Hey, book friends! Did you spend November hunched over a keyboard working on your NaNoWriMo piece? Or was your hunching due to studying with fiction breaks? Either way, yoga for writers (and readers) to the rescue! Our neck and shoulders can get really stiff and uncomfortable, and it feels so good to stretch them out! …
Hi, book friends–welcome to my room! I made a short video to show you guys my writing space and tell you a little bit about how I put together my latest YA fantasy story, Murmur. Hope you enjoy!
Brains are weird. We get all ready to write, and we even know the kind of story we want (swords! sorcery! fantasy realms!). But the minute we go to hammer something out on our laptops, we get stuck. Ugh! Not to worry–sometimes you just need a little warmup to get your brain on board 🙂 …
“Ugh, what should I write about?” Do you ever get stuck when facing a blank page? Sometimes, you need a good writing prompt to get the creative juices flowing. You might go back and use some of what you’ve written, or you might just use it as a warmup until you feel more confident or …
With so many magical stories in North America alone, I knew my books had to have some Mexican myths thrown into the mix! While I was weaving the latest danger into Devil’s Den, I stumbled into some really cool Youtube videos where people are speaking Nahuatl (historically known as the Aztec language). In fact, over …
Finn was really cute and I love the name, too! —@lifeofpages_ Yes! I was so happy to see this comment in a reader’s review of Murmur. Good names are so important, don’t you agree? (Also, geez—I can only imagine what it’s like to name a real-life baby. So much brainstorming.) Here’s the low-down on how I …
Where did you get the inspiration for the Murmur books? A reader sent in the question above, and I think it’s an especially awesome question for fantasy fiction books. Where do all of these pieces come from? For me, I think the ideas for the Wildheart books draw from a couple of wells of inspiration: …
Somehow — SOMEHOW — November is over. Thanksgiving was last week here in the States, and my mental calendar gears have clanked from “almost Thanksgiving” over to “almost Christmas”. This time of year always looks so good on blogs, too. All golden lights and hot drinks—it’s easy to get totally run over by the actual, …
Hello, bookish friends! I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful comments on the Wildheart book covers, and I’m so glad you guys like them! Today’s post is a behind-the-scenes look at my glamorous desk (ha!) and how I put together the cover for the third book, Devil’s Den 🙂 Gathering Inspiration Devil’s Den pulls in a lot …
OK, book friends, I have a confession: I don’t actually like NaNoWriMo. I mean, don’t get me wrong. The camaraderie, the ‘let’s just DO THIS!’ attitude is great. But banging out 50K+ words in only one month, especially if it’s someone’s first crack at a novel, is pretty much insane. When you do the math, …