Four Bay Area novelists discuss their experiences and offer tips for aspiring fiction writers.

Geri:  I’ll introduce you so please send me no more than three sentences about you and your work.

• Author Teresa LeYung Ryan wears two hats.  As a novelist, she uses her book Love Made of Heart to shed light on secret agonies suffered by mothers and daughters in domestic violence.  As a writing career coach and creator of Build Your Name, Beat the Game: Be Happily Published, Teresa helps writers identify their mission statements to attract agents, publishers and fans.

Geri:  Send me two questions regarding writing craft.

• Teresa, in interviews you’ve revealed that the themes and subject matters in Love Made of Heart are autobiographical.  Did you start out writing a memoir or a novel?

• Teresa, would you share one trade secret about story-telling?

Geri:  Please communicate with the other three panelists if you don’t already know each other. I know Margaret Davis and Judith Marshall; I will study Jon Cory’s website.

Geri:  Please tell me anything particularly unique about you that pertains to your writing

• “I am the only Teresa LeYung Ryan (my middle name LeYung was created to honor my mom), but, my protagonists represent the many women, children and men who survived similar experiences that I have.  I was a witness to domestic violence–a girl who felt helpless, ashamed, angry, guilty and voiceless. Decades later, I found a way to help the child-in-my-heart. Through the characters in Love Made of Heart, I encourage survivors of violence and witnesses to violence to find and fortify their own voices through writing.”  Teresa LeYung Ryan   http://LoveMadeOfHeart.com
 
Panelists:
Margaret Davis (Straight Down the Middle) is a sociologist who is also the author of Families in a Working World and A Practical Guide to Organization Design.  Her second novel, Katie Carlisle, will be available soon. www.margaretdavisbooks.com

Jon Cory (A Plague of Scoundrels).  Retirement enabled him to return to creative writing after a career in business.  His debut novel received the 2009 Independent Publishers’ Silver Medal Award for popular fiction.  www.joncory.com

Judith Marshall (Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever) is the owner of Kelso Books, a publishing house.  Husbands has been optioned for the screen and her second novel, Staying Afloat, will be available soon. www.judithmarshall.net

Teresa LeYung Ryan used her novel Love Made of Heart to shed light on secret agonies sufferered by mothers and daughters in domestic violence.  She is also a writing career coach and creator of Build Your Name, Beat the Game: Be Happily Published. http://writingcoachteresa.com

Moderator:  Geri Spieler, author of Taking Aim at the President http://www.gerispieler.com/

https://www.sanmateocountyfair.com/ 650 574-3247  for ticket info. Parking lot is on Saratoga, 1 block before the street dead-ends at Delaware (south side of fairgrounds).

The Stage is located in the Fine Arts Dept, which is in the Fiesta Building on the San Mateo Event Center fairgrounds. https://www.sanmateocountyfair.com/fair-info/fairgrounds-map Vendors have the center block of space, we are in our own separate large room type space and the stage is midpoint. (the technology dept is on other side of vendors).