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Simon & Schuster authors speak out on the topics that inspire them

A gossip queen dissecting politics? A political pundit musing about sports? A romance novelist waxing poetic on music? You read it here first... see what your favorite literary personalities have to say about life beyond books.

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How Do You Know?

By Marion Dane Bauer - January 16, 2013

“How do you know,” a reader asked, “when a picture book is right?” She was writing in response to my blog about my most recent failed attempt to write a Christmas picture book. In the blog I said that after two rather intense weeks of work, I had a picture book text that I loved, but even as I finished it I knew it didn't work. This reader came back to ask, reasonably...

By Tina Renton - January 15, 2013

This is my first posting on authors voices, I have read many other authors post's and was a little lost about what to write myself. So for now, I guess this is me saying hello to all you great people out there and thank you for taking the time to read about me and I hope you enjoy my book upon its release in January.

Stories to Transform Our Lives

By Carol Rivers - January 9, 2013

On December 19, 1843, Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ was published. The story is one of my favourites. Not just because of the seasonal plot line, heart-warming characters and cracking dialogue, but because the real essence of Christmas is conveyed with a delightful simplicity. The story is about a family and one wealthy but lonely and disillusioned man. We join...

A Surprising New Way of Writing

By Marion Dane Bauer - January 8, 2013

If necessity is the mother of invention, then perhaps disaster—even a relatively small one—is the mother of necessity. On a snowy Sunday, December 9th, I slipped on hidden ice, dislocated my elbow, and broke my rotator bone just below the elbow. That evening and in the days that followed I made a number of interesting discoveries. The first was that if you arrive at a...

CAPTURING ANGELS TO BE PUBLISHED IN PRINT IN THE UK

By V.C. Andrews - January 7, 2013

Capturing Angels will be released as a hard cover on April 15 in the UK and then as mass market this August in the UK!

By Marion Dane Bauer - January 3, 2013

Every morning, right around 6 a.m., I spring awake. I could stay in bed longer if I wanted to, but I'm done with sleep. I step across the hall to my study where there is just enough open space on the floor for my Pilates exercises and a bit of yoga. That done and my body beginning to unfurl, I settle in to meditate. Breathe. Breathe again. I'm not a particularly experienced...

A Happy Christmouse to All!

By Marion Dane Bauer - January 2, 2013

“We need a sweet Christmas story, and we know you can do sweet.” It was an editor on the phone, one I especially enjoy working with, and I found myself smiling. That the author of Killing Miss Kitty and Other Sins would be admired for her capacity to write sweet! I was charmed. So I wrote The Christmas Baby. It was sweet, and the book has been a success … probably in...

Writing into the "Golden Years"

By Marion Dane Bauer - December 12, 2012

The boy sat at his desk, his long legs splayed in front of him, his face twisted in disbelief. "What makes you think you can write for kids?" he asked. Well, no. He didn't say it quite that rudely, but that's exactly what he meant. He looked at the old lady standing in front of his high school class in creative writing—and I must have been twenty years younger then—and...

What about Branding?

By Marion Dane Bauer - December 12, 2012

Once you're published, you hear a lot these days about "branding," about getting settled into and known in a single genre. No one talked about branding when I came into the field forty years ago. But then my peers and I almost always started out under the guidance of a single editor, and that editor usually did his or her own shaping of our careers. If you succeeded with your...

By Gillian Royes - December 4, 2012

The elections are over and we all feel a release, even in the US territory of the Virgin Islands. The tension was almost unbearable, especially at the end, and everyone's prayer was that it would be over quickly. Not another 2000, Bush-Gore, hanging-chad debacle. Let's hope that the animosity that had started to crawl like scum over everything political will go away for...

ELLE Magazine's 2012 Nonfiction Book of the Year

By Terry Helwig - December 3, 2012

I am delighted that my memoir MOONLIGHT ON LINOLEUM is a 2012 Grand Prix Selection for ELLE Magazine's Nonfiction Book of the Year. Cloistered in my office writing (and re-writing) for the better part of two years, I hoped readers would identify with the universal themes of love, forgiveness, abandonment and redemption clothed in the particulars of my story and the lives of...

The Unglamorously Hard Work Part

By Marion Dane Bauer - November 28, 2012

In the last few weeks I’ve been talking about writing for the pure love of writing, not as a career, and then I turned to asking what it takes to make a career, beyond serendipity, which is usually one of the most important ingredients. Today, as promised, I’m going to talk about the unglamorously hard work required to make a living as a writer. It starts with all I’ve...

By Marion Dane Bauer - November 26, 2012

Last week I talked about what it takes to build a career as a writer. I discussed the importance of setting a writing schedule and keeping it. I said that it is essential to learn to revise and to get the kind of input that tells you what kinds of revisions will be useful. And then I marched straight on into the deepest secret of every successful writer . . . serendipity. No...

So You Want to Write for a Living

By Marion Dane Bauer - November 14, 2012

Last week I talked about the benefits of writing for your own deep pleasure, not having to depend on this uncertain craft to have a warm bed at night and food in your belly. And as disingenuous as that sounds, coming from someone who is a career writer, I do remember from my own early years the pure joy of writing simply because I loved to write. But I also remember yearning for...

A Visit with a Book Group

By Jeannie Mobley - November 8, 2012

A couple weeks ago, I got to meet with a book group for the first time. They first contacted me a month earlier. They went to the library to get a suggestion for the next book to read, and the librarian not only pointed out my book, but told them I was local and might come talk to them. Thank goodness for libraries and great librarians! The thing about being a writer, is...

Writing for Money

By Marion Dane Bauer - November 7, 2012

One of my editors said to me recently, “I tried to support myself with my writing once. The whole endeavor lasted for about a day and a half and scared me to death.” I am one of the privileged ones. I do support myself with my writing. I no longer even supplement my income by teaching on the side, something I did for forty years. Nor do I supplement my income by speaking in...

October and A Sister's Shame

By Carol Rivers - November 6, 2012

October 2012 is publication month for my new 1930's novel, "A Sister's Shame". My stories are always peppered with gritty and often dangerous situations and this book is no exception. Just as today, my historical heroines must use a great deal of emotional energy and courage to try to resolve their desperate predicaments. In "A Sister's Shame" twins Marie and Vesta Haskins,...

A Search for God

By Marion Dane Bauer - November 2, 2012

I talked last week about the years I spent plumbing novels for scraps of ideas about God. What I found in church and discovered through reading more traditionally theological sources was too expected, too much cloaked in arcane language, too certain of itself. I needed questions that didn’t come with ready-made answers. And so I turned to novelists, the creative minds that...

The Forbidden Topic ... Religion

By Marion Dane Bauer - October 24, 2012

Last week I took on same-sex marriage. While I’m on a roll, I might as well talk about religion, too. There aren’t many topics forbidden to those who write for young people these days. Especially if the audience is defined as young adult, writers can take on sex, violence, racism, social taboos, war . . . you name it. And sometimes we can even tiptoe into religion. Religion...

Presidential Debates

By Gillian Royes - October 23, 2012

While watching – leaning forward, biting fingernails – the recent presidential debates, it occurred to me that what this tradition had become was an aristocratic boxing match. Maybe society, I pondered for days after the second debate, had found another way to separate the haves from the have nots. Physical boxing seems to be considered fitting for those with less income...

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