The Divining Wand has scheduled an interview with the author on Tuesday, May 29, 2012 where you'll learn much more about So Far Away however, in today's guest post, Meg cites a legendary journalist/author to help explain why she writes.]

I once heard a quote about writing that really struck me. It went something like this, “Writing is the only thing that when I’m doing it I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.” When I sat down to write this post, I thought I would try to dig out the exact quote. Laboring under the misconception that it came from Gertrude Stein, I searched through a bunch of her quotes, trying to untangle those gloriously complex sentences to find what I was looking for. Nada. (Indeed the statement seemed, in retrospect, to be a remarkably succinct one for Stein: I should have known.)

As it turns out I had the right initials, wrong writer. It was Gloria Steinem who said it, in a November, 1965, article for Harper’s called, “What’s In It For Me?” As an nonsubscriber I am not privy to the entire article but the bit that I was able to access told me that Steinem is right on the money. Here’s the quote:

But for me, it’s the only thing that passes the three tests of métier: (1) when I’m doing it, I don’t feel that I should be doing something else instead; (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and (3) it’s frightening.

Yes, yes, and yes! Is it bad guest-post-writing etiquette to say, “What she said!” and move on with my day? Maybe, but I don’t think I could articulate my thoughts about writing as well as Steinem articulated hers. Really, she nails it.

Life is so busy for so many of us that it’s a very common affliction to have our minds on anything but the task at hand. I am certainly guilty of that. When I am folding laundry I feel like I should be stretching my hamstring. Walking the dog? Usually thinking about the laundry. Grocery shopping? Field trip permission slips or the Scholastic book orders. Or walking the dog. You get the picture.

But writing does not allow for that sort of divided attention: it demands all of us, for a concentrated amount of time, and giving in to that demand—and overcoming the fear the Steinem talks about—is a rare and wonderful thing. It’s something that we writers should feel very fortunate to experience, because not everybody gets to do so on a regular basis.

The next line in Steinem’s article says, “I don’t like to write. I like to have written.” Yes again! Who among us (be honest!) doesn’t agree with that sometimes? I’m a runner, and I have made the comparison between running and writing more than once, here on this site and elsewhere, so I won’t bore this audience with that again. But. I will say that usually, having run feels better than actually running. Often, having written feels better than actually writing. Bravo to Steinem for saying so, for saying all of it, and bravo to all the writers who are out there plugging away at it, day after day after day. I bet if we could ask her now we could get even Gertrude Stein to agree.

Meg Mitchell Moore can be followed on Twitter and liked on Facebook.

The best news is that today's guest post offers a sample of the author's voice on her feelings and thoughts as Jennifer shares why she writes....(brilliantly).]

When my kids were still too young to taste the difference between brownies made with water and brownies made with broccoli, my husband went to Mt Everest for two months. Two months. He’s a sports broadcaster. It was a show. I talked to him once a week from base camp.

There were days when the only people I spoke to were three feet tall. Staying sane was a top priority, so I had to come up with a plan. I decided to pretend there were secret cameras in every corner of my house. That way, when I most wanted to scream my brains out, I would think twice and remember to at least smile as I did. And as nutty as this sounds, it helped. (I also taught them to address me as their “young-looking beautiful mom” whenever they asked for something.)

This is how writers go through life. Not as that insane mother, but as the hidden camera. We’re watchers. We watch people when they don’t know it. We watch people when we don’t know it. And weirdest of all, we watch ourselves and know it.

I write because I’ve always been the hidden camera. When I was seven years old, I was brushing my teeth one day, minding my own business, when the girl in the mirror smirked at me. “You’re going to be a writer you know.” “Nope,” I said. Writers were old and not pretty and not famous. Plus, I had big plans to be a professional Avon lady. There was no way I was going to be a writer. “You’ll see,” that little girl said. And by fourth grade I knew she was right.

I often wonder if whoever designed this thing called “Life” fell asleep at the wheel a few times. Why else would bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad? But writers can fix this. We add the motives to the craziness. Selfish, self-centered, mean? You don’t get the girl at the end. Humble, caring, funny? You do. It might be cliché, but it’s also reassuring. Writers are like ER doctors; we never know what kind of trauma we’re going to find when we show up at the page each day, but whatever it is, it’s our job to fix it.

