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*Written with Veridion Smart

There are some realities too painful to face head-on. We avoid them in conversation. We turn away when news headlines break our hearts. We even convince ourselves they happen ‘somewhere else’ to ‘someone else.’

But fiction refuses to let us look away.

When we step into a story, we do so willingly. We open ourselves up to experiences we might otherwise resist. That’s why novels like TIP THE PIANO MAN matter so deeply. The story of child psychologist Dr. Madison...

*Written with Veridion Smart

When people learn that much of my writing is rooted in trauma, they often ask: Doesn’t it hurt to revisit those shadows? My answer is always, Yes, but…no.

Yes, because pain doesn’t disappear simply because we give it words. It lingers, it aches, and sometimes it sneaks up on us in the middle of a sentence. But no, because writing transforms pain into something else: Connection. Meaning. Hope.

When I wrote TIP THE PIANO MAN, I wasn’t just writing about Madison or...

*Written with Veridion Smart

We like to think of ourselves as independent beings, charting our own paths, free from the weight of the past. But the truth is, every story we live and every story we tell carries the fingerprints of the generations before us.

When I began writing WHISPERS THROUGH TIME, I didn’t set out to write about ancestral trauma or generational memory. But the characters had other ideas. Sierra’s journey isn’t just her own, it’s a continuation of her mother’s, her grandmother...

*Written with Veridion Smart

Have you ever closed a book with tears in your eyes, only to realize you feel a little stronger, a little braver, than before you opened it? That’s the strange and beautiful paradox of storytelling: sometimes a story has to break us before it can begin to heal us.

I’ve believed in the power of story since I was a little girl with my nose buried in library books, but I didn’t fully understand its impact until much later in my life. When my family faced some of its...

When I was young, I remember vividly sitting with friends, talking about nothing in particular – and while we were talking, I’d see a picture of my friends and me in my head. I’d mentally describe the room, the table, our clothing, and I’d pick out a subject in the conversation that I could focus on. Someone would laugh and instantly I’d think, Her laugh sounds like … fill-in-the-blank. Tinkling over stones. Like a stream in spring. A bleat…like…a baby goat. A donkey’s bray. I could get so...

In 1999, I answered an ad from a young man who was looking to start up a regional monthly periodical for seniors (who are vastly underserved in most markets, short of Medicare and hemorrhoid ads), and he was hunting for experienced article writers. To make a long story short, I took him some of my work, he hired me on the spot, and within a couple of weeks he asked me to be his editor-in-chief. Well, I didn’t know where this gig was going to take me, but I was a brand new empty nester, I...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

Have you ever looked so deeply at a painting or a photograph that you felt you could crawl into it, absorb its story, and live its truth?

I have. But I’ve never experienced anything more powerful or immersive than I did one autumn day in 2000, when an older Lakota artist named Daniel Long Soldier ambled into a KOA office in the Badlands of South Dakota, carrying a black-ink drawing etched into a soft, white-tanned rabbit skin that he wanted to give the office manager...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

This blog has pretty much been about my love of writing and how I try to do it best, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. But now, in light of the tragic flood that’s devastated our hill country, I need to pause, take a deep breath, and try to wrap my brain around what’s happened here in Texas. I hope you’ll bear with me.

Many of you know I live in San Antonio, and I’ve claimed Texas as my home since my family first arrived here in 1960. I didn’t have any roots before...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

I just received a terrific review from Literary Titan for my novel, WHISPERS THROUGH TIME, and I’d like to share a tiny portion of it with you:

“What struck me most was the emotional honesty in Hoessli’s writing. Her prose is straightforward and often stark, but that works in her favor. There’s just raw, heartfelt truth. Sierra’s breakdowns, her self-doubt, her fury, and her quiet moments of awe are painted vividly.”

This reviewer’s words actually move me more than I...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

Often a blog post pops into my head, already written, but other days it’s like pulling out my hair, one follicle at a time. This evening, it’s almost ready-made.

