Chatting with New Blood: Svetlana Rodina
Posted: October 3, 2026 Filed under: Book Review, Books, Chatting with New Blood, Fiction, Interview, Literary, Review | Tags: Author Interview, Book Review, Chatting with New Blood, Kaye Lynne Booth, Literary Fiction, Little Red Riding Hood: Letters from the Wolf, Svetlana Rodina, Writing to be Read Leave a comment
Introduction to Author Svetlana Rodina
Svetlana Rodina is an independent writer based in Buenos Aires. She writes contemporary women’s fiction that reimagines familiar fairy tales through the lives of modern adult women. Her novels explore family memory, identity, relationships, inherited stories, and the moment when familiar roles and expectations stop working. She’s especially interested in what remains when the fairy-tale script falls apart, and a woman has to decide for herself what comes next.
My Interview with Svetlana Rodina
Kaye: Please start by telling us about your author’s journey. What drives you to write?
Svetlana: I came to fiction relatively late. I trained as a translator and spent many years working in education, so my professional life was built around language, economics, and people rather than literary publishing. I began writing during a very difficult period in my life, when a psychologist suggested putting my thoughts into words. At first, that was all it was meant to be. I certainly did not expect it to become a novel. But as I continued, I discovered that fiction gave me a way to explore the questions that mattered most to me. What do we owe our parents? How much of a life is truly our own? Can a family lie sometimes be an act of love? What happens when, in midlife, you realize that the story you have been living was shaped long before you were old enough to question it? That is what keeps me writing now. I am drawn to the moment when an adult woman stops moving along the path laid out for her and begins to ask whether it is really hers.
Kaye: Red Riding Hood is your first literary work. What was your inspiration?
Svetlana: The emotional starting point was very personal. I found myself thinking about the stories families tell about themselves: who was good, who was guilty, who sacrificed everything, who abandoned whom. When the same version is repeated for years, it gradually stops sounding like an interpretation and starts sounding like fact.
That led me back to Little Red Riding Hood, one of the simplest stories we learn as children. There is a girl, a mother, a grandmother, a wolf, and a road through the forest. Everyone has an assigned role, and we know from the beginning whom the girl should fear.
Adulthood is rarely so convenient. I began wondering what would happen if Red Riding Hood were no longer a child but a fifty-three-year-old woman. What if the “wolf” were not necessarily the person she had been taught to fear? And what if the adults who gave her the map had themselves been frightened, mistaken, or hiding something? That question became the beginning of the novel.
Kaye: Can you give us a brief overview of the story?
Svetlana: Rose Hood is fifty-three and lives in Buenos Aires. For most of her life, she has believed that her father died when she was young, but photographs, letters, and family documents begin to contradict the story she has always known. She is forced to consider a much more unsettling possibility: perhaps her father did not die at all. Perhaps he disappeared.
At the same time, the person most likely to explain what happened, Rose’s mother, is losing her memory. Rose is therefore trying to reconstruct the past just as one of its last witnesses is gradually losing access to it.
There is a mystery at the center of the novel, but solving it is not the whole story. What interests me more is what Rose will do with the truth once she finds it, because discovering a family secret is one thing; deciding whether the next generation should inherit it is something else.
Kaye: What kind of things did you research to write this book?
Svetlana: The research covered several layers of the novel: Buenos Aires itself, migration, family archives, old photographs and documents, and the ways private histories survive through very ordinary objects. I became particularly interested in material traces of the past. A photograph without a date, a letter, a name written differently, or an archive card can suddenly alter the story a family has repeated for years. That became important to the structure of the book, because Rose never receives one convenient
explanation. She has to reconstruct what happened from fragments, and each fragment gives her only part of the picture. I wanted the reader to experience some of that uncertainty with her rather than simply being told the answer.
Kaye: What was the most interesting fact you turned up while researching to write Red Riding Hood?
