Announcing the Book Trailer for Speed of Life!

I’m pretty excited to share with you the book trailer for Speed of Life! My wonderful friends at WideLens Thoughtful Media made it for me and I think it’s pretty swell. Especially the car! Check it out below. Also, thanks to these other wonderful bloggers...

Friday Five Guest Nova Ren Suma

One of my favourite people is Nova Ren Suma and she very kindly answered five quick questions for me for the Friday Five post. If you’re not familiar with her, get familiar! Nova Ren Suma is the author of four novels, including the #1 New York Times Best Seller...

I’m On Tour!

Speed of Life comes out October 11th and so I’m on a blog tour! I’m actually on two tours, one U.S. and one Canadian (the CA one starts next week). You can find out more about the book, read reviews, interviews with me, and guest posts on writing, my...

Happy Birthday Curious George!

When my publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt sent out an email to its authors asking us to help commemorate the 75th birthday of Curious George, I was all over that. I wanted to do something special because he lives in a small corner of my heart. I planned to do...

Winners & Reviews

Congratulations to Alyssa and Sarah who are the winners of the ARC of Speed of Life! Thanks to everyone who entered. I’m excited to share a couple of very nice reviews for Speed of Life. There’s one more good one I’ve gotten a sneak peek at, but...

Speed of Life by my alter ego

If you haven’t heard already, I’m writing YA under a new name, J. M. Kelly. I’ve now linked my other website with this one…mostly for simplicity, but also for my sanity. And if you haven’t seen the beautiful cover of my new YA, Speed of...

Good News PLUS!

I’ve had so much good news in the last week, but I’ll start with the best…I’m very excited to announce that Second Story Press is going to publish my first Middle Grade Novel, A Month of Mondays. It’s tentatively scheduled for release in...

Changes & News

I have three very exciting bits of news…but one you’ll have to wait for! The first one some of you know about already, but here it is…I have a new YA coming out in October under a pen name. The reason I’m using a pen name is because I’m...

Fave 15 of 2015

While I’m not really blogging anymore, I couldn’t resist making a list of my Fave 15 of 2015 reads and sharing them here. For those of you interested in what else I read, you can click here. A few notes about the list. First, there are more middle grade...

Shhh…it’s a secret!

For years almost the only thing I posted on my blog was writing-related. Then a while ago, I stopped updating regularly, and occasionally posted something of interest to me or a bit of personal news. I am guessing because of the lack of updates, and the fact my most...

Round the bend…

I was just thinking that four or five people out there in the world might wonder if I ever planned to blog again. So I thought, “Why not?” The main reason I haven’t been around is because I’ve taken 2015 off from writing new books, and...

Buried in Middle Grade (a nice place to be)

I don’t really blog that much anymore, but I thought it was time, lest you think I’d disappeared. In a way, I kind of have. I don’t think I can really say why yet, but let’s just say that I might’ve recently received 85 Canadian middle...

A nice round number….

This year, I read 100 books. Usually, I tell you my favourites. This year, I’ll just show you what I read and you can decide what looks good. Happy Reading in 2015! Red River Raging Draper, Penny * The Rosie Effect (Don Tillman #2) Simsion, Graeme Five, Six,...

Teen Writing Circle

Last year, I was part of the Teen Book Club at the library, but teens have so much homework, it was always hard for them to add another book to their workload, even if it was a fun read. So this year, the new librarian and I talked it over and decided to try a Teen...

NaNoWriMo

Hi all! Not really into blogging much anymore, but I thought I’d just put this little tidbit up for now. Last year, for the first time ever, I tried National Novel Writing Month and ended up with 50k words that I eventually threw away, but not until I’d...

A warming winter smoothie

What you may not know is I fancy myself a pretty good cook. I almost never post recipes on this blog because it’s supposed to be about writing, but heck, I almost never blog so why not break a rule? Anyway, it’s pretty cold here, even for Canada, -8C when...

Zilpha Keatley Snyder

I saw in the trades that author Zilpha Keatley Snyder passed away. I have a soft spot for her although I’ve read very few of her books because they’re scary, dark, and definitely not my thing. If you know me, you’re probably surprised I’ve read...

I Love to Write

I don’t make many blog posts these days. Mostly because I blogged for a long time and I’ve pretty much said what I want to say about writing, but today, I’m feeling inspired. Or, if not exactly inspired, then fired up? Last night, I listened to an...

O Canada!

Today, my husband and I became Canadian citizens. We’ve been landed immigrants (kind of like a green card in the US) for seven years, but now we’re really, truly Canadians. Here we are with the judge and the requisite Mountie. I have to say it was a very...

Take A Pledge For Independence on the 4th of July

Seven years ago, my husband and I took the pledge not to buy bottled water anymore. Except for a rare emergency, we’ve stuck to it, packing along our water bottles and keeping a gallon or two in the truck for refills when we’re out and about. I think I can...

Oh, Canada!

Tomorrow, 1st July (see how I wrote it the Canadian way-the number first-instead of July 1st?), is Canada Day. While we haven’t received our official letter, it seems very likely due to the fact that they’ve scheduled Canadian Citizenship Swearing In...