wonderful writings—if you haven’t …Read More