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.

Celebrating the pre-birthday of Bug!

My new picture book, Bug, is now available for pre-sales! And it has already been getting some attention. Here’s what I can share so far: Author and blogger Dawn Prochovnic invited me to tell Bug’s Birth Story for her blog. I’m so grateful that Dawn takes the time and energy to promote her fellow authors…

BUG! Publishing News

It began last October with a semi-desire to learn how to do scratchboard while tinkering with a story idea. As usual, my brain firmly resisted this new task that sounded messy, time consuming and difficult to learn. So, after buying all the materials and watching a few tutorials, I tried creating the scratchboard effect using…

Texting While Driving: a Writer’s Tip

We all know that sticking our nose in a device to read and answer messages while we drive is akin to driving while impaired, or worse. But safe texting while driving is something I’ve done for years. A lot of writers talk of their routine of “Butt in Chair” (BIC) from something o’clock to whatever…

Don’t over-pluck your picture book

If you write picture books, you know it’s a lot easier to tell your story in more words than probably anyone wants to publish. It used to be that 1,000-1,200 words was the limit. Now, it’s more like 700. Or even shorter! But that does not mean you cut all but the first 700 words…

Can you handle the truth?

In the world of publishing we (hopefully) agonize over a project until it is perfect and present something we believe in our hearts is an incredibly awesome work of art. So it’s never any fun when our projects are rejected by an agent or publisher. In 30+ years of publishing children’s books, here’s my take…

Are You Done Yet?

Wow, it’s been thirty years since my first children’s book contract. So… what have I learned in thirty years? I’ve learned that people often don’t respect or understand just how long it can take to accomplish a task that might appear, to the one not doing it, to be easy. I think everyone has experienced…

More about bats.

I worked with the third spread for my book idea about opposites and this is how far I got. Lots of tweaking yet to go, but it’s so fun to carve out some time to illustrate. Now it’s time to get back to writing. I’ve put one client off for three weeks, so I better…

Bats Rule!

It was a very long winter and spring working on “work for hire” writing projects along with the usual spring gardening, greenhouse and yard chores. I have eight (8!) books coming out in August, which you can find by searching my name as the author. My latest Boxcar Children Mystery was released in March, which…