Writing Blog
It’s not nosiness – it’s research
“I’m a gossipy person—I like looking at people and how they get along with one another.” -Jane Smiley Love these words by the brilliant novelist Jane Smiley. And I think this is an important trait for a novelist, after all, they are delving into the inner lives of the characters they create on the page.…
Read MoreAll roads lead to Rome – for literature!
If you find yourself in Rome in the next couple of weeks, you may want to take part in the Eternal City’s literature festival – the Festival delle letterature. This year is the Festival’s 16th edition, running from 20 June through 21 July. It’s an interesting mix of Italian and foreign authors, and most events…
Read MoreBook review: The Two-Family House
I devoured Lynda Cohen Loigman’s debut novel, The Two-Family House, this past weekend. I spent last Saturday on the beach reading about this complicated, large Brooklyn Jewish family in the 1950s. I loved getting into the minds of these well-drawn characters and watching how attitudes and thinking changed along with the changing times. The main…
Read MoreA slice of heaven: mountains and a book
Just thinking back to my last weekend. After many of months of kids’ exams, kids’ sports competitions and my own work keeping me away from my preferred weekend getaway in the Apennine mountains of central Italy, I finally (!!!) managed to escape the city. The weekend was short, but enjoyable. Here I am out-of-frame in…
Read MoreI need to write!
Every year I set writing New Year’s Resolution writing goals for myself, and this year I’ve apparently been a very, very, very bad resolution-keeper. It’s not that I don’t write lots. I do. But it’s for my day job. What I’ve always been good about is carving out a bit of free time evenings and…
Read MoreDoes an author owe something to her readers?
As a reader, there are many types of books I don’t like. If a book isn’t well written, it’s an easy write-off for me. If it’s not a genre I enjoy – most action/spy novels or science fiction fall under this category for me – I’m not expecting much either, even if they are well written.…
Read MoreWomen’s fiction vs romance. One author’s discovery
In this very informative post on the Writer’s Digest site, romance author Linda Goodnight discovered, once she submitted a story proposal to her editors, that her story was not romance but women’s fiction. In this post, Women’s Fiction or Romance? The Differences, and 5 Reasons Why They Matter, Goodnight explores the differences between the genres. As…
Read MoreBook Review: Queen Idia’s Africa – short stories
I enjoyed this collection of short stories. These connected stories all imagine a contemporary society in which Africa has developed as a wealthy continent, and is working to finance the development efforts in the lesser developed regions of Western Europe and America. This overseas development aid is largely intended to stop the flow of desperate…
Read MoreBook review: Flawed
I picked up this novel, by Irish author Cecilia Ahern, by chance. I liked the premise, and I was struggling through a novel that infuriated me more than it interested me, so I decided to take a break from it with another, much different novel. It’s good I didn’t notice that the novel was the…
Read MoreBeach reading season 2017 officially begins (for me…)
It’s that wonderful ‘event’ that rolls around each year – the official start of beach reading season! For me, it often happens around the Easter holidays, when the weather in Rome starts turning almost summer-like. I often take my kids to one of our favorite beach spots near Rome – the wonderful town of Sperlonga.…
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