Category: Creative Writing

A Chat with Author, Julia London (part 2)

working on the train
working on the train

TS.  My kind of interview…one sprinkled with terrific tongue-in-cheek humor.

Q. Who is your muse at the moment?

JL. My muse is a sloven blob, and she wants to eat chocolate and float in the pool and watch Real Housewives of Name Your City. She’s not much help, to be honest. I kick her out, and then she lurks around the windows, peering in, shouting things I can’t really hear. But every once in awhile, she comes up with a gem. Just every once in awhile. For the most part, she does not earn her keep around here.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

JL. I have always written. I have had many jobs that required good, technical writing skills. But somewhere along the way I was bored with my jobs in public administration. I had never aspired to be a fiction writer, but one day I picked up an Iris Johansen book at a garage sale. I really love historical fiction at the time. I didn’t recognize the book as a romance because I never read with any eye toward genre. I just read books that appealed to me and never thought about their category. The Johansen book really appealed to me because of the guy on the back cover, LOL. It was a great read, and an easy read after a stressful day at work. I read more books like the Iris Johansen book, and I began to think I could actually do this. Turns out, I could.

Q. How long after that were you published?

JL. Very quickly. I wrote a book and learned how to construct a novel, how to build an arc of a story into it. So then I wrote a shorter, better one, which became my first book, The Devil’s Love. I was extremely lucky that the first book I wrote and sent to an agent caught her eye. Continue reading “A Chat with Author, Julia London (part 2)”

Interview with Julia London, best selling author of Regency Romances

Julia.London.203,200_I confess!  I read them along with several million other women.  I love the regency period when men were gentlemen and women were ladies, in the drawing room.   Subtle, and full of innuendo, I like something left to my own imagination. And Julia London delivers!  Now I landed an interview with one of my favorites.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo/s of your shed, room, closet, barn….) Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.

JL. This is my current office, however I’ve just invested in a treadmill desk and am about to change the London.3way I spend my day, as in upright and not hunched over. But where is that sucker going to go? I haven’t figured that out yet.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

JL. I can’t sit down and write until I’ve exercised in some way. I have a variety of activities to start the day: either taking my dog out for a jog (rather, he trots happily along, while I wheeze through a jog), yoga, biking or Pilates. It clears my head and gets the creative juices flowing. I’ve worked out a lot of plots while sweating profusely.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

JL. I majored in political science with an emphasis on Middle Eastern Studies. Mainly because I paid my own way through college with a patchwork of jobs and scholarships. The best was a National Defense Education Act scholarship for which all I had to do was study a critical language for three years. The deal was that if the country needed your language skills within some specified time frame after graduation, they could call on you. So I studied Arabic (I know, right?) and took some classes in Middle Eastern religion, economics, and culture. I should point out that I have forgotten most of it. As it turned out, there wasn’t a big call for that expertise. Continue reading “Interview with Julia London, best selling author of Regency Romances”

The Dark Days of…Poetry

Time for a bit of Bukowski and yours truly!

how is your heart? Charles Bukowski ©poet, wisdom, Charles Bukowski

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment–
I wouldn’t call it
happiness–
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occurring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.

it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.

to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade–
this was the craziest kind of
contentment
and to walk across the floor Continue reading “The Dark Days of…Poetry”

Chuck Dixon Interview (part 3)

a.comicbookstore.BBTWhen I achieved doing this interview, I won’t lie.  I wanted to run into Stuart’s comic book store and yell, ‘I’m interviewing Chuck Dixon!’ For those of you who have no idea who Stuart is…well you are not living to your full capacity if you’re not watching, The Big Bang Theory’.
Chuck was so generous with his answers so let’s sit back and enjoy the final part.
Q. What makes a writer great?

CD. If a writer’s work can survive a few generations past his initial readership. History is filled with writers who were considered white hot in their era and forgotten only a few years past their death and never re-discovered.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

CD. Everyone works differently. No writer’s approach is the same as another….. Continue reading “Chuck Dixon Interview (part 3)”

A Day In The Life Of A Writer

anxnst.mouseIt’s time once again to share with other writers, my hopes, my fears, my successes, my setbacks. My days as a writer look very much like a pizza loaded with toppings.

My time at my keyboard, has been filled feverishly working with an editor on The Art of Murder because a publisher is sniffing around my campfire.  That is to say, the senior editor for a publishing co. said my mystery series had ‘tremendous potential‘ but wasn’t quite there yet.  Now we wait and see if my editor and I were able to do what they needed in order to offer me a contract.

Yes, even though I am moderately successful as an indie author, I am still chasing a traditional publisher when I stumble across one.  Continue reading “A Day In The Life Of A Writer”

When A Story Takes You by the Throat!

