Becoming Californians
December 10, 2019
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My father loved California and the / Heat. / He’d do cannonballs / Into the neighbors swimming pool / And float with only his nose, / His belly, and his toes / Above the water.
Reading Past, Present, and Future
December 5, 2019
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I’m in a holding pattern with my own writing at the moment while I await editorial feedback on my book in progress (more later) so I’m able to tackle the books on my bedside table. Here’s what’s happening now.
Grandma’s House
December 3, 2019
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Today is my grandma’s birthday. She would be 129 years old. Happy Birthday, Clara Czerwinski Lipski. You were a great grandma.
Los Angeles
November 19, 2019
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We moved from Chicago to Los Angeles when I was ten. When asked recently how I liked California, I came up with this.
Voice of Vashon
October 17, 2018
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I hope you’ll enjoy this interview, a podcast, with Susan McCabe on REALTalk. We talked about all of my books.
Fall Reading Recommendations
August 26, 2018
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I’ve been reading a lot of middle grade novels lately. Here are some I really liked.
FAQ #10: Joy
June 19, 2018
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What’s sitting on your desk that gives you joy? This photo of Padraic never fails to make me smile. He was a great dog, part border collie by ancestry,
FAQ #9: Inspired
June 12, 2018
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What do you read for inspiration? I tend to read novels set in whatever time period I am writing about. I like to see how other authors tackle the tricky problems involved in writing historical fiction: authenticity vs. info dumps, history vs. imagination, how they invent the past. During the years I worked on the medieval books, I read
Huzzah!
June 7, 2018
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I loved receiving this review for the new middle-grade anthology, Totally Middle School (Delacorte, ed. by Betsy Groban). I hope you’ll discover the wide variety of stories within this book, many of them the right length for a classroom read-aloud, and all of them engrossing for reading on your own. “Featuring an eclectic mix of short stories from a number
FAQ #8: Stuck
June 5, 2018
3 Comments
What do you do when you’re stuck on a writing project? I don’t sit at my desk and try to push mashed potatoes through a keyhole. I do something else. Walk, putter in the garden, play computer solitaire, eat an orange, do the laundry, nap, or work on a different project. My subconscious seems to work on the problem without me,
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