Learning from the Masters: The First 250 Words

It’s time for another installment of this! (Click here to find installments 1, 2, and 3.) You know how when you read advice on querying, they suggest comparing your manuscript to a published book? For my first manuscript, this was really hard to do–it’s a YA mystery, with some historical fiction, with some magical realism, with […]

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MK’s Book Reviews: Every Day

Because there’s no day that begins with B so I can’t make it alliterative, I’ve decided Tuesday is now Book Review Tuesday. Instead of reviewing a few at a time, whenever I have time, I’m going to be reviewing books one at a time, once per week. I’ll include 3 main things: the Goodreads summary, so […]

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Good Reads Lately

Been a little while since I updated you all on my reading list. Here are some recent good reads (and incidentally, you can follow my other good reads on Goodreads).

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On Writing YA Contemporary

For my first novel, the only people I had reading and critiquing it were friends and family. Which was awesome for my ego–not so awesome for my work. For my second novel, I actually did what the internets have been advising me to do–I searched for critique partners. And I actually found two! More on […]

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Friday Things

After an amazing wedding weekend (my boyfriend’s sister’s) it was hard to return to real life this week.

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Friday Things

Where is this and can I live here? I have been horribly stressed this week. I won’t bore you with the details, but here is how I combat no-good-very-bad weeks:

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Learning from the Masters: The First 250 Words

I’m still struggling with getting the beginning of my novel just right, so it’s time for another installment of this. (Installments 1 and 2 here and here). I’ve been getting more and more into YA contemporary. Jandy Nelson, Stephanie Perkins, Robyn Schneider, Gayle Forman, Rainbow Rowell, and David Levithan are all recent faves. But I’d argue […]

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Friday Things

I recently took one of those Buzzfeed quizzes–I think it was the one that tells you which Harry Potter book you are (I got Deathly Hallows, and I am fine with that). One of the questions asked what magical device you would want. I picked Time Turner, because I wish I could redo every day […]

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Friday Things

I like being drunk. On booze, on fiction, on writing, on love, on beautiful sentences. Maybe that’s why I’m so discontent on a daily basis; my day job can be quite sobering most of the time.

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Learning from the Masters: The First 250 Words

I’m currently revising the first book I ever wrote. After many years of debate, I’ve decided to definitively kill my darling of a prologue and start right away with the main story. I wrote before about the importance of the first 250 words of your manuscript and I’ll probably write about it again because it was […]

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