Blogging for Bloggers
Mystery Fanfare
How A Dare Got Me Out of Writers Block
"I have a confession: Five years ago, I was overwhelmed by writer's block. In other words, my fountain pen felt so heavy I couldn't pick it up."
Elizabeth Spann Craig
You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover or Can You?
"The long and short of it is: How do you come up with a compelling 5.5″ by 8.5″ book cover suitable for a bookstore window and which is also suitable when reduced digitally to a postage stamp image displayed online – where most books are seen and sold today?"
Novels Alive
Where Do Fictional Characters Come From?
"As a writer, I forget that my characters are not real. I grieve their losses and I champion their successes, but I don’t know where they come from."
Reading the Past
My Notebook and I Got Drenched...
"For me, born to travel, research takes me on a journey into the past, and that's why I love writing historical fiction."
Books and Benches
“What happens in the mind of a writer? What makes them tick, or inspires them to put pen to page? Joanna Fitzpatrick shares her historical fiction mystery novel, The Artist Colony, and a gives us a glimpse into the mind the writer."
“My father was called the Father of Travel. He bragged about going around the world thirty times, but he wasn’t making it up.”
“What happens in the mind of a writer? What makes them tick, or inspires them to put pen to page? Joanna Fitzpatrick shares her historical fiction mystery novel, The Artist Colony, and a gives us a glimpse into the mind the writer.”
“My husband offered to buy me a car for our fortieth anniversary. I immediately saw myself behind the wheel of a brand new, ruby red Mini Cooper riding along the Pacific coastline with the top down, music blaring. But the truth is I really don't like driving cars. What I really like is riding electric bikes.”
“JF on Writing: Inspiration has the power to shut off that critical inner voice that resides in our heads no matter how many books we successfully publish or how many awards we achieve. Mute that voice and the Muses will rush in.”
“Did you need to do much research to write the novel?
Much delightful research. That's why I write historical fiction. If I wasn't a writer I'd probably be a historian. Once you get started, as many of you know, you just drop into one rabbit hole and then another until finally, exhausted, you have to stop and write your story.”
Hasty Book Feature with Ashley Hasty
“Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I'd spend our "close" time together convincing Anna that no man, including her gorgeous lover Count Vronsky, is worth killing oneself over . .”