Creative Writing Archives - Page 3 of 55 - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

Book Review * Saints of Swallow Hill by Donna Everhart

5 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

Donna Everhart knows how to capture the heart and mind of her reader from (practically) the first page. Del and Rae Lynn couldn’t be two more different personalities, but the reader quickly empathizes or feels some affection (in the case of Dell) early on. While Donna has her own unique voice she did remind me, at times, of a blended flavor reminiscent of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker, and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. Lofty company, in my opinion.

If you had told this reviewer she would be reading about ‘turpentiners’ next, I would have said, “Say what?”
It’s a fascinating, exciting story set during the Great Depression. Desperate people using any idea just to survive with literally the shirt on their back and little else.

If you don’t read another book this year, be certain you read Saints of Swallow Hill. I highly recommend it!

Coming soon! An Interview with Donna Everhart!

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To receive my weekly posts, sign up On the home page. Enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim, August: Donna Everhart

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COMINGSOON!

Interview with author, Laila Ibrahim part #2

Q. What first inspired you to write? (con’t.)

LI. …… I thought to myself, of course, he does. She was his primary attachment figure. Our self-identity if formed by those early attachments. And in a flash, I thought of Lisbeth in Mattie’s arms. I wondered what it would be like for her to love this woman like a mother and then be expected to reject Mattie’s humanity to take her place in society. Then I wondered what it would be like for Mattie to have to leave her child to care for another baby. Finally, I wondered about Anne. I thought Anne would be a bigger presence when I started the novel.

Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?

LI. The characters.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

LI. Absolutely. Sometimes I feel like I am dreaming out loud as a write. I feel and see a scene and then my job is to describe it.

Q. What compelled you to choose and settle on the genre you now write in?

LI. I feel like I was given the story of these women and I’m just going from there. Part of what I am working on is understanding how we got to this moment in time, given the history of our nation and world. I think about the caste system baked into the constitution of the United States that gave wealthy, white, Christian able-bodied straight men the most rights—and yet the founders wrote a document that would one day include me as a citizen. I’m grateful to all the people who came before me who worked so that I could have the rights that I do. I don’t take my freedom for granted in any way.

Q. Are you working on something now or have a new release coming up? If so tell us about it.

LI. Cherry Blossoms in set in Oakland and Berkley between 1941 and 1946. Kay Lynn is a young woman with two children whose life is torn apart by World War 2. It is expected to be released in May 2023.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

LI. For my 40th birthday I challenged myself to start writing Yellow Crocus after the story had haunted me for 7 years. Five years later I self published it. It got picked up by Lake Union of Amazon Publishing in 2014 and I haven’t looked back. I’ve published five books since then with the sixth expected out in May 2023,

Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?

LI. Not in my lifetime—too many people my age love to turn actual pages. Maybe in my children’s life time. Or my grandchildren’s.

Q. What makes a writer great?

LI. I don’t know that I am qualified to answer this in a general way. I know many people for whom the language or poetry of writing is what makes you a great writer. I like writing that makes me feel something and learn more about the human condition. For that reason I like writers who are both honest and vulnerable.

Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

LI. I start with knowing my main character(s) and a general time frame. Then I read the newspapers from that time until I find historical

events which give me momentum for a plot. I meditate on the characters, family members and the society and an outline starts to fall into place. I do a solid outline and from there I write. Ideally I have a contract for a book or two from the outline. I notice that most of the time I stick to the outline for the first ⅔ and return to it for the ending. But towards the ending it changes depending on what I’ve actually written. My first drafts are more like a screen play than a book. It’s lots of dialogue. For later drafts I layer in setting and reflection.

Q. How have your life experiences influenced your writing?

LI. My values and education show up in my stories. I’m called to write about the details of mothering in difficult situations.

Q. What’s your downtime look like?

LI. I love my evenings when I watch tv with my wife. Hazel goes between us on the couches and I work on a jigsaw puzzle. It’s a very relaxing way to end my day. I enjoy gardening and walking with friends in the afternoons. We attend the Unitarian Church on most Sundays.

Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre?

LI. Picture books are compelling to me. I was a preschool teacher/early childhood educator for decades. I thought of several stories then and sometimes I wonder about getting them onto the page.

Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)

LI. Not only is it okay to make mistakes, it is an important part of learning and being a conscious being. I want to grow and learn throughout my life. I often circle back to reflect on earlier parts of my life to think about them with my current understanding.

