Query Prep: Researching Agents
Luckily for me, I enjoy research. I like doing a quick search and seeing if I hit anything interesting on the first try. I like going down rabbit holes. And I like pulling my discoveries together into some kind of recognizable order. All of which is a good thing. Because, as I started getting serious […]
Querying: What It’s All About (At Least for Me)
Even before January, I knew what my word for 2022 would be. In the midst of all the chaos, anxiety, and uncertainty of the past two years, writing has been the eye of my personal hurricane. I know, for many writers, the pandemic and their own experiences with it have made writing hard, if not […]
My Word for 2021: Surf
My word for this year, Surf, started off as a joke on social media, when I was commenting on the challenge of picking a word for a year that seems filled with unpredictability. Once I’d tossed it out there, though, the word kept coming back to me. And the more I thought about it, the […]
Storystorm 2021
I’ve got my notebook and am ready to go! Storystorm 2020 was one of the good things, for me, in a crazy year. I developed two of the ideas I came up with, and the manuscripts are at the top of my getting-ready-to-query pile. They are two of the ideas that felt most out-there when […]
Gratitude in 2020
I don’t keep a gratitude journal or do any other kind of gratitude process. But 2020 has been…a lot, and it feels right to put down some of the things I have felt grateful so many times during the past year. I am grateful that my family is healthy, that we have the capacity and […]
Sometimes Life is Like a Snow Globe
Okay, sometimes life is like being inside a snow globe. It’s an odd metaphor for a summer, but it’s a summer where things have been shaken up, settled briefly, then shaken up again. In July, we “hosted” my husband’s kidney stone about three weeks. (Go get a big glass of water. Right now. I’ll wait.) […]
PB Biographies – Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams
I added Lesa Cline-Ransome’s and James E. Ransome’s Game Changers: The Story of Venus and Serena Williams to my first bookstore orders of pb biographies, and I am so glad I did. Picture book biographies of one person require the author to wander through mounds of research, sort out big stories and little stories, delve […]
PB Biographies: Evelyn the Adventurous Entomologist
I’ve been saying for a long time that, someday, I want to write picture book biographies. In a recent Duh! moment, I realized that isn’t going to happen until and unless I get serious about reading and dissecting them. So I’m starting a new series on my blog featuring picture book biographies and my thoughts […]
Adventuring in a Summer of Sameness
Still here, still in a place of luck and gratitude, still on a rollercoaster of anger and grief, still stepping into the chaos, and still pulling back when I need self-care. And still striving to add new things to make daily life feel like it includes change and some kind of forward progress. In June, […]
What Will We Do with May?
It’s May Day. March was chaos. March was crazy. It seemed like I heard a new announcement of some significant change every day. I watched the COVID-19 counts climb and climb. All the Zooming for work and the Zooming with family and friends made me feel like I was literally zooming through every minute of […]
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