Writing Blog
Two new book awards for my short story collection!
So incredibly excited to receive two new book awards for my short story collection, Drink Wine and Be Beautiful. I recently learned that my collection won both the 2024 American Legacy Book Award, Finalist – Short Stories and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards 2024, Finalist. This means that my short story collection has now…
Read MoreMy April 2024 reads
April brought another fabulous – and varied – month month in books. I started the month off with a classic author, Elizabeth Gaskell, a friend and contemporary of Charles Dickens, who published her novels serially in his literary magazines. I had never read her novella of the Salem Witch Trials and enjoyed this interesting recounting…
Read MoreNew BookFest Award for Rome’s Last Noble Palace!
So pleased that my latest novel, Rome’s Last Noble Palace, has just won its sixth literary award! I am very pleased that my dual timeline novel won Third Place in the BookFest 2024 Award in the Women’s Fiction – Historical Fiction category. I had so much fun writing this dual timeline novel (1890s and…
Read MoreBeach reading season 2024 officially begins!
I had a lovely mid-week day off last week and decided to take a hop down to seaside Sperlonga. I love visiting this pretty beach town. Heck, much of my first novel, Three Coins, was set here. In that novel, three women meet and become unlikely friends when they are all in Sperlonga off-season. Some…
Read MoreMy next novel underway…
I’m so excited to be one step closer to publishing my next novel, which I plan to release this fall. I just received feedback from (wonderful) beta readers and prepared my manuscript to send to my editor. When she returns with those edits, I’ll take another crack at it before getting it to my proofreader,…
Read MoreMy March 2024 reads
Another month accompanied by another great stack of books. My stack was – ahem – a little slimmer this month because I had to read my own work. I’m revising my next novel before it goes to my editor, to be released this autumn. As any writer will tell you, reading novels by other authors…
Read MoreA shout-out to Czech literature
Whenever I live in a country, I enjoy learning more about its culture by doing a deep dive into its literature. This was also the case when I lived in Prague, Czech Republic many years ago. The Czechs have a lot of great literature, and I was happy to explore all of it: Vaclav Havel,…
Read MoreNew book awards for Rome’s Last Noble Palace!
Super excited to have new book award news for my newest novel, Rome’s Last Noble Palace. I just learned that my novel received the Reader Views Award 2023 -2024, Silver Award- Historical Fiction. I don’t write for awards, but that certainly doesn’t mean I don’t feel excited to receive them! I so enjoyed writing this…
Read MoreMy February 2024 reads
Another month, another great stack of books. I started off the month in Britain, with two psychological thrillers. First I followed the lives of a financially struggling heart recipient and the wealthy family whose daughter’s death provide the needed heart. As the heart recipient and donor’s family grow closer, the twists and turns go hard…
Read MoreIndies Today Award for my Drink Wine and Be Beautiful and Rome’s Last Noble Palace
I received some excellent news earlier this month. BOTH of my 2023 releases were named Finalists in the Indies Today Book Awards. It’s always an honor to receive awards, and I’m pleased that my short story collection, Drink Wine and Be Beautiful, has now garnered its fourth award since its release. And for my dual…
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