Something AMAZING has happened. THE BOY, THE BOAT, AND THE BEAST won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for the Texas/Oklahoma region! It’s always excited to know that your work is appreciated by readers, but this award in particular means so much to me for many reasons. Firstly, SCBWI’s Crystal Kite Awards are the only peer-voted…
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Next week, I will be faculty at my first Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators writing conference, and it feels like a milestone. The first SCBWI conference I attended was in 2007. I was living in Los Angeles then, so attended the huge annual Summer Conference organized by SCBWI headquarters. As a wallflower who…
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Writing is solitary. Just us with a computer and a head of ideas. But we’re not really alone. And going to a writing conference is a wonderful way to celebrate that. Of course, seminars at writing conferences are great learning opportunities. Query letters, characters, plot, dialog — I’ve learned about all these at conferences. But…
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I’m starting a new Friday traditional on my blog, the Friday High & Low. Every Friday, I’ll check in and give you my writing high and low for the week. My high this week, is actually last week’s, but I was too busy to post it then. And I’ve got two: First, I won the…
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There’s a wonderful feeling you get after a writing conference. An excitement and energy that comes from spending a day or weekend with people who are just like you. With an SCBWI event, that feeling is even more exaggerated, due to the warmth and generosity of the writers and illustrators of children’s books. I spent…
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