Author page: Patricia

Ordinary Heroes - Voices of History Project If you write stories that tell about the real side of war, and I know many of you do, I have a pertinent opportunity for you. A colleague of mine at JoHazel Publishing is working to document “stories of wartime life and its aftereffects either experienced or shared from…

I’m reading about the makings of one of modern fiction’s most prolific writers, Joyce Carol Oates. Oates has written more than fifty-six novels, thirty collections of short stories, eight volumes of poetry, too many essays and book reviews to count, and many long nonfiction works all while teaching at Princeton for thirty-five years. With those many…

Mark your calendars for an upcoming, not-to-be-missed event! Thursday, November 5, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. EDT, join Levar Burton at the Warden Arena to hear his talk, The Power of Storytelling: Written, Spoken, Lived. Levar Burton has quite a life story to tell. You may know Levar Burton as Kunta Kinte in the landmark television series…

Isn’t that a great word—specificity? It has such a nice ring to it. I like the way it feels coming out of my mouth and the fact that I can say it correctly. It’s also a great goal to aim for in our writing. It happens to the best of us. We sometimes get a bit…

Congratulations to Laura Chase who just published her book, Grasshopper Girl: From Fear to Faith. Laura got the bulk of the writing for her book done, more than 60,000 words, in the Finish My Book in 90 Days coaching program and had this to say about the role it played in her accomplishment: Finish My Book…

Patricia speaking at the Association of Personal Historians international conference in Sacramento Do you belong to an organization that invites speakers to share information? If so, let me know. I'd love to come and visit with your group and discuss any number of writing-related topics. If you'd like to see a partial list of my most…

October is breast cancer awareness month, and to remind residents, my hometown of College Park has gone pink! In addition to the pink ribbons displayed at the post office and in my many shop windows, College Park crosswalks and curbs at the corners of Princeton Avenue/Smith Street and Edgewater Drive were painted bright pink. A…

Chances are when we settle down to edit what we’ve written, we are extremely familiar with it. We know what’s coming, and it’s this intimate knowledge that creates editing issues for us. Missing word? No problem. Our mind understands what we meant. The problem is, the reader may not be so clever. One key to editing…

Patricia speaking at Monterey County, California Library Everyone has a story to tell. What’s yours? Learn ways to recount the tale only you can tell in this fun and lively workshop with PatriciaCharpentier, multi-award winning author of Eating an Elephant: Write Your Life One Bite at a Time. Discover ways to put your experiences on…