Patricia Stoltey

Author

How I Wrote a Historical Novel Set in an Era I Knew Nothing About … by Jennifer Kincheloe

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Five years ago, I knew nothing about the Progressive Era. I mean naught, nothing, nada. I had some vague notion that they washed their hair with egg yolks and drank Coca Cola laced with cocaine, but that was about it. I ran across a brief article about a police matron, Alice Stebbins Wells, who became …Read More

Finding a Voice … by Kathleen Ernst

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In the book world, “voice” is a difficult-to-define but prized element. “I can’t describe voice,” editors say, “but I know it when I see it.” When conceptualizing my latest Chloe Ellefson mystery, Death on the Prairie, I’ve thought a lot about finding a voice—and not just my own as a writer. Chloe is curator of …Read More

ON LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION … by David Freed

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I marvel at the capacity of those authors who can pinpoint that precise moment when inspiration struck. There they were, waiting in line at Starbucks, or shampooing their hair, or staring out over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon at sunrise with their legs twisted in some impossible yoga position, and then, suddenly—Bam! Huzzah! …Read More

Do You Know Your Nominative From Your Objective? … by Lois Winston

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There are certain grammar errors that are like chalk screeching on a blackboard to me. I cringe when I hear them, and it’s all thanks to Peggy Riley Hughes. Mrs. Hughes was my seventh and eighth grade English teacher, a veritable martinet who literally beat grammar into us by smacking a yardstick on her blackboard …Read More

Make of it what you will: In defense of challenging the reader in Red Lightning … by Laura Pritchett

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My newest novel, Red Lightning, will annoy some people. Yes, I know it, and I suppose I should be sorry. But I am not. Let me explain, if I may: For the first several years I was writing this book, it was “normal”—there was a standard arc, plot, characters, narration—and I just didn’t like it. …Read More