Hearses and Other Distractions
As a child, I was terrified of two things: death and fire. I also grew up in a family that sang “The Hearse Song” at meals. Consequently, while most kids were on the lookout for punch buggies, I was on…
Category: The Writing Life
YA Wednesday: YA Books to Get You Pumped for the Summer Olympics, You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott, Great YA Horror Reads by Women
Between the Zika virus and the latest warnings for Olympic athletes not to put their heads under the water in Brazil because it is full of disgusting stuff I’d rather not talk about here, it feels like the summer Olympics…
Through the Eyes of an Antagonist
My farm is a novel that writes itself over and over, year after year, always with a similar story arc: I plant, I tend, things go wrong, bugs invade. I fend off crows and raccoons. I pray for rain. I…
Friday Feast: An Open Letter to Authors at Bookstore Tables, How Rejection Shaped One Writer, How Novelists Recover History’s Marginalized Heroes, Donald Ray Pollock’s 5 Writing Tips, and What Makes a Bestseller
Aw. It’s sad to watch a poor, lonely author in a bookstore or at a book festival who simultaneously desires and dreads conversations with customers. Because people! Conversations! Eeek! And then there are those authors who flag you down like street canvassers…
YA Wednesday: Q & A with Beth Revis, 6 Golden Rules of Writing Middle Grade, Are You a YA Writer and You Don’t Even Know It, Summer Camp YA
I’m in my last week of Camp NaNoWriMo, a summer version of November NaNoWriMo in which you get to set your own word count goals and bunk in a virtual cabin with other writers. I wish I could say I…
Camp Tin House
I never went to summer camp. I always wondered what it was like, that thing that other kids in other places got to do. My mom couldn’t afford it. Instead, my brother and I spent our summers trying to stay…