A Tale of Twin Books

Here’s a bit of the bunny-eat-bunny world that I’d put out of my mind up until recently. A terrific cartoonist I follow blogged about people stealing his ideas, and it brought back memories. Twice in my 35 year career, I felt that an idea I submitted had been stolen. I knew that we could not…

Don’t Quit Your Day Job!

…if your illustrating/writing abilities are valuable enough for someone else to profit from them, then maybe honor yourself enough to try being your own boss and choosing who gets to make money off of your talents.

A Fishy Story

I began my career with a picture book contract after about seven months of soliciting. The contract was with a very small children’s book imprint that was part of Dodd, Mead and Company, one of the pioneer publishing houses in the United States. During the 1980s when I started, the children’s book industry was diverse,…

Keeping it real

One of many things I have gleaned from successful writers is to make sure my fictional stories are believable. Experienced sci-fi and fantasy writers are adept at weaving a made-up world and filling it with characters and situations that a reader can believe and invest in. Legal thrillers play out according to real laws with…

When to give up on a story.

Writers love their stories. It can be a love-hate thing throughout the writing process, but when a writer reaches the end and declares the story is done, they are hopelessly in love with it. Does anyone remember the intro scene from Romancing the Stone, when the sobbing Joan Wilder types in the final scene in…

Changing with the times – how I stayed published.

This piece is from the May 2006 issue of our local electrical coop’s Ruralite Magazine. I interviewed myself actually, and was very easy to talk to. I also took the photos, hence the cut off head. The gist of the interview was how we creative types struggle in our careers. Getting published doesn’t mean we’ll…

DIY Picture Book Query Letters

When it comes to picture book submissions, editors and agents nearly always ask for the entire text. For novels and nonfiction, they generally ask for a synopsis, the first three chapters, and/or a proposal and outline. It’s a no-brainer that one should write a query for novels or nonfiction to get the prospective publisher interested…