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Month: November 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Ashley Richer #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 22, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Ashley Richer

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
Many ask me the question, “what made you want to write a book?”
Well, like most artistic professions, writing was, and always will be, a natural gift that I am blessed to have. The writing part came easy…it was taking the leap into publishing that needed a push.
I decided to pursue publishing after battling a rare medical condition. At 24 years old I survived a dissection of my carotid artery and multiple TIA strokes. This life changing experience will forever hold a bittersweet spot in my heart. The bitter…I battled a tough and long recovery, took a permanent medical leave from my job, and had to give up hobbies that I enjoyed my entire life.
However, after four years I found the sweet… I teamed with award-winning local illustrator Ryan Maguire to create the first book in the series. We fell in love, published our first book, and just welcomed our first child into the world in August. I hope to inspire everyone to believe that there is no obstacle too large to overcome, and sometimes the toughest obstacles lead to the biggest miracles!
Ryan and I are now preparing to launch the second book in the series. The first book in the series, titled Tyler’s TALL Tales: Chasing the moon, has a Rhode Island setting and focuses on teaching children about local Narragansett landmarks. The second book, Tyler’s TALL Tales: Journey around the world, will take readers on a global adventure and focuses on raising awareness of animals found all over the world. We hope to continue to educate children in schools and the community through literacy and illustration.
Ryan and I have a crowdfunding website to help offset costs for local schools and community establishments that wish to have us visit for one of our custom workshops. Together we have combined our teaching experiences to develop innovative workshops, which enforce creative thinking, artistic discovery, and movement. To learn more, or donate to our cause, please visit our GoFundMe page.
You can contact Ashley via email (tylerstalltales@gmail.com), visit her on Facebook, and catch up with Tyler’s Tall Tales on her blog.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Rachael L. McIntosh #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 21, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Rachael L. McIntosh

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
I graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a B.A. in painting in the mid 1990’s. I lived in a non-live-in painting studio in Boston’s North End when mafia were still huddled at the coffee shops and before the place was gentrified.
That’s when I started Entropy Press to make my artists books and zines seem more legit. Entropy Press grew. My artist’s books appear in the collections of MIT professor Noam Chomsky, jazz musician John Scofield, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Library. The online version of the zine was getting more hits than the satire site The Onion at that time. Soon a real bricks and mortar gallery, with a digital recording studio, and a black box theater cropped up under the EP brand.
In 1995, my father was in a plane crash and although the Coast Guard searched for days, they never found him. The only thing to confirm his death was a running shoe and his business ledger checkbook. Those things were found floating in the water and collected by a lawyer on his yacht on his way to the Bahamas.
It was around this time that I was suddenly afflicted with a mysterious malaise which turned out to be Multiple Sclerosis. I left Boston and my loft and sought out a “normal” life in Connecticut.
I ended up working as a marketing director in Hartford, Connecticut. I also worked part time as the Urban Artist Initiative Coordinator for Norwich and New London. Ultimately, I secured a full time job, via a temp agency, at a defense contractor agency because I knew how to use email. (I kid you not.)
Then things got sticky. 9/11 happened. My job at the defense contractor became more defense-y. Generals and mercenaries were floating through. I was the youngest person there. My world became almost schizophrenic. Between not feeling my feet and legs and not knowing how to defend my day job to my artist friends, my marriage was falling apart.
Long story short: I was unexpectedly pregnant and became hugely concerned about the future. Maybe it was to avoid thinking about my miserable state of affairs, but I threw myself with all my creative and intellectual might into the Ron Paul campaign. I wanted to end the war and fix all the stuff I had seen at the defense contractor’s. I was elected to be an alternate delegate for the state of Rhode Island and attended the Republican National Convention.
My experiences at the RNC prompted me to write the Security through Absurdity series. I wrote every night for almost two years to produce the equivalent of 4.8 novels. I submitted it to a publisher who told me that they were going to break it down into a trilogy. They also told me to get life insurance. The books, although closer to Contemporary New Journalism, are funny in parts and are listed as fiction so that I don’t get thrown in jail.
The Security Through Absurdity series is #1 on Goodreads Best New Series. The books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks, as well as in libraries and high schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Visit Rachael’s website, her Facebook author page, and follow her on Twitter.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Elda Dawber #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 20, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Elda Dawber

