Today, I am answering questions about editing, working on anthologies, writing, my writing, and what I like to read on vacation at the Writers Who Kill blog.
The Writers Who Kill are a group of mystery authors who post each day. Their Welcome Wednesday spot presents a Q&A to guest authors, agents, and editors. I’m pleased to be their guest today.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, and so created two agencies dedicated to the development and preservation of arts, culture, and history in the U.S.
On September 29, 2015, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities will celebrate their 50th birthdays. If you are an artist or historian, you are invited to be part of this celebration.
The NEA has issued an invitation to artists to share how art influences and inspires you, your family, your community. The project is called Tell Us Your Story. You can submit an essay, audio, video, and photos. In September, the NEA will begin posting stories on their website. Continue reading “Tell Your Arts Story”
The judges and jurors quoted below won’t be evaluating your criminal activities. They’ll be evaluating your mastery of the writing craft, your interpretation of theme, your narrative voice, your ability to hook a reader with a well-crafted opening, your skill at creating an emotional connection with a character.
To round out this short series, I contacted people who read submissions and select stories for inclusion in a couple of regional anthologies. Most of the folks below are also writers, so they understand the joy of acceptance and the disappointment in rejection. Continue reading “What Do Judges & Jurors Want? Part 3 of Writing for Contests and Anthologies”
Today I am welcoming Nancy Sakaduski, owner of Cat & Mouse Press and creator of the Rehoboth Beach Reads Short Story Contest.
The RBR contest is in its third year and is currently open for submissions. This year’s theme is “beach days.” I had the pleasure of judging last year’s entries for Rehoboth Beach Reads, published in The Boardwalk. Although the beach and Rehoboth are tied into the stories, the contest is open to all writers, from anywhere. Continue reading “Why Enter a Short Story Contest? Guest Post by Nancy Sakaduski”
Last week, two new short story anthologies bearing my name as editor were released for publication. Those marked my sixth and seventh time working on an anthology based on a specific theme. In addition, as a writer, I’ve contributed stories to three other themed anthologies, plus I’ve gathered some fellowships and grants for my work in short stories. In the arena of short story anthologies and contests, I feel pretty comfortable.
I love the short story form with the heat of a thousand suns. To spread the love, this week, I am posting a three-part series on writing for contests and themed anthologies.
Today, I will share my “rules” for entering contests. Continue reading “3-Part Series on Writing for Contests and Anthologies”
For 40 days, I chose books by and about women from my personal book shelf and wrote brief reviews with a plot summary, plus why it was a good reading choice for women.
Below is a full list of the 40 books I reviewed. Each includes a short description–a log line–to tell each title’s genre and capture what it is about.
40 Days of Book Praise – Reading List Continue reading “40 Days of Book Praise – Reading List”
For 40 days, I am choosing a book from my personal book shelves. It will be a book that is insightful, intriguing, or illuminating about women. I will write why I think this book is a positive one and worth a read. This isn’t advertising for me or to promote any of my friends. It’s simply praise for good book.
Day 40, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Continue reading “40 Days of Book Praise, Day 40”
For 40 days, I am choosing a book from my personal book shelves. It will be a book that is insightful, intriguing, or illuminating about women. I will write why I think this book is a positive one and worth a read. This isn’t advertising for me or to promote any of my friends. It’s simply praise for good book
Day 39, Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) Continue reading “40 Days of Book Praise, Day 39”
For 40 days, I am choosing a book from my personal book shelves. It will be a book that is insightful, intriguing, or illuminating about women. I will write why I think this book is a positive one and worth a read. This isn’t advertising for me or to promote any of my friends. It’s simply praise for good books.
Day 38, “When Death Comes” by Mary Oliver Continue reading “40 Days of Book Praise, Day 38”
For 40 days, I am choosing a book from my personal book shelves. It will be a book that is insightful, intriguing, or illuminating about women. I will write why I think this book is a positive one and worth a read. This isn’t advertising for me or to promote any of my friends. It’s simply praise for good books.
Day 37, The Button Field by Gail Husch
A paper mill once stood near the town of South Hadley in western Massachusetts. The mill used old rags to make the paper, and sometimes buttons remained attached to the rags. Waste from the paper mill was washed out over area fields, and in that waste were thousands of buttons that spread out and settled into what became known as the Button Field. Students from the nearby college walking through the field could pluck buttons from the ground as if the buttons were flowers….
This odd detail is one of many in this artfully crafted novel based on the true disappearance of a student from Mount Holyoke College. Mount Holyoke was established as a “female seminary” in the first half of the 19th century as part of a movement to create institutions of higher learning for women. In 1897, Bertha Mellish–a real person–spends the summer between semesters working at the local mill. The daughter of a minister, Bertha was mostly raised by her older sister, a spinster twenty years Bertha’s senior. Her upbringing impressed upon Bertha that she is special, and she believes herself destined to rise above her family’s genteel but modest circumstances. But college, and her fellow students, are not what she expects, and she is not as special there as she has been raised to believe. And then one day, a perfectly ordinary day in every other way, Bertha Mellish cannot be found anywhere on campus. A search is undertaken, without success. As with any missing person case, surely someone knows what happened, but who that person is and why they won’t come forward to ease the agony for Bertha’s family and the Mount Holyoke community is a conundrum.
Why is The Button Field a good read for women? This fictional account of what happened to Bertha provides all the hallmarks of a mystery that can be reasonably explained, if not solved, with the combination of good research and informed guessing. In the capable hands of author Gail Husch, we see Bertha as more than the centerpoint of an investigation. Bertha was real, and in this novel, she comes back to life, and so does the pain of those who missed her. Bertha has hopes, dreams, and flaws; she suffers from ego and endures rejection, but nothing in her childhood or early adulthood hints that one day, out of the blue, she will simply be gone. This book provides a possible solution to Bertha’s fate, while at a deeper level it explores how young people thrown together by circumstance embrace people who are like themselves, and how they treat those who are not. Most of all, it is written with style and sensitivity about a young woman who mattered, but not only because she was the girl who disappeared, but because she was a young woman with promise.
Ramona DeFelice Long 