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Dear Reader,
Today's guest author, Anna Mazzola, is giving away three copies of her debut novel, The Unseeing. Email: [email protected] to enter the drawing.
Anna Mazzola is a writer of historical crime fiction and strange short stories. The Unseeing, is based on the life of a real woman convicted of helping to conceal a murder in London in 1837. Anna is currently working on a second historical crime novel about a collector of folklore and missing girls on the Isle of Skye in 1857. Anna is also a criminal justice solicitor and child wrangler.
Please email and welcome author Anna Mazzola to our book club...
Getting into the writing habit:
How I got into the habit of writing every day
The crucial element of becoming a writer is that you actually write. That sounds obvious, but when you have various things competing for your time, as most of us do, it can be tricky to make the space to write. For me, the key was getting into the writing habit, and it's something I did almost by accident.
I had my first child six years ago, and he was a sleeper. He would sleep for two--sometimes three--hours every afternoon. I should probably have been tidying the house during that time, mashing up sweet potato, or speaking to other mums about 'controlled crying.' What I was actually doing was sitting in a cafe, writing, with my son asleep in his car seat beside me. At the beginning, I wrote about anything: the conversations of the people sitting around me, childhood memories, ideas. It didn't really matter what nonsense I was scribbling, because what was happening was that I was getting into the habit of writing. Gradually, it became not something that I pushed myself to do, but something I really wanted to do.
When I returned to work, I only had snatches of time to write, but I carried on, even if it was only ten minutes a day. You can write a scene in ten minutes. Several years and ten drafts later, I'd written a novel. I forced myself to submit it to literary agents just before the birth of my second child, and a few weeks after my daughter was born, I received a call from a brilliant literary agent offering me representation.
Unfortunately, my daughter was NOT a sleeper--no chance of sitting with her for two hours in a cafe. I ended up doing most of the edits to my first novel while standing up at a laptop at home, with her sleeping in a sling attached to me. But in the end, the novel was finished (so, unfortunately, was my back).
People often tell me they can't write because they don't have time, or the right environment, or even the right desk. But almost every writer I know writes on top of a job, family, personal crises and a heavy social media addiction. We just need to make enough time each day to keep in the writing habit--to keep getting the words on paper. They might not always be good words, but they give us something to work with. And they make us feel like we are what we want to be: writers.
--Anna Mazzola
Say hello (writers love to hear from readers) and when you do, you'll be entered in the drawing for a copy of Anna's new release.
Email: [email protected]
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE ENCHANTED APRIL, by Elizabeth Von Arnim. Click the link below to start reading, and be sure to enter the drawing for your chance to win a Penguin tote bag: http://www.supportlibrary.com/bc/v.cfm?L=drclassqqxqT1A55E35225F&c=CLASSICS
AUTHORBUZZ: NEVER SURRENDER: A MacKenzie Family Novel (Fiction) by Kaylea Cross
I'm thrilled to bring you more of the Bagram crew with this new story about Ace and Ryan. I've wanted to write more about this cast of characters for a long time now. Ace is headstrong and Ryan is such a ham, which makes them a joy to write about. And Ace's grandma... Well, she's one of a kind, and simply had to have more of her story told.
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on NEVER SURRENDER to find out more about the book and the author, Kaylea Cross. Send her an email, she'd love to hear from you.
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