Being the hidden camera can be solid gold at times. But it’s also a bit of a curse. When I’m away from the page for too long, my brain gets tangled and scrambled and snarled. The things I’ve seen or thought or watched in the passing wordless days make no sense. These motive-less moments get all cramped together inside that too-small space between my ears and pretty soon – we all know – it’s gonna’ blow.

I wish it weren’t this way. I wish I could stop assigning reasons as to why my mail person consistently wears a knee brace on the right knee one day, but on the left the next. I wish I would stop wondering why that guy I see at Starbucks who’s dressed in an Armani suit drives a red beat up truck. And mostly, I really wish I had just done the math on the SAT’s instead of staring off into space wondering why Jimmy had seventeen marbles while LaShawn only had six – did Jimmy steal them? Are they siblings? Is he threatening to beat her up if she tells anyone?

Okay, so I didn’t get into my first-choice college. But I’d be willing to bet my mother’s circa 1960 Pucci pants that I’m not the only writer out there whose head is in a constant state of repair. And I think we’d all agree that these brain explosions are much better splattered on paper rather than on family, friends and dentists. Personally, I need these people, I love these people (not my dentist) and even though I wish I could edit them sometimes (did I mention I have three tween/teenage daughters now?) staying sane for them is still a top priority.

So I write.

And every minute of every day I feel so lucky that I do.

In The Revealing of Jennifer Gooch Hummer, the phenomenal praise for Girl Unmoored was noted along with the news that the book had won the Paris Book Festival Award 2012, Best YA Fiction. Since then this unforgettable novel has also won The San Francisco Book Festival Awards 2012 – Teen Fiction, Next Generation Indie Awards for YA Fiction, Finalist in the Next Gen Indie for Best Chick Lit, and Finalist for Best Fiction Cover. Please disregard the YA and Teen Fiction labeling. This is a coming-of-age story — a tale in which lessons are learned about life and love at any age! [In fact, according to Amazon tracking, customers who purchased Girl Unmoored also bought Fifty Shades of Grey. I rest my case. ]

Jennifer Gooch Hummer can also be followed on Twitter and liked on Facebook.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of Girl Unmoored by Jennifer Gooch Hummer — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

In today's guest post Jillian admits her need to make sense of the world through writing. However, by doing so, the novelist gives voice to all of us. Enjoy.]

I Couldn’t Love You More, like each of my novels, was born of rage and frustration. Although the reasons for my rage differ from book to book, the underlying motivation is always the same: to have my say, usually about someone who has wronged me or someone else. (To clarify: nine times out of ten, the people who wrong me have no idea. Although I burn with the heat of ten thousand suns, I do this silently. I am painfully shy and overly nice (too nice, sometimes), but only my closest friends (and now you) know that I can also be opinionated, competitive, and when it comes to writing, very critical of myself. But because I rarely articulate my truest thoughts (not out of fear but because it’s not nice), I need some way to express them.) I also feel very sympathetic toward people who have been mistreated, marginalized, and under-represented in our culture. My husband says that I carry the sorrows of the world, but someone has to speak up for those who can’t. I realize this sounds as though I write novels about migrant farm workers or early 20th century factory workers when in fact I write tragicomic domestic dramas. Give me time, though. I’m just warming up.

Here’s the truth about writing fiction: no one asks you to write, and no one cares if you do. In fact, very often it feels as though people are actively arguing against it. As an artist, then, your challenge is to create despite (or in my case, because of) the world’s indifference and opposition. To make art is a very lonely, very isolating enterprise. Believe me, I would much rather watch crime shows and British period dramas than stare at a computer all day. But I am a writer, which means that even if I have just spent five years working on a dead book that no one wants to read, much less buy (see my Q&A), I will sit down and do it again, and again, and again.

The world is an absurd, chaotic place, and my books help me make sense of it. Writing is what keeps me tethered. When I’m not engaged in a novel, ambient sounds become deafening. There are too many sharp corners. Time moves at a dull, languid pace. I feel too present, too large and ungainly. But when I’m working, the loud noises are muffled, the edges smoothed out, and everything is cast in soft focus. Writing well feels like moving through water. It’s easy, endlessly satisfying, often exhilarating, and I can lose eight, ten, twelve hours at a clip. Writing novels is like having a conversation with every person who has ever burned you (or a mistreated factory worker), except you are the only one talking, so you can finally express all that built-up resentment and sorrow. For someone who rarely had her say growing up, this is a very heady, very powerful feeling.

