When I was a kid – the age that I now write for – I was a science fiction addict. This was before the days of Harry Potter and YA, and most of my SF buzz came in the form of adult SF novels. Which is ironic, partly because I run a blog concerned about “age appropriate” reading material for… Read More
Creativity, vibrant and alive This Ken Robinson video on TED talks about how education kills creativity. I believe children are born creative, but that creative spirit often dies a slow death from a thousand small cuts of criticism, or suffocates in an airless childhood where no time is allowed to simply be expressive. Much of my education (and I had a… Read More
Tomorrow, I’m signing books at Norma’s Coffee Corner, Palatine IL, the local coffee-shop-of-awesome. I’m also giving away a Valentine’s basket with a book, chocolates, and other goodies. If you’re local: stop by and get a love story for your sweetheart or win a last minute Valentine’s gift! For everyone: Don’t forget to enter Omnific’s Looking for Love giveaway (see the… Read More
I stumbled (via Jody Hedlund and the Steve Laube Agency) across a cool tool that will help me weed out those repeat phrases, the ones I like to weed out if I can. (Ok, that was almost painful to type.) The phrases you would repeat in reality tend to sprinkle through your MS, like hiccups that you never notice. As… Read More
Three Act Story Structure I’ve been thinking a lot about story structure lately. The awesome Debbie Ohi (seriously, check out her art), who I met last summer at SCBWI-LA, reported back from the SCBWI-NY conference this month with words of wisdom for children’s writers: 1) concentrate on story/characters 2) just get it written. I’ve been doing a lot of both since… Read More
A great article in the NYTimes talks about a boom in e-books sales for kids and teens, possibly spurred by holiday e-reader gifts. Ink Spells has been a long time* advocate for and predictor of e-readers as the wave of the kidlit fiture. *approximately a year, which is 7 years in internet-time This is what I had to say in… Read More