Blog

Never Give Up On Your Dreams by Christine Kersey

By Cheryl Shireman | March 20, 2012

I love to read and lose myself in a good story – forget all that is going on around me and be in the story with the characters. One day in 1997 I finished reading a novel by Joy Fielding and realized she hadn’t needed to be an expert in a particular field, like medicine…

French Fancies! by Mel Comley

By Cheryl Shireman | March 11, 2012

In the Summer 2011, I was approached by another writer Cheryl Shireman who wanted to pull a group of women writers together to create a unique book. The object of the book would be to inform readers about our personal struggles to become established authors. Every story is an inspiration, some sad, some happy and…

Have You Ever Lost a Hat by Barbara Silkstone

By Cheryl Shireman | March 6, 2012

I lost everything including my home, my car, and even my retirement accounts. I was physically attacked inside and outside a court building. My daughter and baby granddaughter were threatened. I came at the bad guys like a mother tiger. A few years earlier I had agreed to testify against a real estate developer in…

From 200 Rejections to the Top Amazon 200! by Sibel Hodge

By Cheryl Shireman | February 28, 2012

Ever since I was old enough to scrawl my first word, which was Halibaaaaa, I knew I wanted to write books. OK, so the word didn’t actually make sense, and it might take a little longer for me to actually string a whole sentence together, but that didn’t put me off. I was going to…

How A Big Yellow Truck Changed My Life by Christine DeMaio-Rice

By Cheryl Shireman | February 20, 2012

An orange peel grapple is a big machine. Excavator on the bottom. Long arm in the middle. And a metal grapple on the end that looks like a horror movie claw. The base spins. The arm moves up and down. The grapple grabs stuff like SUVs and big piles of metal.  You may come across…

Just Me and James Dean by Cheryl Bradshaw

By Cheryl Shireman | February 13, 2012

When I was a little girl I used to make up stories at bedtime for my younger sister, Michelle.  The most vivid centered on a boy and a girl who received a piece of gum for Halloween in their trick-or-treat bag, and when they chewed it, they were transported to a magical land where they…

Writing From a Flour Sack by Dani Amore

By Cheryl Shireman | February 13, 2012

Fact:  I was born on a bathroom floor.  Literally.  My arrival into this world was followed seconds later by an unceremonious drop onto the cold tile of St. John’s Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. You see, I was the fifth out of six children.  My mother knew my delivery would be fast, but the nurse at…

A Kinky Adventure by Anne R. Allen

By Cheryl Shireman | January 30, 2012

When I started writing funny women’s fiction fifteen years ago, if anybody had given me a realistic idea of my chances for publication, I’d have chosen a less stressful hobby, like do-it-yourself brain surgery, professional frog herding, or maybe staging an all-Ayatollah drag revue in downtown Tehran. As aCalifornia actress with years of experience of…

Searching For the Off Switch

By Cheryl Shireman | January 23, 2012

Rest. It seems like such a simple concept. I’ve spent the last half hour looking up quotes on rest. I’m trying to convince myself that was not a waste of time. It is morning. Still dark outside. I am listening to soft classical music. The day is mine. I look forward to my day’s work.…

Turning Medieval by Sarah Woodbury

By Cheryl Shireman | January 22, 2012

Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint those moments in your life where everything is suddenly changed.  When you look across the room and say to yourself, I’m going to marry him.  Or stare down at those two pink lines on the pregnancy test, when you’re only twenty-two and been married for a month and a half…

Work In Progress

By Cheryl Shireman | January 22, 2012

It is January. The beginning of a new year. A time of renewed hope and planning. I thought about creating this blog last November. I was in the middle of working on a novel (I still am) and thought it might be interesting to have a running account of that work in progress. I asked…

Holes by Suzanne Tyrpak

By Cheryl Shireman | January 16, 2012

I used to think I had to be perfect. Of course, I fell short of perfection on a regular basis so I frequently felt like a failure.   The only way to prevent failure is to hide. If we don’t put ourselves out there, we can’t fail.   To prevent myself from failing, I hid in a…