Svetlana: The most important discovery was not really a historical fact but something I began to notice about the
way we look at the past. We judge previous generations with knowledge they never had. Looking backward, it is easy to say that
someone should have told the truth, should have stayed, or should have made a different decision, because we already know what followed. The person making that decision knew none of it. They might have been frightened, exhausted, in love, ashamed, dependent on someone, or simply unable to imagine the consequences.
Realizing this changed the way I wrote the characters. I became much less interested in deciding who was right and much more interested in understanding why each person could believe they were right at that particular moment. The past becomes considerably more complicated once you stop treating it as a solved case.
Kaye: The character of Rose is a strong female character. How much of Svetlana found its way into Rose?
Svetlana: Quite a lot, although Rose is not me. We share an age, a city, and some of the same inner questions. What passed from me into Rose was less biography than emotional experience. I understand very well what it means to live inside a family story and then begin to suspect that parts of it are missing, softened, or rearranged. I also know the feeling of looking back at your life and asking yourself which beliefs were really yours and which you accepted because they were handed to you early. I was never interested in making Rose “strong” in a simple way. She is not fearless. She hesitates, doubts herself, becomes angry, and sometimes wants certainty simply because uncertainty hurts. What matters to me is that she is able, in the end, to look again at the story on which she has built part of her life. That kind of courage interests me much more than heroics.
Kaye: We’ve all heard the advice “Write what you know.” You obviously took this to heart, placing your story in a setting you are familiar with. What literary devices did you employ to capture the atmosphere of Buenos Aires?
Svetlana: I deliberately avoided presenting Buenos Aires as a postcard. Beautiful cities in fiction sometimes seem to exist permanently at sunset, with everyone sitting at picturesque café tables. Living in a city is rather less cooperative than that.
I wanted Buenos Aires to appear through ordinary experience: streets, apartments, transport, weather, distances, errands, waiting, noise, and constant movement. Instead of stopping to explain the city, I let sensory and physical details accumulate around Rose as she moves through it. Contrast also became useful. Buenos Aires is enormous and continuously in motion, while Rose’s investigation becomes increasingly intimate, reduced to photographs, papers, rooms, conversations, and fragments of memory. Millions of people continue with an ordinary day outside while, inside one apartment, a woman’s understanding of her childhood may be changing completely. That tension made the city feel like more than a backdrop.
Kaye: Is there a message that you hope readers will walk away with after reading this book?
Svetlana: I distrust novels that behave like instruction manuals, so I would rather leave readers with a question than hand them a conclusion: How much of the story you tell about yourself was actually written by someone else? We inherit family versions of the past very early, and most of us live with them for years before we think to examine them. One of the things that matters to me in this book is that moment of re-examination, when a person begins to ask not only what happened, but also what she has been taught to believe about what happened.
The novel also touches on forgiveness, though not in any easy sense. Understanding why someone made a choice does not automatically make that choice right. But once we stop arranging people too neatly into heroes, victims, and villains, the past often becomes more human and more difficult at the same time.
Kaye: What was the biggest challenge for you when writing Red Riding Hood?
Svetlana: The hardest part was balancing the mystery with emotional realism. There is a genuine question at the heart of the book about what happened to Rose’s father, so naturally the reader expects answers. The difficulty is that Rose’s mother, who may possess the most important information, is losing her memory at exactly the moment Rose needs her. I did not want memory loss to function as a convenient plot device, and I did not want to reward the reader with a miraculous final confession in which every
uncertainty disappears neatly.
Family histories rarely work that way. My challenge was to reveal enough for Rose’s investigation to feel satisfying while allowing some uncertainty to remain. Eventually the more interesting question became not whether Rose could know absolutely everything, but whether she could live differently despite the things she might never know.
Kaye: What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
Svetlana: I loved constructing it from photographs, letters, documents, and contradictory recollections, and deciding when the reader should encounter each piece. In that sense, writing the novel sometimes felt like assembling an archive.
An object can appear early in the book and seem perfectly ordinary, then acquire an entirely different meaning once the reader knows more. That kind of construction was enormously enjoyable.
