How the Pied Piper of Tucson Led Me to My Story
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…
Category: YA
Ten Tips for Losing a Hundred Pages
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…
Young Adult Fiction Round-Up
With so much change for the better happening out there in the world – the #MeToo movement, the March for our Lives gun control rallies, the rise in LGBTQ+ books and authors of color in YA literature, to name a…
A year with so much outstanding Young Adult fiction can’t be all bad
It’s been…an interesting year. But it didn’t entirely suck. In 2017, a lot of great YA fiction came charging out, leading the push for diverse representation, tackling some tough social issues, and being well-crafted, compelling reads. Here is a round-up…
YA Wednesday: NaNoWriMo for Young Writers, YA Must-Reads that Started as NaNoWriMo Projects, What Young Adults Want to Read, Outlining Without Biting Your Head Off
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is just around the corner and this could be your chance to finally get that novel, or at least 50,000 words of it, written. The result might be highly flawed or rough, but just reaching…
Sharing an Inspiration with Joyce Carol Oates
When I set out to write a novel inspired by the case of Charles Schmid, the “Pied Piper of Tucson,” I knew from the start that I was not the only writer to find a story in this case.