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Elizabeth Guider

Goodreads Author

Born

Vicksburg, MS, The United States

Website

https://www.ElizabethGuider.com

Twitter

#GuiderElizabeth

Genre

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance

Member Since

May 2013

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/elizabethguider

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Elizabeth Guider is a longtime entertainment journalist and more recently a novelist who has lived and worked in Rome, Paris and London as well as in New York and Los Angeles. Born in the American South, she holds a doctorate in Renaissance Studies from New York University. During the late 1970s she was based in Rome where she taught English and American literature at the university level and where much of the action of her first novel, The Passionate Palazzo, takes place. While in Europe she worked as an editor for the International Daily News in Rome, a freelancer for several magazines and as an entertainment reporter for the showbiz newspaper Variety.
She also traveled widely, reporting on the politics affecting media from Eastern Europe Elizabeth Guider is a longtime entertainment journalist and more recently a novelist who has lived and worked in Rome, Paris and London as well as in New York and Los Angeles. Born in the American South, she holds a doctorate in Renaissance Studies from New York University. During the late 1970s she was based in Rome where she taught English and American literature at the university level and where much of the action of her first novel, The Passionate Palazzo, takes place. While in Europe she worked as an editor for the International Daily News in Rome, a freelancer for several magazines and as an entertainment reporter for the showbiz newspaper Variety.
She also traveled widely, reporting on the politics affecting media from Eastern Europe to Hong Kong as well as covering various film events and media trade shows in Cannes, Monte Carlo, Venice, Milan, Moscow and Berlin. She also served on several film festival juries, the International Emmys judging committee in NYC, and the Peabody Board. Over the years she has moderated a number of industry-sponsored panels and Q&A’s with entertainment executives, both Stateside and abroad, and won several media awards while working for the trade papers in Hollywood.
Back in the U. S. in the 1990s, she specialized on the burgeoning TV industry and eventually held top editor positions at Variety and latterly at The Hollywood Reporter, including executive editor at Variety and editor-in-chief at THR. Most recently, she has freelanced for the magazine World Screen as senior contributing editor.
Elizabeth divides her time between Los Angeles, where she freelances, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she grew up and where she focuses on her fiction. Her second novel, Milk and Honey on the Other Side, an inter-racial love story in the post-WWI period, is set largely in Vicksburg. Her third novel, Connections, a family saga that spans the last fifty years, takes the reader from Atlanta, to New York City and Hollywood, and eventually to South America. Her fourth, Our Long Love’s Day, is an unflinching yet sympathetic look at a divorce between two academics at a midwestern college who struggle to find new meaning in their lives. Her fifth novel, a contemporary love story set on the California Coast, came out in November 2022.
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Much of your experience before publishing your novels was in an editorial capacity, as a journalist and as an editor. Once you sat down to become a novel writer, how did you manage to separate that editorial mind required to be an editor and journalist, so to speak, to achieving the creative mindset that being an author requires? Or were you always writing fiction?

Elizabeth Guider Excellent question from a fellow journalist who is also an author. Shifting from a journalist’s mindset—where getting the facts right is crucial—to a …moreExcellent question from a fellow journalist who is also an author. Shifting from a journalist’s mindset—where getting the facts right is crucial—to a creative mindset—where never letting the facts get in the way of a good story is crucial—is not easy or automatic. At least not for me. One thing that helps, I have found, is being strict about the stages of my writing process. Once I have a coherent, if necessarily fluid, outline in hand, I write a first draft concentrating on the STORY and the CHARACTERS, and never do searches on the Internet. Things I don’t know or things I want to introduce to set the time, place and specificity of the story, I simply put XXXs on the page and only come back to deal with them in a second draft. It’s important not to let facts, or knowledge of a period or a place, or whatever to clutter or slow down the flow of the narrative. Similarly, since we’re all highly opinionated, it’s important to make sure our own views of a subject—God, country, politics, sex, love, etc—are either filtered through the perspective of one character or another or through the lens of a very purposefully knowing (or knowingly officious!) narrator, and not just thrown in because that’s what I the author think or believe. In this regard, I remind myself occasionally what Samuel Goldwyn purportedly told film directors whenever they too obviously tried to make a political statement of one sort or another with their movies: “If you want to send a MESSAGE, call Western Union.” (less)

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Are you in Los Angeles (meet for a coffee) or New Orleans? Gary Dartnall

Elizabeth Guider HI there, GARY,

I believe I answered this via Facebook but if not, apologies. I'm in Los Angeles and yes, it would be lovely to meet up for coffee. If…moreHI there, GARY,

I believe I answered this via Facebook but if not, apologies. I'm in Los Angeles and yes, it would be lovely to meet up for coffee. If not before Christmas then early in the new year. Always easier to communicate via email rather than all these websites: elizabethguider@hotmail.com. Meantime, trust you are well and staying safe. what a world, right?! Elizabeth(less)

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Elizabeth Guider’s books

Average rating: 4.2 · 71 ratings · 14 reviews · 8 distinct works • Similar authors

	This Nearly Was Ours: A Novel 4.27 avg rating — 30 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Casserole Courtship: A Shell Beach Novel really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 22 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Connections 4.71 avg rating — 7 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Milk and Honey on the Other Side 4.17 avg rating — 6 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Passionate Palazzo: When Rome Was All the Rage 4.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2013 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Our Long Love's Day: A Novel 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	This Nearly Was Ours: A Wartime Novel really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Casserole Courtship: A Shell Beach Novel 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Elizabeth Guider's Blog

INSPIRATION: How It Came to Me

Snatches of conversation, sights of dog walkers along the boardwalk, the sound of ocean waves, the smell of salt air, the taste of tart wine—these sensations of a particular time and place—combined to provide the backdrop and to inspire the plot of my latest novel. Though the title is still under wraps, the book is set along the Central Coast of California. It’s a sliver of the state where I love Read more of this blog post »

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Published on November 16, 2021 17:25

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