I also liked finding ways to echo Little Red Riding Hood without writing a literal retelling. The red hood, the wolf, the road, the mother’s warning, and the journey toward an older woman are still there, but mainly as psychological or structural echoes. I wanted readers to feel the old tale somewhere beneath the contemporary story without requiring a man dressed as a wolf to hide in a Buenos Aires apartment. Even family fiction has its limits.
Kaye: What inspired you to create a Buenos Aires coloring book? What were the challenges of that project?
Svetlana: The coloring book grew from another aspect of my fascination with Buenos Aires. While looking through archival photographs, I became interested in the older city that still seems to exist underneath the modern one.
Buildings disappear, streets change, vehicles and shop signs vanish, yet an old photograph can still feel unmistakably like Buenos Aires. The challenge was translating that atmosphere into black-and-white
illustrations that remained clear enough to color without losing the character of the original scenes.
Surprisingly, the process reminded me of writing. Both begin with far more information than you can use,
and eventually you have to decide which details actually carry the identity of the scene.
Kaye: Are there other projects on the horizon? What’s next for Svetlana Rodina?
Svetlana: Red Riding Hood turned out to be the beginning of a larger body of work. I am continuing to use familiar fairy tales as frameworks for contemporary adult stories, especially stories about women at the stage of life when the world often assumes the decisive chapters are already behind them.
What interests me, though, is precisely the opposite. Midlife can be the moment when the old explanations stop working, when long-accepted roles begin to feel strange, and when the questions a person avoided for years become impossible to ignore. So, the next books stay in the same territory as Red Riding Hood. They return to women looking again at the lives they have built, the stories they inherited, and the choices they may still be able to make.
Kaye: Where can readers who want to know more about you or about Red Riding Hood find you online?
Svetlana: Readers can find Red Riding Hood: The Letter from the Wolf and follow my work here:
Official website: https://svetlana-rodina.com
Payhip: https://payhip.com/b/6NgSW
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shapk_a2026/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61592242406213
I’m Svetlana Rodina, an independent writer based in Buenos Aires. I write contemporary psychological
and family fiction about memory, identity, inherited stories, and what happens when the roles we were
given stop fitting.
About Red Riding Hood: The Letter from the Wolf
For readers of literary family mysteries, emotionally precise women’s fiction, and book club fiction.
Her father did not vanish. He was edited out.
At fifty-three, Rose Hood has become skilled at living beside loss: an ageing mother in Moscow, a grown son pulling away, a career quietly reducing her to “institutional memory”, and a city that keeps people company without offering comfort.
Then a worn parcel arrives at her Buenos Aires apartment: photographs, tram tickets, old receipts, and a file marked with her name. Inside is a version of her childhood that does not match the one she was taught to survive.
As Rose follows the trail through archives, railway stations, forgotten apartments and the neighbourhood where her father may have lived within reach, her mother begins to forget the only facts that might still matter. The family story is collapsing from both ends: the documents are speaking, and the witness is disappearing.
Dry, atmospheric and unsentimental, The Archive of Absence is a literary mystery about memory, family secrets, late-life reckoning, and the stories families rewrite in order to survive.
My Review of Red Riding Hood: The Letter from the Wolf
I received a digital copy of Red Riding Hood: The Letter from the Wolf, by Svetlana Rodina in exchange for an honest review. All opinions stated here are my own.
As I generally read genre fiction and cozy mysteries or thrillers are more my style, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this literary family mystery, but I was pleasantly surprised. Rose isn’t trying to solve a murder or stop a killer, but I was drawn in never-the-less. The mystery she needs to solve is one of absence. When a package arrives on her fifty-third birthday suggesting that her father’s absence from her childhood was not due to his death as she had believed, it sends her on an archival mission to unravel the truth. Why did her father disappear from her life? And if he wasn’t dead, why was she led to believe that he was? And who sent the mysterious package? As an archivist, Rose knows where to look for clues, and as she uncovers each piece to the puzzle, she isn’t always sure that she wants to learn the answers. The truth may too much to bear, which could change the way she views her whole life.
