Today is the one year book birthday for Restoring Harmony! It's hard to believe it's been out for a whole year. Lots of great things have happened in the last 365 days too. I had several wonderful signings/release parties, made lots of new friends, caught up with old...

I got another great author blurb for my new book. Yay! "The Right & the Real has everything a reader could want: a gutsy heroine, romance, betrayal, and a pace that will keep you reading late into the night. Anthony's character shows us what it takes to survive in...

I'm over at Bookshop Talk today blogging about why I think used book sales can be good for authors and publishers, even if we don't make a dime off of them. Come on over and weigh in.

First off, thanks to everyone who entered my birthday contest by sharing what you're grateful for in the comments! In a random draw, the winner is Tonja! Congratulations, I'll send it off this week. For those of you still hoping to win a copy of RH, Deb Marshall has...

I woke up to excellent birthday news yesterday! Remember those Scholastic book fairs you went to in school? The ones where the gym was filled with tables and tables full of BOOKS! Books that your parents gave you money to buy! Books, books, and more books! And...

Hi All. Time for the annual What I'm Grateful For On My Birthday Post. If you've been hanging out here for a while, you'll know I do this every year. I think some other writers started doing it too, which is cool. Now that I have a book out, anyone can look at the...

I'll admit it. I've done a signing/reading for three people. Okay, truth be told, I even did one for no one. Well, I didn't actually go through with it because I have to draw the line somewhere...talking to myself just was a bit too much. Instead, the store set up a...

I'm very excited to share with y'all the cover for my next young adult book. I'm super excited as you can tell by all the exclamation points!!!!! Kicked out for refusing to join a cult, seventeen-year-old Jamie must find a way to survive on her own Jamie should have...

Hi. I'm over at Kidlit for Japan where they're hosting an auction to raise money for the earthquake victims. You can bid on my item which is a signed copy of Restoring Harmony, a magnet, a gently read hardback copy of Anna and the French Kiss, and the ARC of Gayle...

Happy Birthday to my wonderful agent extraordinaire, Michael Bourret! I hope you have a great day, Michael, and get lots of yummy treats! If I could, I'd get you a treadmill desk, because I know how much you want one, but alas...Canada Post would take years to get it...

Happy Opening Day, Everyone! Go Cubs! It's our year!

I'm sure you've all been missing my regular scintillating blog posts, haven't you? Well, first I got hacked and that took a while to sort out. Luckily, the wonderful writer and my dear friend, Eileen Cook, has an equally outstanding husband who is a tech geek wizard...

Today I'm dong a guest post over a Kidlit Frenzy about the men of Maud Hart Lovelace's books. It's part of their romantic Valentine's week series of posts. Hope you'll drop by and find out more about the handsome men of the Betsy-Tacy books! And if you haven't been to...

Last week, I was so deep into edits that I wasn't able to teach my class, so that's why there wasn't a new prompt. Today, we had a wonderful class all about brainstorming. The kids formed teams of four, then they drew a topic from the hat. As a group, they...

This video says it all.

I hope some of you writers out there will help me inspire my writing students to participate this week by jumping in yourselves. This week's classroom lesson was all about dialogue, so if you want to work some into your writing, go for it! And don't forget the other...

One of the fabulous things about being an author is you are hip to some really great books and often, people give them to you. I'm extra lucky because my sales rep is also a pal/neighbour of mine, and so she gives me loads of ARCs. I love this, as you might imagine....

Join my students and leave me a story in the comments section. This week, we studied plot, so as you write your story, keep in mind the Beginning, Middle, Climax, & End. Prompt: Use these five words in a story of any length. Pencil, giraffe, desperate, headache,...