Colleen L. Donnelly on Write What You Know

Wild Women Authors is pleased to have author Colleen L. Donnelly, who writes fiction with heart, and who will share her thoughts on . . .

Writing What You Know so Someone Can Read What They Want to Know

If I pour my heart into writing a book, I want someone to find their heart when they read it. If I take my characters down paths I know too well—betrayal, accusations, lost love, settling for second best, waiting too long to say how you feel, making use of a law that boxed you out, facing an enemy you need to forgive—then for the reader’s sake, I must get them to the end of those struggles with something experienced, something learned, and something gained…because that’s how I did it, wrote it, and why someone read it.

So what did I do and write for someone else to read?

• Denying passion: Caging a heart – it couldn’t be done. Not a heart in full blossom of passion. Stopping a roaring river would be easier, or harnessing a violent hurricane with bare hands. From “Love on a Train.”

• Suffering distance even when close: “I miss you too,” I answered, my cheek flat against his chest, my eyes staring across the room at a poster of Cincinnati’s baseball team. I did miss him but not in the way he thought. Even when he was near I still missed him, missed him in the lonely place he should be in my soul. From “Mine to Tell.”

1. Losing dreams to reality: “You think your dress works good for a bride?” Lana eyed the dress her grandmother was giving her, faded gray fabric with only a hint of white where tiny daisies had once been. “You’re going to be a wife, not a bride…” Grandma muttered around her mouthful of pins, her needle and thread weaving in and out of the gathered waist. “Get silly notions about being a bride out of your head.” From “Asked For.”

• Having plans go sour: Ben let go of his saddle. “Look, you need more than a business arrangement. You need a real husband. Why settle for some agreement with a stranger when there’s a man here who’d marry you right?” My heart struck up a chorus of eager beats as I stared up into eyes I could tell meant everything the man behind them said. If a cowhand ever proposed to me, that’s exactly how I imagined it would sound. He raised a finger. “I want you married the right way. I’m suggesting you consider Doc for a husband.” Doc. My heart became silent, my chest an empty cavern. From “The Lady’s Arrangement.”

• Suffering suspicions: Mama believed Grandma resented being with a man who walked a little bit different. I asked Grandma about that and she told me it wasn’t the gimp in a

man’s gait that made him crippled, it was the gimp in his eye. From “Out of Splinters and Ashes.”

• Learning too late your heart has gone from friendship to love: My skin grew cold, and my gut coiled into a knot. I thought I was going to be sick as it dawned on me what Lane had wanted to say, and why he was skirting our pinkie truce. He asked Gabriella to marry him. From “Sonata Contineo”

When I write what I know, I could be writing your path. So read and enjoy, and when the pages answer what you’ve always wondered, clasp the book to your heart, and say, “Amen.”

A bit more about our guest:

Colleen L Donnelly was born in the Midwestern US where she has returned after several years of living in other places, proving, “There’s no place like home.” A scientist by profession and an outdoors person by passion, she has learned to find and generate stories wherever she’s been and whatever she’s done.

You can find Colleen at:

Website – http://www.colleenldonnelly.com/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/ColleenLDonnelly

Twitter – https://twitter.com/ColleenLDonnell

Goodreads – http://www.Goodreads.com/colleenldonnelly

Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/Colleen-L-Donnelly/e/B00ELP1GIA/

And, her books can be purchased at :

Asked For – http://amzn.to/1TyflEu

Mine to Tell – http://amzn.to/1PNJo4S

Love on a Train – http://amzn.to/1m9eYCx

The Lady’s Arrangement – http://amzn.to/2qj7DE2

Sonata Contineo – https://amzn.to/2I0zzYi

Out of Splinters and Ashes – https://amzn.to/2K0WTHt