The writing style is very literary, with much of the dialog in two or three word sentences, and vague thoughts from inside the character’s head which allude to more, but the story grabbed me and sucked me in as easily as a genre story would. I felt it was well-crafted, unfolding in a natural procession of events, while her position as an archivist diminishes at work, and her friend, Lucia, betrays her out of love, bringing up the issue of forgiveness. Can she forgive her friend? Can she forgive her father? And should she?
An intriguing tale of mystery which spurs an investigation into the past. I give Red Riding Hood: The Letter from the Wolf five quills.
_____________________________________
About Kaye Lynne Booth
For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; as well as her poetry collection, Small Wonders. Her novels include Books 1 & 2 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah and Sarah, and Books 1 & 2 in her Time-Travel Adventure series, The Rock Star & The Outlaw, and Double Visions.
Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press, where she edits and publishes two short fiction anthologies and one poetry anthology every year amidst her many writing projects. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.
_______________________________________
Did you know you can sponsor your favorite blog series or even a single post with an advertisement for your book? Stop by the WtbR Sponsor Page and let me advertise your book, or you can make a donation to Writing to be Read for as little as a cup of coffee, If you’d like to show your support for this author and WordCrafter Press.
________________________________________
This segment of “Eye on Art” with Kaye Lynne Booth is sponsored by WordCrafter Press and the Narrating the Paranormal Anthology Series in the WordCrafter Spooky Special
October 1 – 31, WordCrafter Press’ Narrating the Paranormal Series is on sale. Volumes 1-3 are only .99 cents each, or you can get all three volumes in volume four for only $2.50. Get your copies at the links below.
Volume 1 – Whispers of the Past: https://books2read.com/WhispersPast
Volume 2 – Spirits of the West: https://books2read.com/SpiritsoftheWest
Volume 3 – Where Spirits Linger: https://books2read.com/WhereSpiritsLinger1
Volume 4 – Lingering Spirits Whisper (3 in 1): https://books2read.com/LingeringSpiritWhispers
Share this:
The Many Faces of Poetry: Where Does Poetry Come From?
Posted: November 27, 2019 Filed under: Literary, Mystery, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing, Writing Inspiration | Tags: Art Rosch, history of poetry, origins, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read 1 Comment
Where Does Poetry Come From?
I keep inquiring into the nature of poetry: where does it come from? It’s a question that opens a lot of introspection into the nature of literature itself. Poetry is the ultimate ancestor of literature. There was the spoken word, the saga, told around fires surrounded by rapt listeners. Poetry came from the telling of heroic stories. Beowulf, the Eddas, the Greek epics, the Chaldean cycles. We’ve come a long way from the spoken word, the recitals that spawned the invention of text itself. People cared enough about the preservation of their cultural history that they made the effort to write it down. Ancient stories survived the eons, so that we still have them, we still can read The Odyssey or learn about the trials of Gilgamesh. In truth these long recitals are almost unbearable in the real world but they are like artifacts in museums. We have them. We can reach into their labyrinths and return with answers to questions that we must always ask. Why are we here? What are we doing?
Poetry is the literary equivalent of cave drawing. Mankind, many thousands of years ago, felt the impulse to make an artistic statement, whether it be for a ritual gathering of game animals or to praise the gods for their benevolence. We are still, when we write poetry, drawing on cave walls. We are traveling backward in time to re-enact the original creative impulse. What came first, I wonder? Did poetic recitation pre-date the drawing on cave walls. Or did they come at the same time? I wonder what anthropologist will research that question and tell us about the history of art. All of this speculation is to invoke the origin of Art itself. Poetry has changed with the human race. We are not the same people who told and re-told The Odyssey. We are modern people with a modern poetry, a poetry that has become more free as we re-invent the structures of literature.
We must ask another important question, one that I will address in a later essay. What does poetry do? We must break this down into two parts. What does it do for the poet? What does it do for its audience?
The poet writes to express his or her state of being. It may be emotional, intellectual or both. A poet, however, usually needs fire to lure an audience, so poetry begins in the emotions, where the fire lives. There are three things that literature needs to provide in order to attract an audience: information, inspiration, and entertainment. Who will listen to poetry if it’s not entertaining? Many are the yawns I’ve seen at poetry readings, glances at the wristwatch, restless fidgeting. Entertain us, poet! Or go home, get off the stage.