Did you miss the beginning of this delightful interview? Click here
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Book Review ** Kindergarten at 60

This is a delightful narrative about a long-married couple, safe, comfortable, and settled in their ways. They’ve both sort of retired. They still teach. Then one day they step way…way…way…WAY out of their comfort zone. THAILAND.

They finally arrive, after a laborious trip through red tape, to a far-flung Providence. They have anticipated that they would still teach in the age group that they have so much experience in…teens to young adults.

For years the author, Dian Seidel has been teaching English as a second language, and Iyengar yoga in the US. Sounds like one of the most adventurous things she does is open ocean swimming.’ Adventuresome’ at least in this writer’s mind. It would scare me to death!

My only critique is that the author spent way too much paper on the bureaucratic and endless paperwork to get into Thailand. I don’t think the reader particularly cares for a blow-by-blow description of each hurdle. A couple of paragraphs would have covered it. We got it!

I would have liked to have seen more pages dedicated to the family lives of some of the students. That would have made for good reading!

I would recommend this book kto my readers. It was charming.
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Much Anticipated Interview with Laila Ibrahim

Luca is the Frenchie. The mini Aussie is named Hazel

Laila Ibrahim grew up in Whittier California. She has lived in Oakland and Berkeley for 40 years, when she moved there to go to Mills College where she studied Human Development and attachment theory. Since 1993 Laila and her wife have lived in a small co-housing community with two other families. Her adult children are a great joy, as is her dog, a toy Australian Shepherd named Hazel. She is beyond excited to welcome her first grandchild in July.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, or special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ workspace.

LI. Since my last child moved out I have had a room of my own to write it. I LOVE it. It’s in the back of the house with a view of a beautiful redwood tree. Before that I worked at the dining room table when my kids were at school or a small desk sandwiched in the living room.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat workspace, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, a glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

LI. I don’t get dressed before I write. I usually make myself a cup of rooibos chai tea. I generally write for 45 minutes to an hour. Take a break. And then do it again. I can’t usually write for more than 3 hours in a day.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

LI. I often write my very drafty, first drafts in bed, in a half dream state.

Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?

LI. I write on a lap top, though I have used a full size external keyboard at times.

Q. Do you have pets? Tell us about them and their names.

LI. My toy Aussie, Hazel Nut Ibrahim-Bartley, often sits by my desk as I write. She’s 18 months olold and we LOVE her. She enjoys laying on our legs, playing fetch and running in big wide circle on grass.

Q. Do you enjoy writing in other forms (playwriting, poetry, short stories, etc.)?
If yes, tell us about it.

LI. I enjoy making visual art, but not other forms of writing, so far. Though when COVID first struck I wrote a poem for the first (and so far only) time.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

LI. Create routines that work for you, and know why you are writing in the first place. I find if I’m sitting at my keyboard and nothing is coming out then I’m not working on the right story for me.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?

LI. With the Yellow Crocus series, I am continuing with the descendants of the characters in the first book. With the other two, Living Right and Paper Wife, it was a mystery. In many ways all my characters are parts of who I am, or who I wish I aspire be.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

LI. I was very surprised when I got the call to write a story. In 1998 I had a flash that conceived Yellow Crocus. Before that flash, I had no desire to write fiction. I was with a group of people talking about Tiger Woods. Someone mentioned the fact that he identifies as Asian as much as African American….

Join us for part two of this interview with this wonderful writer on June 16th
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivation for the Writer! #26

Writers, we are all guilty of using particular words or phrases far too frequently!!

I was recently reading a delightful series by an author but it was very distracting when she used the same phrase over and over.
“Custom glass workroom”. The shop where the story takes place is just four rooms so it is my opinion that:

1] the author needed to change it up; There is an office, a retail room, a classroom and a custom workshop. Just a little chance would make all the difference. For example: ‘the workroom’ and ‘the workshop’ and ‘the specialty glass room’.

2]readers are smart and we should never underestimate their ability to follow along. If they can’t then we, as the writers, have failed at our job.
3] If we miss our idiosyncrasies, and we all have them, then the editor, beta reader, proofreader, etc., should catch it.

My most common ones are the words, ‘just’ and ‘that’. My watchdog, first defense, is to use Word’s ‘find’. Then I review the manuscript looking for when I overuse the words and why.

