Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 31
November 11, 2019
Meet author Terra Ziporyn in this fabulous interview: “We should stop worrying about genres, reality, and imagination, and think instead about telling good stories.”
Meet my guest author Terra Ziporyn, fiction and non-fiction writer. When did you write your first book and how did it come about? It’s hard to answer this question because I’ve been writing “books” since I was a kid, and the trajectory of my fiction and non-fiction is very different. I guess I completed my […]
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November 4, 2019
What writers can learn from the composer Shostakovich
My husband and I recently attended a concert featuring the Shostakovich Violin Concerto #1 with soloist Christian Tetzlaff. The exhilarating performance is still reverberating within me, the work a stunning blend of instruments and tonal shifts. The opus also challenges any concert violinist to demonstrate his/her best relationship with his/her instrument and the score. Tezlaff not […]
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October 28, 2019
Why do people write?
It’s wonderful to be writing again after my daily commitment was severely interrupted by launching and marketing Freefall: A Divine Comedy. I’ve felt hollow during that time, as if something vital were missing from my daily diet. In fact, writing is as important to me as food. What is it about writing that is so necessary […]
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October 21, 2019
Book Marketing 101: Part Three
Though I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve discovered the value of doing readings while visiting in different locations. Usually, bookstores aren’t interested in having authors read at their venues unless that person has a following in the area. The conventional wisdom is that readings are more productive in areas where we have […]
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October 14, 2019
Book Marketing 101 (Part 2)
In my last blog, I promised to articulate what seemed to be the most helpful marketing tools in my next post. Here I am! I researched extensively, and continue to do so, potential readers and reviewers for my novels Fling!, Curva Peligrosa, and Freefall: A Divine Comedy on sites like The Blogger List and Book Reviewer Yellow […]
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October 7, 2019
Book Marketing 101
We writers are innocents in many ways, especially regarding the selling side of the publishing business. As long as we can stay in front of our computers, engaged in the dream world of our fictions, we don’t have to think of how these narratives will find their readers. Now that three of my novels have been […]
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September 30, 2019
What are the origins of fiction?
Whenever I give a talk or reading, someone in the audience asks where my stories come from. I find the answer more complex that what it would appear to be on the surface. What are my narrative seeds? What starts me on these explorations of others’ lives? One of my bios states “Lily sprouted on […]
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September 23, 2019
Giving Birth to a Fictional Character
This is the second anniversary of my novel Curva Peligrosa, and I want to celebrate it by discussing how I gave birth to it. The novel opens with a tornado that sweeps through the fictional town of Weed, Alberta, and drops a purple outhouse into its center. Drowsing and dreaming inside that structure is its owner, Curva Peligrosa—a […]
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September 16, 2019
A Writer’s Evolution
I’m standing on the street outside the Crescent Confectionary in Calgary, the city where I grew up. The place is lit from within. A couple sits at a table next to the window, eating. I feel like the little match girl, on the outside, looking into this place where I once worked. When I was […]
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September 9, 2019
Blind Drawing vs Blind Poetry
I recently read an article in the New York Times Magazine describing the author’s experience with blind contour drawing. The process involves looking at the subject and drawing its contours without looking at the paper. Instead of carefully rendered replicas, the drawer ends up with fascinating interpretations of what s/he is looking at. They may not […]
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