In cold Halifax, we meet writer donalee Moulton, who talks all aspects of technology. It’s everything tech: from the tech that we take for granted to knowing how detailed our tech descriptions have to be, and from the depths and limits we have on understanding tech to the practicalities of tech that’s helpful in our daily writing lives.

donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. A historical mystery, Conflagration!, was published in 2024. It won the 2024 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense (Historical Fiction).

A short story “Swan Song” was one of 21 selected for publication in Cold Canadian Crime. It was shortlisted for an Award of Excellence. Other short stories have been published in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies. donalee’s short story “Troubled Water” was shortlisted for a 2024 Derringer Award and a 2024 Award of Excellence from the Crime Writers of Canada.

donalee is an award-winning freelance journalist. She has written articles for print and online publications across North America including The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Lawyer’s Daily, National Post, and Canadian Business.

As well, donalee is the author of The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say and co-authored the book, Celebrity Court Cases: Trials of the Rich and Famous.

LINKS

Website: donaleemoulton.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/donaleemoultonauthor

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaleemoulton/

X: @donaleeMoulton

Instagram: donaleemoulton

TIMINGS

00:40 Welcome / Distractions and Disruptions

04:35 Tech Tools

08:22 Tech that we take for granted

13:36 How deeply we need to understand tech in our novels

20:00 Helpful Tech

26:27 donalee’s Writing journey

33:00 A Psychopath for a Protagonist

36:00 Closing

Total Run Time = 37:29

#writing #writingtools #plotting #coverdesign #revision #AI

Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2025/02/607-writers-on-writing-donalee-moulton.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Writers on Writing, a series of interviews with active writers on technology, social media, process and productivity, and much more. Here’s a link to the YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7Kctg7OayipF1tU2xl6TKjy

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

A Couple of Bees came for an interview, and we laughed all the way through. Elise Brown is a young writer who has reached the pinnacle that some never achieve: a book on the verge of publishing and another book in revision, an agent who loves her work and a publisher eager to get the books out.

Elise Burke Brown comes from a family of detectives, including a grandfather who filled her childhood with true crime stories she learned not to repeat at daycare. She is the award-winning author of the New Orleans-based Chase Harlem series. She teaches composition at the University of Alabama and runs the popular book blog A Couple of Bees Read, https://coupleofbeesread.com/. You can connect with her on Instagram as @EliseBurkeBrown_Author on on X as @couple_of_bees.

Becky Brown has had several careers in her lifetime: retail management, stay at home mom, a charity organizer, a teacher, and a principal. She loves taking care of her granddaughters, quilting, photography, and reading. She’s new to writing and just started her memoir, Wings of Eagles: My Journey of Faith. Becky currently is president of her local quilters guild and is active in her church. She enjoys working with her daughter-in-law on our blog A Couple of Bees Read as well as serving as her beta reader and acting as her amateur publicist.

TIMINGS

00:40 Welcome / their Podcast A Couple of Bees Read

04:50 Weekly Wine

9:00 Tech and more

14:57 Reading Out Loud

17:48 An agent who supports the work

23:55 A Two-Book Deal

27:00 Elise’s Process

Total Run Time = 30:52

#writing #writingtools #plotting #coverdesign #revision #AI

Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2025/02/606-writers-on-writing-couple-of-bees.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Writers on Writing, a series of interviews with active writers on technology, social media, process and productivity, and much more. Here’s a link to the YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7Kctg7OayipF1tU2xl6TKjy

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)

Travel and Death. We don’t normally put these two topics together unless we’re talking tragic accidents, but Dawn Barclay has found a way to create entertaining mysteries and relate true crime stories.

After talking about Tech and tools, the writing process and productivity, she shares with us the two publications she will have this winter. In January she’ll release her newest domestic thriller, Deadly When Disturbed. February sees the multi-volume nonfiction Vacations Can Be Murder: The True Crime Lovers’ Travel Guide to New England. She will return with more true crime in a Mid-Atlantic edition followed by the Southeast before she explores bloody murder in the Mid-West.

D.M. Barr is the pseudonym for Dawn M. Barclay, an award-winning author who writes psychological and romantic suspense under this pen name and non-fiction under her own. Her published novels include Expired Listings, Murder Worth the Weight, Saving Grace: A Psychological Thriller, The Queen of Second Chances, and Simple Tryst of Fate.

TIMINGS

• 00:40 Welcome / Introduction / Tech Tools
• 5:09 Finding True Crimes of the Past
• 7:53 Trying AI for Translations
• 10:50 Problems with Tech and AI
• 19:30 Tech used in Active Writing
• 23:54 Dawn’s Process
• 25:00 True Crime, RomComs, and Domestic Thrillers

Total Run Time = 31:10

#writing #writingtools #plotting #coverdesign #booknarration #AI

Website https://thewritefocus.blogspot.com/2025/02/605-writers-on-writing-dawn-barclay-and.html

Thanks for listening to The Write Focus. We focus on productivity, process, craft, and tools. Our podcast is for newbies who want to become writing pros and veterans who are returning to writing after years away.

Our current focus is Writers on Writing, a series of interviews with active writers on technology, social media, process and productivity, and much more. Here’s a link to the YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXi3M_aM-d7Kctg7OayipF1tU2xl6TKjy

Support the podcast with a cup of coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/winkbooksr

• You can find workbooks and templates at Buy Me a Coffee. Available is the Enter the Writing Business Workbook and templates from the Discovering Characters
• Available Now: worksheet templates and a video trailer script for Discovering Your Author Brand.

For more links and resources, visit www.thewritefocus.blogspot.com .

Write to us at winkbooks@aol.com.

If you find value in this podcast, please share with your writing friends or write a review. (We’re small beans. We don’t have the advertising budget of the big peeps. You can make a difference.)