I first read Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra (Atheneum, 1967) the summer between my seventh and eighth grade year after pulling it off my mother’s bookshelf.
“You’re not going to like that,” she warned. “It’s pretty dense history.”
She was right.
New Adult Covers
Just as the difference between a middle grade story and a young adult story is more than the characters’ ages and grades in school, the difference between a young adult story and a new adult story is more than the characters’ ages and their graduation from high school.
The cat on the cover was modeled after Anne’s cat!
The 10,000th Try: Rejecting Rejection with Anne Bustard from The Writing Barn. Peek: “That I had a story was the good news. That it was deeply flawed, the bad. And that I must start completely-from-the-very-beginning-over, the scariest.” Note: check out Anne’s newly redesigned official author website.
Tracy Holczer is the first-time author of The Secret Hum of a Daisy (Putnam, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Twelve-year-old Grace and her mother have always been their own family, traveling from place to place like gypsies.
Continue Reading New Voice: Tracy Holczer on The Secret Hum of a Daisy »
Speaking at KidlitCon 2013
Today marks the 10th Anniversary of Cynsations!
The blog launched on Nov. 12, 2004; and featured children’s author Chris Barton, talking about consolidation and marketing.
There was no introductory post and no images–until Blogger introduced that option.
Thanks so much to each of you for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Kindergarten author talk
By Deanna Roy
There are a lot of lonely jobs out there. Night security. Toll booths.
I once worked at a huge event arena, where my sole job was watching a panel of red lights in case one light up.
When I first became a full-time writer,
From the promotional copy of Born To Be Wild: Baby Mammals and Their Parents by Lita Judge (Roaring Brook, 2014):
What do grizzly bear cubs eat? Where do baby raccoons sleep? And how does a baby otter learn to swim?
Every baby mammal,
Why Picture Books Are Important by Kelly Bingham from Picture Book Month. Peek: “Picture books teach us – young and old alike – lessons about ourselves, our world, our feelings, our realities.” See also Chris Barton on Why Picture Books Are Important.
You’re Such a Character by Jael McHenry from Writer Unboxed.
Over the last decade I’ve published seven middle-grade novels with Random House and Scholastic, focusing my last four titles on contemporary magical realism stories set in the bayous and swamps of Louisiana with page-turning plots and a lot of heart and family issues.
But I also write young adult and always have.
By Lindsey Lane
It’s opening night. I am sitting in the audience at the debut of a play I had written.
I remember thinking as I watched, “This is as much as I know right now.” It wasn’t a negative thought. I simply knew that this play was the culmination of everything I knew up to that moment.
