Patricia Stoltey

Author

When You Don’t Use an Idea Fast Enough, Does It Really Move on to Someone Else?

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Ideas Won’t Hang Around Forever? In 2015, Elizabeth Gilbert’s still best-selling book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, was published. I read it then, and I’m getting ready to read it again this winter. The book gave me a lot to think about, but there’s one point Gilbert made that has come to pass in …Read More

Two are Better Than One; Tips for a Successful Co-Author Partnership … by Kerrie Flanagan

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When you meet the one, it all falls into place. You no longer have to carry the burden alone. The workload is shared, you encourage each other through the tough times and celebrate successes together. With the right partner, co-authoring can be an incredible experience that fuses the synergy and talents of two writers into …Read More

Exiting the Doldrums

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No, I haven’t been to the Equator I’ve been lost in those other doldrums–the kind characterized by inactivity and slothfulness. I don’t feel depressed, just plain old-fashioned lazy. I’ve read a lot of books though. And I have applied my critique group’s suggestions to my work-in-process. But have I finished the big revision yet? Nope. …Read More

Interview and Book Excerpt at the Colorado Sun

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Colorado Humanities has teamed with the Colorado Sun to spotlight this year’s Colorado Book Awards winners and finalists in the digital paper’s weekend SunLit feature. This weekend was my turn. The excerpt I selected from Wishing Caswell Dead is the chapter where Jo Mae Proud is introduced. There’s also an interview where I responded to …Read More

The Hawks are Watching Me (and Sassy)

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First I heard the hawks in the neighborhood, then spotted two sitting on housetops on the route Sassy and I walk each morning. They screeched back and forth in an eerie call that made me think they were talking about us. The next day, the two had moved up a block, still on our walk …Read More

What do I do when I’m not writing? … by Karen C. Whalen

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There are periods of time when I don’t write, when I’m in between projects and just need to let my words simmer for a while. When I’m not writing, I’m reading books about the craft, or I’m reading other writers’ works for sheer pleasure, or I’m marketing, which means I’m scheduling book events and blogging. …Read More

A Schedule Do-Over and a Few Mini-Reviews

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Oh boy, I’ve really had it with Facebook. Having the social and info posts I want to see in my timeline controlled by a faceless algorithm and putting up with hate posts and comments so constant I have to unfollow people I care about have taken a toll. I’m in the process of shrinking my …Read More

The Other Arc … by Brian Kaufman

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The term character arc refers to the inner transformation of a novel’s character over the course of a story. A character begins the novel as a certain kind of person. As the plot progresses, characters react to developments in the story. By the novel’s end, each character is a different sort of person. The change …Read More

At Least I’ve Been Reading Lots of Good Books

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Even though I’m not working as much on my work in process as I’d planned. Sometimes you just gotta read, read, read until you can’t read anymore. Here are the books I’ve enjoyed the most. Note I’m hopping from one genre to another and sampling lots of new (to me) authors as well as checking …Read More