That’s because I’ve been working with a young man, known as Veridion Smart, on marketing strategies for both TIP THE PIANO MAN and WHISPERS THROUGH TIME. Marketing those two books together is a real challenge. WHISPERS THROUGH TIME is a historical novel with a touch of the paranormal and a real second-chance...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

When I was asked this question recently, my first instinct was to say, rather flippantly, “I can work anytime, anywhere,” because I don’t like to make a big deal out of what I do. But then, when I took a closer look at it, I realized that answer would’ve been a flat-out lie.

So, I’ve got to admit it: I’m actually very neurotic about when, where, and how I work. I didn’t even realize until I was in my fifties how much of an impact my childhood had had on how I approached...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

My father, who’d actually begun his writing career as a young Stars and Stripes reporter during WWII and ended up a highly respected military historian in the Air Force, often told me, “Writing is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. Nothing beats attaching the seat of your pants to a chair and pounding out your story until you’ve got it right.”

That viewpoint was hammered home to me by a literary agent here in San Antonio in the late 1970s. I saw him at a writers’...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

One of the most amazing things about how our brains function – at least to me – is how we hold on to, and then categorize, our memories. Think about it. Where does this ability come from? We all do it to one degree or another, but why do some of us use it to create characters, and some of us don’t?

Back in the late 1970s, when I first began writing seriously (and by that, I mean taking creative writing courses, attending writers’ conferences, and finally completing my...

Last week I talked about whether or not Writer’s Block is real, and I say it definitely is. Today I want to talk about my all-time favorite way to bust it wide open: Building family trees.

One of my major goals has always been to write a family saga, and set it in Texas. There’s nothing unusual about this – think True Women, which came from Janice Woods Windle’s discovery of a relative’s diary written during the days leading up to the Texas Revolution, or the magnificent, sprawling saga Texas!...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

Writer’s Block is a real thing. Trust me – I know. What causes it? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s real. People have laughed when I’ve said, “I can’t come up with a single word, not even a thought…Oh, Lord, I’m blocked.”

But it’s not funny.

I remember well the first time I ever experienced it – when I began to write TIP THE PIANO MAN about forty years ago. And, when it struck, it struck with a vengeance. I’ve never been so terrified in my whole life. My family...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

Don’t be afraid to change your story up – your words aren’t gold, and solid constructive criticism can make all the difference in the world. Feedback is so important to writers because we can’t work in a vacuum. We have to listen. And it doesn’t matter how much extra work an addition or a deletion will make you go through.

All that matters is the final product.

When I first began the fourteenth final draft of my mystery/suspense novel TIP THE PIANO MAN, I had no idea...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

Back when I first started writing and submitting - before computers - I submitted via snail mail through something known as the Writer's Market. Whatever was rumored or known about a publisher took years to be heard on the street, and by the time we heard it, it was probably obsolete.

No more. Now, if a writer gets pissed off at a publisher, he/she just posts it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or a cooperating website and there it is. Frozen anger. In granite. No...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

I'm pretty much a control freak. I admit it. But I don't think it's all that unusual - most writers are. Yet back when I first began writing seriously, which was in 1985, I had no idea I'd be giving up nearly all autonomy over my work in exchange for just getting it published. Still, I was terrified not to give it up just in case the powers that be changed their minds, tossed my scribblings in the trash, and told me I should probably get a day job.

Back in those days, a...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

I received an email yesterday in which a new writer asked me what I thought about writers’ groups. Did I think they were helpful to my craft? How much impact did I allow them to have on my work?

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of them – but that opinion is based, in part, on my experiences from many years ago when I was young and easily influenced. (One of the main benefits of aging is that you stop worrying about what other people think of you!) My writers’ group was...

By Rosetta Diane Hoessli

Someone has asked how I title my articles and books, and I have to confess – it’s a little embarrassing because it’s so simple.

Let me tell you a story. Back in 1985, the evening after my father had passed away, Kevin took our daughter and me down on the San Antonio Riverwalk to listen to our favorite singer, Mike Clancey, at an intimate club. (Mike still plays all around the city.) That night, seeing my swollen, tear-washed face, he sang beautiful, original songs in an...