Writers Authors On Fire Podcast

Rick Light is an author in two distinctly different genres. Here's the link to the Show Notes page for Rick's interview with highlights, quotes, book titles, and links to his website. Rick has a book on backpacking the light way and others on spiritual eldering, conscious aging, and Jewish death practices. He says life is too boring to just do one thing. His interest in the way the Jewish community prepares their deceased for burial lead to speaking opportunities and then writing several books on the beauty and richness of Jewish death practices. Rick walks us through his writing process, from identifying the central theme, to determining his audience, and fleshing out the book's contents. He published several books through Amazon's Create Space but then with the more complicated ones, knew he needed a publisher. This led to writing book proposals and submissions to many publishers - and he takes us through the process of both finding a publisher for the Jewish death practices book and the backpacking book -

Charles Stone is a pastor who has authored four books, one coauthored with his daughter and three for pastors. Here's the link to his Show Notes Page with episode highlights and quotes, his books, and links to his website and social media connections. Charles' first book was Daughters Gone Wild, Dads Gone Crazy, coauthored with his daughter. Since then, he's written three books for pastors. He explains, as a pastor, the differences and similarities between writing a book and writing sermons, with an application all writers can learn from. He attended the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference and took classes on writing, where he learned about the discipline of writing. One specific class taught him how to write a book proposal. He found an agent, something he learned was important to becoming published. After the first book, he asked himself what he wanted to be known for, and determined he wanted to write to help pastors. Charles candidly talks about balancing the demands of being a full-time pastor

Rhonda Stoppe is an author and speaker with the tagline of The No Regrets Woman. Here's the link to the Show Notes page for Rhonda's interview with highlights, links to her books, and her website and social media connections. Rhonda loves pouring herself into the lives of women to help this live life with no regrets. Over time as she mentored women, she had opportunities to speak - which she loves doing. She kept hearing God tell her to write, which at first she resisted. Then she wrote a 52-week devotional for pastor's wives. Later she contracted her book Moms Raising Sons to be Men with Harvest House. She candidly admits that writing is really hard. Throughout the interview, Rhonda's passion and focus is increasingly evident. She has two traditionally published books and several books she offers on her own as Kindle ebooks. Her website is a great marketing example as a resource for women, and writers too, with excellent content, a blog, audio bonuses for readers of her books, a newsletter, resources, and mo

Michele PW is a master at copywriting but also writes fiction. Here's the link to the Show Notes page for Michele's interview with highlights, her books, and links to her websites and social media connections. In this interview Michele starts by sharing how she taught herself to read at age three because she wanted to write stories. She takes us through her journey to becoming a copywriter and describes the importance of how learning direct response copywriting skills will help any writer. Her three books on Love-Based copywriting get into how copywriting taps into emotions, which is either fear- or love-based - and how these can be applied to fiction writing, to selling your books, and more. She goes in-depth into why marketing needs to be love-based rather than what is often know as the sleazy side of marketing, which is fear based. We as writers can use the love-based emotion approach to our writing and marketing, and let it guide our writing fiction or nonfiction, book proposals, back cover copy, web site

In this special episode we recap episodes 26 - 50 of Writers & Authors on Fire. Here's a link to the Show Notes Page for the episode. We’ll go from episode 026 to episode 050 with a short description of the show and then share a short clip from the interview. You will learn about authors, what they shared, and in their words, a bit of wisdom culled from their interview. These second 25 episodes are entertaining, but more important, informative as they share what they have learned about writing, their tips and advice, and the exciting direction their writing journey has taken them. It is our hope that the short clips might entice you to listen to the full shows. The 25 include authors of general fiction, novels of all types and for all ages, humor, romance fiction, historical fiction, mystery and suspense, paranormal, women’s contemporary fiction; and lots of nonfiction – writing for children, girls, memoirs, devotionals, personal stories of struggles of health and faith, stories about pe

