Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin, 2015
So good to be back visiting the multi-talented Cynthia Leitich Smith here on Cynsations with my third book in the Wilde Island trilogy. Cynthia hosted an interview for the first Wilde Island book, Dragon’s Keep (Harcourt, 2007) so this visit brings it full circle.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Janet Lee Carey on Tips for Writing Fantasy »
My new contemporary YA, Silence (Shadow Mountain, 2015), is a story about a fifteen year old girl who has an accident that changes her life forever. The only person she can relate to is a boy who has his own tragic past. Out of tragedy comes true love.
I spent years writing Silence,
Continue Reading Guest Post & Giveaway: Deborah Lytton on What’s True to You »
Jean’s children, John and Jane
By Jean Reagan
Many years ago in a writing class, Kathi Appelt said, “Write from the hole in your heart.”
At the time, I had just received sketches for my first picture book, Always My Brother, illustrated by Phyllis Pollema-Cahill (Tilbury House 2009).
Continue Reading Guest Post & Giveaway: Jean Reagan on Writing from the Hole in Your Heart »
One of the things I’ve noticed my graduate creative writing students struggling with is where exactly to start in a book.
I’ve had two students fill up the first 40 pages of their novels with excruciating back-story details involving family history, blood-lines, place of birth,
Continue Reading Guest Post: Cecilia Galante on Where to Start Your Story? »
Sometimes it can be helpful to think about endings when you’re at the beginning of the process—not plotting the ending, but doing a bit of free, no-holds-barred thinking about your character’s emotional inner journey and where you hope she goes.
This is what you write towards,
For some people, starting a new novel is like that scene in “The Sound Of Music,” where Maria’s tra-la-la-ing on a mountaintop, arms spread out, spinning in delirious joy.
If you’re like me, though, that blank white page isn’t cause for bursting into song.
Bursting into tears,
As much as we would like to commit our entire lives to writing, most of us live in the real world. We can’t afford to spend our time at Walden Pond or in a permanent, never-ending, writer’s retreat.
We fit in writing amongst our day jobs, our kids,
Nicole Maggi is the first-time author of Winter Falls (Twin Willows Trilogy) (Medallion Press, 2014). From the promotional copy:
Sixteen-year-old Alessia Jacobs is dying to get out of her small town of Twin Willows, Maine.
Things start looking up when a new family comes to town—but when she falls for Jonah,
Continue Reading New Voice: Nicole Maggi on Winter Falls (Twin Willows Trilogy) »
By Karen Rock
From the promotional copy of Creed by Trisha Leaver and Lindsay Currie (Flux, 2014):
Three of us went in.
Three of us came out.
None even a shadow of who they once were.
When their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere,
Continue Reading New Voices Interview: Trisha Leaver & Lindsay Currie on Creed »
By Dianne White
I haven’t always been a writer – at least not in the way I assume my friends who write must have been as children growing up.
I never wrote stories I couldn’t wait to share with my parents and teachers; I was not the kid who stapled lined pages together to write and illustrate my own books;
Continue Reading Guest Post & Giveaway: Dianne White on Doing the Work & Not Giving Up »