I am the eldest daughter of a traveling salesman who moved his family 17 times by the time I was 17. I attended seven elementary schools, two junior highs and three high schools. At the end of the tenth grade, my family ended up in Atlanta, where—spoiler alert!—my new novel is set. After high school, I studied writing at a fancy private college, and then struggled to pay for a top MFA program while working full-time. In graduate school, I discovered I was a terrible editor, and had to first re-learn how to read before I could then re-learn how to write. Most of the writers I went to school with were talented, many far more talented than I, but talent, we all found out, was the easy part. A writer’s life is fueled by stamina, relentless self-belief, deliberate self-delusion, and absolute will (and in the end, it all comes down to the luck of the draw). Back then, I doubted myself at every turn, but to not try to succeed seemed worse somehow than failing. So I gave it a go.

Here is another truth about writing: you are rejected, in one way or another, every single day. I graduated from college in 1985, and since then, I have worked (almost) full-time at an anonymous, old-fashioned, nine-to-five corporate job. So for the whole of my adult life, I worked and went to work. While my friends went to bars, hooked up, got married, and had children, I worked and went to work. Eventually, I had children and got married, too, but I continued to work and go to work—and I continued to get rejected Every. Single. Day. Despite all the rejection, though, the idea that anyone—agent, publisher, reviewer—could say anything that would make me stop is beyond my comprehension. I may never be considered a literary icon, but my art is my art and I work at it every day. I’m a writer, ipso facto, I write.

After reading (and likely feeling) Jillian’s strength and passion, you can now watch and listen to her describe the storyline of I Couldn’t Love You More. Also another truth is that this book could not be more highly recommended!

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of I Couldn’t Love You More by Jillian Medoff — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

According to The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May 2012:
"The result is a story that explores the way books can and can’t inform lives, as Adrienne’s summer leads to some surprising, even tragic events; that makes this a natural for book-club discussion by reluctant and eager attendants alike."

If reading can and can't inform lives, what about writing? In today's guest post, Julie Schumacher explains why and what writing does for her.]

There are two terrific essays called “Why I Write,” one by George Orwell and the other by Joan Didion. In his essay, Orwell confesses that as a boy, “I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons.”

Didion, who begins her essay with “Of course I stole the title for this talk from George Orwell,” notes that “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.”

Writers, I think, are both shy and egotistical. On the one hand, they like being left alone, hermit-like, scuttling into their libraries or burrows where they can chew on the bones of their own odd thoughts; on the other hand, they want to exercise god-like powers, re-ordering the world according to their liking – killing a character off here and there, inventing a new, pink planet, slowing time down. And once they’ve re-ordered the world, they want to emerge from the burrow and show it off to other people.

I usually start writing a piece of fiction because I find that my thoughts are stuck on a particular remark or event or idea. There is something in my head that I keep returning to – something that makes me feel restless. It’s as if I’m staring at a painting, and I’ve been told that if I look at it carefully enough, I’ll see the “magic eye” 3-D image hidden inside it. I write to try to find my way to that image. Through draft after draft, I wait for it to rise up off the page and announce itself – here I am, in plain sight, you idiot – and make sense to me.

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” That was E.M. Forster’s more sophisticated way of phrasing the same concept. Perhaps Forster didn’t know about the magic-eye image.

If I had to come up with a list of reasons why I write (and lists are incredibly gratifying, aren’t they?), it would have to include the following:

1) I write because stories take the random and bewildering stuff of our lives and try to make sense of them. (And it seems to me that we’re supposed to make sense of them.)
2) I write because not writing is worse.
3) I write because my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Pritchett, read my short story out loud in front of the entire class, and I thought, “This is the highlight of my life.”
4) I write because it’s hard to talk about the weird and misshapen things that lurk in the underlayers of my imagination – but I can write them down.
5) I write because I am not good at math or other reasonable things that make sense to most people.
6) I have no idea why I write.
7) I write because, when I was ten, I composed a rhyming elegy for a litter of orphaned, newborn rabbits that I tried to raise in a cotton-lined box in my bedroom, but all of them died, refusing the eyedropper of lukewarm milk and stiffening into tiny beautiful brown tufts one after the other so that I had to bury them in the back yard during individual funerals, and I was so heartbroken I couldn’t stand it – and I found that the elegy made me feel better.
I write because writing is:
a) infuriating
b) fulfilling
c) demanding
d) ever-changing
e) all of the above
[Hint: the answer is e]

