The quickest way to draw aspiring authors in your circles out of the woodwork is to become a published author yourself. The second your book hits the shelves (or even before), the questions from friends, relatives, and that guy who sat behind you in Pre-Algebra who want to figure out how to generate their own form of passive income* come rolling in. *see .gif You're about to find out just how un-passive earning money as a children's author really is. But I digress. The most c

Nothing says "Lucky Author" like a conference badge. ALA Midwinter is happening NOW and extends through this weekend into Monday, and a ton of my friends will be there--many for the first time! And OLA (which is essentially Canadian ALA) is NEXT WEEK! And a ton of my friends will be there as well, including--dun-da-da-DUUUUUUUN--ME. (More on that later.) So here are some helpful things I learned from my own ALA Midwinter experience last year that I thought I'd share. Pack the

It's Thursday, and that means it's Go Pro day! Go Pro is my weekly blog series in which I pass on industry advice, writing craft advice, and all that good stuff. Next week is the SCBWI Summer Conference in LA, and I will be there! I hope some of you will be, too. And since it will be the first time at a big conference like this for a lot of people, I thought I'd pass on a bit of advice. In fact, this is my Number One Tip for kidlit conference goers: Do not go to a conference

This is the third post in Go Pro, a new blogging series for writers that talks about craft and dispenses industry advice. Someone said on twitter that they had been told that characters referring to each other by name in dialogue was "not authentic," and they wanted thoughts on that: they refer to their kids by name all the time, and their kids refer to each other by name. So what gives? How can it not be authentic if it happens in real life? This was my response: So let's br

Go Pro is a blog series in which I talk about the craft and business of writing books for kids. Last week, I talked about query letters, and posted a template for you to follow. This week, I want to get a little bit into one of the nitty gritty aspects of query letters: naming comparable titles for your manuscript! How to choose the right comp titles? Once you understand why comp titles belong in a query letter, this becomes easier. So here's the thing you need to know: Comp

Once upon a time, before I had this website, I had a blog on blogger. I haven’t updated it since I started blogging here, but there’s a lot of good stuff on it, and rather than migrate the whole thing over here, I thought I’d identify the best posts and pull them through to this blog. So here’s the first of those: a query letter template, for anyone who needs it. I hope it’s useful! First, a quick word about query letters vs. cover letters and querying vs. submitting. We al