“There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.” Anthony Trollope

“All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.” P.D. James

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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard. May: Victoria Costello. June: Laila Ibrahim

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Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom ~~ Review

4 out of 5 stars ~~ Book Review

A much-awaited novel by Kathleen Grissom, who is well known and touted for her two previous books, The Kitchen House and Glory Over Everything. While she never mis-stepped when writing the latter and, as far as I could tell, got it mostly, if not entirely right, there were a few things that made me itch to correct her while reading Crow Mary. Maybe I’m overly sensitive as I myself lived on tribal lands (Makah Nation) as a young woman for over two years in Neah Bay, Washington. (Pacific NW.)

I had a problem with several nation lineage issues regarding Crow Mary’s knowledge of her own people. Wouldn’t Mary mention that the Crow People were originally a minor subset of the Sioux Nation and now were at war? The Crow had migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Dakotas and Montana. Know that in spite of the fact that the Sioux were now an enemy of the Crow People?

Secondly, Nakoda is spelled in the book with a ‘D’ when the correct spelling and the most commonly used name is Nakota with an ‘t’.

Mary is a proud Crow woman who really doesn’t take any guff off of any man, native or white. Yet she refers to herself and to her tribe as “Indians”, a derogatory term invented by the white man. I don’t know of any written history of where the People in question thought or spoke of themselves as “Indian”. I think the author also missed an opportunity to weave in Mary’s nation’s full name that the white man bastardized it to simply, “Crow”.

Please don’t misunderstand, this is a really, really good story, and maybe the average reader wouldn’t pick up on any of the things that bothered me but be that as it may…..I could not give the book the resounding 5 stars that I had anticipated doing.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t read the prologue. It’s a clear indication of how the book ends. (or one of the endings) Within the book itself once I read of the practice of the ‘wolfers’ using strychnine when trapping, I thought I knew how the book would end and that spoiled it for me somewhat.

Did you miss my interview with Kathleen Grissom?
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Interview with Victoria Costello (conclusion)

Q. Are you working on something now or have a new release coming up?

VC. My new book comes out on June 13, 2023, and I couldn’t be more excited to bring it to readers. As mentioned, it evolved from the true story of my tragedy-plagued Irish American family I told in A Lethal Inheritance, but with me giving myself permission to ask, What if? What if the youngest family members dared to confront and reverse this legacy of violence and madness? The result is Orchid Child, a mix of history and fantasy inspired by Celtic folklore, along with science, and bits of mystery and romance. It’s a story told in three voices, one per generation, over a century.
Teague is the novel’s orchid child, who hears voices and talks to trees, but rarely people. Bullied back home in New York, he finds validation when his Aunt Kate takes him to West Ireland, where neo-Druids identify his strange perceptions as the gift of second sight, putting Teague at odds with Kate who sees his mental differences as a medical problem to be fixed.

Kate is the family success story, whose rising star in neuroscience has crashed in a sex scandal. She vows to salvage her career by taking on a study on the epigenetics of family mental illness in a rural Irish county. Only to discover she’s unknowingly come to her ancestral homeland, meaning she’s studying her own genes. As Kate’s research is blocked by hostile locals, Teague drifts further into his pagan fellowship, pushing Kate to confront the limits of science and the power of ancestral ties. Ellen is the apothecary’s daughter who will become Kate’s grandmother. Forced to flee Ireland for New York City after her beloved, also a holder of second sight, is accused of betrayal in the 1920 Irish Rebellion, Ellen lives to her eighties as the matriarch who struggles with the burden she’s accepted to keep the gift alive—until the family wound, past and present, can be healed.
I’m feeling gratified by the early positive reviews, the feeling that the story you’ve slaved over for ten years, is touching people, making them think and have hope when times are tough.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

VC. A weird thing about me is that even as a kid, when I kept a diary, or scribbled poems, I always took my writing seriously. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m a Scorpio and writing has always been my secret life. And that’s probably why it took until this year, when I’ve just turned seventy, to share my most secret story with actual readers around the world.

Q. Do you think we will see, in our lifetime, the total demise of paper books?

VC. I, for one, love paper books, especially hard cover, fine paper books, but I read e-books and listen to audiobooks more often

for practical reasons. I imagine I’m typical that way. So until we run out of trees, that will probably stay the norm.

