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Simon & Schuster authors speak out on the topics that inspire them

A gossip queen dissecting politics? A political pundit musing about sports? A romance novelist waxing poetic on music? You read it here first... see what your favorite literary personalities have to say about life beyond books.

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Hurricane Season

By Gillian Royes - October 23, 2012

Residents of the Caribbean, including me, wait anxiously for the end of the hurricane season, November 30. We keep our fingers crossed that we will have again missed hitting the number, in some sort of reverse form of roulette. Meanwhile, we live with rains, soggy walkways and potholes filled with water. It's not so bad. At least it's warm outside and there are periods...

My Giant List of Book Recommendations

By Melissa Wiley - October 19, 2012

For nearly eight years, I've been blogging about the books my children and I love. Now I'm putting together a master list of all those posts--hundreds of suggestions for picture books, early readers, graphic novels, middle-grade novels, YA, and other titles we've enjoyed. Here's the link: http://melissawiley.com/book-recommendations/ Happy reading!

By Marion Dane Bauer - October 17, 2012

In this new and sometimes bewildering world of blogging, bloggers are advised to stake out a territory. Define who you are, what your topic is, where you have credibility, what will draw your audience to your words and stay there. That hasn’t been difficult for me. I write for children and young adults. For years I have also taught those who want to write for children and...

When Is Scary Too Delicious?

By Marion Dane Bauer - October 8, 2012

Last week I talked about my new picture book, Halloween Forest, and about the function that fear has in a story, even for very young children. Fear tucked inside the safety of a story can allow us an exciting chill without submitting ourselves to danger. It allows us to move through our own feelings and emerge on the other side, having grown larger. But that leaves us with a...

Purging of Pity and Fear

By Marion Dane Bauer - September 25, 2012

Halloween is almost upon us, and my newest picture book, Halloween Forest, is on the shelf. When I received my first copy with John Shelley’s marvelously creepy illustrations of the forest of bones I’d written about, a rather delicious shiver ran down my spine. All those bony tree hands reaching … reaching. And my own shiver brings up an interesting question. What is the...

Spelling under the sea!

By Debbie Dadey - September 25, 2012

I'm having a great time writing the Mermaid Tales series. I loved being an elementary school teacher and librarian, so it's such fun writing about third grade merkids. I just finished an upcoming book about the horrors of spelling tests. They were difficult for me and for one of my sons, so I know they can be hard for other kids as well. I hope this book, the sixth one in...

Emotional Power

By Marion Dane Bauer - September 19, 2012

A while back, talking about gathering ideas for a sequel to Little Dog, Lost, I wrote, "I'm off and running, the story that's growing in my mind gathering emotional power as I go." And that is the key concept to understand when it comes to choosing the stories we write … emotional power. If an idea doesn't touch my own emotions, I can't possibly write it in a way that will...

Writer’s Block?

By Marion Dane Bauer - September 12, 2012

On page 161 I discovered that I had forgotten how to write a novel. It's happened before. I'm moving along at a fairly steady pace and suddenly . . . what's that? A brick wall? And what's my nose doing pressed up against it? The popular term for the experience is "writer's block." Even grade-school children have heard of it and consider it a serious disability. "Do...

A New Teaching Opportunity

By Marion Dane Bauer - September 10, 2012

I'll be teaching two on-line sessions with Writing for Children Live this month. One, on "The Basics of Writing Successful Picture Books" will be on Wednesday, September 19th, at 7 p.m. EDT. The second will be a webinar entitled "Point of View and Psychic Distance in Fiction for Young People." That will be presented on the next Wednesday, September 26th, 7 p.m. EDT. You can...

Bouncing Around the Blogosphere

By Jeannie Mobley - September 6, 2012

The Big Bodacious Blog Tour has begun. Okay, so maybe it’s not that big. And maybe nobody has used the word “bodacious” since sometime in the mid ’80s. Whatever. The point is, I have blog appearances lined up, some of which have already happened, and some that are coming up! So keep checking in, and I will keep adding in the links as they appear! And thank you, to all...

Learning to Write, Then and Now

By Marion Dane Bauer - August 29, 2012

When I first mentioned the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts in this blog, I said that when I was invited to teach there I was skeptical. I had learned how to write without any such program. I had come to be published without even a meaningful creative writing class or a mentor. As a University student, I took a couple of...

Lists, and more Lists!

By Jeannie Mobley - August 27, 2012

Things have been happening in this last week before my release. The fall books are coming out from all the publishing houses right now. It is an exciting time for readers, but a little scary for authors; it is so easy to get lost in the shuffle. I have been fortunate enough to have KATERINA’S WISH appear on FOUR wonderful lists in the last few weeks! First, KIRKUS REVIEWS was...

Memoir Can Read Like a Novel

By Terry Helwig - August 22, 2012

A comment I love hearing about Moonlight on Linoleum, is: "Your memoir reads like a novel." This comparison to literary fiction affirms the countless hours I spent constructing floor plans of our trailer house, perusing old photographs with a magnifying glass, locating marriage certificates and divorce decrees, interviewing relatives and friends, and creating an elaborate...

2...1...0...WE HAVE LIFT OFF!

By Jeannie Mobley - August 21, 2012

I'm so exciting to see my book, KATERINA'S WISH finally launching from the wonderful launch pad of Margaret K. McElderry Books here at Simon and Schuster. In celebration of this event, my blogging friends are throwing me a LAUNCH PARTY over at the EMU's Debuts blog from August 20-24! There will be interviews, a virtual reading, experiments with cooking, a book give-away, and at...

My podcasts are now available on iTunes

By Joshua Graham - August 20, 2012

Interviews, music, and other such podcasts are now available on iTunes: http://bit.ly/KMrvTj

By Marion Dane Bauer - August 15, 2012

I have recently returned from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier where I received an honorary MFA in Writing. I'm not sure what one does with such a thing, but receiving it was a profound honor. From the time I was very young I knew I wanted to write stories. What kind of stories I didn't know, just stories. One day in college I happened to write a single paragraph for...

The Adult Narrator in a Children’s Story

By Marion Dane Bauer - August 8, 2012

Last week I quoted Dallas Bradel and her support for my call to keep adults more present in stories for young people. I agreed, of course, with all she said. But she had more to offer, and this is the way she continued her very articulate argument: I applaud your understanding of the importance of supportive, likeable adults in the lives of your protagonists. In Little Dog,...

On Excluding Adults

By Marion Dane Bauer - August 6, 2012

I've received more responses on the topic I wrote about last week—the practice of excluding adults from stories for young people—than any other I've taken on, so I'm going to stay with the topic for a couple of weeks. One young mother, Meghan Gordon, responded this way: Adam and I have been thinking about this issue recently. Several weeks ago, our 7 year old son decided to...

Another Reader’s Perspective

By Marion Dane Bauer - August 6, 2012

I've been sharing my readers' responses to my July 10th blog about excluding adults from our stories. Here's a response from Dallas Bradel: It may seem as if an author is empowering children by communicating that kids can solve their own problems, but I believe these authors, however well-meaning, are doing a disservice to their readers. Children need, and need to recognize...

By Marion Dane Bauer - August 6, 2012

In 1976 when I published my first middle-grade novel, the lines were clearly drawn. If you wrote for young people, you had to be on their side, because there were clearly sides. Adults were on one. Kids were on the other. And though it's trite to say it, the twain did very little meeting. Adults, it was assumed, were to be banished from juvenile literature, or if they were...

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