by Linda Rodriguez It’s spring, and the holiday to honor mothers is right around the corner. I lost my mother, whom I adored and with whom I had a fraught relationship, before she turned fifty, so this holiday is always difficult for me, even though that was forty years ago. As we approach Mother’s Day, […]
by Linda Rodriguez Next week at this time I will be on my way to Oklahoma for the Oklahoma Book Awards. My newest book, Dark Sister, is a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in Poetry. Needless to say, I am both delighted and excited. Dark Sister is truly a book of my heart, focused […]
by Linda Rodriguez (This essay was just published in the anthology, Stranger in a Strange Land, which benefits the ACLU. Featuring Walter Koenig, Linda Rodriguez, Patricia Abbott, Teresa Roman, R.C. Barnes, James B. Nicola, Eric Beetner, Katherine Tomlinson, Heath Lowrance, Kimmy Dee, Mark Rogers, Sheikha A., Mark Hauer, Berkeley Hunt, Manuel Royal, Kathleen Alcalá, Christine Mathewson, […]
by Linda Rodriguez For the past several months, I have battled an infection of lungs, sinuses, and tonsils, which also triggered my asthma. That meant coughing, lots of big, loud coughing spasms. I mean, coughing that rattles the windows in my house and those of my neighbors. (I have been known to break ribs from […]
by Linda Rodriguez Pianists know they must practice every day, playing scales and various exercises that stretch the fingers and give them the flexibility and dexterity that they will need to play complicated compositions. Long ago, I read in one of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful journals of life and writing about this need for writers. “Nobody […]
by Linda Rodriguez As many of our readers know, I’m dealing with a badly shattered right shoulder right now. I’m also teaching an extremely large online class in revising the novel and losing my voice from doing so much dictating to voice recognition software. So I am running a post from the past today. (And […]
“She speaks for her clan” by Dorothy Sullivan We here at The Stiletto Gang are celebrating a newly designed logo for our blog and the diverse makeup of our membership. We are women writers from various backgrounds, but we all share one thing in common. We’re pretty kickass women. We are all strong in our […]
by Linda Rodriguez Right now, I am teaching an online course in research for the novel, so my mind is turned to research, and I thought I would offer a quick and dirty look at research for novelists. Research is vital for all fiction writers to a certain extent, and for those writing novels such […]
by Linda Rodriguez Lately, I’ve been intensely making notes for a new book in bits and pieces of time left over from other commitments. That’s a fairly common thing around here. Several times a year I follow a character into a short story or book. After the first draft is finished, I still refer to […]
by Linda Rodriguez I receive emails all the time asking me how the emailers can get their own novels published. Usually, they know just about nothing of the business of publishing, which always surprises me. If you took a year or so to write a book that you hoped to publish and sell, wouldn’t you […]