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
Got secrets? Of course you do! Like it or not, our lives are rich with personal, professional, and family tales that could keep readers awake deep into the night. But do we dare risk the telling? If there is a story that needs to be told, then perhaps the time has come to listen and give it voice.
In writing my novel Wait Until I’m Dead!, I placed my main character in the center of this dilemma. A successful romance writer, Donna Jean Brava, has written an autobiography which provides the backstory of how she dealt with her own childhood abuse by her father and uncles while suffering the cold indifference of her mother. Her recovery shows how love and friendship bring about her healing even though evil acts still lurk behind the door. As her family reads the manuscript and begins to unravel buried family secrets, the title of the novel becomes painfully appropriate. Hate and love vie for the upper hand as victims and perpetrators fear the same fate: What if people findout?
The book is also filled with humor—which works as comic relief in the classically tragic sense—mystery, unexpected plot twists, revealed secrets and intrigue. Presented as a memoir within a novel, readers move through the main character’s history. But it is her actions in the present that propel the story through a series of compelling revelations affecting numerous characters in unforeseen ways.
Secrets often beget more secrets. So, why go there at all, one might ask? Well, like everyone else, I’ve had secrets, told secrets, kept secrets, and even spilled a few. But nothing on this earth prepared me for the damage and long term suffering visited upon children when secrets about abuse prevail.
I am, by profession, a clinical social worker who has been working with children and their families affected by childhood trauma. When I retired—or, semi-retired as it turned out—I felt compelled to do something to honor the courage of the youngsters I had worked with who had faced overwhelming situations and yet had prevailed. And so grew the concept of a novel that could both educate as well as entertain. I wanted a book that professionals would value, but that the average reader could respond to as a page-turner full of compassion and hope.
I have finally come to understand what people meant when they said, “Write what you know.” What I know—from years of working with children in trauma—is hard stuff. Getting it onto paper took time (almost six years), and it also took a good deal of emotional energy. I once had a Creative Writing professor in college who told me I had to choose between social work and writing because social work would take over my life and render me unable to commit the time and focus needed to become a “real” writer. Social work did, in fact, consume me for decades, but eventually it also gave me this story of secrets from all the children whose voices I am trying to honor. And another gift as well: the much deeper understanding that secrets revealed can also heal.
Elda lives in Rhode Island, surrounded by an amazingly loving and diverse family, covets a good mystery, gardens in milk crates on her back deck, loves to travel, still trains her fellow social service professionals, and – truthfully – hates secrets that keep children unsafe. Her novel Wait Until I’m Dead! recently won the Independent Publishers of New England 2015 award for literary fiction. She is currently hard at work on the sequel. Find her on Facebook, LinkedIn, and here.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Debbie Tillinghast #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 19, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Debbie Tillinghast

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
Changing Seasons
The wind has shifted overnight, hurling itself across the bay from the Northwest. Gone are the gentle summer breezes, replaced by winds with winter’s bite lurking on the edges. The temperature hovers near forty and the air is crisp and invigorating as I begin my morning walk. The tide is high and waves are breaking over the rocks; one small dinghy rolls on the swells as they dash towards the shore. The waves are the only sound I hear this morning, and if birds are singing, they are drowned out by the relentless pounding of the surf. A seagull perches on a rock that is peeking from the water, and he shrieks his morning thoughts. I wonder if he is sad to see the summer end, taking the visitors who might leave behind an occasional stray quahog, or happy to have solitude return and the bay to himself. Again I listen for the morning calls of resident song birds, but all I hear is the wind and one solitary crow.
My life began on this small island in Narragansett Bay, called Prudence, where daily existence was guided by the changing seasons and the tides. Summer meant the opening of my dad’s general store which kept both my parents busy, as Prudence was predominantly a summer colony. My family lived here year round, but the winter population dwindled to about fifty, and the rhythm of life changed after Labor Day. The ferry now runs daily, and the schedule makes year round commuting a possibility, so the island seems less remote even in the winter.
I’m here on Prudence to help my friend Judy close her summer house for the season. We are always reluctant to say goodbye to the carefree island summer days, and sometimes the warm October sun tempts us to linger for one last swim and postpone this task a little longer. The wisdom of the decision to close is reinforced, when the frosty night reminds us that winter will soon embrace this little island and, without heat or insulation, the disaster of frozen pipes will be real if the winterizing is not complete.
When Judy and I board the ferry in the late afternoon, her house is all tucked in for the winter. I know it will be waiting when balmy spring days entice us to return to Prudence Island, and the bay beckons us for our first chilly swim of the year. Perhaps because of my island childhood, my senses are tuned to the change in seasons and as each begins, it becomes my favorite. Though I will delight in snowy winter days, I will anticipate the time when the song birds serenade my morning walks once more.
Debbie Kaiman Tillinghast is the author of The Ferry Home, a memoir about her childhood on Prudence Island, Rhode Island. Her book is available in local gift shops and bookstores and online at Indigo River Publishing and Amazon. Visit her on Facebook.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Becky MacDonell-Yilmaz #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 18, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Becky MacDonell-Yilmaz

