What makes us want to read a story about a young nurse trying to survive the ugly inner workings of an emergency department and her soulmate soldier trying to survive the jungles of Vietnam? Or, for that matter, what makes us want to read anything? According to reviewer Lee Ambrose, it may be something called word painting.   Word painting is the use of strategic words to trigger specific emotional responses in people. Musicians have used this technique for centuries to add meaning and emotion to their music. If a musical score is happy and lite, then they’ll select lyrics to match. They’ll do the same for music that is wistful, sad, angry, excited, hopeful, and so on. Think of the sad lyrics in Elton John’s Candle in the Wind or the happy and exciting lyrics in ABBA’s Dancing Queen. These two songs played back-to-back can put us on an emotional rollercoaster in minutes.   Novelists also use word painting to elicit emotional responses, and they have more tools to use than musicians. For example, they can evoke emotions through their characters’ facial expressions, body language, actions, and interactions. The settings for each scene can also pull the reader into…

Welcome back to Fresh Fiction! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and your book, MOON WATER?  Hi! Many thanks to Fresh Fiction for the warm welcome. Career-wise, I’m a family nurse practitioner and a long-time nursing educator. In 2015, I switched from writing nursing research articles and texts to writing novels. Creating meaningful historical fiction is the more difficult yet most rewarding writing I’ve ever done. It is an art form that requires a significant amount of time and skill to develop, especially if you want to write literary fiction. While completing my first novel, The Wiregrass, I knew I had a good story, but needed help with designing the infrastructure supporting the story. Consequently, I began taking creative writing classes with a New York Times bestselling author. The classes were difficult but incredibly valuable.  Hopefully, what I learned is evident in Moon Water, a stand-alone sequel to The Wiregrass. Interestingly, the classes also made me a more astute reader of fiction as well. In Moon Water, the protagonist, sixteen-year-old Nettie, comes home to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and gets hit with sucker punches coming from all directions. Her boyfriend since grade school wants to…