I’m rushed this month. We’re moving into a house, a beautiful house!
A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good. His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv.
Want to be sure not to miss any of Art’s The Many Faces of Poetry segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting, please share.
Share this:
Interview with author Margareth Stewart
Posted: January 29, 2018 Filed under: Author Profile, Books, Fiction, Inspirational, Interview, Literary, Writing | Tags: Book Review, Literary, Margareth Stewart, Open/Pierre's journey after the war Leave a comment
Today I have the good fortune to interview the debute author of a new release, Open/Pierre´s journey after war, which is now available at web-e-books.com. Margareth Stewart joins us today on Writing to be Read to share a little about herself and her book. This interview is my introduction to Margareth, as well, so I’m excited to get to know her, too.
Kaye: Welcome Margareth. We’d love it if you’d introduce yourself to my readers. Tell us a little about yourself.
Margareth: My real name is Mônica Mastrantonio and Margareth Stewart is my pen name, but I like it so much that you can call me Margareth.
I´m a PhD professor in Social Psychology, and had been following an academic career if I had not fell totally in love with the writing life.
Kaye: Why did you choose to use a pen name and how did you chose yours?
Margareth: I have a life of academicals papers, thesis and articles under my real name Monica Mastrantonio, so I thought the same name would just confuse the audience. I had no other choice, but to pick up an English pen name for my fiction work which is all in English. I brainstormed quite a few, used app devices to find a suitable one, but only got more confused (lol). The name Margareth came to me as it also starts with the letter M – and the surname seems to match it. That’s how Margareth Stewart was born.
Kaye: To craft your works, do you have to travel? Before or during the process?
Margareth: Yes, for sure. I´m a divorced mom of three kids, so my writing depends on having a break, getting to Writers Residencies somewhere far and isolated. I´ve written Open at Maelor Studio in Corris – Wales; Mademoiselle-sur-Seine at Camac – France and now comes the time to go to Greywood Arts in Cork, Ireland – so glad about it.
Kaye: What are your secrets for juggling writing with family?
Margareth: Hard. I have three kids. The oldest one is Valentina, she is 16, then comes Chloe who is 10, and Vittorio who is 7. So, I never ever rest – that never happens. I’m also divorced, so it’s – “paying the bills, cleaning the house, getting piles of work done, teaching and tutoring my students from university, working for a social project book donation, and so on” – every single day. I think the secret is living, not only being alive: working hard and having fun – both are essential.
Kaye: What is the one thing you hope to teach your children?
Margareth: To follow their dreams and be passionate about whatever they choose to do. I know this may sound a bit too romantic in a very competitive world, but that seems to be the only solution for so many problems we face nowadays. On top of that, I always say that being a happy Mom is the best legacy I can ever leave them. At least, I feel like half of the work has already been done if we are happy people.
Kaye: What’s one thing most readers would never guess about you?
Margareth: Oh, basically two, where I come from and my age. I was born in Brazil, in a Southern city called Londrina – that stands for Little London – colonized by the British in the 20’s. But I also have Italian citizenship because my grandparents immigrated from Italy, so I say I’m like pizza: half Brazilian-half Italian. Now I live in Sao Paolo, few months in Miami and at writer´s residencies, too.
Second, my age. I’m 49, and as I dress casual and informal, people tend to think I’m younger.
Kaye: When and why did you begin writing?
Margareth: I´ve always written, as Academics – mostly scientific papers and articles, though lately felt an urge to start writing fiction. It´s not something I´ve planned, much to the opposite, I even tried avoiding it.
Kaye: When did you first consider yourself to be a writer?
Margareth: When I published my first novel Open/Pierre´s journey after war – at the end of 2017, so I´ve just began (lol). I had also compiled, edited and published anthologies, short stories, articles before, but I did not regard myself so. Then, when Open was accepted and published by web-e-books.com, it felt like the real thing was coming to life.
