Haha!  I am already laughing at myself as I attempt to write this post. A lot of people have asked me how I balance having a family, a young infant, a consulting career, volunteering, socializing, and writing novels all at the same time.  Balance is definitely the key word because it is truly a balancing act.  Obviously my family and child come first, no matter what.  But I am also super-focused when I write.  It's like I'm in another world where not much else breaks through.  So how do I fit it in?  I work in short little stints, whenever I can get in a few minutes...after my child goes...

Fellow writers, When I recently attended the MD conference of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, I was suprised at the number of questions on how to write a good query letter.  Thus, in this post, I'm including a link to Nathan Bransford's blog.  He was a literary agent turned author who has a great blog chock-full of writing tips.  The particular link below includes his advice on writing a query letter to a literary agent.  http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/how-to-write-query-letter.html If anyone wants to include a comment with their query letter attached,...

About a year ago, I saw Jodi Picoult speak about her book, SING YOU HOME, in Washington DC.  When she opened the floor for questions, I asked her for advice aimed at new writers.  Below is the gist of what she told me.  I found it inspiring, and I hope it is useful to you as well. She said that after she wrote her first novel and tried to get it published, she was rejected many times.  Instead of giving up and not bothering to write again, she put down that novel and wrote a second one.  And then a third...and so on.  She said it was one of her subsequent books that eventually got her in the door...

Dystopian future societies are all the rage in young adult fiction right now, ever since Hunger Games hit the bookshelves.  The question is if the topic still appeals to readers or if it's already passe.  And for us writers out there who have written a young adult novel, what exactly constitutes a setting of dystopian society?  How do we know if we should be identifying our book that way or not? I recently attended the MD/DE/WV chapter's conference for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.  It was a great conference, full of prospective new writers all willing to talk...

  Hello!  As my first post I'm excited to explain why I was passionate about writing ELECTED.  First off, I woke up one morning with most of the story in my head.  I immediately grabbed a notepad and started jotting down the basic outline.  And the general themes from that first morning are the same themes that have carried through my entire writing of the manuscript.  I am an environmentalist at heart.  Thus, I wanted to explore what our current world would be like if global warming came to fruition.  If our summers get hotter and our winters get colder and we had to withstand extreme...