What to Do When You’re Stuck (Or How Scorpion Deception Almost Didn’t Get Created)

Guest Blogger: Andrew Kaplan You know you’re in trouble when you’ve got a contract to write the next book in a popular series (OK, not top of the NY TIMES bestseller list popular, but Bookscan and Amazon top 20 popular), a looming deadline, and you don’t have an idea in …

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On Writing YA and Adult Thrillers

Guest Blogger: James Phelan SURVIVOR is the second installment in my ALONE trilogy for Young Adults.  It follows a 16-year-old protagonist, Jesse, in a post-apocalyptic setting in NYC. The trilogy started because I’d already written 3 adults thrillers and was contracted for 3 more, and needed a different writing challenge.  …

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An Obsession with the Past

Guest Blogger: David Morrell Novelists sometimes find themselves stuck with what John Barth calls “fill in the blank” writing. A character walks into an office, which needs to be described. If it’s an attorney’s office, there’ll probably be law books and photographs of the attorney’s family or maybe of powerful …

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Seriously Funny

Guest Blogger:  Jill Wolfson The four novels that I’ve written for the middle-reader and the young adult audience all deal with heavy topics – foster care, unemployment, depression, death, medical emergencies. In COLD HANDS, WARM HEART, I actually killed character – a likeable teenage girl – in the first chapter, …

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When did you first make Miss Dickinson’s Acquaintance?

Guest Blogger: Michaela MacColl I have to admit that poetry has never been my thing. I’m a prose girl. I like plot and character development. All too often when I read poetry I feel as though the writer is scoring points off me – I’m just not as clever as …

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Point of View is Not Always a Good Compass For the Truth

Guest Blogger: Anne Greenwood Brown I love writing in the first person point of view. Somehow, telling the story how one character perceives it helps me channel that character’s emotions and capture a unique voice. I think first person works particularly well with YA fiction, where the reader wants to …

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The Haunting World of Scowler

Young Adult author Daniel Kraus was kind enough to answer a few questions about SCOWLER, his latest release. Daniel “is a Chicago-based writer, editor, and filmmaker. His debut novel, THE MONSTER VARIATIONS, (Random House, 2009), was selected to New York Public Library’s “100 Best Stuff for Teens.” Fangoria called his …

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The Secret Lives of Characters

Guest Blogger: Hilary Davidson While I while writing my first novel, I discovered that characters and their histories take up as much real estate in my brain as close family and friends. More, really, because I didn’t have to think about the long-simmering antagonism between two friends unless I’m inviting …

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The Bionic Man is Here

Guest Blogger: Mark Alpert I was a nerdy kid who watched a lot of television in the 1970s, and my favorite show was THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN. The best part of the program was the 90-second intro, which showed the disastrous mission that nearly killed astronaut Steve Austin (played …

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Food Trucks and Hoarding

Guest Blogger: Lisa McMann I admit it. I love reality TV. I love the thrill of SURVIVOR, all the cooking shows, especially THE GREAT FOOD TRUCK RACE, and I am strangely fascinated by shows about people’s obsessions, addictions, and dark secrets. I’ve even been on a reality show called SEARCHING FOR …

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