What a year it’s been!
First, I had to learn on the job how to promote my story through my website, FaceBook page, Goodreads, YouTube, and LinkedIn sites. While I provided blog texts and descriptive wording, Read More ›
One year ago, August 20, 2020, my novel Bear Woman Rising was published by Inword Publishers. After more than a decade spent writing and rewriting my story, the first time I held a copy of Bear Woman Rising in my hands, I felt like a new mom, proud yet uncertain how to introduce my creation to the world.
Most people disregard the old adage, you can’t judge a book by its cover, when they shop for books. A friend once told me, “When I browse for books, I pick each one up, peruse the cover, flip it over, and read the back before I decide whether or not to take it home.” After all, a cover is an author’s only chance to make that good first impression.
Knowing the importance of first impressions, my daughter Laurie and I began discussing cover ideas for Bear Woman Rising in the fall of 2019. Although I had helped design covers for government publications, my experience was limited. But Laurie, a published author in her own right,* had worked with a wide range of cover designers and artists, and I welcomed her input. Our first challenge was to choose a cover image for my book.&nb...
Someone once asked how much of myself was in the characters I’ve created. Most of my characters are truly composites of people I’ve met whose voices I recall and whose actions and reactions I see quite clearly. They pop out of my memory bank and onto the page with relative ease. However, Jesse Bookman, the female scientist in Bear Woman Rising, brought back painful times in my own journey that I would have preferred to forget, if not for her.
My journey into adulthood began with a jolt mere minutes after my college graduation ceremonies came to a close. While parents and new graduates gathered in the June sunshine to congratulate one another and say goodbye before we left the campus one last time, my father took me aside and imparted these words of wisdom, “Whatever y...
In some stories, the setting becomes as important as the characters who act out their lives within its parameters. We begin to “see” the story unveil in the context of place. That place may determine what our characters think, and say and do.
In Bear Woman Rising, Jesse describes Whitey’s Road House as a “home to wayfaring strangers”. It is a safe haven for locals to gather and for strangers to feel welcome. As such it provides a backdrop for the proprietor’s wife, Ruth, to discuss her concerns for Kara’s mental stability with Jesse, whom she has just met. And later, we hear Kara tell Jesse, whom she has just met, that left alone in a cabin with blizzard force winds beating at the door, she hears an animal scratching t...
