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.

Our guest this week is Kimberly Young (In the Event of Death, Post Hill Press, February 2024). Tune in for a lively discussion about how Kimberly discovered her book idea of an event planner who morphs her wedding planning business into one for end of life memorials when the 2008 recession hits. We discuss the stable of talented women professionals who aided her in bringing her book into being, from mentors at the Stanford Novel Writing program, to a dream agent she got from a referral to a social media consultant who she praises for making her book a success. Unlike some guests, Kimberly credits social media, and specifically Instagram, for her healthy sales figures.

Born in the Midwest and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kimberly Young received her BA from Dartmouth College and an MA from Stanford University, where she was a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellow. She began her career as an advertising copywriter and marketing consultant and worked with clients ranging from startups to Apple. When she isn’t writing, she fundraises for organizations focused on conservation and reproductive rights. In the Event of Death is her debut novel, set in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. Kim and her husband have three grown children and split their time between California and the mountains of Idaho. She is currently underway on her second novel.

To learn more about Kimberly, click here.

This week we talk to Lisa Williams Kline (Between the Sky and the Sea, DragonBlade Publishing, February 2023). Previously an author of books for younger readers, Lisa decided to switch to adult fiction and she’s a proud pantser, even though she admits it takes more time to write without an outline. Her book was inspired by a real-life incident when a luxury liner (dubbed the “Titanic of the South”) sunk off the Carolina coast in 1838 and how she was hampered in her quest to do original research due to the pandemic, We discuss POV (she switched from third to first and then back to third), and how FB takeovers have proved her best technique for gaining exposure.

Lisa Williams Kline is the author of two novels for adults, Between the Sky and the Sea (Dragonblade), and Ladies’ Day (CamCat Books), as well as an essay collection entitled The Ruby Mirror (The Bridge) and a short story collection entitled Take Me (Main Street Rag). Her stories and essays have appeared in Literary Mama, Skirt, Sasee, Carolina Woman, moonShine review, The Press 53 Awards Anthology, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and Idol Talk, among others. She is also the author of ten novels and a novella for young readers. She attended Duke University and received her MAC from UNC-Chapel Hill in Radio, Television and Motion Pictures, and her MFA from Queens University. She lives in Davidson with her veterinarian husband, a cat who can open doors, and a sweet chihuahua who has played Bruiser Woods in Legally Blonde: The Musical. She and her husband treasure frequent visits with their grown daughters and their husbands.

To learn more about Lisa, click here.

My guest this week is D. Liebhart (House On Fire, indie published, March 2023). Debra, whose novel examines the turmoil in a family when a mother, struggling with her husband’s dementia, asks her daughter for help in ending his life, is a speedy drafter, producing 2500 words per day, but a slow revisor, and a meticulous plotter who is nevertheless open to surprises as she writes. We discuss the changing landscape of publishing, how she doesn’t believe in writer’s block, and how she overcome her own prejudices against self-publishing to become a successful indie author.

D. Liebhart is a writer and a nurse. Her stories delve into the moral complexity of real life and ask readers to consider what they would do faced with the same situations. House on Fire, her first novel, won the 2023 Page Turner Award for both fiction and debut. It was long-listed for the 2022 Petrichor Prize and received an honorable mention from Writer’s Digest. Her essay Thalassophobia (a true account of a very out-of-the-ordinary honeymoon) won the 2021 Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction Prize from Emrys Journal.

To learn more about this author, click here.