The Write Focus

A sidestep into screenwriting led Ryan Hines back to writing short stories, novels, and flash fiction. He talks challenges and the Writer as a Thief of Life. That’s the best Quick Tip any writer can offer.

• Ryan Michael Hines is a novelist, podcaster, and screenwriter based in Los Angeles, CA, who loves the Southland sun but misses the beauty and mystery of the Appalachian Mountains every day.
• A graduate of UCLA’s prestigious M...

Santa Barbara screenwriter Todd Goodlett talks scripts, drafting and revising, conflict, and more in this week’s episode of our Summer Writing Challenge.

• Todd Goodlett is a screenwriter and a playwright. He is the recipient of the 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Screenwriting. Todd is also the winner of the 2019 Final Draft Big Break TV Grand Prize. His plays have been developed and produced across the country including the...

Thriller writer Jeffrey James Higgins turns our interview into a smooth journey without any hitches in today’s episode. Located in the DC area, he helps writers with his salon, located at Elaine’s Restaurant , the literary hub of Alexandria, VA. If you’re in that area, do check out the salon.

• Jeffrey James Higgins is a retired supervisory special agent who writes thrillers, short stories, creative nonfiction, and essays. He ha...

Can you see Autumn yet? I’m yearning for it, my special time of the year.

Autumn is the anniversary of this podcast, starting five years ago, and my publishing journey, 10 years ago. It’s always wonderful to me. I see no signs yet, but I’m definitely looking—even though it’s much too soon.

We can be that way with our writing: rushing toward the end, especially when we juggle multiple projects—that’s the focus of our Quick Tip this ...

Into August and the last month of the Summer Writing Challenge with Week 10. Our interviews will stretch two extra weeks of September.

Delia Pitts gives us a wonderful interview with fantastic information to share.

• Born and raised in Chicago, Delia Pitts graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor’s degree in history. After working as a journalist, she earned a Ph.D. in African history from the University of Chicago. She is...

We’ve reached the end of July, two-thirds of our Summer Writing Challenge. How are you doing on your summer goal? Share your progress in the Comments.

In this week’s episode our talk is with cozy fantasy mystery writer Elle Hartford.

• Elle writes the award-winning Alchemical Tales series, a blend of cozy mystery and cozy fantasy. She has also published a spin-off series, Pomegranate Cafe Romance, and numerous short mysteries in...

It’s Week 8 of the Summer Writing Challenge.

Eight is symbolic of two disparate meanings: 1] almost to completion, when completion is symbolic 10, and 2] a step beyond perfection, as 7 is the perfect number.

We’re not perfect. We’re not even a step before, let alone beyond. We do try.

After a Quick Tip on the 2 Requirements for Every Story, we have our interview with writer Paula Messina. Closing, as usual, is the Check-In.

• P...

Welcome to our mid-July week for the Summer Writing Challenge.

Our interview introduces Ron Katz, who brands his mysteries as The Sleuthing Silvers.

We open with a Quick Tip on Antagonists and close with a Check-In. I’m burning ahead to my goal—which is always a good place to be.

On to the episode!

• Ron Katz, a lifetime Baby Boomer, was a trial lawyer for over four decades. A Rhodes Scholar, in 2016 he was a Fellow at Stanford ...

July 9 means we’re in the 6th week of the Summer Writing Challenge.

Returning to us in this episode is donalee Moulton, a great writer living in one of my favorite locations, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We open with a Quick Writing Tip on Using Twists then close with a Check-In, as usual.

donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. A historical mystery, Conflagration!, was published in 2024. It won the 202...

Midsummer brings us to July, and we start July with an interview of Toronto writer Karen Grose.

Before the interview, we have a Quick Writing Tip: Don’t completely panic when characters take over the story. It’s then that we cede control of the story to them.

After our interview, we close with the 5th Check-In.

We’re early days still for our writing challenge and the novella that I’ve chosen to write.

Share your successes and probl...

The Summer Writing Challenge enters the 4th week of June with a slight tiptoe into July.

How is your challenge progressing? Share your goal and project, problems and solutions, and successes in the Comment Section.

Our interview this week is with Judy Penz Sheluk. As a Quick Tip, I chatter about writing a coherent story. We finish with the Check-in.

A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author...

Welcome to our third week of June and our third week of the Summer Writing Challenge.

How is your challenge going? Share your progress in the Comments, and hit the LIKE button whenever you enjoy an episode.

Our interview this week is with veteran writer Al Sirois, based in North Carolina although he began writing in his home state of Connecticutt.

We’ll conclude this episode with our check-in.

However, first is our third Quick Tip....

In this episode of the Summer Writing Challenge~

A Quick Tip on what you need before you start writing, the Interview with Joan Ramirez on Organizing and Prioritizing and Reaching into Characters, and our Check-in for the week.

TIMINGS

• 00:40 Welcome
• 01:18 Quick Tip #2
• 5:00 Interview with Joan Ramirez

Bio and The Write Rules, Challenges in Writing, Prioritizing Tasks, Solutions to Challenges, Allotting Specific Times for ...

Welcome to the Summer Writing Challenge which continues all through June, July, and August for 13 episodes.

Join us for quick writing tips, writers talking about challenges, and goal check-ins. [The final check-in will occur the first Wednesday in September, in the 1st episode of the Fall into Poetry series.]

In today’s episode, host M.A. Lee talks tech tools (only one with a cost) that create this series as well as the nuts and bo...

Writing in her car at midday is all Teresa Inge needs to create stories with strong protagonists. With 18 years of publishing experience, she keeps writing simple with laptop and trusty battery.

Once she has a theme placed in her Outer Banks setting, she gives her sleuth a business so they can encounter and investigate murder.

Teresa Inge is an award-winning mystery author in over a dozen anthologies and novellas.  She is a member ...

Linda Kay Hardie may appear as the classic cat lady, but a conversation quickly revealed the deadly mind for dastardly deeds that she applies to her fiction.

Hardie is vice president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society and is an award-winning author who has appeared in many anthologies, four in 2024 and three in 2023.

She writes crime, horror, and fantasy stories but no romance. She tried once, and everyone ended up dead. Tragic. ...

Lois Winston is a strong writer, best known for her Anastasia Pollock Crafting series of cozy mysteries.

Early in her career, with Manuscript #2, she acquired an agent, but the roses of her writing journey still had thorns, a lesson to us writers that we control our success. Winston definitely controlled her success. She survived a bankrupt publishing house and the closure of a publisher’s entire cozy mystery line, but it was shena...

While most writers settle into the comfort of one format, Elizabeth Zelvin explores the contrasting realms of poetry, novels, novellas, short stories, and flash fiction, all of them distinctly different in approach, situation, and writing style. Zelvin even loves writing cross-genre. She shares freely her writing, building a community, and writing tool tips.

Elizabeth Zelvin is the author of two long-running series, the Bruce Kohle...

Pamela Ebel offers a wealth of wisdom in this interview for our writer-focused series. She pursues writing with the drive and curiosity and wit that she devoted to her previous careers.

Ebel has been published in Shotgun Honey, YELLOW MAMA EZINE, Kings River Life Magazine, The BOULD AWARDS 2020 and 2021 Anthology, Tomorrow and Tomorrow 2021 Anthology, and other venues. Her poetry has appeared in the Delta Poetry Review. A native of...