Julie Schumacher, can be found on Facebook, and please remember that The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls is highly recommended for all ages.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls by Julie Schumacher — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EST tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

In today's guest post, the author reveals how she discovered why she writes.]

On a warm summer afternoon in 1994, as I walked home from my job as Assistant Vice President in Corporate Finance for a Japanese Investment Bank, I paused, looked at the wall of skyscrapers that surrounded me, and had an epiphany. As much as I loved working on Wall Street, I suddenly understood that when it was my turn to retire, my absence would not be noteworthy. There would simply be someone else to take my place.

Then I thought of my mother who was retiring that year, who’d spent her entire career in early childhood education, and who, upon retirement boarded a plane to work in an international school in the former-Soviet Union. When she got up from her desk, she left a living legacy of children who had learned to read through her efforts.

Then I thought of my brother John, who is a building contractor, who could drive me around his hometown and show me the historic homes that he’d brought back to life, the clients he’d helped to create a dream home. He is an American success story. With his wife Heidi, he’s built a business that operates on principles of integrity and quality work. His legacy is as tangible as the windows that open up to a water view.

My epiphany that day was that I wanted to leave New York and find my own legacy. Of course, at the time, I had no idea of what it would be.

It was actually my other sister-in-law, Kathy, who provided a nudge in the ‘write’ direction. After I’d left New York and spent more time poolside than I care to admit, with a glass of wine in one hand and a book on ‘discovering your perfect career’ in the other, Kathy called and shared a newspaper article she’d read about romance authors and suggested that since I obviously liked to read, perhaps I should try writing.

Did I start to write just because Kathy told me to? No. Actually, I wrote my first book at the age of 5 and have had a life-long love affair with writing. However, Kathy’s encouragement was the impetus to overcome a history of what Brenda Ueland called ‘helpful criticism’, in her classic work, “If You Want to Write”. As my mother loved teaching, as my brother loved building, I have always loved books. But after one high school teacher discouraged my early writing efforts, I buried the revelation I experienced when I read a book, the singular desire to ‘do that too’, for the more practical pursuit of a career in business.

Unfortunately, recognizing a desire is not the same as creating a new life. I spent the next several years writing, submitting, getting rejected, and getting discouraged. I wrote four novels and several children’s books. And while I loved writing, my books found no home, so back I went into business.

Then last year with a desire to simply see my work in print, I took the plunge into self-publishing. I published Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure in a much edited form, changing the setting from World War Two Budapest to a dystopian European city, changing the First Person POV to Third Person, and completely eliminating the original spiritual message. All in the name of creating what I thought would be a more commercial version of the book I’d originally written. And as what happens when something is not its true self, it went nowhere.

In February of this year, I re-published Mrs. Tuesday in her original version and finally discovered my authentic writer’s voice….a cross between literary fiction and religious fiction, a contemporary woman who loves God passionately, but sometimes wonders if He’s really listening. As a result, I discovered that this was the underlying voice in all of my books and one that I was ready to share. Once I embraced this authenticity, I felt more confident about my work and my purpose.

Finally, let me leave you with two quick illustrations of Why I Write: The other day I was reading Cynthia Rylant’s children’s book The Heavenly Village. Its unflinching beauty brought tears to my eyes and filled me with an overwhelming hope that I will someday write a book that will have a similar impact. And then, a week before, I was at my desk working on the final draft of my next book and as I looked up from my desk and out the window, I realized that if I had a week to live, this is how I would choose to spend it. I would want to publish my next two books. These books would be my legacy. I have finally found the answer to the question I asked nearly twenty years ago on the Brooklyn Bridge.

To learn more about Suzanne, please follow her on Twitter, become a friend on Facebook, and experience her story of Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure in paperback or Kindle Edition. In fact, this novel as an ebook will be available in a Free Giveaway this Friday, May 4 – Monday, May 7.

