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Dawn’s Bio:

An on-again, off-again writer for most of her life, Dawn started to focus more on her writing seven years ago, about the same time she got serious about yoga. Curious about the amazing effect yoga was having on her creative process, Dawn discovered other yogi-writers through study with Jeffrey Davis, author of Journey From the Center to the Page. Already a yoga teacher, she completed Yoga as Muse facilitator training with Davis in 2010.

Dawn credits Yoga as Muse with helping her establish a regular writing practice, and with overcoming fears of sitting down to write and finding she has nothing to say. Instead, she’s discovered that the body is a storehouse of emotions and memories that, through gentle movement and breathing, can yield rich, creative imagery.

The long, dark winters in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada where Dawn lives with her daughter are perfect for delving into the creative realm. She is currently at work on her first novel and her play, Fish Out of Water, will be produced in 2011. Dawn is also very excited to offer Yoga as Muse workshops for yogis, writers, and anyone interested in exploring how yoga's skillful means can enhance a creative life.

Find out more about what Dawn’s up to on Facebook, Twitter (@dawngcurtis), her website at http://www.dawncurtis.com/, and on Jeffrey Davis’ Yoga as Muse page at http://www.trackingwonder.com/.

If you haven't done so already, check out Dawn's award-winning story "Low-Hanging Fruit" and return here for a chat with the author!

WOW: Congratulations on placing in the Fall 2010 Flash Fiction Contest! What is your inspiration for your story?

Dawn: I adapted Low-Hanging Fruit from a passage in a novel I'm working on that is inspired in part by my grandmother's life, growing up in an Italian immigrant family in northern Ontario during WWI. Though the situation the character finds herself in is, as far as I know, purely fiction!

WOW: Sounds like the novel will be a great story! What do you like best about writing?

Dawn: I really enjoy the process of writing, when I'm in the "flow" and the writing seems to just be coming without any conscious effort on my part. I'm endlessly fascinated by where the subconscious mind takes us when we stand aside, quiet our "inner heckler" and just get lost in the drafting process. On the other end, I also love the work involved in refining and honing my rough material into a finished piece - kind of like fitting the pieces of a puzzle together.

WOW: In your bio, you’ve credited Yoga as Muse for helping you establish a regular writing practice. How has it helped, and what is your writing schedule like?

Dawn: In Yoga as Muse, there are four basic preparations for a successful writing practise:
1) Writing with intention
2) Showing up

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Kelly Stone Gamble holds a BA in History and Business Administration, a MA in Humanities with a Literature emphasis and is currently working toward a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Alive Magazine, Family Fun, Family Digest, Family Digest Baby, Gay Today, Ladybug and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Her fiction has won awards from Writers Weekly, Writers Courtyard and the Ground Zero Literary Project. She has just completed the first draft of Ragtown, a historical fiction novel set during the building of the Hoover Dam. Kelly resides in Henderson, Nevada with her husband and two sons.

To learn more about Kelly, or just to say hello, visit her at http://www.kellystonegamble.blogspot.com/  or on facebook.

Interview by Marcia Peterson

WOW: Congratulations on placing in the top ten in our Fall 2010 writing competition! What inspired you to enter the contest?

Kelly: One of the other students in my MFA program received an honorable mention in the Summer 2010 contest. After reading the stories and the information about the contest, it sounded like fun!

WOW: Can you tell us what encouraged the idea behind your story, December?

Kelly: I have a friend who is writing about her experiences in Baghdad as a Master Sergeant in the US Army and I have been deeply moved by her stories. I have never been in the Armed Forces and after reading one of her essays, I began to imagine what role I might have played had my life taken a different path. I love historical fiction, enjoy writing surprise endings and I am a Nurse, so I put it all together and came up with December.

WOW: It's a terrific story with a twist! Since you’re currently working toward a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, maybe you could share a bit about that experience, and why you chose to pursue that path.

Kelly: I hope to one day teach, and feel the MFA is an important step toward that goal. I work with an amazing group of accomplished writers-our faculty. The value of their input and critique of my work has far exceeded the cost of the education. Additionally, the SNHU program offers a real sense of community. I have made friendships that will last forever. We are a diverse group with a common interest in writing. My family is very supportive of my work, but they don’t always understand how I can spend days stressing over one sentence or one word. My friends do get that. They have become family.

WOW: We’d love to know more about your writing routines. Could you tell us when and where you usually write? Do you have favorite tools or habits that get you going?

