Barbara Keiler: The Writer’s Journey

In “The Hero’s Journey,” Chris Vogler outlines the nine stages a hero goes through to get from the beginning to the satisfying conclusion of a story. In “The Writer’s Journey,” Barbara discusses how our journeys as writers parallel the journeys of the heroes and heroines we create, and also how our journeys are very different from those of our heroes and heroines. She has come up with nine lessons of her own that guide writers from the first step they take onward.

Since her first publication thirty-one years ago, USA Today bestselling author Barbara Keiler, who writes as Judith Arnold, has sold more than ninety traditionally published novels and several original indie-published novels. She’s been a multiple finalist for Romance Writers of America’s Rita Award, as well as the EPIC Award for electronic fiction, and she’s won RT Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Awards for best Harlequin American Romance, best Harlequin Superromance, best Series Romance and best Contemporary Single Title Romance. She has also won the New England Readers Choice “Bean Pot” Award for Long Contemporary Romance. Publishers Weekly named her novel Love in Bloom’s one of the best books of the year, and her novel Barefoot in the Grass has appeared on recommended reading lists at hospitals and breast cancer support centers. Married and a mother of two, Barbara lives near Boston in a house with four guitars, three pianos, a violin, an electric keyboard, a balalaika and a set of bongo drums.