Shows / Hear us Roar
Hear us Roar
If you're an aspiring author and want insights into what's involved in launching a book into the world, this is the podcast for you. Maggie Smith, author and blogger, interviews debut novelists from the Women's Fiction Writers Association discussing not only the inspiration behind their book, but also their insights into the writing process, the best advice they ever got, and the joys and sometimes pitfalls they encountered on their path to publication.
Episodes
Hear us Roar105: L. Bordetsky-Williams: Author of Forget Russia
This week's guest is L. Bordetsky-Williams (Forget Russia, Tailwinds Press, December 2020) whose historical fiction debut is framed around many of her family's…
Hear us Roar104: Christina Tsirkas - Author of The Night Sender
Christina comes out of a copy-editing background but caught the novel-writing bug when a vivid dream presented her with a story she couldn't shake. She…
Hear us Roar103: Judith Teitelman- Author of Guesthouse for Ganesha
After years of non-fiction and business writing, Judith Teitelman fell in love with the more creative side of the craft after a friend dragged her to a regular…
Hear us Roar102: Kathy Sechrist- Author of Success Is The Best Revenge
In this interview, Kathy and Idiscuss how writing this book meant Kathy had to revisit painful memories from her own childhood as well as the breakup of her…
Hear us Roar101: Joyce Yarrow - Author of Sandstorm
This novel was eight years in the making after starting life as an award-winning short story but Joyce felt like she had to grow both as a writer and as a…
Hear us Roar100: Denny S. Bryce- Author of Wild Women and the Blues
It's our 100th podcast and it's with Denny S. Bryce (Wild Women and the Blues, Kensington Books, March 2021). A former professional dancer as well as a…
Hear us Roar99: Kathryn Holzman - Author of Real Estate
Kathryn's book got a new cover only days before release and published in the middle of not only the pandemic but the post-election furor and the post office…
Hear us Roar98: Melissa Hunter - Author of What She Lost
In this interview with Melissa Hunter, we discuss how this story, a fictional quasi-memoir of her grandmother's experiences as a teenager in a concentration…
Hear us Roar97: Florence Kraut - Author of How to Make a Life
Florence's background in social work as well as her own large extended family informed her decision to write a wide-ranging saga, spanning a century-worth of…
Hear us Roar96: Geeta Schrayter - Author of Reaching Riverdale
When Geeta Schrayter first signed with a small press ten years ago, little did she realize she'd have to eventually wrest back control of her debut, rework the…
Hear us Roar95: Densie Webb - Author of When Robins Appear
Listen to my interview with Densie Webb where we discuss the pluses and minuses of working with a small press, the value of writer networks, how readers often…
Hear us Roar94: Bhaswati Ghosh - Author of Victory Colony, 1950
In my interview with Bhaswati, we discuss how her grandmother's short stories about life as a Pakistani during the partition of India in 1947 provided the seed…
Hear us Roar93: KJ DellAntonia - Author of The Chicken Sisters
Hear how KJ worked with Author Accelerator's founder, Jennie Nash, for a year before querying, how her previous platform as a well-known non-fiction writer…
Hear us Roar92: Rachel Mans McKenny - Author of The Butterfly Effect
In this interview, you'll hear how an early family tragedy provided the inspiration for her story, how her research took her down rabbit holes filled with…
Hear us Roar91: Jaye Burke- Author of Venice
In this episode, Jaye and I discuss how finding her grandfather's WWI draft card paired with the time she spent living in New Orleans provided the seeds for…
Hear us Roar90: Grace Sammon - Author of The Eves
In this interview, Grace and I discuss the 25 "life lessons" her older characters imparted to her heroine, how Grace used her beta readers as developmental…
Hear us Roar89: Madeleine Van Hecke - Author of Once You Know
In this podcast Madeleine and I discuss how working how working with a developmental editor for three years was instrumental in teaching her what she didn't…
Hear us Roar88: Paula Adler - Author of Return to Magnolia Bloom
In this interview we discuss how Paula returned to writing after a 20-year hiatus and switched from romance to women's fiction and why she signed up to go…
Hear us Roar87: Angela Terry - Author of Charming Falls Apart
