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Celebrating a Launch and an Anniversary
Attendees listen to a welcome from Penguin Random House executive Barbara Marcus. Last week I attended the launch of the anthology edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson, We Rise, We Resist, We...
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Going It Alone Together: The Authors’ Collective
In my 2018 round-up I wrote about some changes that led to my self-published e-book travel guide to Portugal being put on hold for a while. For months, two friends had tried to convince me that I had...
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A Review Audit
I’ve been a reviewer for The Pirate Tree: Social Justice and Children’s Literature ever since author and now publisher Jessica “J.L.” Powers set up the site in 2010. One of the reasons I signed on to...
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Against Monoculture
With the cancellation of two YA novels already this year, the PEN America annual meeting and panel discussion moderated by PEN Executive Director Suzanne Nossel on the topic “Writing Wrongs: Call-outs,...
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Going the Small Press Route: An Interview with Jamie Beth Cohen
After my review audit prompted me to cast a wider net in terms of books I review for The Pirate Tree, I also began to reach out to authors whose publishing journeys took them beyond large commercial...
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A New Agent!
Readers who are familiar with the publishing industry already know this, but many of my blog’s readers are not familiar with the process of making books (making sausage is clean and fun by comparison)...
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YA Trends and Boomlets
I love working with writing partners, who for years have helped me keep my work on track. Since 2015 fellow VCFA graduate and middle grade writer Susan Korchak has been my steady once-a-week partner....
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Advising a 60-Year-Old Who Wants to Write
Not long after Rogue came out, a mother at a bookstore panel asked for advice for her nine-year-old son who wanted to become a writer. The panelists offered suggestions, which I turned into this blog...
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Stepping Out
This September will mark the seventh anniversary of my blog, which began with this post, written when I first lived in Portugal and wanted to keep in touch with family and friends back home. Since then...
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Find Your Match, Older Writer: The Secrets of Publishing Panel
As a follow-up to my advice to a 60-year-old who wants to write, I attended another of Susan Shapiro’s inspiring “Secrets of Publishing” panels at the NYU bookstore — coincidentally, on my birthday....
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A Fresh Start
This past Tuesday, December 10, I started over. That day saw my move to a new apartment and a few hours later, this announcement. It’s my first book announcement since April 2014, and the first one to...
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Scooped!
It’s the writer’s biggest fear — while plugging away on a book, or querying that book to agents, or on submission to editors, perhaps languishing there for months or years, an announcement comes out in...
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What Are Comps and Why Are They Important?
When querying agents or submitting to publishers, writers often encounter the question, “What are the comps?” “Comps?” The word refers to comparative — or competitive — titles. Nonfiction book...
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A Deadline and a Pandemic
Sunday night, I wrote “THE END” on the draft of my part of the verse novel MOONWALKING, the story of an unlikely interracial friendship in Brooklyn in 1982 from my white character JJ’s point of view....
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The Covid-19 Crisis and the Decline of U.S. Power: Guest Post by Richard...
Over the past few months, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to the cancellation of many conferences and tours for those launching new books in 2020. I’ve tried to highlight some of those books and authors...
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A Big Announcement for TORCH!
Have you ever written a super-secret project, one you didn’t want to tell *anyone*? That was me, for years, as I worked on draft after draft of a weird, multi-POV YA historical novel for teens. I...
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The “Centering Black Creators” Panel and Resources
I’ve been a member of the Authors Guild for many years and last week attended the second of the organization’s series of Zoom events “Black Voices: Pushing for Change in Children’s Book Publishing.”...
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“Nothing About Us Without Us”
In ordinary years, October and November are busy conference seasons for educators. By then, we are settled into the school year but before the distractions of the holidays. Many of these conferences...
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I Get to Write Another Book!
This week saw more happy news, this time on the personal level. Publishers Marketplace announced another book deal for me, a co-authored book with my agency sister Tanisia “Tee” Moore on contemporary...
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Not the Minor Leagues
Many years ago when my first adult novel, Dirt Cheap, came out, I took part in an authors’ panel at a conference in Connecticut. The other panelists were a debut novelist with a major house and a...
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