Keiko: Thanksgiving

Advice For Young Writers, Emergency Chocolate and A MOOSE GOES A-MUMMERING: Three Questions with Lisa Dalrymple

Lisa Dalrymple is the author of Skink on the Brink and many other books for children. She loves to travel. In Thailand, she shared her bath towel with a gecko that thought it was his bed. Lisa now lives in Ontario with her husband and three kids–but no lizards.

Also see my interview with Lisa Dalrymple and Suzanne Del Rizzo about how they created SKINK ON THE BRINK, a wonderful plasticine art book from Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

You can find out more about Lisa and her work at LisaDalrymple.com, Facebook, Twitter.

Click to read more ...

Keiko: Introducing Sendak

Picture books are food for the soul

Comic: Squirrel Writer Therapy

Advice For Young Writers, Dyslexia and Reading, Storytelling, THE JOCK AND THE FAT CHICK: Three Questions With Nicole Winters

Nicole Winters graduated from the University of Toronto with an English B.A.. She loves books, bikes, horror films and globe hopping. She’s currently at work on her third YA novel called THE CONJURER. You can find Nicole on Twitter, her blog, Facebook or NicoleWintersAuthor.com.

I met Nicole through Torkidlit and love her enthusiasm and genuine caring about young readers as well as her support of other authors in the community.

Click to read more ...

Comic inspired by a tweet by Arthur Slade today

Thanks to Arthur Slade for his permission to turn his tweet into a comic. :-)

Short on writing time or falling behind in NaNoWriMo? Try this more flexible challenge.

Too often, I find that writers start motivational challenges like NaNoWrimo with enthusiasm and good intentions, but give up when they start missing their daily targets for more than a few days in a row...undermining their confidence and defeating the purpose of the original challenge.

If you need a motivational writing challenge with some flexibility, try checking out my 250, 500 or 1000 words/day challenge. I'm doing NaNoWriMo right now as a way of helping kickstart my middle grade novel....but I'm already falling a wee bit behind the "1666 wds/day" goal.

If I do end up having to bail out of NaNo, I'm vowing NOT going to get discouraged but am going to keep going, but try a lower wordcount instead.

To those of you with lots of writing time and don't need these challenges: I envy you! :-) These days for me, paying work has taken priority and my non-contracted projects keep being pushed to the back burner. I find that wordcount challenges can help motivate me to get into the habit of putting in at least a little bit of time EVERY DAY on my novel-writing. 

Some of you may snicker at my measley wordcount goals but for me, even 250 words a day is better than nothing at all. 

Writers & illus: How you live your life affects your work, so make sure you have one. A life, that is.

Free Picture Book Thumbnail Templates for Writers and Illustrators

With some sketches for picture book NAKED! (Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, author Michael Ian Black)

When I was asked to illustrate my first picture book (I'm Bored) and I started researching picture book formats, I was confused. I knew a standard picture book had 32 pages, for example, but I discovered that these 32 pages might also include the title page and other non-story pages. Plus some books had the story beginning on the right-hand page while others started on the left. 

Click to read more ...

Advice For Young Writers, Traveling Office Space and BRAZEN: Christina Farley Answers Three Questions

CHRISTINA FARLEY is the author of the Gilded series, a YA contemporary fantasy series set in Korea. GILDED was nominated for Korea’s 2014 Morning Calm, Ohio’s 2015 Buckeye award, and the Tome’s It List. As a child, she loved to explore, which later inspired her to jump on a plane and travel the world. To learn more about this series, visit the Gilded Series website.

Christy is also one of my awesome writing critique partners, and I continue to be grateful for her advice, encouragement and friendship over the years.

Click to read more ...

Comic: Productivity Tip For Writers, Sort Of

Comic: Daylight Saving Time writer

Hope you all changed your clocks last night!

Tip: Write first, edit LATER.

This is something I've been struggling with for years. My tendency is to try editing as I write and while this works for some writers, I know, I find that it bogs me down to a snail's pace.

What I'm trying for my new middle grade novel: to do a lot of in-depth prep and thinking about the structure ahead of time, hammer out a VERY rough first draft, and THEN revise.

A comic for others starting NaNoWriMo tomorrow

Good luck, everyone! I'm "inkygirl" on the NaNoWriMo website, but I'm not sure how far I'm going to get in my novel since I'll be away for part of the month and also have a book deadline. :-\

BUT I just found out that you no longer have to start from scratch to participate in NaNoWriMo. You can also be working on outlines and other types of writing.

Comic: A NaNoWriMo Halloween

Don't forget to check out my friend Errol Elumir's daily NaNoToons during November!

Comic: Death and the Writer

THE NEST by Kenneth Oppel, illustrated by Jon Klassen

I read middle grade novel THE NEST (written by Kenneth Oppel and illustrated by Jon Klassen) in one sitting last night. Totally lives up to the hype. I'm a horror fan and this was genuinely scary, with tension and dread gradually building to a nightmare-inducing climax. Yowza.

Click to read more ...

LOUD LULA by Katy Duffield and Mike Boldt launches today!

LOUD LULA launches from Two Lions today! Written by Katy Duffield and illustrated by Mike Boldt, LOUD LULA is southern-flavored tall tale about a little girl with a big voice. "...Little ol’ Lula’s big ol’ voice wreaks ten kinds of havoc from the day she’s born, and that doesn’t change one smidgen when Lula starts kindergarten. As you might imagine, Lula’s oversized voice isn’t a great fit for the classroom—or maybe it is…"

See Katy Duffield's answers to my Three Questions.

See Mike Boldt's answers to my Three Questions.

Halloween Reads: BOO-LA-LA WITCH SPA and THE GHOSTS GO SPOOKING

Looking for some new Halloween books to share with young readers? Here are two recent releases that would make fun read-a-louds:

BOO-LA-LA Witch Spa, written by Samantha Berger and illustrated by Isabel Roxas (Penguin Random House):

 and THE GHOSTS GO SPOOKING, written by Chrissy Bozik and illustrated by Patricia Storms (Scholastic Canada):