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
I wasn’t quite sure how to dress up for my fourth-grade Career Day. I had borrowed multiple books from my elementary school’s library in an attempt to research exactly how one goes about becoming an author, but most of the information I uncovered related to finding work as a freelance writer and lacked the step-by-step instructions and list of appropriate tools and attire that I had hoped to find. So I settled on an outfit that made me happy: my favorite pink shirt, a pair of comfortable pants, and my white Keds, with a cloth-covered journal – one of several from my collection – and pen my only real props.
Years later, after drastically altering my career path and enrolling in medical school, it was that same principle, doing what made me happy, that brought me back to writing. As fascinated as I was by my studies in anatomy and physiology, by the end of my first year I full of facts but empty as a person. When I learned of an opportunity to incorporate an independent writing project into my medical curriculum, I felt a surge of excitement, which was quickly washed away by abiding apprehension. I waited until the night before the deadline to submit my application. In truth, I spent half of that night trying to convince myself that I might actually have something to say.
When I was accepted to the program and awarded a fellowship to help support my efforts, words began to flow from my fingers into my journal, onto my laptop, onto any scrap of paper within my reach. What I had dismissed during my pre-medical studies as a childhood hobby suddenly emerged as an integral ingredient in my efforts to survive medical school and eventually to thrive as a physician. I filled the blank pages of journals that had sat on my bedroom shelves for so long, untouched yet unable to be parted with. And I finally recalled the sentiment that had first sparked my interest in medicine: the desire to understand, to bear witness to, and to offer a hand to hold throughout patients’ stories as they unfold.
Becky MacDonell-Yilmaz earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Public Health from Dartmouth College and her Doctor of Medicine from Stony Brook University School of Medicine. She completed a residency in pediatrics at Brown University/Hasbro Children’s Hospital. Her work has been published in Pediatrics, Annals of Internal Medicine, The New Physician, The Writers Circle, and Paumanok II, an anthology of poetry and photography by Long Islanders. Her first chapbook of poetry, Tools for Survival, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. You can explore more of her writing at The Growth Curve: ruminations of a pediatrician in training. She lives in Providence, RI, with her husband and son.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Kimberly Kowal Arcand #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 17, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Kimberly Kowal Arcand

