On Saturday, I attended the Missouri Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference. I would categorize this as more of an inspirational than a working conference. It consists of a series of keynote addresses with one breakout session. There was the option to attend an additional breakout session on Sunday morning, but as I…
Random Stuff
Thoughts on Movie Adaptations and THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS in Particular
A couple of weeks ago, in preparation for “The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones” movie, I read CITY OF BONES. I loved it and couldn’t wait to get CITY OF ASHES. I’m still waiting on CITY OF GLASS, but the fact that I’ve only read the first two is an important point in this post….
Make Your Pitches Specific and Other WriteOnCon Takeaways
Another WriteOnCon is over, and once again I feel energized and ready to get back out there with my manuscript. It’s amazing to me how different the conference is from one year to the next. The organizers do a great job coming up with new topics and presenters. In case you missed it, here is…
How to Stalk WriteOnCon Ninja Agents
Please see my 2017 post, which is updated for the new forum platform. Note: I’ve postponed the MMGM I had planned for today due to being lost in the WriteOnCon forums. What’s that, you may ask? Read on. If you write for kids, teens or new adults, you should attend WriteOnCon tomorrow and Wednesday. It’s…
Missouri SCBWI Conference Recap, Part 2
Yesterday I posted Part 1 of my Missouri SCBWI Conference recap. On to Part 2… Illustrator Will Terry kicked off the afternoon sessions. He offered the most polished presentation of the day, and of course he had a visual component. Like Ms. Dryden, he spoke about how technology has changed the industry, but he had…
Missouri SCBWI Conference Recap, Part 1
I attended the Missouri SCBWI conference on Saturday. I drafted a single post with my key takeaways, but it was too long, so I’m splitting it into two. You’ll get Part 1 today and Part 2 tomorrow. The first keynote speaker was the very entertaining David Harrison, a prolific author who’s been publishing since the…
Homicidal Fairies and Other WriteOnCon Lessons
I spent the last two days glued to WriteOnCon, plus several days before in the forums critiquing and posting. If you are a writer and don’t know about WriteOnCon–particularly if you write for kids or teens–head over there now! The conference was online, and everything remains posted forever. Thank you to all of the published…
Story Lessons from Pirates of the Caribbean
My husband and I decided to do a “Pirates of the Caribbean” marathon this week, which is appropriate since we just returned from the Caribbean. As you can see, our ship was a little bigger than the Black Pearl. This view is from an outlook on St. Thomas. As we were watching the movies, I…
My Thoughts on SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (Spoilers!)
Yesterday was my ninth wedding anniversary, so my husband and I took the day off. We made it a movie day, with SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN in the morning and MEN IN BLACK 3 in the afternoon. We thoroughly enjoyed MIB 3. From the moment the credits came up with the same funky font…
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