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Susan Weintrob
Susan Weintrob, our Foodie Lit writer, is a food blogger and reviewer on her website, expandthetable.net. Susan grew up around food and its prep. Her father owned a deli and catering business, which taught her the key components of the industry. "Writing food blogs is an amazing opportunity. Cooking and talking about food is simply fun and takes me back to memories of my Dad."

Cover Crush: Chasing the Star Garden by Melanie Karsak

Stephanie Hopkins
Cover Crush with Colleen Turner  Synopsis An opium-addicted beauty. An infamous poet living in self-imposed exile. An ancient treasure about to fall into the wrong hands. Melanie Karsak’s Chasing the Star Garden takes readers on a thrilling adventure from the gritty opium dens of gaslamp London to the gem-colored waters of the ancient world. Lily Stargazer, a loveable but reckless airship racer with a famous lover and shattered past, reluctantly plunges into a centuries-old mystery in a steampunk romantic adventure best described as Dan Brown meets Mary Shelley. It all begins on one of the worst days of Lily’s life. She just lost the London leg of the 1823 Airship Grand Prix. To top it off, a harlequin fleeing from constables shoved a kaleidoscope down her pants, told her to fly to Venice, then threw himself from her airship tower. What’s a girl to do? For Lily, the answer is easy: drink absinthe and smoke opium. Lily’s lover, Lord Byron, encourages her to make the trip to Venice. Lily soon finds herself at the heart of an ancient mystery which has her running from her past and chasing true love and the stars along the way. Thoughts on the cover…

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The Genie Effect by Virginia King

Stephanie Hopkins
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree How Authors Write Stories that Are Bigger than They Are Some authors plan their stories in advance. Then the writing process puts flesh on the bones of this outline. A few surprises may turn up along the way, but the story follows the plan. In this post I look at a different process called ‘pantsing’ – writing by the seat of the pants. This is when an author has little or no idea what they’re about to write – until they write it. These kinds of writers – like me – are keyhole peepers who wonder what might be lurking on the other side of the door. Their novels are a mystery to them and they discover the story by writing it. This uncorking of an unknown genie is a wild ride, scary and big. It’s also serious fun. Writing without a plan Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) has a great explanation: The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. Each one has crossed a border which I myself have circumvented … Beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. Wow. His characters are taking him places he hasn’t been, through…

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Reading: The Gift that Keeps on Giving!

Stephanie Hopkins
  The year was 1955.  I was ten years old, and it was the most important year of my life.  My family and I were in the first full year of living in the small suburban town of Oradell, New Jersey.  The house we lived in was a rental, built somewhere in the late 19th century. It was so old that there were still remnants of the coal furnace formerly used to heat it, before the new oil-fired one was installed.  We were privileged to have not only a porch, but a yard, as well—actually, three: front, side, and back.  In the side yard were several trees, and among them was a pear tree, which would play an important part in my young life. By age ten, I was already a habitual reader, having been introduced to literature by my mother when I was two. Back then, we lived in a federal housing project in Brooklyn.  Mom would read to me as I sat on her lap in front of the picture window in the living room.  I loved seeing the word pictures she painted as she read to me. Before long, I was reading for myself.  My love affair with words has continued to the present. Imagine my…

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10 Things I’ve Learned About Writing

Stephanie Hopkins
By Seeley James B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree   When I started writing Sabel Security Thrillers four years ago, I thought I knew what I was doing. I hired editors, proof readers, cover artists, etc, and worked on my first book, The Geneva Decision, until it was ready for prime time. I put it out there and waited for the acclaim. Crickets. So, I examined my career and deconstructed successful indie careers looking for the best path to fit my skills and personality. My goal was, and still is, to write the most compelling political thrillers on book shelves today. My first book, post-launch assessment was: long way to go. I envied writers like Russell Blake, Melissa Foster, Joanna Penn, Mark Dawson and so many others who wrote lots of focused books (a small number of characters, few locations, and a single-goal plot). My books sprawl across continents with a cast as big--but not as prone to death and dismemberment--as Game of Thrones. My books are complex and take longer to write because I often get lost halfway through my first draft. In the early days, I spent more time patching plot holes and combining surplus characters than writing the first draft.…

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I WISH I’D… BY HELEN HOLLICK

Stephanie Hopkins
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree I guess all authors wish they had written ‘that’ novel – the one that has made Oscar status Blockbuster movie legend. The novel that hits number one in the bestseller charts and stays there … and stays there… and stays there… Or do we? Yes, of course we all want to do well, the basic facts of paying off the mortgage or being able to afford to get the car fixed is a prime motive – but the reality is, out of the thousands upon thousands of books published worldwide every year very few of them reach the heady height of Literary Stardom. Do I wish I’d written Gone With The Wind, or Fifty Shades of Grey or Harry Potter? To be honest? No, not really. What I do wish is that I had possessed the knowledge and experience I have now twenty-plus years ago. My first novel, part one of the Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy was The Kingmaking.  Writing it, I probably made all the mistakes an author is not meant to make: tell not show, too many adjectives and adverbs, point-of-view (head-hopping) changes… but were these issues that often get slammed in Amazon’s Comments sections nowadays…