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
At seven years old, I proudly announced to my parents that I was going to be an astronaut when I grew up. Even though they could not drag me on an amusement park ride more adventurous than a bumper car, my parents apparently thought it best not to discourage me. I had one of those little white plastic Space Shuttle models with a working cargo bay, and I would fly it around my room and make up pretend missions with pink and blue Care Bears serving as the crew.
Alas, it was not the career for me. Neither was being a doctor, which came later (I realized I didn’t like needles), nor a veterinarian (this was quickly squashed by a stint volunteering in an animal hospital). I knew that I wanted to do something in science — I just wasn’t sure what form it would take.
Fast forward a few decades and you find me happily working for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a mission that studies the high-energy phenomena of the Universe such as exploding stars, black holes, and colliding galaxies. My feet are planted firmly on the ground, but as Visualization Lead for Chandra, I get to use data to tell exciting stories about objects that are far, far away. These stories can be in the form of a tweet about distant colliding galaxies to a 3D-printed model of an exploded star in our Milky Way (http://3d.si.edu/explorer?modelid=45) and lots of things in between.
Beyond my day job using data to tell stories of the high-energy Universe, I found a path to telling stories in writing science books. I have always enjoyed reading and writing, since I was young enough to understand the words. I fondly recall a mythology-writing exercise in my 6th grade English class, where I used leftover silver brocade wallpaper to cover the cardboard binding of my original story — complete with painstakingly hand-colored illustrations — about where rain came from.
Today, I am happy that the binding techniques of my current books are a bit more sophisticated, and the visuals I curate come from artists, photographers and scientists around the world.
In essence, the storytelling truly matters. Science can be complex, so how the story is told is incredibly important. For me, coming up with the best visuals, metaphors, tone of the book is a key part to making scientific topics accessible. I love the process of figuring out all the details to create a book that can be entertaining as well as informative.
Kimberly Kowal Arcand is the co-author of three popular science books including the new release “Light: The Visible Spectrum and Beyond” with Megan Watzke, published by Black Dog & Leventhal/Hachette Book Group. Find the book on Amazon or visit her website here.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Deborah Halliday #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 16, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Deborah Halliday

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
Oh, to be a writer!
I belong to an authors’ group, and I love it. There I am, surrounded by creative people talking about their latest book or short story, and it is fun. Many of my fellow authors mistake me for a writer, which makes sense since it is an authors’ group, but a writer I am not, at least not of the fiction or poetry variety. When it comes to creativity in writing I remain awestruck and stumped as to where my fellow authors get all of those great ideas. No, I am an appreciative audience member. I admire the perfect turn of phrase, the well-chosen word (if it is almost obsolete I love it even more) and the plot twists I can’t see coming. I have also discovered, in my later years, that I enjoy poetry. Maybe it’s only now that I’ve allowed myself to slow down enough to read it, and allowed myself to read it out loud without fear of seeming foolish.
Because I admire creativity so much, and because I’m a bit of a pack-rat in general, I felt a need to preserve literature from the past that could otherwise be lost and forgotten. I became an anthologist, a poetry rescuer. I get a real thrill from turning a century-and-a-half old page in a deteriorating book, seeing a poem that makes me go “oooh,” and thinking I might be the first person in over a hundred years to have read it. I call it being a literary archeologist. I dig up lost things, things that tell us about a culture of not so long ago. Who were these authors? How were they like us? How were they different? Can they express emotions in a way that resonates with us? As a pack-rat who loves to bring order from chaos and find beauty in the overlooked, what more could I ask for than to discover and preserve old poetry.
When I go to book events where I’m selling my anthologies, I have a small plastic box with snippets of poetry in it. I call it “pick-a-poem,” and I invite passers-by to choose one – like choosing a fortune cookie. Often people will shake their heads and say “Oh, I don’t really like poetry.” But then they take one, and as they walk away reading, more often than not a smile will slowly spread across their face, and they will turn to me and say “thank you. You have no idea how much that fits.” And they’ll pocket their snippet for safekeeping. So while I don’t write poetry myself, I do feel that I’m helping to give a gift not only to authors long dead, but to people today; especially to those who maybe thought they didn’t like poetry.
Deborah L. Halliday curates and anthologizes poetry from Godey’s Lady’s Books, one of the most popular magazines of the nineteenth century. Her books can be found at on-line retailers with a search for “Godey’s poetry.” Discover her on Facebook here.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Kevin Mulhern #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 15, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Kevin Mulhern

