Children and teen literature is classified in genres. This is not so much on the insistence of the authors, but on the insistence of the marketing department of the publishing houses and on-line distributors. The placement of your book in a certain genre is…
Everyone has some gaps in their grammar education. No matter how much grammar was pounded into us in class, we didn’t get it all. We might operate on the principle that if something ‘sounds’ right, it is right. Why it is right is often beyond…
Reluctant to Start? You have an idea. You want to write a book. You are almost afraid to start. You’ve decided which age level you want as your audience. Now what? Once you know what you want to write–fiction, nonfiction, history, adventure–and who your target…
Stories share structural frames. Readers expect a certain framework. Stories have characters, a setting and some kind of plot. Somebody, somewhere, does something. The stories we had read to us children, whether they were about pirates, rabbits or toads, likely revealed a structure of beginning,…
Why would anyone read our books? Because they want to participate in the world we create. Readers will read our books with the passion of a collector if they feel an emotional connection to our characters, and they care about them. They care when…