June 2024 – Page 2 – Andrew Careaga

Friday Five: Q&A with cozy fiction writer Sally Bayless

Today’s Friday Five is with Sally Bayless, a novelist who writes in the “cozy” mystery genre. Sally and I met many years ago when I was a reporter for a now-defunct daily newspaper and Sally was a summer intern. Since that time, she graduated from journalism school, worked as a newspaper copy editor (remember those?), and ended up in corporate communications, where “I edited everything from an article on gastrointestinal scopes to a report on the use of depleted uranium in armor-piercing weapons, all of it (honestly) fascinating.” These days, she’s working on book seven of her Dogwood Springs Cozy Mystery Series. All of the book titles are alliterative and set in the mythical Ozarks town of Dogwood Springs.

A new home for ‘Baseball 1971’

Thank you, Bulb culture Collective

In publication news, I’m thrilled that a flash fiction I wrote back in the ‘90s has found a new home! The story, “Baseball 1971,” was published this week in the on line literary magazine Bulb Culture Collective. The site specializes in publishing works that were published previously in journals that no longer exist. That is the case with this story, which originally appeared in Fan in 1998 (backstory here).

Many thanks to the folks at Bulb Culture Collective for selecting this for their Shine A Light series of writings.

Follow the journal on Twitter (I mean X) at @BulbCultCo.

Image via Bulb Culture Collective.

Real creative effort: a copywriter’s perspective

Yeah, most of what I post about here pertains to the so-called “creative” writing arts — the short story, novel, novella, poem, etc. But I cut my teeth in journalism, then public relations and marketing, and some of the best lessons I’ve learned about writing and creativity have come from those fields and from great copywriters like Andrew Boulton, the author of Copywriting Is…, which is a great resource for anyone who writes promotional or ad copy. Boulton is also a frequent poster on LinkedIn (worth a follow), where he recently posted this gem about the source of “real creative effort.”

How are you directing your creative effort?

Friday Five: Thoughts on Steve Almond’s ‘Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow’

Why Steve Almond’s new book about the craft of writing is worth a read.

Cover image of the book "Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow," by Steve Almond.

I’ve read my share of books about writing in my time, and most of them have given me at least a nugget or two of wisdom or inspiration. A new entry to the craft genre by Steve Almond, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories, which came out in April, is one of the best I’ve read in a while.

If you’re a writer, you should read this book. Here are five reasons why: