Please welcome debut author, Barbara Monajem.  
Barbara Monajem wrote her first story in third grade about apple tree gnomes. After dabbling in neighborhood musicals and teen melodrama, she published a middle-grade fantasy when her children were young. Now her kids are adults, and she writes paranormal and historical romance for grownups. She lives in Georgia with an ever-shifting population of relatives, friends, and feline strays. Barbara can be contacted via her website at http://www.barbaramonajem.com/
Instinct, aka the Shoulder-Whispering Gut-Jabber
I’m happy to say I don’t have an evil internal editor who hovers around my computer with the sole purpose of criticizing my work. [...]

By Marilyn Baron
Last year, I had the enjoyable experience of co-authoring a book, THE EDGER, with my sister Sharon Goldman, an award-winning landscape artist from Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, where our story is set. Sharon has lofty goals. She imagines us appearing on “Oprah,” and touring the country together signing our book. Being an artist, she’s visualized that outcome. I tried to explain the realities of the publishing world, but she is dreaming big. I am proud because I think I have done some of my best work and the process of creating this book with my sister long-distance turned [...]

After thirteen years of off-and-on novel writing and three years of grad school, craft is a dirty word to me.  Fortunately for my parents and unfortunately for me, I have always been an overachieving student.  Imagine my frustration when I realized that writing, unlike other academic subjects, could not be mastered by learning a few rules and corollaries, by memorizing dates or by scouring academic journals to see what the “experts” had to say.  No, writing is an open-ended subject complete with fickle teachers who often can’t tell you what they want.  They, like many of my old literature professors, [...]

MacGowan’s Ghost
by Cindy Miles 
Signet Eclipse Book www.penguin.com
ISBN:  978-0-451-22618-1
Paranormal Romance
 
 
 
Odin’s Thumb Inn and Pub may be owned by brooding Highlander Gabe MacGowan, but it is actually run by a crew of ornery ghosts, who aren’t eager for their home to undergo a change of management.  Gabe intends to sell the pub not only to give his son a more stable environment but to escape what really haunts him—his wife’s death.
 Fun-loving Allie Morgan is hired to oust the sneaky spirits who scare away potential buyers.  She wins the hearts of everyone in the seaside village including some interesting ghosts and Gabe [...]

A Pirate of Her Own
by Kinley MacGregor
Avon
ISBN 978-0—06-108711-0
 
Serenity James wants to be a reporter in the 1770s when women aren’t allow to do such things. Because her father owns a newspaper she manages to slip in an article about the Sea Wolf, the pirate she admires for helping men that have been forced to join the British Navy.
Morgan Drake, alias the Sea Wolf, has a dark past. When he reads the article that Serenity has written about him, he becomes worried that his true identity has been discovered. That knowledge could mean his death, being wanted in two different [...]

by J Perry Stone
What is it with tone that it has so much significance in so many different arenas?
In music, tone indicates the sound of a particular pitch.  My poor son cannot hit a note to save his life.  You can imagine how this goes over when the classically trained grandparents come to visit and he’s singing along with the car radio.  Lots ‘o wincing and laughing behind hands.
In art, tone suggests the lightness/darkness of a color.  You’ve heard of photographic memory?  I have it, but only when it comes to color.   I can remember exact shades.   This ability comes [...]

By Debbie Kaufman
 Sun Tzu, The Art of War (approx. 400 B.C.)
Revisions are something we all bemoan.  Who among us doesn’t want to just write the daggone thing and just be done? 
Rita Herron, one of my favorite Intrigue authors, reminded me the other day of this sage writer’s adage when she suggested some revisions to my current storyline:  Writing is rewriting.
The sooner we wrap our minds around it the better, folks. 
That said, in my world of revising, whining is allowed.  However, I limit myself to about five minutes of self-pity where I allow my inner three-year-old to have a tantrum in [...]