Kaye: What time of day do you prefer to do your writing? Why?
Margareth: Midnight is the perfect hour for me, that’s when all the lights go down, kids are in bed, and silence reigns. My neighbors may think I’m very weird, staying up for long hours at night, but those are my precious working hours, when words flow – I won’t be giving up on them.
Kaye: What inspired you to write your first book?
Margareth: Can you believe it was a Facebook group? Awesome, I know. It was November – Nano writing month and this group ran a contest for the person who would reach 100.000 word count first. Obviously, I´ve missed both the month and the word count. But it somehow gave me courage to book a writer´s residency in January in Wales and accomplish my target there. That was how my novel came to life. Then, it took me two years to have it published. So, my advice is never ever give it up. Champagne takes two full years to have the bubbles in it, so good things do take time. 
Kaye: How did you come up with the title – Open/Pierre´s journey after war?
Margareth: The title is a reference to a scene from the book, the only romantic scene in it – when the main character falls in love. They were in a village stepping on the grapes to make wine, the weather changes and rain is about to fall heavily, the owner of the land was holding a bottle ready to be opened in his hand as a tradition to the new harvest, everyone surrounding him started shouting “Open open, open”. It was the first time Pierre held Claire’s hand.
Kaye: Is there anything about your style or genre that you find particularly challenging?
Margareth: Because of my background in Social Psychology, I mainly focus in the human beings, their relationships and their inner selves more than anything else.
Kaye: Open/Pierre´s journey after war is the story of one man’s reaction after losing his family to the atrocities of war. How much of the story is realistic and are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
Margareth: It’s a mix of everything. There is no such a thing as a blank page, everything we ever lived influences us, what we read, hear, see, the people we´ve met, etc. Writing is putting all that in order.
Kaye: Who designed your cover?
Margareth: The Publisher, but I did some changes and suggested the main colour which is orange.
Kaye: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Margareth: Yes, indeed. A message about last wishes. Pierre the main character lives for his last wish which is revenge. People do not pay attention to things they need to accomplish in life, so when old age comes, they become very bitter and frustrated.
Kaye: Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest? Who is your favourite writer, and what is it about their work that really strikes you?
Margareth: Oh, so many influencers. I´m an avid reader since a small kid. I read everything I can ever get my eyes upon, and I love libraries and Book Shops – to a point that I could spend days inside one. So from Tchekov, to Dante, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sidney Sheldon, Yeats, Kafka, Steinbeck, Wilde to Agatha Christie, Cervantes and Mills and Boon to name a few. I´ve learned so much from them all.
Kaye: Outside of family members, name one entity that supported your commitment to become a published author.
Margareth: Facebook groups can play a great motivational role to new writers, feed-back from beta-readers, and artist residencies.
Kaye: Do you see writing as a career?
Margareth: Yes, it’s a career like any other. I wake up, get some tea, sit down and type until bleeding – as Nietzsche would say.
Kaye: If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your book?
Margareth: No, nothing, really, I´m very happy with the book, its edition, and so thankful to everyone that helped me along this way.
Kaye: Did you learn anything during the writing of Open/Pierre´s journey after war?
Margareth: Yes, so much with Pierre, and also about the way I can produce more and write better for next time.
Kaye: If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
Margareth: Oh, love this question, wish they read this interview, buy the book and decide to film it: Clint Eastwood or Jeremy Irons.
Kaye: What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Margareth: Keep writing – keep walking, and “Cheering” accordingly.
Kaye: What book are you reading now?
Margareth: Cyrano de Bergerac – I want to learn more about dialogues, spoken language, you know.
Kaye: Do you remember the first book you ever read?
Margareth: A series of adventure books for a contest at school, I just remembered I won, and read loads for weeks.
Kaye: What makes you laugh or cry?
Margareth: Good talk & nice people, I get emotional when I meet people who are passionate about what they do.
Kaye: Which author, dead or alive, would you love to have lunch with?
