What are the first words you think of when you read Teenagers are…? Did the words resourceful, hard-working, or resilient come to mind? We’ve all heard negative stereotypes about how today’s generation have it so easy, but we overlook the ... Read More  

I don’t know about other writers, but every story I write has a connection to something in my own life and experience. Music, sports, the Nova Scotia shore and, in Bliss Adair and the First Rule of Knitting – ... Read More  

Like many authors, I have many author friends. I also have all too many friends who gave writing-to-publish a shot and gave up after a short while. Some of them went on to self-publish their books. I think self-publishing ... Read More  

Warning, readers: I’m not a science writer. But like any scientist, I do incorporate research findings (of a sort) into my stories. Here’s one example that’s especially true of my most recent YA novel, Larkin on the Shore. When stories ... Read More  

This will be our final column on audience (at least for now). So buckle up for a crash course on age levels in children's literature! First, a caveat: the categories I'm presenting here are not absolute. Different people use different ... Read More  

I started reading Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin series over the holidays. They are YA zombie apocalypse books, and they are terrifying. The zombies themselves, yes. Mayberry’s monsters are creepy and awful, and his action scenes are seriously intense. But the ... Read More