Tag: creativity

Inside the Writer's Studio with Lee Fullbright

This week we have the pleasure of hearing from Lee Fullbright, author of The Angry Woman Suite. I’ve started the book and it’s an ambitious family epic told from the perspective of various characters, male and female, at a variety of times in their lives. Let’s hear how and why Lee started her journey to tell us this multi-generational story.

 

 

Lee Fullbright

 

1. Try to describe your book in one sentence.

 The Angry Woman Suite is literary suspense, about the fallout of an unsolved celebrity double murder in the early 1900s and the ensuing fallout on three generations of one Pennsylvania family.

 

2. How would your friends describe you in 20 words or less?

Intense but also fun. Completely inflexible about commitments, but spontaneous within scheduled free time. Soft but tough. Loves dogs.   

 

3. Did you have support at the beginning and/or during your writing?

Absolutely—my husband, the most brilliant, curious, low-key, patient man ever. He always believed I was best of the best, and I always wondered what he’d been drinking. He loved listening to stories about “the story”—what would become The Angry Woman Suite. I wrote almost ‘round the clock after he was diagnosed with a brain disease. By the time I finished the novel, he was no longer able to read, but when the first bound copy arrived, just before his passing this past May, he could hold the book and he knew what it was and he whispered, “Good work, kid.” He was happy.

 

4. Do you ever read reviews written about your book?

 Every single one of them, and I print them out and put them in a binder because that’s what over-the-top intense people do. 


5. Do you write at a laptop/desktop or do you write freehand?

 Hunched over a desktop.

 

 

Novel Publicity Blog Tour Notes

 

Wanna win a $50 gift card or an autographed copy of The Angry Woman Suite? Well, there are two ways to enter…

  1. Leave a comment on my blog. One random commenter during this tour will win a $50 gift card. For the full list of participating blogs, visit the official Angry Woman Suite tour page.
  2. Enter the Rafflecopter contest! I’ve posted the contest form below, or you can enter on the tour page linked above.

About the author:

Lee Fullbright is a fourth-generation Californian, raised and educated in San Diego. She is a medical practice consultant and lives on San Diego’s beautiful peninsula with her twelve-year-old Australian cattle dog, Baby Rae. The Angry Woman Suite, a Kirkus Critics’ Pick and Discovery Award winner, is her debut novel. Connect with Lee on her website, Facebook, Twitter, or GoodReads.

Get The Angry Woman Suite on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Inside the Writer's Studio with Brian D. Anderson

A hectic week around here as it’s the Eid al Fitr holiday (end of the Muslim month of fasting) and so the city came alive after thirty days of closed restaurants during sunlight and a family trip away before school starts for the fall semester.

Brian and Johnathan

That doesn’t mean though that writing is far from my mind! Sometimes the best way to improve your writing is to take a break, read the work of others, and take in their experiences. With this in mind, I’m happy to host Brian Anderson in the studio because his book is a family project.

Brian D. Anderson grew up in the small town of Spanish Fort. He attended Fairhope High, then later Springhill College where his love for fantasy grew into a lifelong obsession. His son, Jonathan Anderson’s creative spirit became evident by the age of three when he told his first original story. In 2010 he came up with the concept for The Godling Chronicles that grew into an exciting collaboration between father and son.

1. What is your one piece of must know advice for aspiring writers?
That they don’t have to be Hemingway or Tolkien to be a good writer. Every professionally released book you’ve ever read was not to sole product of the author. We have a army of talent behind us helping us put it together. From the proof readers to the editors, they turn our rough work into a polished novel. I think that too many aspiring writers get discouraged because they look at their own work and think it’s “not good enough”. Of course it’s not. At least not until the other people you need to have involved get their hands on it. Remember that, and tell the best story you can.
2. Is there an unforgettable lesson you learned from writing this book you wouldn’t know otherwise about fiction?
That I become entirely too involved with my characters. I didn’t realize that I had the capacity to have genuine feelings for fictional characters. Sadly, it’s too late to do anything about it. But, I suppose it’s for the best. It helps me make them more believable.
3. Any challenges for you as you wrote and published this book?
There are always challenges. But the biggest challenge is patience. Once your work becomes a finished product, you want it out there. You want to share it with everyone. It’s so very hard to wait for all the proper wheels to turn. The little kid in you really comes out.
4. How would you start your next project?
I’ve already completed The Godling Chronicles-Book Two:Of Gods and Elves, and it’s currently in editing. I’m in the process of writing book three. It’s taking more time to write than that other two; mainly because the story has grown so much.
 
5. Anything else you want to readers to know?
What can I tell a reader? They read, and to me that is wonderful. I am just honored that they choose to read my work, and I hope they continue to enjoy reading about Gewey, Lee, Kaylia, and the rest of the cast of characters as much as I enjoy writing about them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Why Stand Up Comedy Isn't My Worst Nightmare

Books about Humour and Stand Up Comedy 03
Books about Humour and Stand Up Comedy 03 (Photo credit: Julie70)

When people hear I perform standup comedy, they generally have the one reaction:   whether male or female, eyes wide, “I could never do that,” the speaker usually says, giving me the once over as if seeing me in my material form for the first time. Since fear of public speaking rates higher than fear of dying, I seems to have superhero powers when I say I regularly get up in front of people and try to make them laugh. “My worst nightmare,” someone said with a shudder last week when I mentioned I had a show.

For me standup comedy is a monthly reminder that as a creative person, I have to be willing to put myself out there, much the same way I do each time I publish a book. But since I’ve got quite a few titles to my name now, the vulnerability I might feel publishing has diminished (not to say that it ever entirely goes away). Creatives are kind of like thrill seekers: We have to keep searching for the next thing that will keep us creating in order not to fall into stale, repetitive patterns.

When I started keeping this blog, I of course began work on an expat memoir – that genre that is almost as ubiquitous as the Novel – about my experiences living in Qatar as a South Asian American woman. I contemplate a lot in the articles about race, class and gender through the everyday things that happen to me in a fairly serious tone. When it came time to stand up for my first routine (in support of the only other female comic in the city at the time) I stripped away the social commentary from these incidents and told them as they happened.

The audience’s reaction was electrifying to me: they laughed! They saw the irony from my perspective and I was hooked by the unsettling feeling of nervousness I felt in the moments before going on stage. I teach five classes a week to undergraduate students: in a way my life is standup comedy. You have to be quick on the uptake, lively, upbeat — if you want to keep them from outright doodling or texting during class.

See what you think of one of my sets during last week’s show, where I talk about being an Indian with an American accent.

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