Some might call it rage.

Whatever is burning up inside of me, I know I’m partly to blame. I’ve been fanning the flames by imagining Mrs. Hamilton poisoning Scottie ever since Jake planted the idea in my head. I even asked Rod, on the ride home (and yes, he was more than ticked off at waiting so long), if he thought the cook who has worked for us for the last two years could be capable of such a thing. He’s never met this one, but he said sure, and that people are always capable of stupid acts of grotesque horror when acting in their own selfish interests. That wasn’t really what I was looking for, but it told me his frame of mind was no more reliable than mine. So I just shut up, petted sweet Scottie, and let the flames within grow.

There’s a really cool thing about our front door. It’s hugely heavy—super tall, nearly double-wide and at least triple thick compared to most. When you slam it, the whole freakin house shakes. It is impossible to do on accident, so if it’s slammed, you know someone meant to slam it. Fortunately, in my house, you are allowed such shows of utter infuriation, or at least my dad is. I only get away with it when used sparingly. Read the rest of this entry

This weeks teen of the week is a group of 58 teen writers who penned “RED: The Next Generation of American Writers—Teenage Girls—On What Fires Up Their Lives Today” (edited by Amy Goldwasser). This  collection
of personal essays, on everything from politics to pop culture and body image, is written by girls age 13 to 19. Every one of the authors has her own blog at redthebook.com.

Vanity Fair calls RED “unsparingly frank and perceptive,” and Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert says of the book, “It’s high time people stopped writing, talking, and worrying about teenage girls and let these girls speak for themselves.”  Click here to read about these gals who appear on the coveted blog Huffinton Post.

Part Two in our “So You Want To Write A Book” series….

Two things have happened that I’ll never be able to explain.

One, Scottie is up and walking around, checking out the place, like she hasn’t been sick a day in her life. The other is, I’m getting my first lesson in magic.

It all happened so fast. I just told Bea everything about Anna and how I came to find this place. I’ve never seen anyone listen the way that woman does. I swear, she was listening with her eyes, ears, fingers and toes. Maybe even the length of her spine. She got it all on the first take, no explanations needed. Even Jake seemed to need no further information than what I gave. And it’s not like they were not interested. You could have heard a crow caw, which we did, quite often in fact. Read the rest of this entry

I don’t know, maybe someone could look a woman like this in the eye right off the bat. But it would be a braver person than me.

I wasn’t twenty feet in—just past where Rod could see me through the trees—and she appeared. Not a sound, mind you. Not a twig breaking to warn me. Stealth personified. She’s wild, too. I mean, like, really wild. Like she was born wild. Now she’s sniffing me like an animal. I’m too weirded out to do anything but wait in my soaking wet pants, trying not to pee them. Read the rest of this entry

Now we are really taking off with The Mayden Chronicles! Chapter Five is all over the place. I’ll tell you how I deal with that in this video…

(This is an updated Video) Based on the works of Al Zuckerman in “Writing The Blockbuster Novel,” we look at how Mayden has high stakes for all the main characters.

Scholastic Children’s Books recently published Star-Crossed, a book for teenage girls written by a teenage girl.

Rachael Alice Wing started writing Star-Crossed when she was 14 years old. As she wrote each chapter Rachael posted it on to an Internet writing website called Quizilla. It wasn’t long before Star-Crossed had a cult following of over a thousand online readers and shot to Quizilla’s number one spot of highest rated entries. Buoyed by her online popularity and pleas from her friends, Rachael juggled schoolwork, sitting her SATs and writing to finish the story. Click Here to read more about Rachael at Scholastic.co.uk.

This is a MUST watch (but beware, 20 minutes), for anyone wanting to understand how the MUSE works with writers. It is brilliant, and just how it works for me. Enjoy!

This is part one in our “So You Want To Write A Book” series… follow along and learn to write your own book. Don’t forget to let me know what YOU want to write, or are writing!