Imagine your darling baby grows large enough to suddenly resemble a near-teen, old enough to write a book. A real book. A whole 35k of words with a beginning, middle, and end. He’s worked on it for six months, getting up at the crack of dawn to transcribe his scribbled notes to Word before he goes to school. Now imagine… Read More
My Monday post was a terribly un-funny look at the raw guts of humor. Now for the funny part…. In preparing to draft my humorous skits, I read some D*mnYouAutocorrect (warning: NOT PG) and paid homage to LOLcats. After I wiped the tears of laughter from my face, I got to work. My first discovery was that I absolutely cannot write… Read More
Dark Omen (age 12) writes a lot, and his characters have always been very strong. Sinister overlords or heroic defenders of the galaxy. He also loves humorous characters – savvy robots or smart-mouthed subordinates that give voice to his quirky, funny side. Recently he’s started to give his characters more depth, because his plot turns require a character to be… Read More
My post about a Twelve year-old View of the World – wherein Dark Omen opined about the utter uselessness of romance in fiction – inspired commenter, master librarian, and all around cool dude Iron Man Guy Carl (aka Mr. Swanke) to ask Dark Omen to interview over at his blog Boys Rule! Boys Read!. In my completely non-biased opinion, it’s spit-out-tea funny. Especially… Read More
Debbie Curan posed an excellent question regarding books for Young Teens: How would you handle a series – like HP – where the MC grows older and the series becomes much darker? Starts off as MG then grows up – HP is in the MG section of the bookstore, but the later books I won’t let my guys near until… Read More
My son Dark Omen (age 12) is writing a novel. He’s been diligently working on it for some time now (since the summer). We discussed it over dinner. Me: What genre is your story? Dark Omen: Well, it’s science fiction and adventure. And mystery, too. But no romance. Me: No romance? Dark Omen: No! Why would I write a scene… Read More
The Brimstone Key by Derek Benz and J.S. Lewis is the first book of a new Grey Griffins series called The Clockwork Chronicles. This is the second middle grade steampunk book that I’ve read (Leviathan being the first), but The Brimstone Key doesn’t take place in a mythical past, but rather in an altered-present version of Avalon, Minnesota. This small town is… Read More
Blogoversary I’m coming up on my one year anniversary as a blogger on October 17th. (Here’s my first post. Oh, I was so young and naive!) Back then my boys were 6, 8, and 10, and my fourth child was my Byrne Risk manuscript. Now, a year later, my boys are 7, 9, and 11, and I have a book… Read More
Thanks to blogger friend Bane’s suggestion Monday, I’m opening Ink Spells up to guest posts to fill those Tuesday/Thursday slots which will sit vacant and lonely over the summer. If you are interested in guest posting, please email your post to susankayequinn@comcast.net. Ink Spells is all about middle grade (ages 8-12) books – writing them, reading them, getting the little… Read More
Summer. That lazy, sweltering time of chasing butterflies, digging in sandboxes, spraying your brother with the hose, and nearly dying from boredom. That was the summer of my youth, but now it’s a hectic shuffling of kids to classes and activities, having little friends drop by, and making excursions to the pool, all while trying to decide whether hot dogs… Read More
Thank you to Ruth of Readatouille for bestowing this upon Ink Spells: That is what I look like most of the time, although there’s usually more stuff crowding my desk. Many of my blogger friends deserve the Prolific Blogger Award for having daily (or more!) tidbits of awesome, but I will pass it on to these three: Book Crazy: Jennifer… Read More
Nathan Bransford, literary agent extraordinaire, recently asked if the query process still works – queries are the one page summary that writers submit to agents or publishers, outlining their book and credentials. At the same time, I stumbled across the awesome new plaything that is Google Search Stories! So why not combine the two? In a Web 2.0 era when… Read More
Fans of Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief will be excited to learn he’s starting a new series (The Kane Chronicles) with Book 1: The Red Pyramid, to be released May 4th, 2010. Dark Omen and Worm Burner both read and loved the entire Percy Jackson series, and are eagerly awaiting the new book, where Riordan tackles another ancient mythology: Egyptian… Read More
