Author Chat with Lynne Golodner

Now I am joined by another Michigan-based author, Lynn. Lynn, how are you? I am doing great. I'm so happy to be here. Of course, it's been a work in progress. We've had our little meetings between the time, but now you're finally here. So tell us a little bit about who you are and you have a little gift for us to show, like what really started your love for reading. So tell us a little bit about you. So I'm an avid reader. I've been reading since I was little and I've been writing since I was six years old. My mom says this is my first journal. Quarter I covered from the 70s, yes, I'm that old, but I've been writing all my life and I did it as a labor of love, really, for a long time. I was a journalist, but I wrote eight books in that time that were published all over the place, poetry, nonfiction, and I really started working on fiction in the past five or six years and I've had three novels published. My fourth comes out in October and I'm just having the best time. I love writing and I love reading. And I love that you actually go on these journeys that kind of help you write your books because you just came back from Africa for a birthday trip and the picture looked amazing, even though my Dramamine tip did not work for you, but that's okay, as long as you got there, that's all we care about. And so you have a plethora, like you said, of books that's within your literary world and so one of them is I Love You, Charlie Tanner and that one has actually just won an award. So tell us a little bit about that and what the book is about. Sure, so I Love You, Charlie Tanner is my 12th book, third novel, came out a year ago and it's a romantic suspense story about a midlife protagonist, Charlie, who loses a great love and then processes her grief in the garden. All the while there is a murder in this book. She falls in love with a hot rabbi a second time around and she rebuilds her life in Vermont after having escaped a commune, which is really more of a cult in Cape Breton. And that book was really inspired by my own travels to both Scotland and Nova Scotia, which helped me really to picture where I was gonna place that book. And I loved it and it was a great read and especially when I found like there was a dead body, I was like, oh, this is definitely in my romance and a little bit of horror thriller, which is what I love with you combining the two. And then another one was Woman of Valor, which was a very, it's still romance, but it took a deeper dive into really like the main character finding herself. So tell us a little bit about this one. So Woman of Valor is an interesting story because it's a protagonist who did not grow up Orthodox in the Jewish world, but she chooses to become it. And then some things happen in her chosen community that make her question whether this is the best place for her. It really challenges her marriage. There is infidelity in this book. There's some family trauma at a school and she has to confront it and decide, am I gonna stay in this community that I love or is it really not for me? And so that's quite a journey of the soul. Yeah, and you have, like I said, you have a ton of other books that I feel like would take up the entire hour if we got into all of those. But you also do a lot of work with the Detroit Writing Room that's at the Michigan Central Station. And you just had like a little workshop not too long ago, which I attended. Thank you so much for having me with that one. And so what other works are you doing within this book world? Yeah, so I am a writing coach. I work with a lot of writers one-on-one. Just got back from Mackinac Island where I led a writing retreat, which I do every year. And I also have a publishing house called Scotia Road Books and we publish authors over 40 with strong voices that need to be heard. So we have a book coming out in November. The granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors is writing her memoir about her grandparents. It's a really beautiful story. I'm working on a novel with a client to come out in late 2027. She's Korean American, lives in California and it's a romance, has some polyamory in it. It's a little bit different. So I coach writers every step of the way from beginning to getting published. And I know like in your time when you're not out there helping everybody else or in your own little writing space, what would you say would be your top two genres that you like to read on your own time? Okay, so I really do love romance even though I have major issues with all the tropes and everything, but I do love romance. But I also really like just good women's fiction. So I have a purple couch at home that has like 27 books on it that I'm in the process of reading. But I just can't put it down. Like I love to read. So when I went to Africa, I bought books by Tanzanian authors so that I could read the voices of the place and it really enhanced being there. So wherever I go, I like to read those authors and read about the place. I just, I love to read, yeah. And I definitely feel the couch thing because with me doing this, my bookshelf is full. I need to get some more shelves because my couch is leaning because I have so many books on it that I need to read. So Lynn, before I let you go, is there anything else that you would like to say to maybe future authors out there that's kind of on the fence on if they want to put their work out there and just book lovers in general? Well, yes. So the average first book comes out after age 50. So it's never too late. And, you know, yeah, you'll get negative reviews, but you'll get a lot of positive reviews. And if you change one person or impact them positively with your writing, isn't that worth it? So I just think your voice is important and it needs to be out there. Yeah, and I love to hear when people say, you know, like if they're, I think it was Toni Morrison. And she was like, if there's a book that you want to read and it's not on the shelf, then that means you need to write it. And so if there's something out there, you're like, well, this romance could have had this look on it or maybe you've had real life experiences, write it, write it. And reach out to independent publishers and see if maybe they'll help you like yourself, you know, writing coach, or maybe just tips or a mentor, like, hey, what do you think about this? Should I change something? Should I do something different? Just reach out. And so Lynn, thank you so much for the work that you're doing in the literary world and for coming in and chatting with us. I greatly appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here. Of course.