Lisa Bogart is a nonfiction author known for her infectious giggle who has been a knitter for 40 years and an author for about a decade. Here's the link to Lisa's Show Notes page to catch her episode highlights, quotes, books, and websites and social media connections. As a teen she journaled and after her son was born she took a writing class and wrote about being a mommy. Her journaling continued and she learned she could write articles, which planted the seeds of a possible writing career. She focused on writing short stories, articles and devotionals. Lisa admits to knitting an hour a day as a meditative activity. Two of her books are about knitting - one being a knitting devotional. She walks us through the process of writing devotionals, sharing some great tips. Lisa has a degree as a graphic designer and so sketching comes naturally. While attending Mt. Hermon in 2015, she took a class where she sketched throughout the sessions. It was suggested she share her sketches. This led to working with her agen

Sherry Kyle is an author of seven books for women and tween girls and is a contributor to two compilations. Here's the link to the Show Notes Page for Sherry's podcast interview with show highlights, her books, and website and social media links. In the fourth grade Sherry won an award for her story Friends Can Be So Mean. As she read library books to her children, the bug hit and she knew she wanted to write for kids and be a writer. She started writing for tween girls after taking courses through the Institute of Children’s Literature. Then an agent suggested she write contemporary novels for women. Going to writers conferences followed and she talks about how these conferences helped her build a writing career. She laughs as she describes writing a bit of everything, a bit of this and that. Being a member of two writing organizations also has helped her writing. You’ll laugh at how she got the ideas for her novels. She starts with the plot and then her characters evolve. Sherry takes us through

Jill Osborne is a fiction author writing for pre-teens. Here's the link to the Show Notes Page for Jill's interview with show highlights and tips, and links to her books in Amazon, her webpage and social medial connections. Jill's been involved in children’s ministry for 16 years - so writing for this age is natural. She started writing in the seventh grade and has written ever since - writing whatever needed to be done: stories, curriculum, skits, articles, and newsletters. In 2008 she began writing for publication. While on a run she felt God calling her to write for 9-12 years olds kids - an age often affected negatively by today’s cultural. That started her love of writing fiction for pre-teen girls and led to writing goals and reading books about writing. I love Jill’s answer to the question whether anyone can write for children. It makes sense and is a wise response. She defines the terms planners and pantsers as they relate to one’s writing method.  Jill takes us through he

Ben Wolf is the founder and editor-in-chief of Splickety Publishing Group, which publishes three flash fiction magazines. Here's the link to the Show Notes Page for Ben Wolf's interview with highlights, links, and social media connections. Ben’s an author of speculative fiction and a children’s book. Ben starts by defining flash fiction, which he says is a different term for short story. Splickety uses flash fiction that is 1000 words or less with a beginning, middle, and an end - with some sort of conflict going on. Ben shares his struggle with three obstacles: time, money and understanding the craft. His first published novel was a unique story about a vampire that gets saved and he talks about the challenge and value of the book. He helps us understand who can write flash fiction, and shares tip on how to try your ideas, write the story, and edit it to hold the finished story to 1000 words. We talk about the difference between short stories and flash fiction, and how writing flash fiction is a

Crystal Bowman was an early childhood educator who has written or coauthored over 100 children’s books, won awards, and sold millions of books. Here's Crystal Bowman's Show Note page with highlights, tips, and links to her books and websites. Crystal has fun writing mostly for preschool but has done books for early readers, and devotionals for older children. Her start came when she wrote lyrics for children’s piano music after which she wrote humorous poems for children. In this in-depth interview, Crystal provides insights into the challenges of writing to this audience. She shares about word counts per line and lines per page, the number of characters per line, spacing and punctuation, and the importance of following the publisher’s guidelines. We learn tips about getting published, fine-tuning your manuscripts, how to tell if your idea is worth doing, and more. There’s excellent information on the value of attending writers conferences. We talk about, after repeated rejections, whe

