I’m delighted to welcome Alison Jean Lester to the blog today. Alison is the author of novels Yuki Means Happiness, Lillian on Life and Glide. Her most recent novel, The Sound of It, was published yesterday by Bench Press Books and is available from all good book retailers. Today she’s sharing a really interesting #TenThings she’d like her readers to know about her with a focus on the steps which led to the writing of this novel.   

Five of my ten things are steps.

The first step toward the idea for my current work in progress was participation in the New York City Midnight Short Story Challenge. The competition challenges writers to create stories in just a few days, based on assigned genres, subjects and characters. In one heat, I had to write a historical fiction story featuring an eating contest and a teenage mother. I set the…