Q. What makes a writer great?

VC. Oooh, hard one. Maybe the courage to bare their soul, regardless of what anyone thinks or says. The ability to find the right, and the fewest, words to express the ineffable.

Q. and the all-important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like for you?

VC. It all comes down to perseverance. Orchid Child took ten years from beginning to end. You have to want it more than anything else in your life during that time of writing, revising, querying, and promoting. There may not be room in your life while you have young kids to raise. That’s why I think a lot of women publish later. But I believe our books are richer for it.

Q. How have your life experiences influenced your writing?

VC. It’s all there in my writing.

Q. What’s your downtime look like?

VC. Walks with friends in our wonderful downtown Ashland, Lithia Park. Hikes in the hills. Cat play. I really don’t have what you would call hobbies. I eat but I’m not a cook. I read and watch endless Scandinavian and British mysteries, from Shetland to Inspector Morse, I find are the perfect diversion when my mental energies need a rest.

Q. Have you or do you want to write in another genre?

VC. Being new to fiction, I’ll stick with it for the time being as my main creative output. I’ve also been writing essays on craft and theory of fiction and especially autofiction.

Q. Note to Self: (a life lesson you’ve learned.)

VC. I’m good enough. Pretty enough. Smart enough. Why, oh why, did I, like most women, take so long to learn this? Being enough is wonderful. Try it!

Did you miss the beginning of this interview?
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A chat with author, Victoria Costello (part 2)

VC….While working on my memoir, I did a ton of freelance writing, mostly science and psychology for outlets like Scientific American MIND, the kind of writing where facts and evidence reign supreme. I plan to stick with fiction from here on out. Just last year, I started teaching writing and I find that I love it. I’ve now taught both in person and online, through Southern Oregon University, and this Spring, for WritingWorkshops.com. The course I’m teaching now is called When Memoir Becomes Autofiction and it’s for memoirists who, like me, want to fictionalize their life stories to one degree or another. I’m having a blast and I’m sure it’s making me a better writer.

Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?

VC. I know many smart people say you should just sit down and do it, free write whatever comes into your head. Others listen to music or read poetry. For me taking a walk is the best thing for getting past a major block, or that blah, I have nothing worthwhile to say feeling.

Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?

VC. I usually begin with a feeling and then connect it with a character and a situation, in that order. For Orchid Child that feeling was one of disconnection, of not belonging anywhere, something I felt which I gave to Kate, along with her Daddy issues.

Q. What first inspired you to write?

VC. I think it was my early conviction that I was a weird kid, so I better tell no one what I was really thinking. It was safer to write things down.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing?

VC. Aside from the moment when I laid eyes on my first-born son, getting lost in writing has been the best feeling I’ve ever had. I think it’s the same for artists working in any medium, and for athletes, too, although I wouldn’t know about that. As a writer, losing time and space while getting lost in my stories is everything. The euphoric feeling that carries you along, the words and sentences that seem to come out of nowhere, or from someone long ago. Not that this happens all the time. or even a lot. But when it does, it’s the payoff for suffering through all the drudgery of blank screens, and mornings when you have zero inspiration, not to mention the feelings of insecurity that are part and parcel of the writing life. That said, this high can conflict with other parts of life, like mothering and partnering, so it becomes a challenge to set boundaries, both for yourself and others.

Q. What compelled you to choose and settle on the genre you now write in?

VC. I, and, maybe, most writers, tend to circle around the same themes no matter what we’re writing. For example, there’s a scene in Orchid Child that first appeared in my memoir, A Lethal Inheritance. It’s a traumatic childhood memory I’ve carried forever about finding my father passed out in our flooding basement. In the memoir I told it in the voice of my seven-year-old self as best as I could recall. In the novel, this same memory is shared by my protagonist Kate, a brilliant neuroscientist with serious Daddy issues. As Orchid Child opens, Kate has lost her job in the wake of an affair with her married lab director. Later, Kate tells her drunken dad story to Ryan, a work colleague and her soon to be love interest, who responds empathetically. Indeed, Ryan’s availability for relationship tests Kate’s predilection for doomed affairs. Like all unrecovered sex and love addicts with Daddy issues, Kate—like me for much of my adult life—resists a healthy relationship with an available man.

Suffice to say, I’ve struggled with this issue in therapy for decades but, oddly. it was only after I went to the bottom of it in fiction that I finally felt done. So, for me writing this novel has had a profoundly healing effect. I’m also gratified when I hear from readers who email to say that reading Kate’s story has helped them process their own issues. It’s also a lot of fun to make up stuff after spending decades adhering to the facts.

