Best-selling author Michelle Moran on writing

Best-selling author Michelle Moran continues her foray into historical fiction with Cleopatra's Daughter, new in stores on Sept. 15. 

She has been very candid about her relationship with book review bloggers and how they have helped her spread the word about her books.  Check out the exclusive blogger section on her Website.

You can see her testimony on the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Web site, which spearheads the celebration of online reviewers Sept. 14 through Sept. 18.

Michelle was gracious enough to take time out of her writing and publicity schedule to answer a few more questions about her writing.  Check out the first part of the interview.

Most writers will read inspirational/how-to manuals, take workshops, or belong to writing groups. Did you subscribe to any of these aids and if so which did you find most helpful? Please feel free to name any "writing" books you enjoyed most (i.e. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott).

Actually, I never attended workshops or read how-to manuals. I do read quite a few publishing blogs however, and have quite a few daily must-reads, including Nathan Bransford's blog, Pimp My Novel, BookEnds, and Pub Rants.

Do you have any particular writing rituals or habits that you must complete before, during, and after writing?  If so, please describe some of them.

Ha-ha. No! I just turn on the computer and go.

Most people have read some poetry in their lives either in school or in magazines or online.  What poems have touched you in some way?  And do you have any favorite poets?

I really enjoy Frost, Tolkien and Wordsworth. Anything inspirational and sappy calls to me, which is why I really love "The Road Not Taken."

Please describe your writing space and how it would differ from your ideal writing space. (If you wish to include photos, please feel free).

Actually, my writing space is pretty ideal. I write in an office on my first floor, looking out of my window onto a garden of over two hundred roses and eight fruit trees (None of which I can take credit for.

The woman who sold the house to us had retired and spent her life gardening). I have a variety of images in my office. One is a black and white photograph of the Wright Brothers taking flight, the other is a beautiful Didier Lourenco whose paintings evoke life on the Mediterranean better than any other artist I know.

But there has always been a space to the right of my desk that has gone unfilled since we bought our house, and back when Crown commissioned a painting for the cover of Nefertiti: A Novel, I had the brilliant idea of purchasing it. After all, what better image could fill my empty wall than one that represented my first success?

So immediately, I contacted the representative for the artist Doug Fryer, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted the painting. I told myself that I would purchase the original at whatever-the-cost, imagining that whatever-the-cost would probably mean around $500. Or maybe $600.

When Doug’s agent emailed back, however, I discovered that for the ten by fifteen inch oil painting, I would need to fork over several thousand dollars (the agent also mentioned that this was a bargain, and that the artist’s other paintings go for thirty thousand). So I looked at my husband, and he looked at me, and to my great surprise he said, “Well, there will only ever be one debut novel.”

So now I sit beneath the gaze of Egypt’s most fascinating queen, and it’s worth every dollar!