Tag: fiction

My Most Difficult Subject Yet

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about death and dying.

Mostly it’s because I’m starting a new romance novel that features a character who is a death doula (cue the jokes and the confusion about writing a romance novel around death, haha!). But I suppose it’s also because I’m in the latter half of my own life now and have elderly parents and in-laws, and so it seems like the right time to delve into this great and final mystery. Plus, I like to challenge my writer’s self with unusual topics.

There is another reason, too. Frankly, I’m a bit haunted.

A former colleague and friend died more than three years ago after a very sudden and short terminal cancer diagnosis. He was only in his early 50s, with two teenagers at home and a wife who was battling her own health issues. He didn’t want to go, understandably so. In the short time he had remaining after his diagnosis, he could not come to terms with his own dying. He became depressed. He cheated himself out of talking about it, of comforting his family, of allowing himself to be comforted, and of coming to some kind of peace with how his life was going to end. Things progressed so quickly, that my goodbye had to be in the form of an email that was read out loud to him. Read more

Hail to the Badass Romance Writer

Tracey Richardson 2 Comments

I don’t typically write about politics in this space because this space is reserved for reflecting on writing and books (and I will talk about writing and books, in a moment, honestly). But in light of the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, well, how can we not talk politics?

More specifically, I want to talk about the badass romance writer who may well have saved America.

Have I got you scratching your head, wondering what the hell a romance writer has to do with the current worrisome state of affairs in America? Well, scratch no more, because I’m talking about Georgia’s Stacey Abrams.

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How Are You Going to Write About 2020?

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

I don’t have to tell you that 2020 has been a poop sandwich.

The world wide pandemic, a political and social disintegration for our neighbours to the south thanks to Trumpism, a record year for hurricanes and devastating wildfires. It’s a long and unforgettable list in a long and unforgettable year.

If you’re a fiction writer, it’s a dream year in terms of material. I mean, EVERYTHING is happening. Peoples’ lives have changed dramatically. Our daily life is perhaps forever altered in some very meaningful ways. Read more

A Writing Place of My Own

Donna Judy Curtin 1 Comment

     Before Covid-19 hit, one of my favourite writing spots was the local café. I loved seeing friends and neighbours, watching people chat and order their coffee, while I wrote. I have this unique skill, this ability to ignore everything around me and get fully engrossed in my own made up world. I took pride that some of my scenes were so engaging, I could disregard the rest of the world and fully immerse myself. I remember these times fondly.

Since March, with the cafés closed and my writing space stolen, I’ve been displaced. I’m nothing if not persistent and so I took to writing at home. The best time was early in the morning, before my family arose. I would claim the couch in the living room, coffee in hand, doing my best to shoo away the cats and dogs vying for my attention. This was heavenly, until my teenage children woke. Then they invaded, turning on the television, complaining about missing laundry and overall… just being their noisy selves, so I would stop writing.

This summer, my teenage son decided to move downstairs, leaving his bedroom upstairs empty. So… I’ve begun to dream of a writing space. Read more

Writing In The Time of Covid

Tracey Richardson 2 Comments

I’m not sure if I’ve spoken much about my “writing break” in this space, but like we hear with Covid-19 jargon, I think I flattened the curve of writers block-itis and am on the downside of the peak.

When I finished writing my last novel in the summer of 2019 (“Thursday Afternoons” by Bella Books), I hung up my keyboard for an indeterminate amount of time. The old “TBA” as to when I would start writing fiction again. I just…lost it. The drive, the inspiration, the energy. I felt like I still knew how to write; it was more a matter of feeling I had nothing to say. Read more

One Writer on Vacation

Diane Ferguson 2 Comments
Varadero, Cuba

There’s nothing better than lying on a warm beach with a good book and your bathing suit on. A rare treat in the midst of a cold Canadian winter. I just returned from Cuba where we had days filled with sunshine, crystal clear waters and some of the best reading I’ve done in a long time.

To have that kind of time and space for reading was something I wasn’t even sure I could manage anymore. There’s alwasy so much that needs to be done at home, my days of reading for hours seemed long ago. At night, I’d be a few pages in and falling asleep.

And I couldn’t imagine a week of vacation without some writing in there, but I didn’t want to bring a laptop. So I took my fountain pen, my spiral-bound notebook and Sarah Selecky’s deck of writing prompts and Robert Olen Butler’s book on writing: From where you Dream.

But my biggest writing lesson was falling back in love with reading. Here’s my reading list and how I saw these novel’s from a writer’s perspective, in the order I read them:

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Writing what you don’t know? No problem!

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

I’m a fan of reading medical romances, but for a long time, as a writer of romance novels, I was too scared to attempt to write one. Too intimidated, more like.

There are medical professionals with more than enough street cred out there writing successful medical romances. So why should I attempt writing them when I’m not a doctor, nurse, paramedic or even an employee at a hospital? I mean, isn’t it a bit “fraudulent” to write these kinds of novels when you’re not “one of them”?

Well, my answer is an emphatic no to that last question, since I’ve now written four medical romance novels (including two that were finalists for the Lambda Literary awards…the most prestigious award for LGBTQ books in the world). Read more

Biographies and their important lessons

Tracey Richardson Leave a comment

For a fiction writer, I’ve been spending an awful lot of time lately reading biographies.

First it was Sally Field’s autobiography In Pieces. Now I’m almost finished reading Julie Andrews’ second book in her autobiographical trilogy, called Home Work. Next in my reading pile is a brand new biography of Janis Joplin, called simply, Janis.

I’m not sure why I’m on this little non-fic reading kick. I like to read a biography or two a year, but three in a row? Not typically. Nevertheless, as a writer who enjoys focusing on character development, reading biographies and memoirs provides a tremendous resource for learning about other people’s lives straight from the horse’s mouth. They’re also invaluable for researching a character you might write in the future.

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