Happy September, friends! You may recall a few months ago I talked about tackling a self-edit for my current manuscript. One thing I didn’t get into during those posts is that I had tried something rather ambitious when I drafted the book–and I already knew it might not work. In the first step I mentioned…
Revising
Easy Words & Phrases You Can Cut to Tighten Your Manuscript
How’s everyone’s summer going? I just returned from New York with my family, where we filled the week with Broadway shows and all the major tourist attractions you’d expect. It occurred to me on our return home that both of my books have ties to New York. Jenny (Your Life Has Been Delayed) boards a…
How I Self-Edit A First Draft
Happy summer! It’s in full swing here–at least schedule wise. The weather has been unusually cool the past few days thanks to a storm that came through over the weekend, but I expect the heat to return soon. Missouri is notorious for jumping from 60 degrees to 90 in a single week. On Friday, I…
Revision Tip: Why You Should Read Your Manuscript Aloud
Before I get into today’s topic, I want to mention that my November newsletter is out today, and in particular, I have several events coming up over the next month. I have two signings at St. Louis Barnes & Noble stores, a virtual panel you can tune in to from anywhere, and will be participating…
On Revising and Killing Those Darlings
Last week when I posted my review roundup I noted that it had been a while since I’d shared a writing post. So here we go! What am I even writing these days? Well, I didn’t really talk about it here on the blog, but I wrote a whole book last year–or maybe it was…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Pass Pages
I can’t believe it’s already February! Your Life Has Been Delayed has been out five months as of yesterday, and we’re a little more than seven months out from My Second Impression of You. I hope you caught the cover reveal for My Second Impression of You a couple of weeks ago. I’m so in love with…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Copyedits
Happy New Year! I can’t believe my debut year is already over and we’re now into 2022, when my second book will release. Each step of the process makes it feel more real, like this past Friday, when my editor sent me the clean copyedited version of My Second Impression of You. It was so pretty…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Line Edits
Happy December! My latest newsletter is out today, and I’m continuing the series I started last month going behind the scenes of publishing with book edits. Moving on from developmental edits, this month I’m talking line edits! While developmental edits look at the big picture plot, character, and overall changes that need to be made, line…
Publishing Behind the Scenes: Developmental Edits
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may have seen my After the Book Deal posts back in 2019. As I have some new followers both here and for my newsletter (which is out today), I’m revisiting the topic of what happens behind the scenes when you’re working with a traditional publisher….
How NaNoWriMo Shaped My Writing Process
One of the most common questions I receive from readers and at events is about my writing process. I don’t remember exactly when I started writing my first middle grade book, only that I started querying it in 2011. It could have been 2009 or even 2008. The reason I don’t know is that it…
After the Book Deal: Copyediting Fun!
It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED. I think I’ve mentioned here on the blog that the book is now coming out Aug. 24, 2021. (I have, right? I’ve kind of lost track of this whole year… ) Anyway, you can even pre-order YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN…
Chop Chop: A Revision Tale
Last month, I posted about how I had finished my longest draft ever, ending up at 90,983 words. Quite honestly, I had no idea how I had written that much. Even before I started reading through the manuscript, I was sure it was too long. So I went into my initial editing round with the…
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