Angela Terry (Charming Falls Apart, Spark Press, August 2020) talks about how her novel's protagonist was inspired by a woman Angela met casually at a…
Hear us Roar86: Katey Schultz - Author of Still Come Home
During a wide-ranging talk about such diverse topics as the effect of language on how we view war to a discussion on finding mentors within books themselves to…
Hear us Roar85: Sarah McCraw Crow - Author of The Wrong Kind of Woman
Sarah's lifelong obsession with Dartmouth as well as her fascination with the challenges that faced her mother's generation of women in the early '70's sparked…
Hear us Roar84: Mary Helen Sheriff - Author of Boop and Eve's Road Trip
Mary Helen talks about the three things she was advised not to do in a debut novel (unfortunately she'd done all three), messaging her "Christmas list" one day…
Hear us Roar83: Regina Buttner - Author of Absolution
In this interview, Regina describes how she used her childhood experiences in the Catholic church to inform her protagonist's guilt and shame over a…
Hear us Roar82: Nguyen Phan Que Mai- Author of The Mountains Sing
Quế Mai shares how she wanted to write a novel set during the Vietnam War from the missing perspective of the Vietnamese themselves, specifically the women…
Hear us Roar81: Ehsaneh Sadr: Author of A Door Between Us
A child raised in both Mormon and Muslim religious traditions, Ehsaneh worked in Iran for several years and her experiences there form the backdrop to her…
Hear us Roar80: Valerie Taylor - Author of What's Not Said
We discuss Valerie's transition from a corporate writer to writing fiction after her retirement. She's a fan of book clubs and built her author platform partly…
Hear us Roar79: Michele Levy - Author of Anna's Dance: A Balkan Odyssey
Mining her personal knowledge of the Balkans from a long-ago adventure, Michele's debut braids historical events with a young woman's personal journey to find…
Hear us Roar78: Anita Kushwaha - Author of Secret Lives of Mothers and Daughters
Anita, an Ottawa resident, describes the difference between Canadian writers and those in the US, how she channeled her own grief experience into her main…
Hear us Roar77: Barbara Conrey - Author of Nowhere Near Goodbye
). Barbara describes how her age influenced her decision to go with a small press, how her year-long engagement with reader Facebook groups proved invaluable…
Hear us Roar76: J.L.Cole - Author of Silver Heights
J.L. is new to writing but she's determined to build a career, so if you're a younger writer, or have a teenager interested in what it takes, she'll inspire…
Hear us Roar75: Susan Payne - Author of Forever Kind of Woman
If you're a pantser, this interview is for you! Susan is squarely in the camp of letting your characters tell you their story and she's got the books to prove…
Hear us Roar74: A. H. Kim - Author of A Good Family
Learn how the convergence of knowing someone in a women's prison, the popularity of Orange is the New Black, and overheard conversations at her law firm about…
Hear us Roar73: Tricia Hopper Zacher- Author of Many A Sudden Change
In this podcast, Tricia and I discuss how a question her daughter posed was the "what if" inspiration behind her debut, how her background in screenwriting…
Hear us Roar72: Amanda Brainerd - Author of Age of Consent
In my interview with Amanda Brainerd, we discuss how her debut novel started out as an oral history before morphing into a fictional examination of her years…
Hear us Roar71: Lindsey Rogers Cook- Author of How to Bury Your Brother
In our interview with Lindsey Rogers Cook, we discuss how she decided after a year to leave her first agent because they clashed over editorial changes, how…
Hear us Roar70: Stephanie Newman- Author of Barbarians at the PTA
Desperate Housewives meet Mean Girls in Dr. Stephanie Newman's debut novel, which examines mother-daughter relations, the pervasive nature of social media in…
Hear us Roar69: Pamela Raleigh- Author of Sandshell Island
During her career as a high school English teacher, Pamela always enjoyed the units on writing more than those on literature so when she retired, she put her…
Hear us Roar68: Anju Gattani- Author of Duty and Desire
Twenty years ago, Anju Gattani saw a fully-formed scene in her dreams and it turned into the last scene in Book 2 of what is planned as a 5-book series, Winds…
Hear us Roar67: Tracey Enerson Wood- Author of The Engineer's Wife
Tracey's debut novel centers around Emily Roebling, a real life woman and ardent suffragette, who honchoed the building of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband…
Hear us Roar66: Jacquline Kang- Author of The Club
