Elena Taylor spent twenty years in the theater as a playwright, director, and designer before she wrote her first novel in 2007. It took until 2016 to see a book in print, and by then she had learned the thing nobody tells you: there is no game plan. No book you can buy that lays out a…
Sheila Roberts wanted to be a songwriter. Sixty books later — with movies on Lifetime, Hallmark, and Great American Family — she says the writing life has cost her nothing at all. That answer is worth sitting with, because it doesn't come from an easy career. Sheila talks about crashing…
Kirby Larson learned that words have power at age seven, standing on a playground where the popular girls always got to be Dorothy. She told them her mother was in the hospital — leaving out that she was there having a baby — and got to be Dorothy that day. Decades and 250 rejection…
Alan Katz has written more than 50 books and spent five years writing for The Rosie O'Donnell Show. He grew up in a family of shoe-store owners and teachers and announced early that he'd be a writer — his father's response was that as a writer, you are your own merchandise. We talk about…
Steamy romance novelist Christina Braver has never turned a profit on her books — and she's never regretted a page. In this conversation, Christina talks about writing "real sex representation" into the romance genre: heroines with endometriosis, sexual trauma, and bodies that don't work…
Ben Rockwood and his wife Tamara started Bainbridge Island Press out of frustration — she was writing better and better work and getting nothing but silence from publishers. So they decided to get on the other side of the fence and find out why. Four years later he's designing books…
Susan Wiggs sold her first book in 1986 while teaching full-time with a one-year-old at home. She's since written more than 60 novels, won three RITAs, and hit the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists. We talk about what that life has cost — a decade of…