Margareth: Professor, Historian and Writer from Oxford University: Sir Theodore Zeldin. He has an extraordinary capacity to link major historical events to people’s daily lives – to understand people from a larger point of view. A truly Historical Social Psychologist. I would love to spend some weeks as apprentice in his Department, who knows?
Kaye: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Margareth: Jogging, cooking, dancing, and reading (lol).
Kaye: What TV shows or films do you enjoy watching?
Margareth: Can you believe I watch no TV? Zero. That´s me, I´m keen on films, but “zero” TV, not missing much is the feed-back I have from people watching it.
Kaye: What are your favourite foods, colours, music?
Margareth: Homemade Pasta made by me (my Italian side) and all sorts of music from Jazz, to folk, rock, samba, bossa, and classical.
Kaye: How would you describe yourself in three words?
Margareth: Passionate. Determined. Brave.
Kaye: Imagine a future where you no longer write. What would you do?
Margareth: I can´t imagine it any longer…there are some paths that there is no turning around – writing is one of them.
Kaye: What is the one thing in your writing career that is the most unusual or unique thing you’ve done so far?
Margareth: Doing some of the things my characters do. For instance, Pierre the main character of Open, he drinks hot burning coffee and I tried that once, just got my lips and tongue all burnt for a week. Another unusual thing is taking notes all the time. I carry a small notebook with me – there are times that I have to pull the car off the road not to miss an idea.
Kaye: Is there anything specific you’d like to tell your readers?
Margareth: Just read it.
Kaye: Do you have a blog or website readers can visit for updates, events and special offers?
Margareth: Yes, please follow my Facebook Page where I post offers and new book releases. For 2018, we have Mademoiselle-sur-Seine (erotica) much hotter than 50 Shades of Grey.
Kaye: Thank you Margareth, for joining us today. It’s been great to get to know a little about you and to learn a little about Open/Pierre´s journey after war.
Margareth: Thank you so much for putting these together for all of us; it´s an immense pleasure being here, and looking forward to next book interview.
Like this post? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress.
Share this:
“Holy Denver”: A True Literary Treat
Posted: January 19, 2018 Filed under: Book Review, Books, Fiction, Literary | Tags: Book Review, Florence Wetzel, Literary Leave a comment
I’ll tell you a secret. For me, the problem with most literary works is that they move so slow it seems like nothing ever happens and eventually, I am so bored that I don’t care enough about the characters to finish the story. I guess that’s why I read mostly genre fiction. It’s more fast paced and has real conflict to keep the story moving and the reader interested. Not so, with Holy Denver, by Florence Wetzel.
While Holy Denver does have true literary qualities such as moving at a lacksidaisical pace, the characters are colorful enough to keep me coming back for more. Wetzel makes her settings come alive, allowing the unique atmosphere of Boulder and the old town ambience of down town Denver to become characters in their own right, carrying the story from place to place with graceful, relaxed transitions.
Holy Denver is a tale of self-discovery and yet is the tale of the fall of the publishing industry and some of its more recent rises. I was fortunate to acquire a print copy for review, so for me it was a feel good read, allowing me to slip quietly into a world I’m only too familiar with, having grown up in Golden, right between Denver and Boulder, and forget about the reality of the here and now for a while. (I can remember when what is now the 16th Street Mall that Wentzell writes about was a paved street where all the kids went to cruz their daddies’ cars on Friday and Saturday nights, and I attended the later part of my ninth grade year at school located in the Capital Hill area.) I think I smiled almost the whole way through it. It is introspective and entertaining, and I give Holy Denver four quills.
Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs at no charge. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Share this:
“Gnarled Bones”: A Collection of Five Brief Tales
Posted: August 4, 2017 Filed under: Book Review, Books, Fiction, Literary, Stories | Tags: Book Review, Empowerment, Gnarled Bones, Literary, Short Fiction, Short Story Collection, Tam May Leave a comment
Short stories carry the burden of telling the tale in few words, so they often sacrifice many of the qualities one finds in a novel length work, including details that fill in our mental picture for us, making readers work harder to gain a clear vision for the story. Another common complaint that I often voice is the fact that they are a brief glimpse into the character’s lives and don’t always have a complete story arc, making them feel incomplete, like there should be more. Such is the nature of the beast we call the short story. I have had to learn to expect these things when I’m reviewing short fiction, and not mark against the story for these faults alone. So, while I may comment on some of these qualities when reviewing anthologies or short story collections, they will not be the basis for lower ratings. Those will be based on the quality of the writing and how well the stories are crafted, just as they are with a longer work.