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one paperback copy of Mrs. Tuesday’s Departure by Suzanne Anderson — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

It's also brilliant, witty, and poignant yet the best news about the novel is that today it comes out as a paperback! Both the content and the flow of Laura's writing are so natural that one might stop occasionally and wonder how does she capture that effortless magic? In today's guest post, the author describes the simple (and successful) reason for why she writes.]

I write because I love to read.

Can it be that simple? Maybe yes, and maybe no. In thinking about the reasons I write, there are so many answers that immediately came to mind. Writing helps me answer questions, it is my primary way of reaching new understandings, it provides me a sense of joy, and it has (long before I did it professionally) helped me figure out my place in the world.

All of those answers are true. But the most true answer is the first one. I write because I love to read. I have loved to read since I was too young to even know what I was reading. For me, writing is the natural extension of reading. It is the other side of the same conversation about what makes our narratives feel special—the unique ways we experience joy, work through relationships and figure out what we want our lives to be. Writing is another way to experience stories, another way to share them.

While working on my novel The First Husband, I often returned to the notebook I’ve kept since I was in High School—which is really a testament to my love of reading. It is a notebook of quotes and ideas from things I’ve read that touched me. Things that I didn’t want to forget. Ideas that came from a variety of reading sources: favorite novels and biographies and memoirs and plays and poetry collections. Bad magazines and beautiful story collections. All the words that stuck with me, like only music or words can.

In thinking about why I write, I opened it again to look through it. One of my favorite quotes (a very apropos one!) popping out at me immediately.

“Keep in mind that the only person to write for is yourself. Tell the story you most desperately want to read.” – Susan Isaacs

And as I start looking through some of the others—Ernest Hemmingway’s advice on writing (“write one true sentence”); Toni Morrison’s thoughts on love (“He can’t value you more than you value yourself”); W.S. Merwin’s thoughts on dreams (“We are asleep with compasses in our hands.”)—I get that familiar desire to sit down and start telling a new story. Or get back to figuring out an old one.

Reading does that. Which is why, when I’m stuck, when I don’t know how to finish a sentence or a chapter or how to begin one, I’ll throw my books down from the bookshelf and sit on the carpet with ten books and have a little reading party. Just to remind myself that reading and writing is a messy, wonderful business.

And that I write because it is.

For more from Laura Dave, please follow her on Twitter, become a friend of on Facebook and enjoy The First Husband available in paperback today!

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of The First Husband by Laura Dave — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

Many fans first met Allison on the popular, long-running blog, Ask Allison, where she generously answers writing and publishing related questions. Yet, when asked why she personally writes, the author confessed never having put those thoughts into words until now.]

Why do I write? I’m not sure that I’ve ever asked myself this question before, or if I have, I’ve never fully answered it because it is too big, too encompassing to really get my brain around. I write for so many reasons, it’s hard to pinpoint them, to hold them down and say, “aha, this is what compels me.”

But after much consideration, here are a few reasons why I put words onto a blank page and hope that, many months and many pages later, they turn into something magical:

1. I write because writing for me, is a way to connect with others. One of the best parts of being a writer is hearing from readers, when they take a moment out of their busy lives to shoot you an email and say, “The story you told is also my story,” or “The characters you drew are similar to the characters in my own life,” or anything that lets me know that we’re all part of this big collective experience together. As a reader, I read books that touch upon themes or issues that I’m dealing with in my own life, and as a writer, I try to honor that honesty: that we’re all mucking our way through together, and that a lot of times, just knowing this – that we’re not alone – can help us make our way.

2. I write because, well, I really love words. Looking back on it, I was always the kid who would use ten words to write a five word sentence. I loved adjectives, descriptions, synonyms, idioms. I was the girlfriend who gave those movie-worthy speeches while in the midst of a break-up, not because they made any difference, but because I really loved the way that I could string words together. Seriously. I think the same is true of my writing: I can write a lot of awful sentences, but when you craft that really, really, really good one, well, it’s nirvana.

