I haven’t composed a blog post in a long time. It’s easier to post fun things like cover reveals and quizzes and games. Not because those things take less ti...

2017 was a strange year. It began with me wandering through the cold, seemingly-solitary halls of being between agents. I worked endlessly on a book that I w...

“Everyone attack!” “Retreat!” “Attack!” “Retreat!” “What are you doing, Lee? Get back on your feet!” -Stay Alive, Hamilton I’ve always wanted to open a blog ...

In my ongoing struggle to sit down and be productive as a writer who works from home, I fully admit to being one of those people who clicks on the daily asso...

Hello there! We are middle grade authors Kit Rosewater and Ash Van Otterloo, and together we make up the MG Pitch Wars mentor duo, #TeamRainbow! What is Pitc...

Three years ago, I was just starting my journey as a Pitch Wars mentee. For those unfamiliar, Pitch Wars is a mentoring program where published or agented au...

A few weeks ago, my friend forwarded me this tweet. It was posted by authors Brendan Reichs and Daniel José Older and was making the rounds in the Book Twitt...

Confession time: I’m one of those writers who sees an article title like “My Ups and Downs of Writing” or “My Long, Long, Loooooooooong Road to Publishing” a...

Being a writer is a difficult thing. Any job can be difficult, of course. When I was a teacher, a stage director, a textbook translator, and a bookseller, I ...

This story starts with a wedding. In mid-March, I was returning from a friend’s nuptials in Brooklyn, NY. I had watched a couple stare lovingly into each oth...

(The following content was originally presented at the SCBWI New Mexico April Shop Talk on 4.09.19) When I started querying in 2011, I looked at pitch a lot ...

In early February I read Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s middle grade graphic novel This One Summer and I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I mean, I absolutely ...

In the fall of 2018, I started to write a book about ants. Wait. No. That’s not true. In the summer of 2017, I started to draft this book about ants. Nope. N...

In the fifth inning of Game 3 in the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth was up at bat. After two strikes, he held his hand high and pointed toward the center-field...

If you’re a writer or an avid reader, you may know of the classic hero’s journey as outlined by literary academic, Joseph Campbell. In Campbell’s prescribed ...