Yesterday, as I sat down to write some brilliant words in my WIP, I did what any writer does before starting. I got onto Facebook. For research. I swear. Okay, maybe not, but I did see a couple of posts that inspired the words you’re reading now, so it wasn’t all a waste of time.…
Yesterday, I read a well-known book with my first-grade group called Is Your Mama a Llama? It’s about a llama looking for others like him, who would have a llama for a mama, told in a fun and predictable rhyming pattern. “Is your mama a llama?” I asked my fried Dave. “No she is not,” is…
Book blogger and fellow author Colleen Chesebro has read and reviewed Drake’s story, and I’m blown away by her thorough feedback. Here’s a bit of it: I love YA fiction and strong characters because I think these portrayals give hope to our teens in a chaotic world. Fictional heroes have a way of letting kids…
The title is a question I get asked fairly often, and after writing out what I’m about to write out here several times I said to myself, “Self, you know that blog thingy we have? Maybe write it all there and then share the link when someone asks.” Myself can be pretty smart sometimes. It’s…
A few days ago on Facebook, a writer in one of the writing groups I’m in posted a question about a minority character in her book. My first thought was why would anyone be offended by the mere presence of a Chinese character? So I opened up the comments. And, well… Let’s just say diversity in…
Learning to read is a magical process: we recognize letters and assign them sounds and then smash the sounds together into words. Then we read many words in sentences and in paragraphs, not only decoding the them but extracting meaning from them. It’s pretty trippy if you dwell on it too long. Seeing as learning…
My birthday is in a few days, and I only want one thing. Seeing as it conveniently overlaps with everyone’s reflecting on the past year, this should be easy. Here goes. If you read a book you loved this year, go to its Amazon and/or Goodreads page and write a review for it. That’s it.…
Yesterday, I read this list that Meg Dowell compiled. It describes 18 things that writers should stop worrying about, and one item in particular jumped out at me, but not for the reason you might think. 6. Writing things your friends and family will read/love. I suspect the reason that item is there is along the…
In the writing community, there’s a saying that there are no new story ideas – there are around 12, and every “new” story is one of those 12 told in a different voice and from a different angle. The Orphaned Chosen One and the Unasked For Journey are two common ones. Another “branch” of these is…
Check out my guest post on Linda Sienkiewicz’s blog! Playing favorites… for a reason: Just over a month ago, my most recent novel The Seventh Seed was released to as much fanfare as I could muster. I hosted a Facebook launch party (where Linda contributed as a guest author and was FABULOUS), wrote blog posts, created ads,…
Allison Maruska 