3. I write because it is catharsis. I often say that if I weren’t a writer, I’d be an actress. There is something really therapeutic about spending time in someone else’s head, at least for me, whether that is writing a character or saying a character’s dialogue, as an actress would. When I’m writing, I honestly forget about wherever I am in my real life – I lose minutes, hours to the page, and in those minutes and hours, I really step outside my own life. Now, don’t get me wrong, my own life is pretty great. But in that time I spend on my manuscript, I’m able to pour out whatever quirks or issues I might be wrestling with onto my own characters, and a lot of times, I emerge wiser, calmer, happier. It’s my personal therapy session, just without the couch and the therapist’s bill.

4. I write because I love it. How lucky am I that I get to spend my days creating something from nothing, creating fictional lives and people and places and calamities and resolutions? I am so, so lucky, and not a day goes by that I don’t realize this. Sure, some of the bad days are dreary, but mostly, this career is heaven, and I love nearly everything about it. That may really be why I write – simply, because I love it. That I then have people to read my work is just the cherry on top.

In refreshing details from the post, Picture the Book: The Song Remains the Same, this a novel that asks:

Who are we without our memories? And how much of our future is defined by our past?

One of only two survivors of a plane crash, Nell Slattery wakes in the hospital with no memory of the crash – or who she is, or was. Now she must piece together both body and mind — with the help of family and friends who have their own agendas. She filters through photos, art, music and stories, hoping something will jog her memory, and soon – in tiny bits and pieces –Nell starts remembering…
It isn’t long before she learns to question the stories presented by her mother, her sister and business partner, and her husband. In the end she will learn that forgiving betrayals small and large will be the only true path to healing herself — and to finding happiness.

And, of course, these glorious critical reviews need to be repeated too:

“Bestseller Winn Scotch sparkles in her captivating fourth novel. Readers will love Nell and won’t be able to put the book down until they know how much of her past she wants to bring into her future.” – Publishers Weekly

“Scotch has drawn a fully three-dimensional heroine in Nell, and the story’s pacing perfectly mirrors the protagonist’s increasing rate of self-discovery. Scotch peppers her chapters with a number of pop-culture and musical references, giving the story a modern and lively feel. With shades of Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me? (2008) and Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot (2011), this novel is a breezy yet introspective examination of one woman’s newfound history.” -Booklist

“Readers who appreciate women’s fiction that investigates serious themes will enjoy Scotch’s fine novel. Reading groups will find much to discuss as well.” – Library Journal

As for my truth: In THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME, Allison has written the ultimate “what if?” by wiping her heroine’s mind clean. Nell can start over and become a “fabulous me.” Yet memories cannot be erased from one’s heart, especially when music triggers emotional recall and pulls Nell back to the past in order to understand her present. Writing stronger than ever — with brilliant insight –, the author tells a story of survival filled with courage and hope in discovering one’s truth.

However what Allison also does is keep the reader wondering who this woman truly is. All that is known of Nell is what Nell knows of herself, initially based primarily on “facts” from family and friends. Yet do others always share the same perspective or speak the entire truth? That, in itself, creates a fascinating, cautionary tale of choosing who to trust.

Highly recommended, The Song Remains the Same is a novel of emotional substance that will likely cause you to reflect as well as be entertained. And that’s the best in a book….enjoy!

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of The Song Remains the Same by Allison Winn Scotch — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

There are fortunate individual born knowing what they want in life and having the talent to do just that. In today's guest post, Sarah explains that's why she write.]

I write because, even though it can be frustrating and ego-crushing and difficult, not writing would be so much worse. I write because it can be magical and uplifting and nurturing, too. I write because it’s what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a little girl.

Writing has always been a part of my life, except for one dark period in my early thirties. My husband and I had two young boys by then, and I’d left my job as a features writer for The Baltimore Sun newspaper to stay home with them. I’d imagined I’d be able to free-lance for the paper, but the type of stories I did for The Sun – like racing to catch a plane the day of the Columbine school shootings, and locating and interviewing a boy who transformed from the class clown into an unlikely hero who saved dozens of lives – had suddenly become impossible for me to cover. I felt completely adrift; I’ve often described the sensation as similar to discovering my best friend had moved away without leaving a forwarding address or phone number.

Then one night, I began to type fiction. The words poured out of me, like water gushing from a garden hose once a kink in its middle is untangled. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and discovered something incredible: As much as I’d loved being a reporter, I enjoyed fiction even more.

