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The Real People Who Have Inspired My Leading Men
As I did a few weeks ago, I thought I’d continue this series which was inspired by a fellow writer’s blog whereby he wrote a post about people who have inspired his characters along the way. I loved reading his insights and what informed his writing, so I’m going to continue doing so with people who have inspired some of my own characters in my novels. Again, I’ll pick three, one from each book. MICHAEL CONTELLI from BENEATH THE MIMOSA TREE When I was little and my grandmother and grandfather (Nanny and Poppy) lived in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, on Myrtle Avenue, I would regularly visit. We didn’t move from…
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Finding George: One Teacher’s Profound Effect on Me
This story begins back in 1992, as I was finishing up my master’s in professional writing at Towson University. I decided to take Writing Short Fiction as my final class—an elective of sorts—in the Professional Writing program. I had selected the public relations track, so this class was taken for fun. I had taken Creative Writing in high school, and had loved it, so I decided to give it a try. Enter Dr. George Friedman, the professor. His teaching style was one that, to this day, some twenty years later, I try to emulate in my own classroom. There we were, all of us students writing stories, and George would…