Wayne Kurtz has tagged himself as the Chief Goals Officer. He’s an ultra-distance triathlete who loves challenges and has turned his experiences into books. Here's the link to Wayne's Show Notes Page to show highlights, and links to his books, websites and social media connection.   Wayne understands writing, publishing, and the importance as a writer of establishing goals. Wayne learned to set goals in the first grade. He talks about taking what he calls, risk-failures, either in sports or in business as a personal challenge.An Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a 26.6 mile marathon. Wayne describes what triathlons and Ironman races are, and the double, triple, quintuple, and deca (10 times) races. Wayne has done even done a triple deca - 30 Ironman distances in 30 days! His focus comes out in this interview and it’s easy to see how he applies his goal setting, discipline, and focus to his writing. His first book came out of his journals of his training methods as others a

Penny Sansevieri has been helping authors market their books for over 16 years through her company Author Marketing Experts. Here's the link to the Show Notes page for Penny's interview with highlights and links to her websites, books, social media links, and more. Penny reminds us that book marketing is vastly different because of it’s nature - close to 4500 books are published every day in the U.S. So how are you going to stand out? She stresses that two of the biggest changes in the 16 years she’s done book marketing is the acceptance of self-published books and the rise of ebooks. She explains the difference between book marketing and book publicity. Her new 4th edition of Red Hot Internet Publicity gives readers a game plan for their book. Its sections cover social media, websites, and traffic - three core parts of a marketing strategy - and two bonuses. She shares her tips to get started with publicity as an author, and tips on how to find and work with a publicist, talking about everything

Ray stresses that in order to sell your products and services online, you must be able to write persuasive web copy. Here's the link to the Ray Edwards Show Notes page for show highlights, links to Ray's books, his website, podcast, and social medial connections. In this interview, Ray shares great effective tips for writers in all genres, why all writers must understand and use copywriting techniques, his writing process, and more. Ray's new book How to Write Copy That Sells provides a step-by-step, fill-in-the-blanks system for writing persuasive copy for websites, sales and promotions. Ray’s sales copy is amazingly effective – having sold an estimated $200 million in products and services over the last 5 years. Now he shows you how, step-by-step, you can use the same methods he does.  As a young boy, Ray Edwards was fascinated by the topics in newspapers like the National Enquirer, that he later found out were direct response copy ads. When he got into radio, he started writing ads for the

Alisa Hope Wagner is not your ordinary author. How many authors do you know that have been an MMA cage fighter? Here's the link to Alisa Hope Wagner's Show Notes page. She has written nonfiction and fiction, has books in two different series and stand alone titles. Her writing reflects her passion for fitness and faith, and bodybuilding, which led to a transformation from a Christian writer to fight in a mixed martial arts (MMA) cage for national television. Her driving passion is the imagination God gave her to create beauty for Him. As a junior in college she felt the call to write. After earning her Masters in English she taught in high school and junior college. She has several websites, including Granola Bar Devotional, which includes 366 devotionals and a Devo Workshop to teach people how to write devotionals. Alisa candidly talks about her MMA fight, the hardest thing she has done, and how that experience grew her faith. She holds certifications as a Certified Fitness Trainer and a Specialist in Fitnes

Terri Schneider is an author who loves nature and adventure. Here's the link to Terri's Show Notes page with episode highlights and links to Terri's books, website, and social media. Terri's an ultra-endrance athlete who started in triathlons and moved into mostly Ironman triathlon races as a professional athlete. Later she moved into the difficult multi-discipline sport of adventure racing, then ultrarunning and multi-day ultra races, and mountaineering. After writing two books about triathlons, she wrote Dirty Inspirations. Her goal in the book is to take readers inside her head in many of the extreme races she completed. Each chapter also looks at what it means to be human while doing the race - the gripping fears and struggles - and how much more we can learn about ourselves as we push our limits. What inspires her is when people tell her how hearing her stories have helped them try new things. She talks about how defining moments in life shape us. Terri talks about the struggles of writing Dirty Inspirat

