Today I’m welcoming Leigh Shulman, who mentors writers and lives in beautiful Argentina, as she introduces her helpful new book for writers: The Writer’s Roadmap: Paving the Way To Your Ideal Writing Life.

                           Thank you for sharing with us, Leigh!

Back Cover Copy:

Have you always dreamed of making a living from writing? Or even just a way to fit writing into your everyday life? But you’ve stopped before you’ve even started because fear and doubt get in the way…

 

“What if I’m not good enough? What if nobody wants to read what I have to say? I’m overwhelmed with ideas and lack of time and don’t know how or where to start.”

 

Your writing dream can seem impossibly hard to reach.

 

These are all blocks that writing teacher and author, Leigh Shulman, has helped hundreds of students overcome, to go on to achieve their writing goals. Now in The Writer’s Roadmap, she shares her twenty years of experience of helping others to write and publish their way to their ideal writing lives.

 

Through a combination of practical steps and mindset work, Leigh will take you through the creative process and shows you achieving your writing aspirations is not only possible but joyful (and profitable!). From hands-on writing exercises and real-life case studies from her students to stories from her own personal journey to her dream writing life, The Writer’s Roadmap is the essential guide that shows you not only where your writing life could take you, but how to get there.

 

So if you want to avoid the number one reason why most people never write or learn how to deal with rejection or believe that you can earn money from your writing, then The Writer’s Roadmap will signpost the way to take that big scary writing dream and break it down into manageable steps.

 

Writing is a journey, but you’ll never reach your destination if you don’t take that first step. If you’re ready to stop dreaming and start writing then adventure awaits…

Leigh Shulman is a degreed writing mentor with twenty years teaching experience under her belt. She’s taught at universities and writing programs worldwide and founded The Workshop, her online writing community and Creative Revolution book writing retreats in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, New York Times and The Huffington Post among others.

She currently lives in Argentina with her family where she writes and wonders if she’s the only person on earth who doesn’t like dulce de leche.

Leigh’s contacts…

 

website: leighshulman.com

Twitter: theleighshulman

facebook author page: http://facebook.com/leighshulman

newsletter signup: https://mailchi.mp/leighshulman/signup

Welcome to Margaret Welwood, and her children’s books! Tell us how you got started, Margaret.

I’ve always enjoyed sharing stories with children. But when one little granddaughter started asking for “fake” stories, she wasn’t just asking for fiction. No, she wanted stories that were made up on the spot. My writing muscles, used to striving for clear, concise, and compelling non-fiction for adults, stretched in new and happy ways as I strove to share my faith and values with a story-hungry little girl.

When it came time to start writing some stories down, I continued to read to children, but now with an added purpose: to learn from the masters. The Berenstains are among my favorites, and Coralie (the artist for my first two books) and I studied their work. I also read books about writing for children and began reviewing children’s books.

Scissortown, my first picture book,answers the two questions that burn in the heart of every serious reader ?

What happens when a neat and tidy town is invaded by Slicers and Dicers? These pleasant-looking creatures mean no harm, but they never met a pinking shear or nail clipper they didn’t like.

The clever grown-ups hide all the cutting tools, which brings us to your second burning question: What happens when nobody can cut anything at all?

“A delightful story with many layers of meaning.”

“Teaches children the importance of being responsible and using their thinking skills to solve problems.”

If Scissortown explores your burning questions, Marie and Mr. Bee leaves a question unasked.

Children with disabilities and their parents find this story of compassion, forgiveness, and forever friendship particularly empowering because no one asks why Marie uses a wheelchair. She is an equal and beloved partner in work and play, and her forest friends make accommodations for her disability without comment.

“All sorts of important ideas pop up while Marie and her friends play and work in the forest: the power of choice, the treasure of friendship, the capabilities of ‘disabled’ children, what kindness looks like.”

Little Bunny’s Own Storybook is the tale of a library-loving rabbit who takes matters into his own paws when his favorite place closes for inventory.

“By describing with words and illustrating Bunny’s book-making process, the author gives readers a detailed how-to.”

Children (both human and animal) who make—or learn to make—good choices in cute, humorous settings are one place I want to leave my mark.

Where do you want to leave your mark?

Connect with Margaret!

Facebook

Twitter

Goodreads

Writing blog

Linkedin

E-mail: margaretwelwood@gmail.com

Sharon Dean introduces us to her love of literary history here. If you like a thought-provoking whodunit, you will enjoy Death of the Keynote Speaker, which I just finished reading. This week, Sharon’s giving away one free copy of Leaving Freedom (either e-book or paper) to a commenter. Welcome!

In her scholarly book on girl sleuths like Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames, Bobbie Anne Mason wrote, “A scholar is a version of a sleuth” (The Girl Sleuth, 1975). I was a sleuth when I wrote scholarly books. I’m still one now as I write fiction. Besides puzzling out how to construct a plot and develop a character, I’ve discovered what propels my imagination: my scholar’s sense of history and my personal sense of place.

In my first Susan Warner mystery, Tour de Trace, Mississippi’s history crept into my descriptions of the Natchez Trace and the fraught racial past of that state. My second novel, Death of the Keynote Speaker, is set on New England’s Isles of Shoals. It weaves a fictional writer into the real history of Celia Thaxter’s literary salon on Appledore Island and a notorious murder on Smuttynose Island. My third mystery, Cemetery Wine, draws on New Hampshire’s history and its connection to the Underground Railroad as Susan Warner searches for who murdered an African-American scholar researching that history.

Set between 1973 and 1982, I suppose my just-published novel, Leaving Freedom, is historical. Even more, it’s informed by a sense of place.  My protagonist, Connie Lewis, travels from Massachusetts to Florida and through Buffalo and Niagara Falls to Oregon. In Oregon, she discovers places I’ve visited: the apothecary of nineteenth-century herbalist Kam Wah Chung, the landscape of the John Day Fossil Beds, the giant redwoods of the Smith River, the beautiful town of Ashland. Connie twice visits the Rajneesh commune that took over the tiny community of Antelope, Oregon, in the 1980s as she searches for a place to call home and pursues a writing career.

Like Connie, I’m settling into a new place, learning to call it home even as I’m drawn back in my imagination to my New England roots. The novel I’m working on now, tentatively called The Barn, springs from an image of a barn I remember from my childhood. Above its door, a large wooden cow’s head looked out from the hayloft, peering at passers-by. I thought it was a real cow. It’s given me the sense of place I needed to start writing a novel that flashes back to a cold case in 1990. The cow is watching as I uncover the history of my imagined cold case and discover where it will take me.

For more on me and my work, see my webpage, https://sharonldean.com/ and my Facebook author page, Sharon L. Dean.