Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Kathi Macias | Writing Beyond “What You Know”
Author Guest / December 28, 2010

When I first started writing, I heeded the admonition to “write what you know,” even though it severely limited my topics and focus. As a result, most of my novels were set either in Southern California, where I was born and raised and currently live, or up in the Pacific Northwest, where I also lived for several years. My characters were a lot like me and/or the people around me, and their lifestyles and circumstances often paralleled my own to some degree. But somewhere along the line I had to ask myself, Is that all there is? Can I move beyond my own little corner of the world in my writing, even if I can’t actually do so physically? With the Internet at my fingertips, I decided I could. That’s how my Extreme Devotion series with New Hope Publishers came about. RED INK, the third book in the series, is set in China, and though I’ve never been there myself, my readers tell me the book reads as if I have. The same is true of NO GREATER LOVE, set in South Africa, and MORE THAN CONQUERORS, set in the San Diego/Tijuana area (been there!), but also San Juan Chamula…