Author Interviews

About the author A professional speaker and author, L. Diane Wolfe conducts seminars, offers book formatting, and author consultation. She’s the senior editor at Dancing Lemur Press, L.L.C. and contributes to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group.http://www.spunkonastick.net/ – Spunk On A Stickhttp://www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com – Spunk On A Stick’s Tipshttp://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/ – Insecure Writer’s Support Group Tell us your story? What made you start writing? I was always a reader—read the most books in my class almost every year. When I picked up a copy of the newly-released The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey and read it, I was enthralled. And I made the decision right there and then that I would be an author one day. What is the best gift you have been given? For my 50th birthday, my husband took me to Orlando for a week and we stayed at a resort on site at Universal. I visited both parks daily, even went to Sea World one day, but the best part was riding the Minions ride (many times) and attacking their gift shop. (I am a HUGE Minions fan.) If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to? I’m going to say 1975. Back when things were simpler, there was still innocence and values, and none of the insanity of the past couple years. What’s your favorite family tradition? Christmas Eve, we exchange one present, eat a dinner of cheeses and other snacks, and then we watch The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you had a warning… Read More »L. Diane Wolfe

About the author Tell us your story? What made you start writing?* I’d always been an obsessive reader, cereal boxes and warning labels, comic books (bought or stolen), then short stories and novels, but I didn’t write much (except, countless repetitions of “I will not talk in class.”) After high school (and a brief stint in the shipping department of the Peter Pan Swimwear Company in Newark, New Jersey), I joined the Navy. In the service, I enjoyed penning letters to family, buddies, and girlfriends. I liked riffing off my environment, the setting and people around me, using some detail I hoped would surprise or amuse my correspondents, perhaps make them laugh. I liked making stuff up. Honorably discharged from the military, I decided to advance my education, took the SATs and did okay, which I attribute to my obsessive reading. I enrolled in a local college, where it was suggested I major in history. Sure. In one of the required English courses, I wrote a character sketch the instructor liked so much he suggested I submit it to the college literary magazine. I did, and it was promptly rejected, but with faint praise—enough to raise some hope. A year later, I moved to California and attended UCLA, where I would get a BA in history, but by then my interests had turned to less academic writing. So, while I was reading Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, I peddled satire to alternative weeklies. I also took a few… Read More »Alex Austin

About the author Tell us your story? What made you start writing? I’m not sure. I just got it into my head when I was 18 that I wanted to write stories and I’ve been doing it ever since. The very first stories I wrote were terrible and it took me a long time to write anything that could be considered good, let alone great. Now, almost 20 years later, I’m finally writing the stories I wanted to write when I was 18. It’s been a long road to get to this point and I’ll be the first to admit I have no natural talent as a writer. Any skills I now have are the product of hard work and a great deal of tenacity. Aside from necessities, what one thing could you not go a day without? Daydreaming. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re after, but I’m a chronic daydreamer. I have daydreams that are part of a saga that has lasted years, with the people in the daydreams ageing as the daydream progresses. It’s not that my life is bad, it’s actually pretty great, but I do need my daydreams to survive. If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to? I’d love to see how the universe was created, so about 13.7 billion years ago. Though I’m not sure exactly how I would exist in a universe during its early state. I suspect I’d need to be a ghost of some kind… Read More »V.S. Nelson

About the author Tell us your story ? What made you start writing ? I read a lot as a child. I would go to the library and borrow as many books as possible and read them all during the week. Writing came naturally from my avid reading. I started inventing small stories and then I moved to more ambitious ideas. They were definitely too ambitious! I would start writing a novel with no planning, already seeing myself with a 500 pages book. Usually my enthusiasm for the story would fizzle out and I would move on to my next idea after only writing a dozen pages. Then as a teen I decided I really wanted to actually finish a story. So I started writing short stories. I wrote three before moving on to a novel. This time I outlined the book and found a contest to apply to. This deadline helped me actually finish the first draft of the novel. But the editing process seemed too daunting so I kept the novel as a Word document. Same for my second novel that I wrote during NaNo Wrimo. I managed to do the 50k words and was super proud of myself but I dreaded the editing process so much and I felt like finding a publisher would be an impossible task. And then, Corona hit and I found myself talking with one of my best friends, Jenni about writing our very own book. I would have never been able to… Read More »Alice Karpiel