Nowadays, if I’m away from my laptop too long, I feel itchy. I write a novel every year, along with a short story, newspaper reviews and articles, and a regular magazine column. There’s rarely a day when I’m not writing. It’s completely addictive: the more I write, the more I want to write. The thing that thrills me the most about writing fiction is that there’s always room for improvement – I can toil away at this craft for decades, and still have so much room to learn and grow.

I also write because it connects me to people. I adore going on Facebook, and interacting with readers and learning about their lives. I love popping onto Twitter and exchanging jokes with folks I’ve never met. And I love being able to interview real people about their jobs and lives, then weave those details into my novels. For example, for THESE GIRLS, a magazine staffer snuck me into the New York headquarters of a glossy women’s magazine and gave me a behind-the-scenes tour that was fascinating. Much of what I observed that day made it into THESE GIRLS.

I write because I’m lucky enough to have found the job of my dreams, and I can’t ever imagine letting it go!

Family secrets may shape us all, but it’s the rich, complicated layers of friendship that can save us.

That one sentence describes Sarah Pekkanen’s most compelling, true-to-life novel yet tells the story of three very different women as they navigate the complications of careers and love—and find the lifeline they need in each other.

And critics praise:

“A fun and engaging romp…Pekkanen’s authorial voice is sweetly snappy, the plot is character-driven, and the book ends satisfactorily without tying up every loose end. Fans of Sophie Kinsella and Jennifer Close will enjoy this refreshingly introspective, sharply realistic, and tenderly humorous novel.” —Booklist

“Pekkanen’s characters are sympathetic and familiar, and readers are likely to identify with aspects of each protagonist. Fans of Jennifer Weiner, Sarah Dessen, Liza Palmer, and Emily Giffin will strongly appreciate this smart novel by a rising star in women’s fiction.” —Library Journal

Now “picture the book” as the author talks to six sets of best friends about the healing power of female friendships.

Sarah loves social media and can be followed on Twitter and friend(ed) on Facebook. And for your reading enjoyment, These Girls is available right now!

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of These Girls by Sarah Pekkanen — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EDT tonight! The winner will be notified by email tomorrow.

In today's guest post, the author explains the need to share emotional truth in all her writing and also provides a glimpse of a second novel to be published in January 2013.]

When I was a kid, nothing was better than listening to my Aunt Thelma’s stories. She’d take humiliating awful situations and transform them into eye-popping, comic-tragic tales. Her pain was our gain.

Stories bang around my head and crowd my mind. I’m stuffed with ‘what if’ and ‘why did s/he do that?’ As a child, I made twice-weekly trips to the library. Writers were gods to me, purveyors of that which I needed for sustenance. Food. Shelter. Books. Those were my life’s priorities.

As an adult, I still feel that way. I’m constantly foraging for books that offer glimpses into a character’s psyche, that go deep enough to make me part of the choir, saying, “Oh yeah, me too, tell it, writer. True that, uh huh.”

As a writer, I’ve learned that reaching deep isn’t always comfortable. (My daughters will read this! My husband will think I’m portraying him!) And, honestly, there is a place on my shelf for soothing books. Sometimes I want a comfort read, a total escape, a warm place to rest. But my favorite books, the ones I return to time and again, are those gritty enough to have emotional truth (which is very different than the truth of events.) Thus, I work to write with a knife held to my own throat, so that my work will hold as much emotional truth as possible.

Do writers of dreadful happenings all come from dysfunctional families? I wrote a book that begins with two sisters who witness their father murder their mother and goes on to explore the myriad ways this event shapes their lives. Did my father kill my mother?

No. But he tried, and my sister and I were there. My sister let him in (after being told ‘don’t open the door for your father’) and somewhere in the background I stood, a silent four-year-old. Did that shape my work? I’m quite certain it did. Even though it is only the first chapter that holds my family DNA, the ongoing emotional tenor and the themes are all ripples from my past: invisibility, abandonment, neglect—much that was drawn on.

My next book, coming out in January 2013, The Comfort of Lies tells the story of three women connected by one small child: one gave birth to her, one’s husband fathered her, and one adopted her. The year their lives collide, they’re forced to make decisions about the child, their marriages, and face the damages of infidelity.

