Kwill Publishing Company Launches Angel Hero July 22nd!!!

Hallelujah! Hip, hip, hooray! Today is Publication Day for Angel Hero, a true tale of crime and courage and love that lives past the grave. I’m sitting at my computer in this vintage redwood house in the green hills above the University of Hawaii, listening to songs I wrote honoring a firefighter I grew to…

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Writing a Fictionalized Memoir, Part 1

An author friend of mine, Laurie Hanan, got me a gig speaking at a local library recently. Because my book Angel Hero is a fictionalized memoir, the librarian asked me to talk about writing one. I worked long and hard on my 15-20 minute speech before I came up with this version, which I’ll post…

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Writing a Fictionalized Memoir, Part 2

The word memoir comes from the French word memoria, meaning reminiscence. A memoir is a nonfiction, or factual, collection of memories an individual writes about that took place in his or her personal life. It is a subcategory of an autobiography but with a narrower focus. A few definitions: an autobiography is nonfiction, written by…

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Writing a Fictionalized Memoir, Part 3

For writers who do not invent dialogue, or make up events, or combine characters, but who do fictionalize details, a third category is necessary. If the writer tells the truth about events that actually occurred, uses genuine dialogue, and only changes details such as dates, names of places and people and their appearances, an appropriate…

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