from the heart

I love it when students write me letters, even if they’re forced into it by their teacher or principal. I got a ton of letters today from the Bronx school I visited a couple of weeks ago…Fredrick wrote, “I can really relate to some of the situations that you provided for us. Continue [...]

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brrr…

It is COLD in NYC today!  And I had to leave the house before 8am in order to make it up to the Bronx for my morning workshop…extreme delays, construction, and four transfers later…I arrived fifteen minutes late.  I *hate* being late.  The school doors were closed, and a big crowd of students was waiting [...]

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last bit

Phew!  I just finished the tail end of that chapter, AND I broke the 40,000-word mark.  I stopped writing, looked at the word count, and it said: 40404.  I’m going to think of that as auspicious!  Time to shower and venture out into this blustery, rainy day.  Even my mother says she’s starting to warm [...]

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the ARCs are here!

ALL DAY I stayed in my apartment, waiting patiently for the first box of advance reader copies of Wish to arrive…and finally, after 6pm, the doorbell rang: it wasn’t UPS, it was the guy delivering the manuscript showing the re-designed interior of the book…and can I just say, so far, it’s GORGEOUS!  I’m not a [...]

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better late than never…

Well, Wish now has its first professional review in Canada.  From what I can tell, CM Magazine is one of the only journals that reviews children’s literature up north; the reviewer gave Wish three and a half stars out of four, calling it “highly recommended.”  You can read the complete review here.
I was taken aback [...]

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serial fiction

I read a lot of novels by Charles Dickens when I was a teen, and it amazed me when I reached college and discovered that Dickens wrote his lengthy novels as serials—individual chapters were published in weekly or monthly magazines, and readers could purchase them for a fraction of the cost of a bound book.  [...]

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focus

It feels like the world’s going to blow away…all night the wind was raging, and it’s still tearing stuff up today.  The golden leaves on the tree in our back alley are just about gone, and I wonder what the garden looks like—might have to head over and find out.  Something in the turkey, ham, [...]

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wow!

I should be sleeping, or editing my manuscript, or writing a new chapter…but instead I’m wide awake, and thoroughly enjoying the comments on my previous post.  And then I got a Google alert and watch OUT!  There’s another awesome review of A Wish After Midnight over at Gal Novelty (who is also wingstodust)!  The very [...]

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aftertaste

Sometimes I wonder about the timing of book releases…I just finished reading Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith, and found myself making endless comparisons to Mare’s War by Tanita S. Davis, which I read several months ago.  I’d heard great things about Flygirl and it was original and interesting, but it was hard to read [...]

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“I got sunshine on a cloudy day…”

We’re expecting rain all day today as this “nor’easter” moves along the Atlantic coast, but I’ve got three things to brighten my day: 1) I wrote a new chapter last night, and if I do say so myself, it’s GREAT; 2) the young ladies over at Taste Life Twice have posted a fabulous review & [...]

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