I just finished a major revision of one of my novels and restarted my literary agent search, so I thought I’d take a moment to list and encapsulate the five “completed” novels I’ve finished over the years, never mind the first novel I wrote in college that shall never see the light of day, or the three half novels I started but have yet to finish. Hopefully one or all of these will find themselves on a bookshelf near you someday!
Read moreTop 10 Favorite Books From My Childhood
A while back a bunch of people started posting lists on Facebook about the top books that stayed with them — everything from children’s classics to modern literary juggernauts. It got me thinking about the books that I loved as a kid, the ones that really meant something to me. So here are the Top 10 books that shaped my childhood and early reading habits, in no particular order. Although there are plenty of others, these are the books I get most nostalgic about when I think of my elementary and middle-school libraries.
Read moreWhy I Write for Children, Too
A lot of people know that I'm a fan of noir fiction, crime, mystery, and old pulp stories. Many of my short stories and novels focus on these genres, but I also dabble in horror, sci-fi, and even westerns. And those closest to me know that poetry has pulled me through the worst events of my life and made the best events even better, but when people ask me what I write, one of the first things out of my mouth is, “I write children’s books.”
Read moreThe Toughest Crowd in Town: Writing for Children
They say writing for children is harder than writing your typical adult novel, and that never became more evident for me than when I worked on my middle-reader novel The Little Blue Knight vs. The End of the World. As adults, we’ve developed an innate understanding about how to communicate with each other — how our work day went, what happened over the weekend, giving a speech at work, etc. But few of us continually communicate with children on their own level — not just telling them what to do, but actual storytelling for and from their perspective. It’s a skill that slowly goes away as we grow up, so when you decide to take up the challenge of writing a children’s book, there are many things we adults need to understand and re-learn. Here are three things to keep in mind.
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