Rick Daley, over at the Public Query Slushpile Blog (which I hadn’t visited before, too enamored of his personal blog My Daley Rant), is hosting a contest for writers: write a query and the first 5 pages of a novel based on the following premise: Our protagonist has found evidence that the government is being lured into war. If the… Read More
Playing laser tag with your three munchkins on Mother’s Day = awesome. Just in case you were wondering. Mighty Mite and I finished How to Train Your Dragon – the book, not the movie – this weekend. Now the book is never the same as the movie, but this is the first time I’ve found a book where the story… Read More
The sun blinds me as I listen to the shrieks and laughter coming from the maze of giant hedges. A stolen moment of solitude finds me fishing a pencil from my son’s backpack and searching for white space on the Arboretum map. I scratch a thought, a story (beginning, middle, end), a whisper of character. The other moms find me and… Read More
I struggle with endings. Whether it’s a flash fiction or a novel, I have a hard time finding that perfect resolution that leaves the reader (and writer) with a satisfying feeling deep inside. Coming up with zingy last lines or satisfying scenes seems less challenging: those are tiny morsels of yumminess, not the entire meal, which needs to be balanced… Read More
An awesome list of favorite books for 6th graders from Mary Ann at Great Kid books … straight from the kids’ mouth! At the end of the year, she gathers up the books kids say they liked the best. Since my TBR list is a mile-long already, I forced myself to pick two from each category to put on the… Read More
A friend of mine heard author Michael Sullivan speak at a local library on “Boys and Books,” and knew I would have enjoyed his talk about keeping boys reading. So, I cyber stalked him and found his lovely website called Boy Meets Book, which is a fabulous resource for finding books for boys, sorted by age, from preschool to high… Read More