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cecil castellucci

5 Quirky Summer Writing Tips

Summer arrived this week with the solstice and a gift of sunny, balmy days here on the East Coast. School’s out and families are settling into new routines. If you’ve been secretly thinking all year that you’ll get to your writing in the summer, you might be surprised that it’s harder to ease into your new novel than you expected. I’m certainly finding that distractions abound. How can you get the most out of your summer writing days?

1. Like with exercise, you’ll get further with writing if you encourage… Continue reading

Book Promotion for the Long Haul

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 9.48.13 AMI was talking to a writer friend yesterday about art, our writing careers, book promotion, and how they’re related. Of these, promotion remains the wildest mystery. My first thought was that I don’t do much promotion because I don’t understand how it works. My feeling is that my publicist at Macmillan is the expert, and the success of my books is largely in her hands.

Then I realized I actually do quite a bit of promotion in my own, laid-back way. I just don’t much notice my efforts because… Continue reading

Good Times at WonderCon

WonderCon Building Worlds with Words Panel, March 25. L to r: Cecil Castellucci, Aditi Khorana, Margaret Stohl, Victoria Schwab, Lisa Yee, Gretchen McNeil, and Caragh O'Brien

WonderCon Building Worlds with Words Panel, March 25, 2016. L to r: Cecil Castellucci, Aditi Khorana, Margaret Stohl, Victoria Schwab, Lisa Yee, Gretchen McNeil, and Caragh O’Brien. Photo: Julia Hart

WonderConGames

Approaching the Games area

WonderCon was a blast, as expected. I arrived at the L.A. Convention Center last Friday with ample time to sit in on a couple of other presentations and wander the floor. I liked how the visitors in costume totally owned the conference, like when a couple of Spidermans encountered a J. Jonah Jameson (Peter Parker’s boss)… Continue reading

Star Wars, Cecil, and Princess Leia

517-Z0Wk6nL._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_You may have noticed the latest new craze for all things Star Wars which launched with Force Friday last week.  Here’s a fun fact.  My friend Cecil Castellucci was tapped to co-write (with Jason Fry) the Princess Leia book Moving Target because Cecil is both a great YA science fiction writer and a huge Star Wars fan.

Photo on 9-7-15 at 3.48 PM

It’s true: I have an R2-D2 Lego piece.

I’ve been delighted to see Cecil in the spotlight.  Aside from Moving Target, Cecil has published a recent space-faring… Continue reading