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
As a firm believer that a better tomorrow starts with a better today, and with the young people of today, Rhode Island author/radio personality Kevin Mulhern presents his children’s book, Cody theCloud – a book with a strong message about anti-bullying, believing in oneself, and the power of friendship and love to literally transform the world.
Since its release by Mascot Books in January, 2015, Mulhern has been donating a portion of all proceeds of copies of Cody the Cloud sold on his website to various charities. Most recently, he was involved in a fundraising initiative to help raise over $10,000 in partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken in Greenville, RI for a young Warwick, RI boy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy who needed a wheelchair ramp van. Through Cody, Mulhern has also donated to Hasbro Children’s Hospital, Special Olympics RI, Meeting Street School, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the San Miguel School, and The Run To Home Base Program for military veterans, among others.
A member of the Association of Rhode Island Authors, Mulhern has read Cody the Cloud – geared toward kids between three and eight years old – to nearly 50 local schools, libraries, bookstores, and other events. The book has been featured twice on the WJAR Channel 10 evening news, on The Rhode Show, and on numerous radio stations and in print publications. The story of Cody the Cloudwas recently adapted into a play and performed by the Radioactive Theater Company at Symposium Books in East Greenwich, RI, where its anti-bullying message and messages about kindness and love were well-received by young and old alike in two performances of the play.
Currently, Mulhern is donating 30 percent of all proceeds from Cody books or Cody pillowcases sold on his website now through the end of the year to Hasbro Children’s Hospital to help kids and their families in the fight against cancer. Mulhern thanks all those who have supported the book and its various associated charities, and is happy to do local book readings free of charge if requested.
Contact Kevin through email at CodytheCloudBook@gmail.com, or through his website.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Christine DePetrillo #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 14, 2015

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Christine DePetrillo

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
Fall into Danger
I live a pretty safe life. My neighborhood is located in Suburbia, USA where getting my mail at 4:30 instead of 4:00 is the biggest danger I face. Police sirens are rarely heard, criminals don’t run rampant in the streets, and my super huge German Shepherd, aka The Werewolf, has only squirrels to scare away. I can walk The Werewolf at midnight on the streets surrounding my home if I want to and not worry that I’ll be abducted or something equally as heinous.
I work in a safe school in a safe town, surrounded by safe colleagues and safe students.
Bottom line? My life is basically populated with fuzzy pink bunnies. For the most part I like it that way. I do.
But…
I am a writer, you know. Sometimes I fantasize about danger. It’s kind of my job to do so as a fiction author. I imagine scenarios that are jam-packed with suspense, action, life-and-death decisions, and of course gorgeous men that are at the center of it all.
That last part is my favorite. I’ll admit it.
I can be engaged in a mundane task like weeding my yard. A truck will drive by and even though I know exactly which neighbor is in that truck and that it drives by at precisely the same time every single weekday, I’ll pretend the driver is a 6’4” ex-Marine dressed in all black. He’s wearing dark sunglasses covering sharp, blue eyes. A scant beard circles his full lips, and he’s got a gun on the passenger seat. A gun he plans to use. He peels around the corner in front of my house, screeches to a stop, and jumps out of his truck. And it’s a big manly truck. Black. Tinted windows. An engine that growls. Angry rock music fills the cab. In three long strides, he is standing beside me, the tips of his black combat boots touching my pile of yanked dandelions.
“Let’s go,” he says.
I look up with a you-talking-to-me expression on my face… and streaks of sweat and dirt no doubt from my toiling in the yard.
“There isn’t much time. They’ll be here any minute. I’m your only chance.” He extends a big, sturdy-looking hand to me.
I gape at it, mesmerized by the size of his fingers and the calluses on his palm. Man hands. Oh, boy, do I love some man hands.
Sliding my soil-covered hand into his, I let him pull me to my feet. I’m wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, but somehow I’m pulling off a cute, girl-next-door look and not the sloppy gardening dork look I’m usually sporting.
He whisks me into his truck, hops into the driver’s seat, and we’re off.
Away from danger.
Or perhaps into it.
Either way, I’ll be on an adventure—if only in my mind—until my weeding task is done. Then I’ll most likely be attacked by fictional ninjas while I’m folding the laundry.
Danger. It’s nowhere… and everywhere.
For more fictional danger, try my Maple Leaf Series. Each contemporary romance has a dash of suspense to take you out of your everyday world. My upcoming release in this series is More ThanCocoa in which Boston Detective Rachel Lorensen and ex-con Harris Wilder team up to save seventeen abducted women… well, actually it’s eighteen women when Rachel becomes one of them.
More Than Cocoa is available for pre-order right now! I will also be selling and signing print copies of it, along with print copies of all my other books, at the 3rd Annual Rhode Island Author Expo on December 5, 2015 at Lincoln Mall. Check my website for more details on this spectacular chance to meet Rhode Island authors.
Book One in my Maple Leaf Series, More Than Pancakes, is always FREE in ebook. It costs you nothing to give it a try. Enjoy, and try not to get too hungry or thirsty with this series.
****
Christine DePetrillo writes stories to make you laugh, cry, possibly sweat, and definitely make you believe in the power of love. She’s tried not being a writer several times, but the Voices won’t leave her alone. They insist that she tell their stories, and so she does.
You can find out more about her other books at her author website and follow her at her Facebook author page. She also blogs on the 4th and 14th of each month at The Roses of Prose blog.

