The Publishing Dream and Reality
Dreams shift, fortunately. When I was teaching a segment on The Great Gatsby, I asked my students to write about their dreams and goals, and at the end of it, one of my students asked me what my dreams were. I’d written sincerely about how I hoped to become a better teacher, one who could inspire students and still be left with a sane life outside of school. It seemed like a worthy goal, a grounded one, but it had none of the soaring hopefulness I’d… Continue reading
Prized Cover in the UK
The Amazon.co.uk site has uploaded the cover for Prized, which will be published by Simon & Schuster Children’s Books in the United Kingdom and Australia in November, just a couple days after it will be released in the U.S.
In case you can’t read the tag line, it says “In a world where an innocent kiss is a crime, deciding who to love will cost more than your heart.” Clever. I did not come up with that, incidentally.
Here are the two UK covers so far… Continue reading
Road Trip with Art
By the time my daughter and I became log-jammed in two hours of traffic south of D.C., we’d had a chance to visit the Hirshhorn Museum and we were still high on having our minds boggled. I was pondering the two great elephants in the gray room, and the way I was irresistibly drawn to walk between Gordon’s screens, uneasily safe while the beasts were captive, with their natural beauty trapped in a barren, dizzying world. I liked how Samaras’s book made of needles looked both soft and… Continue reading
Q. Do You Ever Write on Paper?
Computer Folder for Book 3
A. If I’m on a plane during take-off, in Starbucks expecting a friend, or in my car waiting for one of my kids, I write on paper. I keep a notebook in my purse for such occasions, though at times I’ve been reduced to using sticky notes. Normally, however, I do all my writing on my computer, including brainstorming, lists, notes, first drafts, and revisions. I have different documents for stages of a book that I keep in one folder, and I… Continue reading
Note to Self: It’s Not the Plot
I swear I’ve been here before.
I’m working with this draft of Book 3, and I’ve been revising along pretty steadily from the beginning, knocking out characters and scenes, deepening what remains, and I’ve reached a place where Gaia gets out of trouble. She can catch her breath for a minute, which is obviously a disaster as far as writing goes. The two of us sit back and look ahead at the next few scenes, and the links between them are simply not there. In fact, all… Continue reading
Playing Death at the Lake
The gutsiest thing I ever did at the lake nearly killed me. The color of our family’s lake in Minnesota, where four generations of Geist-O’Brien-Walshes have happily cavorted for as many decades, is a deep, rich brown. Rumor has it iron turns the water that color, while other theories lean toward peat, but whatever the reason, the result is unlike any lake color I’ve ever known elsewhere. The water feels extra heavy in your palm, too, and it’s deceptively easy to float on. It’s like… Continue reading
Ari & Milo, my serial novel, is now up on Wattpad! I drew illustrations to go with each chapter, and best of all, it’s free! Because of problematic themes, this novel is for mature readers age 17+.
Book Trailer for Promised