Erica Lainé: Landscape and Memory

This week’s ‘writer abroad’ is Erica Lainé (or should that be L’Ainé given her family’s origins in the Channel Islands?). She originally trained for the theatre at the Arts Educational School in Tring. Later in London, she worked in the Libraries and Arts department of the London Borough of Camden, running the box office for […]

Vanessa Couchman – The other South of France

Continuing the writers abroad series, this week it features Vanessa Couchman whom I met at a literary festival here in France. Vanessa writes historical novels and short stories set in France or on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. Quirky true stories often find their way into her fiction, and she likes nothing more than pottering […]

Charlene Newcomb: Finding inspiration for a story

My guest this week is Charlene Newcomb who lives, works and writes in Kansas. She’s an academic librarian by trade (and recently retired), a U.S. Navy veteran, and has three grown children. When not at the library, she is still surrounded by books, trying to fill her head with all things medieval and galaxies far, […]

Amy Maroney: Shining a light on forgotten women artists – a research journey

My guest this week is Amy Maroney who lives in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. with her family. She spent many years as a writer and editor of nonfiction before turning her hand to historical fiction. When she’s not diving down research rabbit holes, she enjoys hiking, drawing, dancing, traveling, and reading. She’s the […]

Writing Challenge Day 27: What's your favourite trope?

Strictly, a literary trope is a rhetorical or figurative device, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect. Today, it’s also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices and motifs in creative works.

Right, now we’ve got the formal stuff out of the way, let’s look at how it […]