Here’s my entry for the Official Kidlit #FallWritingFrenzy! Writers select one image to inspire a 200-word story. My image is below! Ms. Wolownik’s New Assistant Ms. Wolownik’s house looks like a rotten potato. It’s brown and white, and nobody can tell mold from paint. Its roof sags. Vines from overgrown plants spill out the windows….
Writing My First Query Letter
Writing my first query letter has been transformative. I have lived the life of a phoenix. Taken my beak to shell. Swelled with the glory of flight. Burned into ashes. And then, in a chorus of mystical chemistry, I remade myself. Eh, in short, it was really effin’ hard. Here’s my personal path from zero…
Feb. 2020’s #PitMad
My second #PitMad! My first #PitMad, back in December of 2019, I was a wide-eyed fawn, brimming with hope and anxiety. You can read about that (and my favorite pitches) at my first To Pitch Madly post. This round, however, I was ready. TweetDeck posted my pitches for me, so I could respect some limitations…
How Do You Finish a Story?
How do you know a story is done? Or if not a “story,” a piece of writing—your flash fiction, your novella, your book. How do you know when it’s a ready, submission-worthy, finished piece? Reading the classics in high school, and even in college, I had this underlying assumption that every poem, every novel, was…
My Sister’s Heart Transplant
TL;DR: My sister got a heart transplant. Please be an organ donor. Click this link: https://www.donatelife.net/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━√v^√v^√ ❤️️ In December of 2018, my sister’s heart failed. No warning. She was 21 years old. It was a rare genetic hiccup. Doctors saved her life that December…but at a cost. Her body became, in a sense, battery…
Dec. 2019’s #PitMad
I did #PitMad! My first rodeo. On December 5th, I Twitter-binged for ~12 hours. Aaaand when logged off at 8 p.m., my eyeballs about rolled out of my skull. Took an hour for depth perception to return… What’s PitMad? It’s a Twitter event! Writers “pitch” their finished books to agents, who follow the #PitMad hashtag….
Five 50-Word Stories
This year, Every Writer’s 50-word horror story contest exploded. Over 4,000 entries. From the website, it looks like the wild popularity brought some drama too: The comments were all still up, last I checked. Eh, coupling a $500 prize with no limit on the number of submissions was… ambitious. But hey, the winners are posted:…
The Fragility of Glass
This October, here’s my entry for the Official Kidlit Fall Writing Frenzy! This competition is hosted by the talented Kaitlyn Leann Sanchez. Her blog, Math is Everywhere, follows her own writing journey and offers plenty of opportunities to connect with fellow authors. The competition asked writers to select one image (see mine below) to inspire…