My writing trip, part 1

I am long past due writing about my trip to Utah. The end of March I went up to teach a couple of writing classes at the LDStorymakers conference, do a school visit (Brockbank Junior High Rocks!) and in general…

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Happy Birthday, theoretically speaking

I’m celebrating a birthday soon–although of course when you get to my age you don’t actually celebrate them. You dread them, you try to dodge them, you sigh with that same it-can’t-be-here-again-already expression you get when the dentist informs you…

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Janette gets lost

Some of us weren’t blessed with a sense of direction. The fairy responsible for bestowing that gift on me at birth—in Sleeping Beauty like fashion—obviously got lost somewhere and never made it to my cradle. I take heart that I’m…

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Edit Your Novel Month

I heard on the radio that March is the official edit-your-novel-month. Which of course begs the question: Are other authors only editing their novels one month out of the year? How do I get that gig? I’m editing all of…

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Am I Smarter than a Fifth Grader . . .

I have fifth grade twins so I’m doubly qualified to answer this question. I was trying to help my daughter with her math the other night. It was something about probability. Like, if you have a coin and you flip…

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Vote on your favorite cover.

For those of you who don’t stop by my website because I never have new content on it–guess what? I put on new content! (Okay, I didn’t; I paid someone else to do it for me, but still, it’s there.)…

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Editing Myopia

I just finished going over the galleys for Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Reading galleys is like sending a child off to college. You just hope you did a good job somewhere along the line and put in enough time, effort,…

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The Higher Power of Lucky and the S word

Everyone in the book world seems to be weighing in on the fervor caused by the S-word in the newly crowned Newbery book: The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron. I imagine most of my compatriots in literature will…

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Another Call From My Editor

My editor just called to talk to me about self promotion and book publicity–specifically how I need to be doing both. (I remember fondly the good old days when I thought my job was to write books.) Anyway, with that…

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Then again, maybe anonymity isn’t so bad.

I know in my New Year’s resolutions blog I resolved to become wildly famous because, unlike some people, I could live a life free of embarrassing myself by stepping out of limos while only half dressed. But I didn’t take…

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Why I Need a Live-in Copy Editor

As you can tell by my last post, I was involved in an internet game of telling five things people don’t know about me and then tagging five other bloggers. So after I’d written my post I went to my…

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