Recently I read a piece in the Los Angeles Times  that made me laugh out loud. Multiple Times.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a humor column, but an ostensibly journalistic piece on the future of reading that focused on changes libraries are making in order to “stay relevant.” (Are you chuckling yet?)

It focuses, to a large extent, on some of the changes ( Read more... )

My fabulous critique partner is a big believer in communication. When someone’s upset, he wants to talk it over. When something great happens, he wants to hear about it. He’s a writer by vocation, and a communicator by nature.

In other words, his cell phone rings at a near-frantic pace.

It’s a struggle to balance all those calls with his face-to-face ( Read more... )

Okay, yes, it’s been like 15 months since I posted on LiveJournal-but it’s not like I haven’t thought about posting during that whole time. It’s just that I was a little preoccupied, what with moving, and getting married, and losing one of my gigs, and trying not to have a nervous breakdown. You know how it is.

But among the many benefits of ( ( Read more... )

Forgive me, LiveJournal, for I have not blogged. It has been-cringe--practically eight months since my last posting.

But, in my defense, it’s been kinda hectic. What with the digital/ print battle going on at one gig, and the threat to cut my hours (and, correspondingly, my salary) at another, with the to-be-expected emotional and practical ( Read more... )

I knew real life was getting in the way of my blogging (drat you, Real Life!), but I had no idea that I had missed a season and a third of Live Journal updates. Wow.

Okay-Real Life and a novel revision. A pretty dang successful novel revision. (At least, that’s what I intend to believe until my critique partner flings his editing tomahawk at my ( Read more... )

Lo, the many reasons I hate the unnamed phone/ internet/ sadistic company that will be henceforward referred to as SatanCo.

Many moons ago, when I first began using email for my budding freelance career, I was such a novice that one of my editors actually had to teach me how to attach documents to a message. (That was after he explained to me what ( Read more... )

It took me a long time to submit to Anne of Green Gables, mostly because the cover declared her to be “the best-beloved heroine of all time,” or something, and I just don’t cave to such overpromotion (not even when I was 12).

But once I started reading, I was hooked. And one of the things that got me was her focus on her identity. Sure, she was an ( Read more... )

Children’s writers! Children’s illustrators! Editors! Agents! Bookstore!

How I love the SCBWI national conference. And I want you to love it too. So without further ado, here are this year’s Top 10 Best Things I Heard at the SCBWI National Conference. (Potential alternate titles: The Niftiest Things I Heard Come Out of Bruce Coville’s and Margaret ( Read more... )

When I was in college, I worked at Kinderfoto. It was a job rife with challenges: how hard is just hard enough to blow in a baby’s face to make it smile? Once you’ve made it smile, how fast can you nip back behind the camera, to make sure it’s focused and take the picture, without tripping over the tripod legs? When the family returns to view the ( Read more... )

I interviewed a painter the other day-a nice guy I’ve interviewed before, apparently 10 (!!) years ago. (It does feel strange to be able to say I’ve been at anything for 10 years!) I admire his work for its well-researched subjects (historical aviation pieces, they are), for its technical proficiency, and most of all for its sharp, photographic ( Read more... )