Did I give a child up for adoption? No. Did I adopt a child? No. But I struggled with issues of infidelity in ways that allowed The Comfort of Lies to come alive in my mind (and hopefully on paper.)

How does this happen, this weaving of truth and imagination? Does it always happen? One wouldn’t know without x-raying each writer’s past, but it’s a question I wonder about when reading my favorite books. What was that writer tapping into when they brought such depth to the page? Can a wrenching book be written without the writer taking a visit to their depths?

For me, writing transmogrifies fact into fiction, and thus, soothes my soul.

I used to play a song for my daughters, from Free to Be You and Me that swore that crying got the sad out of you. That’s kind of what writing does for me—it gets the sad, the mad, and the glad out of me.

Writing calms me. Writing excites me. Writing sorts out my world.

And writing lets me tell stories. Just like Aunt Thelma.

Enjoy much more of Randy on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Although it may have taken years for this honest and realistic love story to be written and published, Comeback Love is a book to be treasured. For, as curious as this fairy godmother usually is about discovering the backstory, where or how the characters were developed, the novel's message, and how much of the storyline might be autobiographical, I realized I did NOT want to know the answers to this book. Being pulled into pages where everyone and everything felt and looked (the descriptive writing is memorably vivid) genuine is more than enough. And how refreshing to read about a relationship that is based on the individuals involved as opposed to events that drive their story. Simply put, this debut is a "keeper."

Whether working as a journalist, historian, biographer or novelist, who better to ask "Why I Write" than Peter Golden?]

Time moves, and I find myself, frequently against my will, moving right along with it. I’m a different husband than I used to be, a different father, and a different writer. Where my family is concerned, I’m different because in so many ways, large and small, what your loved ones need from you changes with the passing years. Yet I’m a different writer because the reasons I write have shifted, leaving me to marvel at how naive I once was and, I’m happy to say, how dedicated I have remained to the craft.

As a young teenager, long before I began writing seriously, it occurred to me that I had only one life and writing would enable me to enter worlds that were closed off to me—from pitching in a World Series at Yankee Stadium to residing in eighteenth-century Williamsburg or serving as your newly elected president.

By the end of college, I was familiar with Henry David Thoreau’s observation that most people wind up mired in quiet desperation, and since I was philosophically opposed to sustained misery, I started writing on a daily schedule. Thanks to the enchanting gift the young possess for self-deception, I soon convinced myself that writing was an effective method for bending reality in my preferred direction. Absolutely ridiculous, I know. And in my case, absolutely true.

Less than ten years later, I was earning a living by writing, and I knew that I was lucky to go to an office in my own house and pay my bills by doing work I enjoyed. Still, money, like love, is usually something you think about only if you don’t have enough, and although by my thirties I felt relatively secure in my career, on occasion I asked myself why I got up every morning to face a blank page.

Honestly, I’m not sure I had a good answer to that question back then.

Now, after writing almost every day of my life for over thirty-five years, here is what I discovered: nothing, other than the joys of family and friends, gives me more pleasure than writing a sentence that informs me emotionally or intellectually. Of course, I hope others are touched or informed by that sentence. But if not, at least I tried.

And I wrote the sentence.

Like Nicholas Sparks and Robert James Waller, first-time novelist Peter Golden knows how to write the kind of nostalgic fiction that men and women alike fall for. In Comeback Love, a universal story about lost love, he offers an evocative debut that begins in the tumultuous 1960s and ends in the feverish thrill of present-day New York City. Over thirty-five years ago, Gordon Meyers, an aspiring writer with a low number in the draft lottery, packed his belongings and reluctantly drove away, leaving Glenna Rising, the sexy, sharpwitted med student he couldn’t imagine living without. Moving between past and present, the book is a journey into the hearts of two lovers who came of age in the 1960s and is a sensual exploration of youth, regret, desire, and the bonds that mysteriously endure in the face of momentous change.

Please listen and picture this poignant and nostalgic book.

Much more about Peter Golden can be found on his website, by following him on Twitter and becoming a friend on Facebook. And remember highly recommended Comeback Love is available at your local bookstore and online retailers today!

Book Giveaway: The Divining Wand is giving away one copy of Comeback Love by Peter Golden — in a random drawing — to anyone who leaves a comment on this post by 11:59 p.m. EST tonight! The winner will be notified by email on Wednesday..