More About Anne R. Allen

My books are mostly romantic-comedy/mysteries. Maybe a little more comic than romantic. Since two of my favorite writers are Dorothy Parker and Dorothy L. Sayers, I guess it makes sense that I ended up writing a mash-up of the two “Dorothy” styles. Ruth Harris calls it “Chick Lit Noir.”

I’ve been in the writing business long enough to have collected a pretty full set of mistakes. I blog in hopes of helping some of the new writers out there make better choices.

In a former life I was an actress, bookseller, and the former artistic director of the Patio Playhouse in Escondido, CA. I last appeared in A Comedy of Errors at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. I grew up in New England (Waterville, ME and various college towns in CT) graduated from Bryn Mawr College, and spent some time doing the hippie vagabond thing in several continents. Even got married once. All excellent adventures.

My Work

My author page at Amazon.com is here. I’m the author of 10 comic mysteries and a collection of short stories and poems. I’m also the co-author of a guidebook for writers, written with Amazon superstar Catherine Ryan Hyde, and I’ve written a new guidebook for author-bloggers: The Author Blog: Easy Blogging for Busy Authors.

All my book-length works are detailed on my book page.

My short fiction also appears in theIndie Chicks Anthology (Oct 2011) as well as Genre Wars (2010) and Notes from the Underground (2011) and Indiestructible (2013) and Equality from Vine Leaves Press. (2017.) I have a poem in the Silver Boomer Press anthology, From the Porch Swing (2010) and one in Compose Journal (Spring 2013)

Was Anne one of “the Brontes” in THE GATSBY GAME?

Most of the litzines that published me seem to have gone under (I do hope I didn’t have anything to do with that.) Some of those are Mosaic Minds, Prose Toad, Dispatch Literareview, Chick Flicks, Rogue Voice, and the Women’s Press. My first mystery novel COMING UP FOR AIR was run as a serial by the California entertainment weekly, New Times. I’ve published nonfiction in The Coast News, Bay News, SLO City Press, SLO County Journal, Information Press, HopeDance, Women’s Press, and New Times. I was a columnist from 2002-2008 for the Toronto-based Freelance Writers Organization International, named one of Writer’s Digest Top 101 Websites for those years.

I’ve taught blogging at the at the Central Coast Writer’s Conference., and guest blogged for Nathan Bransford about the importance of Trafalmadorians in our literary life. I’ve written for Writer’s Digest, as well as many other magazines for writers

Interviews

You can read interviews with me at Morgen Bailey’s Blog, Books, Personally, and on Catherine Ryan Hyde’s Blog. I talk to Roz Morris about the “Undercover Soundtrack” of The Gatsby Game.

Here’s something about the real story behind Sherwood, Ltd at Write it Sideways, and more at the RG2E . I discuss No Place Like Home at the RG2E

Here’s the story behind my poem No One Will Ever Love Him on the Compose blog.

I discuss the inspiration for No Place Like Home in the September 2014 issue of More magazine in Laura Sinberg’s article on women’s fears of financial insecurity.

I wrote about how social media can suck away our writing time at the magazine Talking Writing, and what an author’s life is really like on Ronel Janse Van Vuuren’s blog.

My article on short fiction, Short is the New Long appeared in the November 2014 Writer’s Digest and was included in the Novel and Short Story Market for 2016

And I gave some tips to new writers on Carmen Amato’s blog.

Cambria newsman and author Stephen H. Provost interviewed me about So Much for Buckingham in 2017.

And here’s my favorite article of all from Debra Eve at the Later Bloomer. How Author Anne R. Allen Turned a Publishing Fiasco into Hilarious Fiction.

And here’s some lovely kudos from VS Anderson on the Just Can’t Stop Writing blog.