Women Outside the WallsHow do writers find their stories??  This one came to me as I sat, one Sunday morning, in the waiting area of a state prison. I was there to interview a convicted murderer for a play I was writing(Cook County Justice) about his case. I found myself sitting with many other women;  wives, sisters, daughters, grandmothers.  We all had one thing in common; we were there to visit a man behind bars and all of our shoe laces were untied. (They search you.)

Was I nervous?  Scared?  YES!  I’d never been in a prison before and I was about to enter a visiting room filled with convicted murderers, rapists, thieves and drug dealers.  The one thing these men had in common was they were someone’s son, husband, and father.

I have often advised new writers to write about what they know.  I did not follow my own advice.  These women had such an impact on me…..figuratively taking me by the throat and insisting that I tell their story.  So I did….with research, research, and more research.

This story is told by three diverse women married to men who made a bad decision. Continue reading “When A Story Takes You by the Throat!”

Interview with Prolific Playwright

Headshot.TS.259x300TS: Adam Szymkowicz, a published playwright and employed by The Juilliard School, asked to interview me, while wearing my playwright hat.  I was happy to oblige and hope that you will visit his blog to read the entire article.  Most of all, I hope it entertains you.

INTERVIEW * Trisha Sugarek, Playwright, director, actor * by Adam Szymkowicz

AS: What are you working on now?

Transgendered teensA ten minute play, for the classroom, about transgender teens. I have written 26 of these scripts addressing real life issues in a teen’s life such as, Bullying, running away, drugs, teen dating violence, cutting and suicide.

 AS: Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a writer or as a person.

As a writer: I grew up, before television, at my mother’s knee. She told wonderful stories of her growing up, in the wild forests of Washington state, with her 13 siblings. I have written 3 stage plays and 2 novels based on these true stories. Continue reading “Interview with Prolific Playwright”

My Momma Always said, Life is Like A Box…. (part 7)

Words.….a Box of Words.  this popular series is for all of you out there that love the English language as much as I do.  Especially stumbling over a word I have never heard or used.  I am fascinated with the origin of words such as:

 

Forest Gump, WordsCracker,  I’ve only heard it used as a derogatory term for Caucasian people. To imply an ignorant hillbilly or worse depending upon who was using it. (Well, yes, the obvious generic term for those tasty, crunchy squares that we can’t resist.)     When in fact it is an endearing term used for the COWBOYS of Florida (past and present)  who are adept at the use of a whip.  The cattle in Florida are trained to obey the ‘crack’ of the cowboy’s’ whip and hence the term ‘cracker’.  Did you know that Florida has the largest number of cattle in the USA?  You’d of thought, Texas.  But you’d be wrong.

Beeline, “I made a beeline for the car, Continue reading “My Momma Always said, Life is Like A Box…. (part 7)”

Two Authors, One Book…(part 2) My Interview with Thorne and Cross

Thorne.pic.2 TS: This is one of the most entertaining and humorous interviews that’s been my pleasure to do.  Enjoy!

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

A. We work 8-to-10 hours per day six days a week. We start in the morning even though we both hate mornings, and work until we’re called for dinner. Writing is a full-time job. If we only worked when the mood struck, we’d never get anything done. Discipline is everything for a serious writer. No excuses.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

A. Give it up or just buckle down and do it. You wouldn’t procrastinate going to a job where you worked for someone else – when you are your own boss, you must be even more disciplined.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long?

A. It’s a bad day if we don’t get lost in our work. Getting lost means it’s going great. It can last for a couple hours to all day. We never know.

Q. Who or what is your “Muse” at the moment ? Continue reading “Two Authors, One Book…(part 2) My Interview with Thorne and Cross”

Interview with a Writing Duo…Authors:Tamara Thorne & Allistair Cross

31l6DU3VVVL 61ZHnam-LQL._SX150_TS: What a compliment!  This dynamic duo’s publicist requested an interview!  ‘How fascinating, to interview co-authors’, I said to myself,  ‘how does it all work? Two people writing the same story.‘

Q. Where/when did you two meet?

A. Alistair had just been published when he started doing author interviews on his personal blog. As a fan of Tamara Thorne’s since the 1990s, he was eager to have her on. He contacted her through Facebook, she agreed to the interview and they instantly hit it off.

Q. How did you start to write together?

A.Accidentally. Normally we both hate telephones, but this was the exception and our daily conversations and texts would end up turning into brainstorming sessions. In the following months, we naturally transitioned into an official collaboration, Continue reading “Interview with a Writing Duo…Authors:Tamara Thorne & Allistair Cross”