My Debut Novel

Cover image for blog My Debut Novel. Jan M Flynn holding a copy of her new book

My Debut Novel – and I’m 72 And never once has a publishing professional asked about my age There are a few, vanishingly rare, incidents in life when the stars line up in such a way that you begin to doubt the evidence of your own senses. As in, I’ll wake up soon, because this […]

The Gray New Deal

AI Header image for the blog The Gray New Deal

The Gray New Deal My first published novel, The Gray New Deal, is appearing as I turn 63. In the novel, seven seniors who shared a college co-op in Austin fifty years ago reunite to create another co-op. Together, this intentional community navigates Trump 1.0 and the first years of the pandemic. They’re a diverse […]

Artificial? Yes. Intelligence? Maybe.

AI Image of female author talking to an Artificial Intelligence chatbot

Artificial? Yes. Intelligence? Maybe. Years ago my son bought the house Marion Zimmer Bradley owned at the end of her life. She lived there in community with the writers who ghost wrote many of her later novels. Those books, published under Zimmer’s name to take advantage of her established readership, really did literally take advantage […]

How Can an Old Biddy Become an Author?

AI image of over 55 community with Ambulance and fist responders for blog How Can an Old Biddy Become an Author

How Can an Old Biddy Become an Author?  I’m an old biddy who released her first book at the age of seventy-one. I want to share my story of becoming a traditionally published author of four humorous nonfiction books after retiring from a forty-year career. We older women need to tell our truths. We have […]

Let’s Shine Our Light: Crone Authors Together

AI generated image for blog Let's Shine Our Light: Crone Authors Together

Let’s Shine Our Light: Crone Authors Together   The issue of “stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest” sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices. —Brene Brown, Daring Greatly We live in a time of massive change, including huge changes […]

Setting Lights the Way

A montage of the author and settings for the blog post Setting Lights the Way

Setting Lights the Way I love talking to authors about where their ideas come from, and I’m fascinated by the small seeds that blossom over time into a full-fledged novel. In workshops, I hear about starting the writing process with a character in mind (a nurse, grieving the death of her nephew), and one of […]

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Stella Fosse