Two of my favorite words when working on a manuscript.

I am very excited to see that my latest article for SCBWI is now out in the new bulletin. It is called How To Find The Right Agent and is chock full of tips that I learned the hard way! But the most exciting thing for me was to see that they added a sidebar with my...

You all know I love the Betsy-Tacy books...just look at the background of my website. So the other day, I was chatting with Meg Cabot, okay, okay...I wasn't "chatting" with her, but I had emailed her and she did email me back...anyway, the gist of our exchange was...

If you've been reading this blog for a while, or clicked the link about my book RESTORING HARMONY, you'll know all about Sarah Tradewell and how she looks just like Molly (the main character in my book) and how I found out about her because of the magic of her fiddle...

I am revising. I thought I was almost done with this book, but after reading it, I saw that I needed to raise the stakes and so as I'm going through it again, I am adding and streamlining one particular facet of the story. Still, for the most part, this is a "near the...

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada (Veteran's Day in the US) and down at the RCMP building, they held a ceremony to remember the men and women who served in Canada's military. One of my great uncles went MIA, another died of complications to his wounds, my grandfather...

I have taken procrastination to a new level. No, not with my writing...with my knitting. For the last few days I have been knitting swatches like a madwoman for a knitting workshop I took today. As my dear friend,Eileen Cook, so helpfully reminded me yesterday,"You've...

My friend Alix told me the other day that she was thinking of doing NaNoWriMo. In the end, she signed up for Seventy Days of Sweat instead. Same idea, more time. She's never written and novel, but has the time, is a good writer, and had the inclination. I offered to...

I know I've been blogging a lot lately, and I don't intend to keep up quite this pace, but this relates to writing and I wanted to share. My husband has been gently nudging me to leave the house more. It's true, left to my own devices, I can go an awful long time...

I forgot to go to law school, so when I got my book contract today, I sure was glad to have the best agent in the world in my corner! Oh, I read every single word. Some of them twice. The parts I understood were cool. The rest I knew was okay because he'd explained...

It's true. I'm all aflutter today. I can't concentrate. I'm revising, or trying to, and at this stage in the draft, it usually takes me about 30-60 minutes to revise a chapter. I'm mostly cutting repetition, tightening, adding in a small new thread here and...

I'm very excited because I managed to actually take a week off from writing (my husband thinks I'm a workaholic, although he refers to it politely as my "work ethic", but I just really love my job!). Now the week's up and it's time to go back to work. I wrote a book...

This is a blog about writing. It is not about politics and I don't intend for it ever to become one. However,this is a blog about politics and this is a piece I wrote for it. If you're interested, drop by. If not, that's cool too.I hope you're having a great weekend...

I don't really know much about how the whole author photo works, but I'm assuming that someday my editor or someone at Putnam is going to ask me for one (or maybe even some to choose from). I'm very lucky in that I'm married to a professional photographer! Neither of...