QUESTIONS

From me, personally, of course. You can contact me at btbarbaratucker11@gmail.com and I'll arrange delivery. I have credit card processing ability through Square. You now can order through this website as well. You can also buy all of them on Amazon in Kindle and hard copy and some from Barnes and Noble in hard copy.

Yes, I belong to the Chattanooga Writers Guild and highly recommend these great folks. I also helped start a critique group for serious writers in Northwest Georgia (right over the line from Chattanooga, of course) in 2011. I had to take a hiatus to earn a doctorate, but I came back and love this group! I really advise any serious writer to join a critique group--not because everything they say is right, but because they do say something valuable. No writer should submit to a publisher or self-publish without getting lots and lots of beta readers and editing help first. Let me give an example. I was working on the sequel to Long Lost Family and started the book in a certain way. They said I needed some action in the first chapter. I balked at this. But then I got over it and did write a short first chapter with "action" or at least a dramatic question--"what's going to happen?" It's much better. This resulting book: Long Lost Promise.

Yes, on this website. But I also blog more frequently at partsofspeaking.blogspot.com. Use the archives and search engine to find my writing posts. I also blog about everything else there--politics, theology and practice, dogs, literature, film. I blog on higher education and college teaching and learning, my research area, at https://highereducationobservers.blogspot.com

As of 2024, I do! You can buy books from this site. Look under the tab MORE to shop.

OK, I added this just to get into the personal stuff. I didn't want to splatter my picture and information all over the front page of this new website; I wanted to emphasize the books and blog. I am Professor of Communication at a public state college in Northwestern Georgia. That should be easy enough to find. I like to keep my writing life separate from the academic life. Without getting into my CV or resume, I've worked in higher education for over 43 years, doing just half of every possible job. Right now, I'm an academic department chair supervising 20 faculty (full- and part-time). I teach classes in communication, although in the past I've also taught English. I have two master's degrees and one doctorate. (The doctorate is an Ed.D., which some don't consider a legitimate doctorate, but I got it from one of the top universities in the nation, so I'm good with it. I also worked my head and other body parts off for it during a difficult time in my life.) My undergrad is from a Christian college that no longer exists. I have a husband, grown married son, disabled brother for whom I am conservator, a pitbull, and lots of friends and a wonderful support group at the church I attend. I am a very blessed person with a lot of interests. Most wonderful, I have a beautiful daughter-in-law and equally beautiful granddaughter. I am not sharing the baby's photo in public, but trust me, she's beautiful, growing, healthy, talkative, and learning two languages already at 2 months old. I don't think she's going to be an introvert. She sometimes looks like her lovely mother, and other times she is so similar to my son at that age that it's hilarious. Greatest thing ever! Sometimes you will see the disclaimer on works of fiction: Any resemblance between real people and events and those portrayed in this novel are purely coincidental. Well, that’s nonsense, at one level. We have to get our ideas from somewhere! But, rest assured, no one in my books is a real person I know, and it’s not you!

Good question. You have to give up something to write. TV, movies, Internet surfing, big parts of your social existence, a little bit of your privacy, a lot of your sanity. It's lonely, lonely work. Your best friends won't even read your work sometimes. You won’t make much money. You have to do it because you love it. You also have to work hard at it and let other people honestly critique you. You have to kill the little darlings and be realistic. You have to proofread your book three to five times, and there will still be errors. Is it worth it? I don't know; I just can't help it. Beyond that whiny paragraph, though, I am not one of those disciplined persons who can write three hours a day, on schedule. But you do need to find regular long chunks of time to write.

Both. Although I am genetically averse to anything "new-agey," I do believe that a writer has to tap into the subconscious and let it flow sometimes--memories, images, poetry, words, dialogues, and mostly feelings. That's the pantser side of my writing. But I also have to plan the plot and write character descriptions. Plots--and characters-- have to develop through chapters, and chapter need to have a coherent center or theme or whatever you want to call it; they are not just a series of events. They need a beginning, middle, and end like everything else. The cute little planster/pantser dichotomy misses the point, though. Writing is rewriting. It's revision. We must spend much more time in that than we give it credit for.