Author of the Month

Last month was a bit of a surprise -- lower than average temperatures and rain, rain, and more rain. Still, the wildflowers have grown tall and the potatoes are doing well. And, as all things do, the days pass swiftly. Now it's time for fireworks and picnic celebrations, and  another amazing authort. Allow me to introduce you to our celebrated and award-winning author for July -- Leslie Budewitz. Janet Irvin: Welcome, Leslie. You have become a real force in our writing community. Your novel series [...]

June rolls in after thunderstorms and tornadoes roil the area where I live...maybe where you live, too. This month I'm so pleased to welcome a fellow writer whom I met a number of years ago at the Taos Writers Conference, when we were both working to get published. Now, Jill has her first novel -- true stories at the smoky view -- published and continues to pursue this obsession we share! Welcome, Jill. Janet Irvin: Please share with readers a little of your writing journey. [...]

Ah, the merry month of May! Such sweet beauty invites romance and who better to talk to us about the subject than Donna MacMeans, who tales of love and seduction are just the right kind of sexy for summer reads on the porch or winter late-nights in a cozy chair by the fire. For those of you who are writers, Donna offers much good advice as she shares her writing story and the process she uses. Buckle your corsets, ladies and gents. Ms. MacMean's has [...]

April comes round again, filling our eyes with green promises and our hearts with that sweet smell of new birth. This month I travel across the pond to introduce you to Ian McAllister, whose science fiction novel To Visit Earth challenged my brain and kept me on the edge of my seat. As you can tell from the photos Ian shared, he's a bit of an adventurer, and so are the characters in his novel. McAllister also wrote a fascinating account of his grandmother's swimming [...]

Welcome March, the lion and the lamb! I'm pleased to host as this month's author Katharine Grubb, whom I met at the first-ever 10Minute Novelist Conference in Cincinnati in 2018. Here's a look at Katherine in her own words: "Katharine homeschools the youngest two of her five nearly grown children. She’s also a novelist, a baker of bread, voracious reader, comedian wannabe, and the author of Write A Novel In Ten Minutes A Day. Besides pursuing her own fiction and nonfiction writing dreams, she leads [...]

One of the great pleasure of my writing life is meeting other authors, especially those who write in my favorite genres. I have been a fan of true crime for a very long time, so I was thrilled to make the acquaintance of February's author of the month Anne K. Howard. Her debut work -- His Garden: Conversations With a Serial Killer -- is riveting. Her interview is delightful and revelatory about the process of compiling this type of work, and her research is impeccable. [...]

Back in the summer of 2018, I joined an intensive poetry group at the Antioch Writers Workshop and met the author for this month, Dave Essinger. His novel about ultrarunning, Running Out, is newly released from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. His writing has appeared in Gargoyle, Sport Literate, and Midwestern Gothic. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a fiction reader for Slice magazine and General Editor of the AWP Intro Journals Project. Currently, Essinger teaches [...]

Oh, Happy December! In addition to being my birth month, December claims the most holidays of any month when you count all the special days celebrated around the world, and gives us reason to congregate with friends and family. To that end, I bring you December's Author of the Month, Jess Montgomery, a dear friend, a fabulous writer, and a superior pie baker! Her debut novel THE WIDOWS comes out in January of 2019. Janet Irvin: Welcome, Jess, to my authors' group.  Tell us a [...]

I feel incredibly lucky to have snagged Stephen Mack Jones for my November author of the month. A year ago at the Toronto Bouchercon, I sat next to Steve and his wife at the librarian's tea and discovered an intriguing personality and a new series to enjoy. Please say hello to our current author of the month! And enjoy this fantastic interview... Stephen Mack Jones is the author of the critically acclaimed Detroit-based thriller novel AUGUST SNOW, published by Soho Press. Mr. Jones, an accomplished [...]

The Dayton area is blessed with an abundance of exceptional poets. I am pleased to know many of them as colleagues and friends. This month I'd like to introduce you to poet and outstanding literary citizen Matthew Birdsall... in his own words. "Matt Birdsall has been a little corny his whole life. He blames Ohio. In fact, his first word was “combine.” Almost a year old, driving with his mom and dad in an old, green Chevy Chevette, he looked into a cornfield, saw a [...]