Kelly: I like to write in the middle of the night and have adjusted my sleep patterns to allow for a lot of night writing time. I sometimes turn on music that is speci

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Linda’s Bio:

After several years as an entrepreneur, at the age of 25, Linda Lisa McGrew sold her business, her house, her car and almost all her earthly possessions. She took her bicycle to New Zealand with plans of touring this unknown and beautiful country for two months, then returning home. This was the beginning of her lessons on how planning is useless. The other lessons? A previously unknown passion for travel and knack for adapting to new environments. Two months later she found herself living in Maui, doing yoga and surfing fulltime. It was here she began to explore the life of a writer. But she was not completely fulfilled, and dreamed bigger dreams; that of becoming an international business consultant. With this in mind, she returned to Canada to complete an MBA. For her thesis project, she thought it exciting to study some aspect of business in China. In August of 2007, she went to Shanghai, with a plan to spend two months there, completing her thesis and learning about the next super power, in order to help her with her consulting firm. She had apparently forgotten lesson number one. Again, the universe laughed at her plans. She fell in love. This love was not a typical love, though. It was not human. It was the love for a people, a country, a language, a culture and a life. It was inevitable karmic-past-life-energy that she could not pull away from. Linda lived, worked, studied and played in China for another three years. Libraries of books could not describe or express all that she learned in that time. She had become a lif-er. She was going to live there forever. Happily ever after. Currently, Linda McGrew travels for a living by writing for several adventure and travel magazines. She is also working on two novels, both based in China.

Find out more about Linda by visiting her blog: http://www.lilimcg.com./

Read Linda's third place story "A Chinese Haircut" and return here for a chat with the author!

WOW: You have quite an exciting biography! Is your story based on a real experience, or what is your inspiration for your story?

Linda: The story is a mix of several experiences I had personally in China as well as horror stories I heard from friends. There is certainly an element of fear alongside the excitement of living abroad, and I took that with a pinch of humor to tell the tale.

WOW: You brought out both that fear and excitement very well in your story. What do you like best and least about travel writing?

Linda: I love experiencing unexpected adventure, meeting incredible people and overcoming challenges. The pleasure comes mainly from getting to tell others all about it. My major focus in doing so is to dispel ignorance and fear of other people and places. We're all 99.99% the same and all want the same fundamental things.

The major difficulty is getting paid to do something you would do for free - because what happens is you end up doing it for free more often than not.

WOW: What is your traveling/writing schedule like?

Linda: Schedule?!? I am genera

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Cynthia Tracy Larsen lives in southern Vermont with her husband and three daughters. She pretends to run the office for their landscaping company but is often caught writing. She graduated from the University of Maine at Machias with a degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. Her historical novel, LOT’S DAUGHTERS, is currently on submission. She is trying her hand at short stories while she waits for the next novel to knock her over the head and carry her away.

This story began as a workshop piece for Roxanna Robinson’s class at the Wesleyan Writer’s Conference in the spring of 2010. A Cup of Coffee is Cynthia’s first publication.

interview by Marcia Peterson

WOW: Congratulations on winning first place in our Fall 2010 writing contest! How do you feel?

Cynthia: Thanks for asking, Marcia! I was really excited that my story was chosen. And surprised. This is my first publication, so it feels especially valuable to me. I was on vacation with my family when I found out, and quickly ordered up a round of mimosas to toast my achievement. But before we put down our glasses, my sister won $1000.00 in bingo and stole my moment! Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! Of course, she was forced to buy drinks for the rest of the trip, so I feel like I got even.

WOW: I'm no stranger to those Brady Bunch references! Can you tell us what encouraged the idea behind your story, A Cup of Coffee?

Cynthia: Most of my stories start with visuals. I pictured a woman, sitting in a diner, waiting for a man. I was interested in the idea that life-altering decisions can be made so quickly. In the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

WOW: You did a great job--it was very moving. What was the editing process like for the story, which began as a workshop piece for a class?

Cynthia: A Cup of Coffee started as a one-page character sketch for Roxanna Robinson’s workshop at the Wesleyan Writers Conference. Originally I had a bit of Ray’s back-story in it, which I think crowded the story. So I took that part out, which enabled me to flesh Caroline out a bit more. Even though the story didn’t change much, there was a lot of tweaking. That’s the challenge of flash, trying to squeeze out all of the extra air.

WOW: We’d love to know more about your writing routines, especially since you have three children. Could you tell us when and where you usually write? Do you have favorite tools or habits that get you going?

Cynthia: My writing habits change as my life changes. When my kids were little, I went through a period of time where I got up every day at 5 am to write. And I am not a morning person. Mainly I have become a hoarder of time. I don’t say ‘free time,’ because when you have three kids and two part-time jobs those two words do not co-exist. When my youngest daughter started pre-school, instead of usin

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