Hear us Roar Maggie Smith

Our podcast guest this week is Gabi Coatsworth (A Beginner’s Guide to Starting Over, Atmosphere Press, April 2023). The concept of a benevolent ghost helping a loved one move on is a popular trope at the moment and Gabi’s book fits right in. Readers like its blend of optimism and small town charm and it has proved there is room for humor in women’s fiction as well as heavier topics like grief and loss. Gabi is a member of both a local critique group and also runs one of WFWA’s Write-Ins, partly because she writes “with an English accent” and often needs help making her prose more accessible. We discuss her success with co-op ads to build her mailing list and how she’s enhanced her own author platform by positioning herself as a go-to  interviewer for authors coming through Connecticut on national book tours.     
Gabi Coatsworth is an award-winning British-born author and blogger, who has spent half her life living in the United States. Her memoir, Love’s Journey Home, was published by Atmosphere Press in May 2022 and her debut novel, A Beginner’s Guide to Starting Over, came out in April 2023. They both won first-place awards in the Connecticut Press Club, and the novel came first in the Indie Author Project Awards. She’s been published in trade publications, and literary journals, both in print and online, and anthologies, and is active in the Connecticut writing community, where she runs several groups for writers. If she’s not writing or traveling, she’ll be in her flower garden, wondering whether to weed, or relaxing with a book.
To learn more about Gabi, click here.
 

This week’s special episode is a roundtable discussion with four of the editors of the anthology Feisty Deeds published on Women’s Fiction Day June 8, 2024. This collection of 23 juried short stories came from members of WFWA’s Historical Fiction affinity group who meet weekly to share the ups and downs of writing in this genre. The selected stories range across centuries, continents, and cultures and feature ordinary women facing extraordinary challenges in astonishing ways. You’ll hear how the initial idea for an anthology morphed into a two-year collaborative venture with these five women each volunteering their time and expertise to this passion project. We discuss the initial planning process, how decisions got made, the developmental editing stage, and what each editor personally learned from the experience.
It’s obvious that this publication was truly a labor of love and a great example of what association members can achieve when they work together. The royalties from the sale of Feisty Deeds benefit the WFWA Scholarship Fund and the group of five editors are already planning their next volume.  If you’re a member of WFWA, write historical fiction, and would like to join the affinity group, click here. 
To learn more about the anthology, click here.  
To connect with the group of Instagram, click here. 
 To learn more about the individual editors and their writing:
Kimberly Sullivan, click here.
Elaine Schroller, click here.
Christy Forrest, click here.
Kay Smith-Blum, click here.
Carolyn Korsmeyer, click here.

This week’s interview is with Cynthia Bogard (A History of Silence, Atmosphere Press, March 2023). A former university professor, Cynthia’s novel features six contemporary women grappling with issues of racism, misogyny, and societal challenges and she brought not only her background in Women’s Studies but also sensitivity readers to vet her story. We discussed how the lack of response from agents shocked her when compared to the academic feedback she was used to, how working with a hybrid press educated her about the publishing business, how bookstores have not proved an effective sales venue, and how being a part of two critique groups has had a profound positive effect not only on her braided novels, but on her own continued development as a creative artist.
Cynthia J. Bogard has reinvented herself as a novelist after a successful career as a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Hofstra University in New York. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin she’s lived in Kuwait, Greece, Mexico, New York, Texas, Vermont, and in Madison, Wisconsin.
World traveler, longtime feminist and environmentalist, Greece, mid- 20th century jazz, and Mother Nature are all close to her heart. These days, Cynthia lives with her spouse and two rescue dogs in Montpelier, Vermont.
To learn more about Cynthia, click here.

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.