Why should I write about a Local Author Fair? The Kansas City Metro area may not seem like a literary hub to people from other parts of the world, but this town is just crawling with writers. I encountered that fact again when I attended the Mid-Continent Public Library’s Story Center Local Author Fair, on November 15, 2025. I’ve tried to offer a glimpse of it in this post. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the United States…
Is there anything quite as sad as unfinished stories? The bright promise of beginnings, the building strongly up to a climactic . . . nothing there? I’m sure I’m not the only writer with unfinished stories in her file drawer and on her computer. But today I’m not only talking about literary projects. Because all too often, people’s lives can be unfinished stories, too. The Unfinished Stories of Too-Early-Ended Lives My mind leaps to all the young people in the…
By Jan S. Gephardt I promised a SoonerCon 31 summary, and I mean to deliver in today’s post. But this overview won’t be our last glimpse of SoonerCon. I love this convention, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s event. However – as at every convention – this one provided some “learning takes.” Our dealers table experiment continues, although after SoonerCon 31 the effort is looking ever more dubious as a genuinely money-making proposition. We had another unfortunate entomological…
By G. S. Norwood Good opening sentences are like pickup lines at a bar. An author wants you to spend some pleasant time with her book. Maybe develop a lasting relationship with her characters. What can she say in that moment when your eye first meets her page? How should she start a romance with her reader, as well as a romance between her characters? Today I want to look at some of the pickup lines that helped me start…