Q&A with Paper Lantern Writers
Please welcome Paper Lantern Writers to our Featured Author Q&A series at Writer’s Fun Zone. Enjoy!
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If you’d like to be considered for an interview, check out our guidelines here.
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About Paper Lantern Writers
We are the Paper Lantern Writers, an author collective focused on historical fiction of all eras. From the medieval world to WWII (and beyond), in locales around the world, from romantic to tragic, and back again, our books will take you on the journeys of a lifetime.
There’s a story to be told everywhere you look and we’d love to be your tour guides.
Paper Lantern Writers include: Ana Brazil, Edie Cay, C.V. Lee, Kathryn Pritchett, Linda Ulleseit, Anne M. Beggs, Mari Christie, Rebecca D’Harlingue, Jillianne Hamilton, Jonathan Posner, Alina Rubin, Vanitha Sankaran
On to Our Interview!
Q. Tell us who you are and what inspires you to write.
A. We’re the Paper Lantern Writers (PLW), a dozen award-winning historical fiction writers banding together to cross-promote our books and short stories.
Writing and promoting historical fiction is an exhilarating, maddening, terrifying, mysterious, wretched, and miraculous experience, but it’s much easier when you have a fellow writer to help you out.
We’re inspired to write because the past intrigues us, and we enjoy making sense out of it by crafting emotionally-rich, adventurous, fascinating characters and stories.
Q. How did you get to this place in your life? Share your story!
A. At the 2019 Historical Novel Society Conference, Linda Ulleseit, Ana Brazil, and Kathryn Pritchett attended a panel about the challenges of promotion, and quickly realized that working as a group to promote each others’ books made a lot of sense.
Paper Lantern Writers started with five Northern California authors and expanded internationally. We published a historical fiction anthology–UNLOCKED–in 2022, and enjoyed it so much that we published two more: BENEATH A MIDWINTER MOON (2023) and DESTINY COMES DUE (2024). We decided to share our hard-earned writing knowledge with CRAFTING STORIES FROM THE PAST: A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION.
Q. What are you most passionate about?
A. Each of us are passionate about telling stories set in the past, but after that, our passions vary.
Our writing dips into so many historical genres: mystery and romance; family heritage stories; women’s fiction; adventure, and generational saga.
It’s a lot of fun to read the variety within our group!
Q. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process, routine, and/or rituals around your writing?
A. Although we created PLW to promote our historical fiction–and decidedly not to critique each other’s writing–over the years we do discuss our latest works, cheer each other on, and celebrate each win.
Every month we host a write-in for our members to share space via Zoom. It’s a great way for us to announce intentions and projects, and get the job done!
Q. What are a few challenges you faced in creating, marketing, or publishing your creative work? And your solutions to them.
A. All of our members are self, hybrid, or indie published, and–as every writer learns–the biggest challenge to finding readers is being seen.
There are a lot of great books coming out every week, and to keep our books from getting lost, we work together to cross-promote our fiction.
We’ve got our own Paper Lantern Writers website where we blog twice-a-week about reading and writing historical fiction. We host a Facebook Group–Paper Lantern Readers–that brings together readers and writers from around the world, and we have a monthly newsletter to share our personal stories with readers.
We’re also active on Instagram, have spoken at numerous historical fiction events, and love to share our books at book festivals.
We celebrate each other’s publications through our individual newsletters, substacks, and social media accounts.
Q. What do you wish you had known before you started writing fiction?
A. You’ll have to read our CRAFTING STORIES FROM THE PAST: A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR WRITING HISTORICAL FICTION to find that out!
Q. What’s next for you in your creative work?
A. Our weekly blogs are highly creative and each month we explore a topic we’re curious about.
In addition to our non-fiction craft book, we are publishing another anthology in November 2025.
Q. Is there anything else you wished I’d asked? Please share!
A. All our information is on our website and social media. Join us there!
Crafting Stories From the Past by Paper Lantern Writers
Are you fascinated by writing in the past? Do you wonder how to bring antiquity to life? To meet the weighty challenge of writing historical fiction and enliven your plot, characters, setting, and story, pick up Crafting Stories from the Past from the Paper Lantern Writers. No matter how, when, or where in the historical world your imagination takes you, this guide can help.
Paper Lantern Writers, an award-winning international collective of historical fiction novelists, developed and curated this compendium of insightful how-to articles from genre experts, twenty-four chapters of hard-earned wisdom from working authors. From deciding when and what to research to building a historical world, we bring you practical advice, authorial insights, and helpful guidance to make your writing process easier, start to finish.
These incisive how-tos are followed by research and writing resources culled from the authors’ own shelves: the places these professionals go to research and write their own books. Whether you are just starting your path into the past or are a seasoned multi-book author, we have tips, tricks, ideas, and resources you can use at every stage of your writing journey.
Connect with Paper Lantern Writers
Site Link www.PaperLanternWriters.com
Thanks for sharing our story!