It’s not often that you get to say this is the day I’ve been waiting for my whole life – a birth of a child or a wedding maybe or – drumroll please – the birth of your first book. For me today is that day. LOST BOYS can be found in bookstores and should be received by all who preordered! To say this day was a long time coming is sort of like saying Harry is a wizard – merely stating the obvious. My first draft of this book was “finished” over ten years ago.

The idea for this story – historic fiction about the Iran/Iraq war – came to me like lightning — complete with one of those spine-tingling, goose bump-filled moments that writers learn not to ignore. Then for months I did my best to run away. I ran because this was not my story to tell…

Everything editors, agents, and authors have told me at SCBWI conferences has turned out to be true, particularly the things I didn’t believe would be true for me.

For example, I’ve been told that getting a book deal will not magically transform me into a permanently satisfied, optimistic, and resilient human.  When SCBWI folks said stuff like that, I remember thinking, “Oh, I’m sure that’s true for the other pre-published writers here, but not me. Once I get a book deal, I may still be an easily-exhausted anxiety-prone weirdo, but then I’ll be that weirdo WITH A BOOK DEAL AND THAT WILL MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.”

Nope. Sigh.

After the ecstasy of getting “the call” in 2016 from my darling agent and connecting with my talented editor to begin the publication journey for my debut middle-grade novel, I expected to wallow in utter contentment for a long time. Years of…

All of my trade published picture books are either nonfiction, poetry, or a mash-up of the two. I want to write fiction picture books, too, but I struggle with plot/structure. Over the past year or so, I’ve analyzed many fiction picture books and typed out a bunch of my favorites, too, hoping to absorb their secrets to success. I was trying to use them as mentor texts by osmosis, I guess. (“Mentor text” is a term from the education world for a text that you use as an example for some element of writing that you ask your students to study and then incorporate. If you go to my website at http://www.laurasalas.com and type in “mentor text” in the search box, you’ll find some other things I’ve said about using mentor texts in writing.) But osmosis just wasn’t working.

Recently, I tried something new. I literally used a picture book…

Ever feel so focused on the details of a manuscript that you actually lose sight of the entire work? Maybe you are working on the pacing or world building or hunting down ‘telling’ to replace it with “showing.” Maybe you have zeroed in on three words, writing and re-writing them over and over again. Meanwhile, six hours just zipped past. And these three words you labored over––exist in a manuscript that has 35-thousand more!

It’s critical to focus on the bits and pieces, to lose oneself in the particulars. But when I am ready to emerge from the deep the woods of writing, sometimes I need a compass to find my way out.

As I painter’s daughter, I know that artists also become consumed with specific brush strokes or the interplay of colors in hidden shadows, or using the reflection of a painted sterling cup to tell a story. Detail…

COWPOKE CLYDE RIDES THE RANGE

by Lori Mortensen

Illustrated by Michael Allen Austin

2016 Best in Rhyme Award Winner

Congratulations Lori!

See the Top 20 Best in Rhyme Books for 2016

RHYTHM AND RHYME

By Lori Mortensen

If you’ve ever delved into rhyme, you know rhyming can be a complicated business.  Not only is there a boatload of elements to consider such as true rhymes, near rhymes, forced rhymes, end rhymes, and internal rhymes, but there’s also a slew of specific rhyming patterns with names like iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, and spondee. (If you know these terms, you definitely deserve some extra rhyming brownie points!)

The good news is–you don’t have to know these terms to write fun, frolicking stories in rhyme.

For me, writing in rhyme is all about the rhythm.  As a former dance major, I’m drawn to the rhythm of the words and the beat they create…