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Cover Crush: Of Sea and Seed by Annie Daylon

Stephanie Hopkins
I have said this before and I will say again. I am not a cover designer but I do have an artist’s eye and can agree that cover design plays an important role in the overall presentation of the book and gladly admit I judge a book by its cover. Overall presentation is important to pull a reader in. When I read a story I want to be completely immersed. A grand cover helps that along. Imagery and all-if you will. Today’s cover crush is a story that recently was awarded the B.R.A.G. Medallion. What an evocative cover! Not only that, the title alone can draw a reader in to find out more of the story.  Let’s take a look at the book description:  OF SEA AND SEED launches The Kerrigan Chronicles, the story of three generations staggered by love, betrayal, war, and the effects of a tsunami that ravages the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland in 1929. Family matriarch, storyteller, and ghost—Kathleen Kerrigan—confesses that heaven does not open its gates to women of her ilk. In her afterlife she is adrift, doomed, like some ancient mariner, to atone for mortal sin by telling repeatedly the story of her downfall. With the lyrical…

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Settings the Writer Cannot Afford to Visit

Stephanie Hopkins
Brand Stoker never visited Transylvania. He based Castle Dracula on the ruined Abbey above Whitby.  Of course, the geography helped: Yorkshire is more or less on the same latitude as Romania, it exhibits similar bleak and capricious weather. There are no Carpathian peaks near Whitby but the abbey is perched on a respectable cliff and if there are no wolf infested forests, at least there some dark woods with similar pines and beeches. The smells of the natural world, especially in the 1890s, may not have been that different from Eastern Europe. But imagine if Stoker had lived all his life in Queensland.  He might have had to write some of the novel in an ice house to describe the physical sensations of almost freezing to death.  To portray the Transylvanian forests and Carpathian Mountains, he might have had to visit the European Masters in Brisbane’s art gallery. His biggest problem would have been the sun. Because Queensland is closer to the equator, the natural light is intense and a huge leap of imagination would be required to describe the dour skies above Castle Dracula. On the plus side, Queensland would have possessed at least one source of inspiration for…

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Christine’s Note of Life with a Mystery Writer

Stephanie Hopkins
  I'm Christine and we've been married for forty years.  Malcolm Noble didn't write his first book until 2003 which means I've only been married to a writer for thirteen years.  It feels much longer! My main role is to explain to Malcolm that some of his ideas are bad ideas.  (He has a rude word for this which we needn't mention.)  When he gave up his proper job and began to write much more, I took charge of the address book.  Not because I wanted to help.  It was because Malcolm hasn't a clue about keeping things in order so it was easier for me to have the address book than to help sort out the mess when it went wrong.  This has led to me being more involved with press contacts and his regular readers. Another way that I help is by working out the exact word he is looking for.  This can be frustrating because his clues are often of little use.  (You should try solving one of his crossword puzzles.)  The example I always think of is - the word for walking slowly around a house.  (I'll give the answer later on.)  There are a couple…

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Free Book Giveaway with J.L. Oakley

Stephanie Hopkins
Never a dull moment in a writer's life. I'm happy to announce that indieBRAG Medallion Honoree Timber Rose is going free starting on April 14. The recipient of the 2015 WILLA Silver Award and a 2014 Chaucer award category win, my historical novel was named the February “back list” pick by the Pulpwood Queens Book Club February, the largest book club in the world with 600 chapters. Having that medallion on front cover surely must have made the novel to stand out in the pile of books. The promotion will run until April 17th. Available here. On April 9th I launched my new historical novel, The Jøssing Affair. Set in Norway during WW II, it tells the story of a lone intelligence agent sent to a fishing village to set up a line to receive arms and agents from the Shetland Islands. Posing as a deaf person, his mission is complicated when he is attracted to the widow of an old family friend accused of betraying her husband. She has secrets of her own too. Available here.  

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Cover Crush: Blue Mercy by Orna Ross

Stephanie Hopkins
Will you identify with mother or with daughter? When Mercy Mulcahy was 40 years old, she was accused of killing her elderly and tyrannical father. Now, at the end of her life, she has written a book about what really happened on that fateful night of Christmas Eve, 1989. The tragic and beautiful Mercy has devoted her life to protecting Star, especially from the father whose behavior so blighted her own life. Yet Star vehemently resists reading her manuscript. Why? What is Mercy hiding? Was her father’s death, as many believe, an assisted suicide? Or something even more sinister? In this book, nothing is what it seems on the surface and everywhere there are emotional twists and surprises. (“Breathtaking, and I mean literally — actual gasps will happen” said one reader review). Set in Ireland and California, Blue Mercy is a compelling novel that combines lyrical description with a page-turning style to create an enthralling tale of love, loss and the ever-present possibility of redemption. Thoughts on the cover Right away my eye was drawn to this cover. Before even reading the description my mind automatically though “oh, there is going to be darkness and mystery within these pages!” and,…

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