Conceptions of leadership have evolved, and Liberating Leadership Capacity captures these new ideas and provides a pathway to create sustainable systems of high leadership capacity. Available April 2016 from 
A sizzling new novel set in Taos, New Mexico. The third in the Justine Trilogy, preceded by the award-winning, The Cairo Codex and The Italian Letters. Buy it at your local independent bookstore, 
Posts Tagged ‘literary’
The Cairo Codex wins 3 awards
Wednesday, May 7th, 2014
The Cairo Codex, has now won three prestigious 2014 awards: the Silver Nautilus Award for fiction, the Bronze International Independent Publishers Award for historical fiction, and was a finalist in the USA Best Books Award competition. The Cairo Codex, a riveting novel of suspense, politics, religion, and romance is set in Egypt during the years 2 and 2007. Anthropologist Justine Jenner discovers the diary of Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, in an ancient crypt during a major earthquake. She barely survives with the codex and her life, both threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood.
I became enthralled with Egypt as a young girl when my mother enchanted me with tales of her own alleged reincarnation from Egyptian royalty. In 1989, I became a State Department Envoy to Egypt and began two decades of exploration of its culture. I’ve written several internationally-recognized books in the field of leadership, none as fun as fiction! Before fiction, I was an administrator, history instructor, international consultant, and am professor emeritus at California State University, East Bay.
The second novel in The Justine Trilogy, The Italian Letters, will be released this fall (I know, I know, I said July!) and the third novel, A Rapture of Ravens, in early 2015.
Tags: awards, codex, Egypt, fiction, Jesus, literary, Muslim, politics, trilogy, Virgin Mary, writing
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Writing the Novel: Fiction versus Non-Fiction
Monday, December 30th, 2013
Post Dec. 28
The story of the two Kents (Haruf and Nelson) in my last post represented two ends of the cognition spectrum: stories that spring organically from experience…and stories that present themselves in a more systematic way. The common ingredient: imagination and fine writing.
Imagination is still the driving force, regardless of how we bring it to life. Because I had written non-fiction texts in leadership before turning to the novel genre, I brought along many strategies that serve me well in my former life. Many of those strategies got in the way!! They had to be discarded, often painfully.
In non-fiction, a writer leads the reader down a primrose path to understanding, bridging and looping ideas, repeating key points, closing arguments—all in service of thorough understanding.
But what about: Surprise? Puzzlement? Tension? Not if you can help it.My first draft of a novel read like a graduate thesis. But surely some practices served me well in fiction as well as non-fiction…what were they?
1) The discipline of writing—writing every day.
2) Tenacity—staying with the project until it is done.
3) Getting the ideas and story down quickly, revising later.
4) Not personalizing critique from self and others.
5) Rewriting, then rewriting again.
Next…New Habits for Writing a Novel
Tags: fiction, imagination, Kent Haruf, literary, non-fiction, novels, tossing out writing habits
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Why a Trilogy?
Monday, December 16th, 2013
I am often asked: Why a Trilogy? Why not just write the first book and see how it goes? I’m sure my publisher has asked himself the same question. So I decided to answer this question as a set of “trilogy rules,” or—when you’re ready to write a trilogy.
You are on your way to a trilogy…
- You have a fierce obsession with some big themes, like the history of the Roman Empire, the transition of Egypt from a dictatorship to heaven knows what, the progression of a people or tribe, your characters must grow up and transform… You have a great deal to say and just can’t keep it under 400 pages.
- You have a lot to say about the evolution of an individual who is representative, iconic, symbolic of a particular group, e.g. women, a political or religious figure, men, ice skaters, explorers, etc.
- You are inventing/creating a voice and actions for a historical character, e.g. Mary of Nazareth, Jesus, Tolstoy, Hemingway, etc. Such a reinvention benefits from a trilogy since it takes time to alter the reader’s sensibilities and experiences.
- Novel Number 1 is doing so well that you receive fan letters demanding to see the next novel.
- Numbers 1-4 above are true for you, but you need a breathing space in between.
Linda
Tags: history, literary, novels, trilogy, women
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