Recently I happened upon this interview with YA author Lish McBride, which I published back in 2014 on my old website. A lot has happened since then, obviously. At the time, Lish’s third YA fantasy book, Firebug, was about to come out, and now Lish has written and published two more YA novels: a sequel to Firebug, called Pyromantic, and,… View Post
**Updated December 2021** I recently met with highly successful literary agent Fiona Kenshole of Transatlantic Agency, and she gave me some query tips that truly blew my mind. I am, unfortunately, no stranger to the query game; I thought by this point I knew everything about writing query letters. As it turns out, I had more to learn. There are… View Post
Back in 2014 and 2015, when I was living in Minneapolis, I created a small writers group. Monica Gomez-Hira was in the group, and she was working on a funny YA contemporary about a Latinx girl who gets a job as a party princess and has to play Belle opposite her “beastly” ex-boyfriend. Imagine my delight when, years later,… View Post
Writing a novel-length project is incredibly challenging. How do you keep track of plot points and character arcs, revise and rearrange scenes, organize notes and research? In the past I’ve attempted to do these things with the use of 3-subject notebooks, post-its, highlighters, and lots and lots of Word documents. Then I found a better way: Scrivener. A few months… View Post
What Is a High Concept Book? Recently I’ve been listening to The Manuscript Academy podcast. In each episode, agent Jessica Sinsheimer (creator of The Manuscript Wish List) and author Julie Kingsley interview someone from the publishing industry, usually an agent or editor. Often, the agents and editors say they are looking for books that are “high concept,” but when they’re… View Post