That being said, I found Gnarled Bones and Other Stories by Tam May to be a collection of highly crafted stories, with brief descriptions that skillfully put readers in the scene and allow them a clear vision of each story being told. Each story in this collection has heavy literary qualities and each carries the theme of empowerment, or the lack of it, in some way. Although most of them felt unfinished to me, they were none-the-less captivating, capturing my full attention during the brief snapshots I was allowed.
Along with Gnarled Bones, the story which sticks out most in my mind is The First Saturday Outing, which I enjoyed at first, but was later disappointed in, when the woman’s inability to empower herself and embrace her freedom became apparent, making the character, whom I’d been routing for, appear weak and inept.
Also to be found in this collection is Mother of Mischief, where Marie is driven by her need to look after and care for someone, drawn to mischievous men who need to be kept in line. Bracelets, where Isabelle, a circus acrobat is drawn to her circus family through the tragedy of a lion attack on a child. And, Broken Bows where, for Anne, a train ride becomes an act of defiance and two very different souls find one another briefly.
Along with theme, the stories in Gnarled Bones and Other Stories have other things in common, as well. Each has a female protagonist, each has literary qualities and feel, and each is well crafted to tell the story with skill and ability. I give it four quills.
Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs at no charge. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
Is Shakespeare still relevant 400 hundred years after his death?
Posted: June 19, 2020 | Author: robertawrites235681907 | Filed under: Commentary, Historical Inspiration, Literary, Opinion, Theater, Writing | Tags: Classic Literature, Robbie Cheadle, William Shakespeare, Writing, Writing to be Read | 34 CommentsMy son and I have different opinions on the relevancy of Shakespeare in our modern world. Greg thinks Shakespeare’s works have become irrelevant and would prefer to study more modern writers who have written about issues that have shaped our modern world.
He would rather study 1984 by George Orwell which is about totalitarianism, discrimination, tracking and other issues that, in his opinion, are still a concern today. He sees Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury as being relevant because he does not see people burning books in Western society.
I disagree with Greg on both counts but I am limiting this post to my thoughts about the relevancy of Shakespeare, who just happens to be one of my favourite authors.
These are the reasons that I think it is still worthwhile for students to study literature:
We quote Shakespeare all the time
Shakespeare invented over 1700 of our common words. He did this by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising entirely original words.
Some of my favourite Shakespeare originated words are green-eyed, assassination, bloodstained, lustrous and obscene.
In addition to all the words Shakespeare invented, he also put words together in new ways to create phrases and idioms. Most people know the famous quotes which are commonly attributed to Shakespeare including:
Many people don’t realise, however, that many everyday sayings are attributable to Shakespeare such as be all and end all, catch a cold, heart of gold and to much of a good thing.
His works are universal and enduring as are his characters
Shakespeare’s plays portray timeless themes of human experience and interaction that have remained relevant since his death. They are also considered to be among the most expertly written and beautifully poetic works in the history of literature.
The outstanding features of Shakespeare’s play are as follows:
What is your view? Do you think Shakespeare is still relevant? If not, what would you have preferred to study instead?
About Roberta Eaton Cheadle
I am an author who has recently branched into adult horror and supernatural writing and, in order to clearly differential my children’s books from my young adult and adult writing, these will be published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. My first young adult supernatural novel, Through the Nethergate, has recently been published.
I also have two short paranormal stories in Whispers of the Past, a paranormal anthology edited by Kaye Lynne Booth.
Like this post? Let me know in the comments. You can be sure not to miss any of Writing to be Read’s great content by subscribe to e-mail or following on WordPress. If you found this content helpful or entertaining, please share.
Share this: