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Please join us for an ALAN Online BookChat with David Klass, author of FIRESTORM, YOU DON’T KNOW ME, and oth­ers Date: 3/28/07 Time: 9:00 PM East­ern URL: http://alan-ya.org/bookchat/flashchat.php Here’s more about FIRESTORM: “His mother is not his mother. His father is not his father. But if Jack hadn’t bro­ken the high school rush­ing record that …

Tonight, I fin­ished read­ing the let­ters of leg­endary edi­tor Ursula Nord­strom.  Prob­a­bly, I’m the last to read this book, because I’ve heard how amaz­ing it is for years.  It amazed me any­way.  As a reader, as a scholar, as a reviewer, and as a writer, I learned so much about the evo­lu­tion of children’s pub­lish­ing …

I spent much of the day revis­ing the first fitfy of my barn­storm­ing novel.  When I was fin­ished, six­teen pages of fat had been trimmed. I love revi­sion.  It’s the eas­i­est way I know to lose weight.

Please join us for an ALAN Online BookChat to dis­cuss FIRESTORM by David Klass. Date: 3/21/07Time: 9:00 PM East­ernURL: http://alan-ya.org/bookchat/flashchat.php Here’s more about FIRESTORM: “His mother is not his mother. His father is not his father. But if Jack hadn’t bro­ken the high school rush­ing record that night, he never would have known and noth­ing would …

As my friends know, I’ve spent much of the past two years–but espe­cially the past six months–lamenting the sud­den shift of focus in mar­ket­ing children’s lit­er­a­ture.  Gone are the days when a children’s book was given time to find its audi­ence, a time frame that can be sev­eral years since most children’s books are *still* …

A follow-up on the Poll I posted ear­lier:  I’ve taken the advice y’all were kind enough to give, with a twist.  A kind soul sug­gested an exer­cise for decon­struct­ing the plot struc­ture, a long and some­times tedious process that was enlight­en­ing, to say the least.  I’ve done a thor­ough pass based on that, and now …

I ran out of needs for this meme and had to switch to wants.  Appar­ently, thun­der­chikin is not a com­mon first name.  Who knew? 1. That is the kind of per­for­mance the thun­der­chikin needs to have  (va-room!) 2. thun­der­chikin needs a func­tion which will return Nextword to a call­ing sub (um, okay) 3. thun­der­chikin needs a but­ton …