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Victoria Corliss & Leigh Brown #riauthors

Published by R. K. Bentley on November 13, 2015

VICTORIA CORLISS (L) AND LEIGH BROWN (R)

Rhode Island Author Expo Spotlight – Victoria Corliss & Leigh Brown

This post was originally posted on Martha Reynold’s blog and has been reposted here with author permission, minor revisions have been made.
We’ve all heard the expression, ‘many hands make light work.’ As co-authors, our four-hands and two brains may not make our job of writing novels any easier, but it’s definitely more fun! With a shared love of reading and writing, and respective careers in marketing and finance, we are a balanced blend of creative and business-minded, of friendship and professional partnership.
How do two people write as one voice? If we had a nickel for every time we are asked that question; even we’re not fully certain of the answer, but we do know that it has a lot to do with the respect we have for one another, both as friends and co-authors.
When we are working, there is no such thing as a bad idea. That’s not to say that we love every creative idea or suggestion the other one comes up with, on the contrary. But even when we disagree, we always manage to work through it using skilled persuasion, healthy discussion and debate, and as a last resort, coercion and bribery.
In our case, the pros of being co-authors far outnumber any possible negatives. For one thing, the odds of both of us having writer’s block at the same time are incredibly slim. Thus far at least, when one of us was buried in a fog devoid of creative thinking, the other was there to guide her out of it. We’ve also honed our skills as devil’s advocates, pointing out the absurdities of the other’s ideas with minimal ridicule or insult. More often than not, when it comes to story development, we are literally and figuratively on the same page. When the ideas and words start spilling out of us in a unified clip, Leigh, the official note taker, is hard-pressed to get it all down on paper.
Both of our novels, Second Chances and The Pie Sisters, sprang from infinite pages of notes scribbled onto lined paper like spaghetti thrown against the wall. Not all the ideas stuck, but the ones that did moved onto the next stage of our writing process: the outline. If it’s not in the outline, it’s probably not in the book either; our outlines are so incredibly detailed. Like an inverted pyramid, we begin with a broad story outline, followed by individualized character descriptions, and chapter-by-chapter development. Only after every emotion, every nuance, every plot twist-and-turn has been crafted in full, do we actually sit down to write.
We divvy the chapters between us and write separately from our respective Rhode Island homes. Leigh is a fast-paced visual writer, putting the story into words as she watches it unfold, movie-like in her head. Victoria writes methodically like a farmer, carefully choosing her words and planting them in neatly rowed sentences until the pages are filled. Two people, two different approaches, but together we create seamless, universal-themed stories that all women can enjoy.
In a few short weeks, 2015 will be coming to a close. Hard as that is to believe, we are also excited to welcome in the New Year, for 2016 will find us writing our third novel, together. As co-authors, we’ll be working hard, as friends it will feel like we’re hardly working.
Rhode Island writers Leigh Brown and Victoria (Vikki) Corliss are friends who became co-authors in 2009. Soon after, they published their first novel, Second Chances, followed by The Pie Sisters in 2015.
Active speakers and book event participants, they are often asked: 1) Are they sisters, and 2) How do they write novels together? In fact, they are sisters in spirit only. To learn more about how their collaboration works, visit their website. Invite Leigh and Vikki to speak at your next book club event. Contact them at browncorlissbooks@gmail.com. You can also like them on Facebook.