I talked before about seeing this slim little tome and buying it immediately, intrigued by the young author and the overpowering cuteness of the contents inside: “If you want to start a conversation with a girl, first you have to say something like “hi.” If she says “hi” back, you are off to a good start.” “If you are in elementary… Read More
I’ve added a Twitter button (at right), and actually started tweeting (not just lurking). I’m still undecided about whether Twitter is worth the time invested, but there are definitely benefits that I had overlooked before. Starting with #yalitchat For the Twitter newbies like me, this is a “thread” of sorts, where a conversation is “hashtagged” so you can follow anything… Read More
The revolution of e-books can’t come soon enough for me. There is a great SF book called Achilles’ Choice that I recently pulled off my shelf, intending to use it in a blog posting, but when I searched B&N to link to it, I found it was out of print! Sadly, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes’ awesome little 1991 tome is unavailable, except through… Read More
If you are old enough to know that 2 bits refers to two coins which together equal 25 cents, you’re probably not reading this blog. Then again, 2 bits has achieved stardom in The Urban Dictionary, so who knows? Over Spring Break, I trooped all my boys down to get their moppy hair cut (which cost substantially more than 2… Read More
With the kids home for a solid week (that would be 9 days, including the weekends. Yes, I was counting) the questions were coming fast and furious. God Bless teachers because they have to answer these questions all day long! The small sampling: Worm Burner (8): “How does that work?” *points to old fashioned scale serving as decor at a restaurant* Mom’s… Read More
This. Book. Is. Fabulous. I could leave it there, but I’m a writer. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld is the first book I’ve read to completion on the nook. In spite of the nook’s irritating tendency to lock up when I’m showing it off to interested passers-by, the nook reading experience was effortless, comfortable, and just plain cool. Dark Omen actually… Read More
First, I must say this: Guitar Hero Rocks! I discovered Guitar Hero at the arcade over Spring Break and spent an embarrassingly large number of tokens rockin’ out to “Hit me with your best shot!” Since I barely tolerate arcades as a hideous waste of time and money, I think I stunned my husband and kids. Good. Need to keep… Read More
I’ve been giving thought lately to what books I buy. I’ve found that I mostly purchase non-fiction, although I mostly read fiction. However, my fiction habit is fed by the library, or lately, borrowing from my kids (who have an extensive library of their own). I’ve gone through several mad book buying phases in my life (although my husband will… Read More
We took a look. We saw a Nook. On his head he had a hook. On his hook he had a book. On his book was “How to Cook.” We saw him sit and try to cook. He took a look at the book on the hook. But a Nook can’t read, so a Nook can’t cook. SO… what good… Read More
Common Sense Media lauded a study on kids and media by the Kaiser Family Foundation, with the sobering conclusions that: Kids are using more media, and have discovered the time dilation effect that I’ve been searching for, packing over 10 hours of effective media use into 7 hours, via multitasking Preteens (ages 8-12) stand out for their heavy usage Kids… Read More
All things being equal, would you pick . . . THIS OR THIS? In an ongoing conversation about what draws boys to books, the influence of cover art came up. Covers are the interpretation of a book by an artist (hopefully one that has read the book), and is usually driven by the publishing company, rather than the author. One… Read More
Dark Omen came home from 5th grade and told me his classmates were “worshipping” him today because he reads the Wall Street Journal. “Worship” is apparently 5th grade speak for, “Dude, you’re really cool” and it strikes me as awesome that these kids think it’s “cool” to read, of all things, the newspaper. Not any newspaper, mind you, but The… Read More
Today, we have a guest blogger! Dark Omen (aka my 11 year old son) will be reviewing Book 2, Flyte, of the Septimus Heap series, by Angie Sage. Flyte: What to Look Out For by Dark Omen Flyte, the second book in the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage is a good story. It has clearly defined good and evil… Read More
My ten year old turns eleven today: Happy Birthday, Dark Omen! No, Dark Omen is not my pet name for my now eleven year old son. That would be wrong. Dark Omen is the title he has assumed for himself, after many discussions about Internet safety and not putting your personal information out where the Internet Bad Guys can find… Read More