Hear how Jacquline uses private Pinterest boards to help flesh out her characters, how she had great fun fashioning her antagonist by channeling every person…
Hear us Roar65: Carol LaHines- Author of Someday Everything Will All Make Sense
In this free-wheeling interview with Carol LaHines we discuss what led her to decide to attempt a novel, pre-Bach musical theory, her best writing advice, and…
Hear us Roar64: Diane Barnes- Author of More Than
Diane comes to women's fiction after publishing three romance novels but feeling like this story didn't revolve around a interpersonal relationship so much as…
Hear us Roar63: William Schreiber - Author of Someone to Watch Over
William's debut has been described as Where the Crawdads Sing meets Ghost and definitely fits in the women's fiction/book club fiction space. He shares with me…
Hear us Roar62: Dianne Romain- Author of The Trumpet Lesson
Dianne relates how she began writing to figure out how to integrate emotions into the philosophical theories she had studied and taught as a professor, how she…
Hear us Roar61: Lisa Braxton-Author of The Talking Drum
A long-time journalist, Lisa began writing her debut novel ten years ago, although her themes of gentrification, intra-racial tensions and the struggle of…
Hear us Roar60: Sherri Leimkuler-Author of What's Left Untold
Sherri took over a decade to write her debut novel, primarily because life intervened. With a spouse and three daughters, something always needed to give and…
Hear us Roar59: Lainey Cameron-Author of The Exit Strategy
Hear how over a hundred agents rejected Lainey's book, saying they didn't think they could sell a novel about women in the workplace putting aside their…
Hear us Roar58: Marolyn Krasner-Author of The Radicals
Marolyn is our first international podcast, coming to us from across the globe in New Zealand, where she lives with her wife and two children. A journalist…
Hear us Roar57: Shawn Cooper- Author of Drawing Down the Moon
If you're thinking of self-publishing, you'll want to listen to Shawn's interview and hear about the professionals she hired to help her launch. This novel…
Hear us Roar56: Elizabeth Gauffreau- Author of Telling Sonny
Liz's novel, loosely based on snippets of family lore about her paternal grandfather, encompasses American life in the 1920's in Vermont and is rich in…
Hear us Roar55: Kelly Duran- Author of Can't Take It Back
Ever wonder whether your novel would make a good audible book? Kelly's the one to listen to since her book is ONLY available in that format, through Audible…
Hear us Roar54: Jae Hodges- Author of The Rose and the Whip
Jae's historical fiction, set in 1663 describes a barely-known woman Lidia Wardell, a Quaker, who defied her community in demanding religious freedom and was…
Hear us Roar53: Jamie Beck- Author of If You Must Know
Jamie Beck, an author with 15 romance books under her belt, has made the switch to women's fiction with her latest release. Find out why she made the switch…
Hear us Roar52: Sharina Harris- Author of (Im)perfectly Happy
Sharina's book follows four long-time friends as they reach their thirties and reevaluate the directions their lives have taken. She describes one of the…
Hear us Roar51: Kathleen West- Author of Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes
Kathleen debut earned a starred Kirkus review and a comparison to Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies. Listen as Kathleen describes how she used her experiences…
Hear us Roar50: Alison Hammer- Author of You and Me and Us
Our 50th Podcast. Hard to believe but yes, we've reached a milestone. And who better to celebrate it with than Alison Hammer, an argent supporter of her fellow…
Hear us Roar49: Sally Suen- Author of Crystal Cove
Sally was born in rural China, soon moved to Hong Kong when it was still a British Colony, then to Canada and eventually to California and Lili, her heroine in…
Hear us Roar48: Diane Byington- Author of If She Had Stayed
After writing a well-received YA book, Diane decided to make a switch to women's fiction and wrote her novel primarily during NaNoWriMo for the sheer joy of…
Hear us Roar47: Donna Stramella- Author of Coffee Killed My Mother
Donna and Maggie talk about the value of an MFA, how she's found success with Facebook Ads, the role libraries have played in her life, and how she once…
Hear us Roar46: Rebecca Hodge- Author of Wildland
Hear how being a finalist in the WFWA Rising Star Award provided the stepping stone to finding her agent, the experience of doing an extensive R & R for a…