James L Rubart writes contemporary fiction where fantastical things happen - novels that will challenge and inspire you to freedom. Here's the link to the Show Notes Page for James L Rubart. You will be amazed by James’ story of how his wife's fasting determined he was to write - to be a novelist - even though he had very little experience. He learned the craft by reading books and by trial and error. After a six-year process, his first book, Rooms, was done, at 148,000 words! You’ll cringe at his story of hearing from one editor and the editor’s in-your-face reaction, and how this affected his writing. His next step was going to the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference and then to a writing clinic by Cecil Murphey - both instrumental in his writing journey. An agent followed and Rooms became a best-seller. His admission on why he writes what he does is good advice for any writer. He encourages aspiring writers to ask the "What if?” sentence as they develop their writing ideas and s

Jennifer Slattery writes missional fiction and missional romance - gospel centered and mission or outreach focused. Here's the link to the Show Notes for Jennifer's interview. Jennifer's tagline is "broken lives saturated by grace." Her ah-ha moment when she knew writing was for her came while she was running. Then the more she wrote the more she discovered she loved it. She got her break in writing fiction in an unusual way - by entering writing contests - and doing well. Her journey to become published is strong and offers hope to struggling writers. Jennifer stresses the importance of remaining true to your brand and true to what God has called you to be. She walks listeners through the process of writing Intertwined, a novel about organ donation, a tough subject, and the extensive amount of research it took. In the interview she spends quite a bit of time talking about creating believable characters. Her characters are developed with help from her critique partners - often as many as nine people giving fe

In this powerful interview, Paula Wallace shares stories of overcoming trauma and abuse. Here is the link to Paula's Show Notes page of her interview about Bloom in the Dark. Paula was born to missionary parents in Peru. Raped at the age of five, Paula was caught in a cycle of damage and abuse, which lasted into her thirties. From sexual abuse to later mental, emotional and even spiritual abuse, Paula developed a victim mentality, which fueled decades of continued abuse. As a high school senior, she took a creative writing class in college and received an A in the class. Shortly after, she received an extreme critique, which caused her to stop writing for 25 years - believing she didn't have any writing talent. Paula wrote Bloom in the Dark by interviewing women who had suffered some kind of trauma or abuse. Then she turned the interviews into stories, poems, and letters of brokenness - about how those women had found hope and life and a new start. It's the story of the trauma and abuse in her life too.

Mark Young was a journalist who became a cop. All this gave him an excellent background to write novels laced with mystery and suspense. Here's the link to the Show Notes page for Mark Young's Interview with highlights and links to all his books and his favorite author and books on writing. Mark didn't start writing fiction until 2006. He has five books, with more on the way, and as he says, “I’m having fun.” As a kid, he enjoyed going to the library and checking out books. He ended up in the adult section where he read mystery and suspense and thrillers - reading those took him all over the world. He writes from his experiences in law enforcement. His five books are part of three different series so he won’t get bored writing in only one series. He initially resisted becoming an indie author, but finally released his first book in 2011. His writing process has changed and he shares how this has helped his writing. He gives straightforward advice for those who want to write mystery and

Miles Anthony Smith wrote his first book, Why Leadership Sucks, out of frustration and the challenges of his career in business. Here's the link to Miles' Show Notes page for highlights, links, and tips to his marketing ideas.  In this interview he talks about his experiences with senior leadership and the challenges of working with people - and why good leadership is important. Miles became a writer when he knew he had to write about leadership. He loves how a book and the creative process always comes together at the 11th hour. To help his writing process, he uses a dictation app on his smartphone. He now favors writing from an outline. Using ACX.com, he was able to get his book into Audible.com as an audio book, recording it in his closet. He also created a course from his nonfiction book in Udemy.com, and talks about the benefits to doing this. Both of these are examples of Mies’ work to get his writing and book discovered by more potential readers.