Category: Writers

Using Google To Walk the Mean Streets

It’s News Squib Saturday. Time to share the best, most interesting (or most entertaining, or most outrageous) tidbit of information I’ve gleaned from all the stuff I’ve read –or done. This week: British Author Watched YouTube to Study Queens (New York) Accent

Today’s Squib continues a topic I started a couple of weeks ago as a Behind the Scenes segment for authors who are researching locations for their novels. I wrote that like bestselling author James Patterson, I am all in favor of researching a location on foot. Nowadays, however, an author does not have to stir very far from his/her laptop or keyboard. Continue reading “Using Google To Walk the Mean Streets”

Location! Location! Location! (Behind the Scenes#6)

 

View across Long Island Sound from the bluffs at Horton Point Lighthouse

It’s News Squib Saturday, but I’m going Behind the Scenes today because Book3 is very much on my mind. Thank goodness, I am getting back on track after a few disconcerting weeks which I wrote about a couple of Saturdays ago. Looking over some photos I took last year when I was researching locations reminded me of the work I’ve already done on the book.

It also helped to have a bit of a nudge from bestselling author James Patterson. He delivers a MasterClass (a series of 22 instructional videos) which any aspiring author or even a well-established author can download for a mere $90. The class looks at all aspects of writing a bestseller including how to find ideas, how to plot, write outlines and so on.

One of the tutorials focuses on researching locations like I did one day last Summer on the North Fork of Long Island. Part of Book3 takes place on the North Fork which is more secluded and remote (so far) and more rugged than the South Fork (better known as the Hamptons.) As Patterson says, ” It’s really useful to walk around a location and make notes about whatever catches your eye.” Continue reading “Location! Location! Location! (Behind the Scenes#6)”

One Woman : The Book

 

Attachment-1I just finished reading Marilyn Murray Willison’s nifty memoir titled, “One Woman, Four Decades, Eight Wishes.”  I met Marilyn, a fellow author-journalist a couple of weeks ago at a lunch of the Palm Beach Writers’ Group.  Author Cathy Helowicz, who organized the lunch at the Pavilion Room in the Chesterfield Hotel, introduced us because she thought we’d find a lot in common. She was right. Continue reading “One Woman : The Book”

DAY 2: Palm Beach Book Festival

51K65yoQgoL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Burt Reynolds tells packed house about his loves, fleeting fame and why he loves living in Jupiter, FL.

Burt Reynolds has quite a morning at the Book Festival.  It starts out with a Q&A  with Scott Eyman, and Burt talks openly about Hollywood, fleeting fame and two loves of his life. He chokes up a little talking about Sally Field,  and he talks about his Mensa wife whom he doesn’t name (but who is surely Loni Anderson) and whom he says was brilliant and beautiful, but spent one-and-a-half hours taking off her makeup at bedtime. And then another half-hour “putting on something else on her face… by which time…” Burt pauses, and pretends he’s gone to sleep. Continue reading “DAY 2: Palm Beach Book Festival”

Palm Beach Book Festival 2016: Day One

Highlights with Molly Ringwald,  Dorothea Benton Frank, and Jacquelyn Mitchard

 

Molly Ringwald and husband Panio Gianopoulos in Los Angeles, CA
Molly Ringwald and husband Panio Gianopoulos in Los Angeles, CA

Molly Ringwald,  actress, singer and author (When It Happens to You ) reveals to an audience at the 2016 Palm Beach Books Festival that she likes to write with her husband in the room “to have him there, to touch his knee” if she wants to.  Molly tells the  audience packed into the auditorium at Palm Beach Dramaworks, Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, that she used to date many writers. “Then, my therapist said, ‘Why don’t you be a writer instead of dating them?'” Continue reading “Palm Beach Book Festival 2016: Day One”