The other day, I wrote a post here on my website about getting ready for the coronavirus tsunami to hit. It’s much closer now but the world still resembles the one I always knew, except that today the toy store in our neighborhood is closed, as are the interior decoration boutique, the hair salon, and…
Category: Writing
Author Interview: Karen Hugg’s The Forgetting Flower
Karen Hugg writes literary mysteries inspired by plants, and she blogs about her passion for gardening, traveling, and books at http://www.karenhugg.com. She’s a fellow MFA graduate of Goddard College and she lives in the Seattle area, where we sometimes meet for tea and a spirited conversation about books, published or not. Karen’s latest novel is…
A Chapter from My Speculative Historical Novel
A chapter from my novel has been published in The Write Launch, Issue #16. I’d be happy to hear your opinions about it, as I always strive to improve my writing. Thank you for reading!
Honorable Mention in the 2018 SAWG Writing Contest
I have recently received an envelope in the mail with a diploma and a set of three critiques. The diploma read: Roxana Arama is hereby awarded Honorable Mention for All Those Monsters in the San Antonio Writers’ Guild 2018 Annual Writing Contest, category: short story.
Author Interview: James Emerson Loyd’s The Great War Won Trilogy
It’s early 1918 and the Great War has exhausted all the parties involved: from the Western Front, where resources are scarce, to the Eastern Front, where Russia has been engulfed in a bloody revolution. Having prevailed in the east, Germany could now try to crush France and Britain before the United States might intervene, or…
Finalist in the 2017 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards
Today I received two emails that begin with: Congratulations on being chosen as a finalist in the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards competition. We received 620 submissions, and competition was tough. Though not one of the three cash award winners, your work was on the finalists list in the fiction category. I entered the…
The Vale of Tears
I moved to the United States from Romania in 2001, and it took a family tragedy for me to understand that I cannot straddle the world and have two homes half a planet apart. Now that I’ve learned the limitations of living in the real world, where the laws of physics apply no matter what…
2017 PNWA Finalist
I recently received a phone call, followed by an email message that begins with: Dear Roxana Arama, Congratulations! You are a finalist in the 2017 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. You should be very proud as PNWA received close to Eight Hundred contest entries from all around the world. An agent or editor will…
The Madwoman and the Flypaper
First things first: being a fiction writer is, in my opinion, a type of fortunate madness, sanctioned by society, tolerated by family, where a lonely person locked in a room, hallucinating about figments of her imagination, playing god in a world of her own creation can claim to be a functional member of said society, and could…
Author Interview: Mindy Halleck on Remembered History
“I made the story complex because that’s how life is. It’s very complex. And in the middle of it, you laugh.” – Mindy Halleck Mindy Halleck is a Pacific Northwest novelist, short story writer, blogger and writing instructor. After her short story received Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest 76th Annual Competition Mainstream Literary Short…