Hear us Roar Maggie Smith

This week we talk to Barbara Bellesi Zito (Lucky Stiff, Literary Wanderlust, January 2023). In an interesting twist to our usual interview, Barbara’s debut features a male protagonist but one who exactly fits the WFWA definition of a “main character’s emotional journey” as he processes his lottery win and what it means to his work, his family relationships, and his own growth as an individual. Written initially as a screenplay, Barbara credits that version with honing her skill at both dialogue and story structure. We discuss whether living in a publishing hub like NYC is an advantage to a writer, how she found her publisher through a Twitter Pit Mad event, and what’s crucial to remember when injecting humor into your women’s fiction story.
Barbara Bellesi Zito is a freelance writer covering lifestyle and home trends for Apartment Therapy, The Spruce, REAL SIMPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, and other digital publications. She earned her BA from Wagner College and her MFA from Emerson College. She lives in Staten Island, New York with her husband and their dog. She is working on her second novel and has recently begun coaching other writers and creators. In her ongoing efforts to champion other women writers, she curates @thewomenwritersclub page on Instagram.
 
To learn more about Barbara, click here.

Our feature podcast guest this week is Kyle Ann Robertson (White Picket Fences, Fulton Books, March 2023). Kyle shares how a children’s story she imagined as a “book within a book” for an adult novel morphed into a series of ten published picture books she authored before coming back to her first love of women’s fiction. She describes how journaling was her entry into writing and then we discuss the workshops she leads where she uses prompt cards to break through writer’s block and help in brainstorming plot solutions.
Kyle Ann, the author of WHITE PICKET FENCES and NOT SO LITTLE THINGS, writes contemporary women’s fiction that sinks its teeth into families’ miscommunications, misperceptions, and the chaos they cause, even in the name of love. She’s also the creator of Journaling for Fiction Writers and Embrace Your Muse Creative Writing Workshops. She enjoys traveling to visit her 4 children and 7 grandchildren and currently resides in southwest Florida with her husband and Bichon-poo Mia.
To learn more about her and her writing workshops, click here.

This week’s guest is Patricia Bernstein (A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower, History Through Fiction, March 2023). The spark for Patricia’s story occurred on a trip to Scotland where she heard the story of a noblewoman who used trickery and cunning to rescue her husband from the Tower of London before his execution. We discuss the rabbit hole of research, the challenge of writing dialogue that sounds like historical discourse without turning off readers, and her stance that a novel should grow organically rather than following a prescribed set of “fill-in-the-blanks” structural steps. Finally, we address the task of marking a book after the initial hoopla of release week has died down.
Patricia Bernstein grew up in Dallas and earned a Degree of Distinction in American Studies from Smith College. Returning to Texas, she founded a public relations agency in Houston, while publishing dozens of articles in publications as varied as Texas Monthly, Cosmopolitan and The Smithsonian. She published three non-fiction books before her first novel. The most recent non-fiction book, about the 1920s Ku Klux Klan, was a finalist for a major award from the Texas Institute of Letters. A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower, Patricia’s debut novel, has been awarded gold medals by the American Bookfest and the IPPY awards. She lives in Houston with her husband Alan Bernstein. They have three wonderful and very different daughters.
To learn more about Patricia, click here.

In honor of Women’s Fiction Day 2024, please join me for a special episode of Hear Us Roar featuring a roundtable discussion between the finalists for the 2023 Star Award for General Fiction – Erin Litteken (The Memory Keeper of Kyiv), Lyn Liao Butler (Red Thread of Fate) and Anna Collins (These Numbered Days). We talk about the genre of women’s fiction and the alternative ways of categorizing this type of story, the current state of publishing today and the career paths each of these talented writers has taken to bring their stories to readers.
 Erin Litteken is an international bestselling author of historical fiction. Her debut, THE MEMORY KEEPER OF KYIV, has been translated into sixteen languages and was the 2023 winner of the Women's Fiction Writers Association Star Award and the She Reads Best Historical Fiction Award. With a degree in history and a passion for research, Erin draws inspiration from her family roots, and in particular, her great-grandmother’s stories about life in Ukraine before, during, and after WWII. She lives outside of St. Louis with her husband and two children. For more information about Erin and her books, click here.
Lyn Liao Butler is a Taiwanese American author of thrillers, upmarket fiction, and rom-coms. Her thriller, Someone Else’s Life, was an instant Amazon bestseller and her second book Red Thread of Fate was a finalist in the WFWA Star Awards for 2023. Before becoming an author, she was a professional ballet and modern dancer, and is still a fitness and yoga instructor. She and her husband and son divide their time between New York and Kauai. To learn more about Lyn, click here.
Anna E. Collins is an award-winning Seattle-area author of contemporary romantic comedies and women’s fiction. Her work has earned praise from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, as well as coverage in USA Today, Woman’s World, and Popsugar, among other outlets. Once upon a time, Anna was a high school teacher with a master’s degree in educational psychology, but when she realized she had stories to tell, she picked up the proverbial pen and ventured into uncharted fictional waters. Nowadays, she spins her imaginary yarns under the careful watch of her mini goldendoodle, Archie, who is a Very Good Boy. To learn more about Anna, click here.
 

This week’s guest is Susan Carew (Take the Plunge, indie published, March 2023). Susan, who now resides in Ireland and previously lived for eight years in Spain, took up novel writing during the pandemic, following weekly instructional posts over Instagram by the best-selling author Marian Keyes. An open-water swimmer, Susan decided to create a protagonist with that same interest and has now penned two of a 3-book series. We discuss the pluses and minuses of indie publishing, how she crashed an agent-only section at the London Book Fair, and the differences and similarities in the European publishing industry vs. the United States.
Susan lives in the south of Ireland with her husband and their dog, Ruby. When not writing she enjoys going walking on the beautiful local trails. She also belongs to a choir and is getting used to singing in the Irish language!
In a former life she was a bank clerk, an English language teacher, teacher-trainer and an English language examiner, the latter of which enabled her to travel the world.
Susan has always enjoyed writing in the form of letters and keeping a diary. It was a lifelong assumption of hers that she would write a novel, but it wasn’t until 2021 that she did so. To her delight she found she loved the process and now writes full time. Take the Plunge, her debut novel, is part of a series entitled Beyond the Waves. Her second book Beyond the Buoy, is due for release in autumn of 2024.
To learn more, click here.

This week’s guest is Heidi McIntyre (Sea Magic, indie published, February 2023). Heidi’s family background with antique shops provided the impetus for her series about a dealer with paranormal powers who undercovers a series of mysteries related to found objects in her small New England town. After trying her hand at a romance, Heidi realized her emphasis on relationships meant she was a women’s fiction writer and she embraced the genre as a fit. Likewise, as a decades-long marketing consultant, she knew she wanted the control indie publishing would give her and that’s proven to be a fit as well, as she’s delved into promo stacking, A-B comparison ads, and Amazon algorithm testing to such an extent that she now offers her book marketing expertise to others in the writing community.
Always an avid reader, Heidi was inspired to write by her college professor who convinced her to switch majors to English. From then on, she harbored a secret wish to write a novel one day. Heidi spent most of her marketing career as a consultant specializing in fresh produce where she worked with a variety of growers, commodity boards, and associations. She currently enjoys working with authors as a Book Marketing Coach.
Sea Magic is her debut novel and the first of the Hidden Gems series, which was also a finalist in the 2022 Page Turner Awards. Originally from New Jersey, Heidi lives in Oviedo, Florida with her husband, Tim, and their dogs Pumpkin and Lizzie. She loves coffee, chocolate, yoga and visiting historical places.
To learn more about Heidi, click here.