Search the Site

Art and Comics

Valentine’s Rejection

I’m heading for NYC for the SCBWI Winter Conference and meetings. If you’re on Twitter, you can follow the action via the #NYC16SCBWI hashtag. If you see me there, please do say hi! Happy writing and illustrating, all!



Free, print-ready poster of Tim Federle quote about books

“One thing that books teach us is that if your life sucks right now, you just haven’t gotten to the good part.” – Tim Federle, author of the Better Nate Than Ever. His new YA, The Great American Whatever, comes out from Simon & Schuster in March. More info about Tim at TimFederle.com. The . . .



On writing success and intelligent persistence

As Ellen Jackson said, success as a writer or illustrator depends depends more on intelligent persistence than raw talent. Excerpt from Ellen’s excellent advice: “By ‘intelligent persistence’ I mean the ability to learn from mistakes, to figure out what you’re doing wrong, and then to change it. I know a . . .



The difference between writing and brain surgery

I keep reminding myself of the above as I’m working on the first draft of my middle grade novel. If you like the image above, I’ve made it available as a free print-ready PDF in my For The Love Of Reading resource (where you can find lots of other print-ready posters and activity sheets).




A comic for Harry Potter fans

Some days I wish I hadn’t read the Harry Potter books already just so I could read them again for the first time.