Writing a Novel in Real Life
Lenore Weiss hosts a quartet of novelists from The Writers Grotto. They'll discuss their novel-writing process—how they got started, how they keep going, and what they've learned through successive drafts. Then, they'll share short readings from their current novels-in-progress.
Lenore Weiss lives in Oakland, California and is a member of The Writers Grotto. Her environmental novel Pulp into Paper and poetry collection, Video Game Pointers were both published in 2024. Lenore is seeking representation for her novel All Gone!
Jesus Sierra was born in Cuba and immigrated to San Francisco when he was twelve years old . He is a structural engineer and has an MFA in Fiction. Over the last five years, he has been working on a historical fiction novel, his first. Jesus will focus on the challenges of writing a novel while working full time and dealing with health issues along the way.
June Martin is a novelist, cartoonist, and painter whose debut novel, Love/Aggression, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction. She is currently working on a novel about the Bay Area, the search for enlightenment, and the ways that capitalism creates a world that is hostile to finding meaning. June will reflect on how different drafts of the same novel can require varied approaches because they represent completely different modes of thought.
Dominic Lim, a queer Filipino writer, holds a Master of Music. He is the author of All the Right Notes (2023) and Karaoke Queen (2024), published by Hachette Book Group. He will share how his novel-writing process evolved across three books—from learning a narrative-arc outlining method in a novel-writing class, to drafting under the pressure of a tight two-book contract deadline, to developing his own highly structured outlining approach.
Mia V. Moss (they/she) is a science fiction and fantasy author from the Pacific Northwest, now living in the SF Bay area. Their undersea sci-fi noir novella, MAI TAIS FOR THE LOST, is out now from Underland Press. Mia will discuss putting aside a manuscript and coming back to it during and after times of personal turbulence.