MMGM is a weekly meme hosted by middle grade author, Shannon Messenger. (Finally! A meme that fits perfectly with my content!) I’m going to postpone the book review I had planned for today and feature instead a super novel by Tim Davis. I reviewed the book a year ago, but seeing as it was such a fun […]
I've reviewed lots of books and written 20 of my own.
Challenges Indies Face (Unmasking an Author Series, #1)
Today marks the first of a four part series I’ll be doing on author visibility. The single most crippling obstacle all new authors face is invisibility. No one has ever heard of us before. Our work is untested, unfamiliar. Why would anyone chance good money on a newbie? That highlights the single most advantageous reason, in […]
Peter and the Shadow Thieves (Starcatchers Series, book 2), by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, 2006
The pre-adventures of Peter Pan continue, and they’re just as fun and fantastic in Peter and the Shadow Thieves as they are in book one. Peter chose to stay in Never Land with the lost boys rather than live with Molly and her family in London. But when he learns the Others (evil ones who seek to […]
The High King (Chronicles of Prydain, 5) by Lloyd Alexander, 1968
I’ve so enjoyed this series. If you’ve never read it, check out my other reviews (scroll to bottom) then get thee to a library and check out book one. These are among the cream of the crop in children’s literature, and all five books are chock full of fantastic adventure and fabulous writing. They relate […]
Sales Equation: Cheap + Bulk = Profit
Last week I argued for the creation of paperbacks even in this digital age. If you do have a paperback available for sale, you can benefit from a sales technique often overlooked by indie authors–bulk sales. But bulk sells at a price lower than what I hope to get for my work, you may be […]
Beneath the Slashings Blog Tour
To celebrate the August 2012 release of my middle grade novel, Beneath the Slashings, I put together a pretty awesome blog tour. Now that it’s over, I reshuffled this post a bit. I’ve condensed all the links into a single, cohesive list below, just in case you missed any. If you’re unfamiliar with the book or the Divided Decade […]
When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead, 2009, Book Review
Miranda and Sal are best friends, until the day they are not. Until the day Sal takes a punch to the stomach. Until the first day of the story she must write in a letter…to someone. Suddenly, Sal no longer wants to walk to school with Miranda, and the first of four strange notes appear. […]
Paperbacks–So Last Century?
Lots of indie authors are getting in on the ebook craze, and why not? It’s affordable, doable, and just so cool to see your novel up on Amazon. But fewer authors, it seems, take the time to create a paperback version of their novel. I’m here to say, you’ve gone through all the trouble of […]
Insurgent, by Veronica Roth, 2012, Book Review
Veronica Roth has created a page-turning second novel in Insurgent, which continues the dystopian YA series set in futuristic Chicago. There, society is split into factions based on predominant character traits: Dauntless, Amity, Erudite, Candor and Abnegation. These exaggerated strengths have always helped maintain balance and morality among the whole. Until Erudite sought to overpower […]
A Front Porch, a Corkboard, and a Stationary Bike
Why do you blog? That’s a good question, one I’ve been asked many times. Sometimes the question translates, Why do you waste your time doing something that I would find more painful than shooting myself in the feet? Other times it means, Everyone blogs. What makes you think you’ve got anything to add to the […]