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…
Originally posted on Allison Maruska:
Last week, I participated in a flash fiction challenge in which I picked two subgenres to mash together into a single short story. I did this using a random number generator and landed on dystopia and erotica. (Read it here if you’re so inclined.) Yep, erotica. As in hormones, blood…
If you know me in real life, you know I go to Starbucks a lot. A lot. My kids attend Taekwondo classes across the street from the Starbucks location I frequent the most, and they pretty much live at Taekwondo, especially around tournament time. The baristas know my name. I gave them copies of The Seventh…
Originally posted on San Giacomo's Corner:
Put on your seatbelts for this roller-coaster-rocket-ride dystopian thriller. Within the pages of The Seventh Seed we meet Javier, a prodigy of the scientific community. He has accidentally stumbled onto a horrid truth concerning a corporation called LifeFarm. For the most part, LifeFarm is almighty and all-powerful. The…
Originally posted on Allison Maruska:
A few weeks ago, I handed off a final copy of Drake and the Fliers to some proofreaders. One of them asked if there was a story before the book, describing what took place before we join Drake in the office tower. There isn’t, but her question gave me an idea. Welcome…
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.…
Originally posted on Allison Maruska:
In clicking over to read this post, you’re probably wondering what the difference between an A/B and a B/A is. I’ll start by saying it’s more than simple word order. I had an epiphany a few weeks back whilst discussing blogging with another author. He was telling me how blogging…
Allison Maruska 