Geraldine McCaughrean (pronounced Muh-cork-run) is not a household name, like that other British children’s mega-author you might have heard of. But Geraldine is actually more prolific and has won far more literary awards than that other celebrity writer. She’s penned more…
Halloween is here and I just scooped up the last bags of Mounds at Stop and Shop, because if I’m going to give out candy it has to be candy I like. I don’t have a pumpkin because it would…
This fall, PBS is running a program called “The Great American Read.” Earlier this year, they asked 7,000 readers to name their favorite works of fiction. The alphabetical list of 100 (not ranked) was then culled by a panel of…
I didn’t plan to write for kids. My current middle grade novel, Beastly, began as a book for adults. After a few years it turned into a YA novel, and a few years later, it dropped to middle grade. Since…
When I started my YA thriller Half in Love with Death, I’d already abandoned two novels about a young girl who falls in love with a man who may be a murderer. Every time I tried to write it I…
Writers think about word counts the way dieters think about calories. By the time I finished my YA novel, Half in Love with Death, I’d reduced it from 97,000 to 90,000 words, and I thought it was pretty slim and…