Q. Do you have pets? Tell us about them and their names.

A. Now that I’m living on my own, I relish the company of my two, four-year-old Maine Coon sisters. Venus is the wary, mischievous one, while Queen Luna is the epitome of sweetness and calm who believes I exist solely to meet her needs.

Join us next week for the conclusion. Did you miss Part 1?
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Monday Motivation for the Writer! #24

HATS! This morning was typical…as an indie author. Wearing many, many hats! There’s a hat for writer, blogger; one for editor, proofreader, and publisher.

Check emails for that BIG break! A Hollywood film Co. wants to make my book into a movie, a ‘big-name’ Publisher stumbled across my novels and wants to publish me.
Nope! Not yet!

Next, Edit and proof the short play I’m working on….rewrites, rewrites, rewrites, rewrites,….did I say rewrites? Submit edited play to my publishing platform and wait for the proof to be approved or for more changes.

Work on my book of poetry and get it launched onto Amazon.com

Work on postings for my Blog. This is a job that doesn’t go away if you want to be considered someone with ‘viable content‘ by search engines.

and after all those chores are complete…..Do some creative writing….never neglect this! Write Every Day!! Also found time to write 10,000+ words of book #12 in a true crime series.

“I’m not saying all publishers have to be literary, but some interest in books would help.”~~ A.N. Wilson

“Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks – chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is
frequently called upon to sit down and write.”~~Fran Lebowitz

“Writing is Not a Calling. It’s a Doing!” Trisha Sugarek
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

Interview with author, Victoria Costello

Victoria was the kind of kid who would sit high on a tree branch for hours at a time, lost in thought. Unsurprisingly, she became a writer, beginning with reams of poems never seen by a living soul. She “also thought it would be cool to be read.” In high school, she started an underground newspaper which caused a sensation and got her suspended.
As an undergraduate, she studied journalism at American University in Washington, DC, where her career started in TV news and documentary. After raising two sons and working as a freelance TV writer/producer in LA and San Francisco, she returned to college for my MFA in writing from Mills in Oakland. She wrote what became her memoir on nights and weekends. A Lethal Inheritance was published by Prometheus Books in 2012.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, or special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ workspace.

VC. My current writing space is a cozy loft, big enough for my desk and a small bookshelf. But it gives me a gorgeous view of Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, at least my chunk of it, from the north hills of Ashland, across the I-5, to Grizzly Point.

Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat workspace, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, a glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

VC. After feeding the cats and drinking two cups of coffee, but before I start writing, I try to spend twenty minutes meditating at the ancestral altar I’ve erected in the attic.

Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?

VC. My brand of spirituality is a bit unusual in that I’m a high church Episcopalian and a pagan. The progressive Episcopal congregation I attend in Ashland, Oregon offers both traditional and Celtic Christian worship and gives me an avenue for doing community service. Then twice a month, I attend a Crone Soul Circle, an online gathering of wise women at the Sacred Wellness Grove, who meet my need for non-patriarchal, Goddess-centered earth worship and visionary feminist thought on issues of our day.

Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?

VC. I’m a keyboard kind of girl for actual writing, starting with my first draft. In the research and thinking stages, I gather piles of books and source materials on which I exhaust numerous yellow highlighters while filling spiral notebooks. I can’t even imagine writing, let alone the endless rewriting I do, without a computer. I have nothing but awe for authors who came before us and toiled by pen and paper alone or even a typewriter. White-Out is a nightmare I’d just as soon forget.

Q. Do you enjoy writing in other forms (playwriting, poetry, short stories, etc.)? If yes, tell us about it.

VC. Early on in my career, I made several documentary films and videos on social and political issues like abortion, nuclear power, and climate change. At a certain point, I got tired of shlepping around the world with crews and heavy equipment and I was happy to return to the solitary writing life. I also had two sons I had to raise, primarily as a single mom.

See Part 2 next week.
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To receive my weekly posts, sign up for my On the home page, enter your email address. Watch for more interviews with authors. March-Apr: Joshua Hood, author of ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RENDITION April: Author, H.W. ‘Buzz’ Bernard, May: Victoria Costello.
June: Laila Ibrahim

A few BOOKS BY TRISHA SUGAREK

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