I’m a sucker for sweet fellas who write well. In May I met the 2011 Edgar Award-winning author Charlie Price, and he shot to the top of my sweet fellas list. He was a fellow presenter at the SCBWI Cottonwood Revision Intensive, and we ran a session together and I just fell in love with […]

My three first graders started school last week, I finished up my launch month festivities for Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies, and my husband cycled across the Iowa. The Halversons have been busy. This weekend, we stepped back from the urgent Now and just puttered around the house. It’s been a glorious weekend of […]

Isn’t this the cutest ad for a book? The wonderful Joy Chu created it for my stop on her blog, The Got Story Countdown, today. This is the final stop on my Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies Blog Tour, and Joy got me talking about one of my fondest publishing memories: making 4 life-size […]

Look what the UPS man just delivered! My sons were as excited as I was. “Where are they going to sell it, Mommy?” “In the bookstore.” “In the bookstore? Wowee!” The cutest fan club ever.

Click over to  Tina Nichols Coury’s blog Tales from the Rushmore Kid for a one-minute video tip from yours truly. The topic: Checking to see if your protagonist has completed a full character arc. Happy writing!

San Diego picture book writers: I highly recommend UCSD Extension’s “Writing Children’s Picture Books” class. Former Harcourt Children’s Book Senior Editor Diane D’Andrade is teaching it, and she’s amazing. She was my first boss in the children’s book biz, and I—along with many bestselling and award-winning authors and illustrators—have learned so much from her. The […]

I spent Saturday morning and afternoon talking to fifty writers about children’s books at SCBWI’s Cottonwood Revision Intensive Workshop. I spent Saturday night sitting with 100 children in a 737. As far as I was concerned, it was a lovely day all around. One gentleman did not share my opinion of the plane situation. When […]