A Writer's Moment: 'Actually living in a book'

A Writer's Moment: 'Actually living in a book':   “Write like it matters, and it will.” –  Libba Bray   Born Martha Elizabeth Bray in Alabama on this date in 1964, “Libba” grew up in ...

'Actually living in a book'

 

“Write like it matters, and it will.” – Libba Bray

 

Born Martha Elizabeth Bray in Alabama on this date in 1964, “Libba” grew up in Texas and now makes her home in New York City where she went to work as a book publicist and advertising specialist after studying at the University of Texas.  After working on behalf of other people’s books for several years she dived into the writing pool herself and became a best-selling author right from the start.

 

Her first novel, 2003’s A Great and Terrible Beauty – the first in the “Gemma Doyle Trilogy” – not only was a New York Times bestseller but a Book Standard's Teen Book Video Awards winner.   Bray also won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award, recognizing literary excellence in Young Adult literature, for her book Going Bovine.  She has now authored 10 novels – including 2025’s Under the Stars – and numerous short stories.

 

“I was a big reader as a kid,” she said.  “It was Charlotte's Web that showed me you could feel as if you were actually living inside a book.”

A Writer's Moment: Rallying emotions for writing success

A Writer's Moment: Rallying emotions for writing success:   “If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.” – Joh...

Rallying emotions for writing success

 

“If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.” – Johanna Lindsey

 

Born in Frankfurt, West Germany on this date in 1952, Lindsey literally owned the title “Queen of American historical romance writers” for nearly 40 years.  All of her 56 books reached the New York Times bestseller list and many were number one, including her 2016 award winner, Make Me Love You, and her humorous and passionate Temptation’s Darling, published in 2019 shortly before her death from cancer.  Translated into numerous languages, her books have sold over 60 million copies.

 

Raised in a military family, Lindsey said she had the usual “Army Brat” experiences, including numerous moves before settling in Hawaii in 1964, where she married, raised a family and lived until 1994 before relocating to New England, where she was living at the time of her death.

 

Lindsey began writing in 1977, doing her first book Captive Bride “on a whim.”  She set her passionate tales in many locales, including the Caribbean, the Barbary Coast, Medieval England, Viking-era Norway, the19th-century American West, and even a sci-fi locale – the planet Kystran.   She often produced two books a year. 

 

 “Biding time is easy,” she explained, “and gets you nowhere.”

A Writer's Moment: Tackling challenges 'all for the good'

A Writer's Moment: Tackling challenges 'all for the good':   “The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me se...

Tackling challenges 'all for the good'

 

“The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me seem like a form of madness. I'm also interested in the way landscape shapes individuals and populations, and from that, cultures.” - Rick Bass

 

Born in Fort Worth, TX on March 7, 1958, Bass is the son of a geologist and was a petroleum geologist himself until he started writing short stories on his lunch breaks.  That led to him to an award-winning career as both a writer and environmental activist.  Now a resident of the remote Yaak Valley in Montana, his books, stories and essays are distributed worldwide, and he also is a nationally known speaker on environmental issues.   

 

Among Bass’s more than two dozen books are the award-winning Where the Sea Used to Be; his short story collection The Lives of Rocks; and the autobiographical Why I Came West.  Among his many other prizes are the General Electric Younger Writers Award, a PEN/Nelson Algren Special Citation for Fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He writes both fiction and nonfiction, and his latest book is the nonfiction Wrecking Ball: Race, Friendship, God, and Football, published in 2025.

When asked about writing fiction versus nonfiction, he said, “I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. . . A novel that features real people is complicated, but in the end, that extra challenge is all for the good.”

A Writer's Moment: Those 'moments in time'

A Writer's Moment: Those 'moments in time':   “It's hard to write haiku. I mostly write long, silly Indian poems .” – Jack Kerouac   That having been said, Kerouac – born in Ma...