The Eclipse Who among us, given a sextant and a supercomputer, could accurately predict the arrival of the next solar eclipse? Yeah, me neither. They (those scientist / astronomer types) started predicting eclipses 300 years ago. I have one question: “how?” But the sight of millions of people moving to the path of totality made…
Tag: inspiration
National Poetry Month—Not Just for Poets!
April is National Poetry Month. So why should that matter to fiction writers? Because poetry is the marriage of words and ideas, blending the two together to create something greater than the sum of their parts—which is exactly the same thing fiction does. Personally, I believe reading poetry (and, if you choose, writing the occasional…
PICTURING HISTORY: Finding Stories in Photographs
When I wrote my historical novel, My Heart Lies Here, I did as much research as I could about the Ludlow Massacre in Trinidad, Colorado. The Ludlow Massacre took place in 1914 when the United Mine Workers of America organized a strike of the coal miners of John D. Rockefeller’s Colorado Fuel & Iron Company….
Truths My Podcast Guests Have Taught Me
Hear Us Roar, the weekly podcast I host for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, has been going since May 2018. The show has been downloaded over 27,000 times and the guests have ranged from authors who later hit the best-seller lists (Julie Clark, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai), won prestigious awards (Barbara Linn Probst, Jeannee Sacken),…
Make Your Characters More Relatable
Honestly, I was kinda blogged out—until, after a multitude of phone calls and emails to kickstart a LOA from my night job, the following thought occurred to me: “Rainey, you forgot to give characters in your new WIP health challenges, and/or physical limitations.” Oh, for Heaven’s sake. Below, I’ve listed those that came to mind:…