Author Archives: Laura Roberts

About Laura Roberts

Creative copywriter and travel writing enthusiast Laura Roberts is the creator of the cheap-eats blog Shoestring Austin, as well as its predecessor Shoestring Montreal (retired). She is currently a columnist for Gifted Travel, a prolific blogger and occasional haiku writer, and is wrangling words for the completion of her first guidebook, Naked Montreal, available exclusively via Buttontapper.com this spring.

Houston Writers Guild thinks I’m special

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While I didn’t win the Houston Writers Guild Genre Contest, I did score a 141 out of 150 points on my 15-page novel excerpt. That’s a 94%, which is still totally an A, right?

The comments I received on my novel excerpt from Naked Montréal were “strong entertaining voice” and “well-written.” They also gave me 15 out of 15 in the section of the grading rubric that said “Quit reading the MS the moment you lose interest in the story. Give the manuscript one point for each page that you read… if you made it all the way to the end, give it 15 points.” Go me! I am not boring! W00T!

I did enter in the “mainstream” genre, which I suspect had the most competition (y’know, since it’s basically the catch-all for anything that’s not mystery, romance, sci-fi, historical or YA), so I’m not too upset about this non-win (I prefer to consider it a minor setback on my ultimate road to victory, not a flat-out defeat). And two ladies actually won this genre (congrats to Pamela Hutchins of Houston and Annie Daylon of Chilliwack, B.C.!), so that’s encouraging in a world where men still seem to take most of the top writing prizes.

So basically, even though I didn’t win anything, I feel like I got something out of entering this contest. Other people have read my work and enjoyed it, plus I got some useful feedback on what needs to be improved to make the book even better.

Thanks, Houston Writers Guild!

P.S. If you’re interested in reading the sample I sent, click the “Naked Montréal” cover photo or this link.

A to Z challenge: Helen Zimmern

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My final Awesome Lady Author is actually a translator whose most famous work came from her ability to put another great writer’s German sentences into English. Helen Zimmern is perhaps best known for her translations of Nietzsche, including Beyond Good and Evil and Human, All Too Human.

Zimmern’s work included the translation and presentation of German and Italian works to the English-speaking world. Without her valuable work, we wouldn’t be nearly as keen on multiculturalism. Indeed, part of her contribution to a more multicultural society included reprimanding Germany for its anti-Semitism and defending the values of her adopted homeland of Italy against German nationalism.

In addition to her scholarly work, Zimmern also wrote stories for children, including a collection entitled Good Words for the Young. She also published a book in the Famous Women series about Maria Edgeworth, an Irish writer of the time who, herself, had published a book entitled Letters for Literary Ladies.

So that about wraps it up for my A to Z Blog Challenge! Thanks to everybody who’s been reading along on my “Awesome Lady Authors from A to Z” journey and participating in this year’s challenge. If you missed any letters of the alphabet, I’ve set up a handy link list in the right-hand sidebar on the main page of my site. You can also read backwards from Z to A by clicking here.

Additionally, as a thank-you to those who’ve stopped by the blog, I’ve made my ninja book featuring an awesome lady lead, Rebels of the 512, available for free over on Smashwords. You don’t even need a coupon! From now until May 30, you can download my ebook on any digital reader. All you have to do is click here and then click the “download” link next to your reader of choice.

Cheers!

A to Z challenge: Banana Yoshimoto

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In quite the opposite direction from the yari, yumi and ya over on my ninja blog, today’s awesome lady author is Banana Yoshimoto.

image by Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

While Banana may share a common ethnicity with the ninja, her writing is about as far away from the battlefield fighting and violence as you can get. Oddly, Wikipedia has classified her as a writer of “pulp fiction.” I’m not sure that fits. I would describe her writing more as magical realism, surrealism or straight up women’s fiction, depending on the book. There aren’t any guns or dames or detectives in her books, much less fantastic amounts of violence (although the stories usually stem from some type of personal loss or death of a loved one), so the “pulp” label doesn’t really fit, although the stories are often dark, twisted and bizarre.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, “Banana” is her pen name. Her real name is Mahoko.)

I haven’t caught up on all of Banana’s works, but I’ve definitely read Kitchen, Lizard, Asleep, NP and Hardboiled and Hard Luck. I started Goodbye, Tsugumi, but I couldn’t get through it for some reason. Her most recent book (or, at least, most recently translated from Japanese for an English-speaking audience) is The Lake, which is partially inspired by the Aum Shinrikyo cult (a religious cult/terrorist organization that released sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo subway in 1995). It definitely sounds more dark and moody than her other works, so perhaps this is where the pulp label comes in. I’ve just downloaded it from the Austin Public Library, so I’m off to read it right now. Hopefully my earlier Bananamania will return!

Have you read any of Banana Yoshimoto’s books? Who’s your favorite Y author?