A couple weeks ago, I headed out to Western Mass. for the New England SCBWI conference. There were so many people there that it was a little overwhelming, but I ran into lots of writing friends and former students, and overall I had a great time. I took pages and pages of notes, so I [...]
The other night, I went to see The Sapphires, an Australian movie based on a true story about an Aboriginal girl group singing for soldiers in Vietnam. I loved the music and the sisterly relationships, and overall I quite enjoyed the film. There were elements in the story, however, that felt somewhat underdeveloped. As I [...]
Copy edits for MY SORT OF FAIRY TALE ENDING are done! What do I do with myself now, you ask? Why, draft another book, of course! As I go ahead with the next project, I’ll be keeping in mind the advice I’ve found myself sharing with my students quite a bit recently: Give your character [...]
[It's "Anna Staniszewski Week" over at Fresh as a Daisy! (Can you hear my head getting bigger?) Today, swing by for my guest post on the lessons I learned from writing a sequel.] I tend to be pretty impatient with books these days, probably because my reading list keeps growing at an alarming rate. If [...]
[If you have a minute, swing by Jennifer Nielsen's blog where I answer the very important question: Fruit or chocolate? (I bet you can't guess what my answer was.) And if you'd like to win copies of both of my books, check out this awesome giveaway.] Last week, one of my students and I were [...]
More and more I’ve found myself describing the UnFairy Tale series as “Tween” even though it technically falls into the category of middle grade. And my next series, The Dirt Diary, seems to fit the Tween label even more. So what exactly is Tween, you ask? Definitions will vary, but for me, Tween is made [...]
[The EPIC FAIL blog tour continues with a post that proves that even cats enjoy the UnFairy Tale series, and with a guest post in which I pretend to be an expert on writing humor.] You probably heard a huge sigh of relief yesterday when I sent off my revision of MY SORT OF FAIRY [...]
[If you have a minute, stop by The Writer Librarian where I talk about MFAs, newsletters, and writing.] As I’ve been doing interviews and guest posts in anticipation of the release of my second book (less than three weeks away!!) and doing school visits (doing one this afternoon, in fact) I’ve realized that telling others [...]
If you have a minute, stop by the Paper Wait where I have a guest post up about the craziness that comes with writing a sequel. And speaking of writing a sequel (or a sequel to a sequel) I’m back in the revision cave! I’ve been spending so much time in here that I think [...]
I’m over at Cherie Coyler’s blog today looking at the evolution of the opening of My Epic Fairy Tale Fail–stop by to read the book’s (terrible) original first page! Also, I was at the Enchanted Inkpot yesterday talking with my fellow Inkies about the BIG things we’ve learned about writing fantasy. When it comes to starting a [...]
