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By: Maggie Smith

If you’re an aspiring author and want insights into what’s involved in launching a book into the world, this is the podcast for you. Maggie Smith, author and blogger, interviews debut novelists from the Women’s Fiction Writers Association discussing not only the inspiration behind their book, but also their insights into the writing process, the best advice they ever got, and the joys and sometimes pitfalls they encountered on their path to publication.

224: Roxana Trabulsi- Author, Of Mud and Honey
02/22/2024

My guest this week is Rosana Motiwalla Trabulsi (Of Mud and Honey, Ten16 Press. January 2023). Her debut is based on her parent’s struggles in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in Yemen as the country morphed into a Communist regime, her father was jailed as a political prisoner, and her mother and siblings were placed under house arrest. We discuss the emotional toll and responsibility of writing your own family’s history and how signing with a small press proved the perfect venue to not only tell the story of a little-known country but also gave Rosana the flexibil...


223: Brynn Barineau- Author of Jaguars and Other Game
02/15/2024

This week’s guest is Brynn Barineau (Jaguars and Other Game, Orange Blossom Publishing, November 2022). After writing two YA novels that didn’t find a publisher, Brynn tried her hand at adult fiction and, writing from her then-home in South America, penned a gender-flipped three musketeers story based in 1809 Brazil when the Portuguese royal court fled Napoleon’s army and relocated to Rio. It’s filled with sword fights, diamond smuggling, court intrigue, and best of all, female friendships as three women work to exonerate their friend who’s been accused of murder. So even though Brynn grew up equating w...


222: Patricia Hudson - Author of Traces
02/08/2024

Our guest this week is Patricia Hudson (Traces, Firesign Industries, Univ of Kentucky Press, November 2022). Patricia’s historical fiction debut centers around 3 forgotten women—the wife and two daughters of Daniel Boone, the famous explorer and an early “social influencer” who gained fame for opening up the Kentucky area after the Revolutionary War. Patricia, a former free-lance writer, set out not just to record the what of these women’s lives but also the why behind their stories and to do so, joined a low-res MFA program, both to get help writing the novel but also for its networking component...


221: Kathy Maresca - Author of Porch Music
02/01/2024

This week’s guest is Kathy Maresca (Porch Music, Touch Point Press, October 2022) In her debut novel, set in 1950’s Gainesville Florida, Kathy utilized stories from her Seminole family history to tap into a story of racial inequities, Southern culture, country music, and religious hypocrisy. Her research included not only books and museums, but also her own memories of working at Six Gun Territory, a local theme park, and absorbing the rhythm of Native American dances. When it came to marketing, her most effective tool turned out to be contests, where she used her awards to publicize her book. Her...


220: Georgia Day - Author of Of Sand and Bone
01/25/2024

Our guest this week is Georgia Day (Of Sand and Bone, Rhapsody Press, November 2022). Hear how a recurring nightmare, complete with a haunting, portentous image, led Georgia to the story that would eventually morph into her speculative fiction novel. Set in a unique world of undulating sand and daily life-and-death struggles, her two female protagonists set out on a journey and Georgia went on her own journey as well, creating a world where everything from the environment to the origin stories and myths to the animals that share the space had to come  from her own imagination. Her reading fr...


219: Amy Watson - Author of Closer to Okay
01/18/2024

This week’s guest is Amy Watson (Closer to Okay, Alcove Press, October 2022). Amy and I discuss clinical depression (she and her husband both live with this) and how her goal in writing her debut was to give voice to this little-understood condition and ways to cope with it. Listen for the serendipitous path that led Amy to her agent and eventually to her publisher, how her biggest marketing success came from inclusion on a book box site she didn’t even solicit, and how gratifying it’s been to hear from readers about both her book’s rawness and its...


218: Linda Moore - Author of Attribution
01/11/2024

Our guest this week is Linda Moore (Attribution, She Writes Press, October 2022). You’ll smile at Linda’s analogy of how introducing your book to your audience is a lot like offering them chocolate chip cookies and about how men are still getting it wrong in terms of the harassment present in academia.  And if you’re interested in marketing to book clubs, you’ll enjoy our lengthy discussion about how Linda approached this often-neglected marketing opportunity, eventually guesting at over seventy clubs in the last 16 months, both locally and via Zoom appearances.

A recovering gallery owner, traveler...


217: Karen Heenan - Author of Coming Apart
12/21/2023

This week’s guest author is Karen Heenan (Coming Apart, indie published, October 2022). Our discussion ranges from what happens when the characters in your 1930’s stand-alone historical novel have more to say (your book turns into a trilogy), what to do when as agent asks you to rewrite your novel in another author’s voice (you part ways) to the unexpected and fascinating tidbits you learn when diving into research (ever heard of  ‘bootleg coal-mining?’). We end with a discussion of indie vs. trad publishing where Karen maintains agents are no longer the gatekeepers; readers are. And all they care about...


216: Wendy Adair - Author of The Broken Hallelujah
12/14/2023

The podcast this week features Wendy Adair (The Broken Hallelujah, indie published, October 2022). Once Wendy had her core idea, snippets of facts as well as sources seemed to appear serendipitously, including the old trunk of a loved one. And we delve into genre – how she set out to write a women’s fiction novel that morphed into another often overlooked genre as well, what it was like to discover a new readership to market to, and the freedom and creativity she’s found in publishing her own work. And if you’ve been on the fence about audiobooks, her experien...


215: Gloria Mattioni- Author of California Sister
12/07/2023

This week our guest is Gloria Mattioni (California Sister, Atmosphere Press, September 2022). Gloria, originally born in Italy, wrote six previous books before penning her women’s fiction debut, a story loosely resembling a traumatic incident in her own life. The memoir form proved too painful to write and a screenplay hid the interiority needed to understand the sisters, but a dual POV novel proved to be the perfect structure for showing the emotional journey of the characters. Gloria crowd-sourced 40 hand-picked creatives for feedback and once she finished the book, was clear and specific about the time frame, the cost, an...