Susanne Dunlap's Blog, page 4

Low-flying Planes and Memory

My mother died on December 15, 2000. Thats a long time ago. So why do I find myself thinking of her more during this bizarre period of isolation and fear? We were never close. I never referred to her as my best friend, as so many do in their Mothers Day Facebook posts. In fact, for much of her life, we werent friends at all.

A Memory Echoing Across Time

I think, actually, these sudden recollections of my mother have to do not with the pandemic, but with 9/11another domestic tragedy I have...

Why I Write Young Adult Historical Fiction

I’ll be honest: my young adult historical fiction has mostly had lackluster sales. In fact, after my editor left my YA publisher, no one seemed very interested in continuing to work with me. So at that point I returned to writing adult historical fiction—which I still do.

Funny that even in my adult books my heroines are usually only just adults. Something about being poised at the beginning of life is irresistible to my creative brain.

Perhaps that’s why I keep coming back. Because young...

It’s been a while…And now I’m full-time with writing!

Yes, I’ve been very, very busy with bookish things. Full-time busy. And I’m all over the place. Literally. But you can find me! And I’m still here too.

Find information about my latest books here. Seemore about my 13th-century trilogy here. Want to come to one of the workshops I teach? You’ll find that infohere. And aspiring writers can explore my book coaching and editing serviceshere.

Why all the diverse activity?

I’m very pleased to announce that I am now full-time engaged with books and...

Mother Goose and Show Don’t Tell

Many books and blog posts have been written about “show don’t tell.” I’m not going to pontificate about it here. As most writers understand, there’s a place for both in a novel.

What I want to talk about here is what that phrase actually means. I want to illustrate what it entails for those places where we definitely want to show. These include action scenes, turning-point scenes, revelation scenes and so forth.

Enter Mother Goose

Before I get started, I must first acknowledge that this idea came from a lesso...

My answer to “The Article”

By now most writers who follow articles about writing on Medium.com (and many who don’t) have read and freaked out about “The Article:” “How to Lose a Third of a Million Dollars without Really Trying.” I waited to read it because I was afraid. Would it caution against what I was doing right now? Would it warn me not to spend money on indie publishing and share horror stories of the same?

It turns out, “The Article” was about mainstream publishing, and the hazards of their system of giving big...

Trilogy and Series Craft Notes

There’s no denying the appeal to readers of a series or a trilogy. When I think about it, I realize that I truly fell in love with reading because of a series—Nancy Drew, of course! As a young reader, I loved getting to know Nancy and her friends, watching her get into adventures, solve mysteries, and live to fight another day. I felt as though I knew Nancy. she was my friend. I even wrote a letter to Carolyn Keene  asking when the next Nancy Drew mystery was coming out. Little did I know the...

I’m Open for Business as an Editor

Sometimes life pushes you onto a path you didn’t expect. Writing full time and hanging out a shingle as a freelance editor and ghostwriter isn’t what I thought I’d be doing at the moment. I thought that would be about six years off for me. But…

My editor site is ready!

I have created a separate “identity” as editor, as much to keep my own mind straight as anything else. I plan to post writing tips and link to good articles about writing craft. The Susanne Dunlap Edits site is e-commerce and u...

What I learned by attending BookCon

I’d never been to BookCon before. The book conferences I’ve attended only include BookExpo America (about 10 years ago), which is really a trade conference, and a few Historical Novel Society conferences. At the latter, I sat on panels and hobnobbed with my amazing historical novelist friends At the former, I wandered around dazed, sporting a badge provided by my publisher, getting free books autographed by the big authors with books coming out in the fall of the same year.

BookCon was differ...

The Publishing Rollercoaster

I see on quick glance that my blog is saturated with images of Listen to the Wind, my book that just came out. So I’ll give you a different image, one that feels very much the way I feel right now: as if I’m on a perpetual rollercoaster. It’s not just the usual highs and lows of life. It goes beyond the performance anxiety of work or the feeling of a task well done. I wonder if it’s a pathology: Book Launch Disorder? It sounds frivolous, but for many authors, it can be close to debilitating.

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Release Day for LISTEN TO THE WIND!

It’s been seven years since I had a book published. Fourteen years since I started writing Listen to the Wind. It makes me so happy to have a book coming out again, and so far, the pre-release reception has been great. Here’s hoping release day goes well too! It’s always a nail-biter: will people buy the book? Will it get any attention? Will readers write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads? They’re so important to authors.

And don’t forget, sign up for my e-mail list today and you could win a fr...