by Michelle | Sep 1, 2015 | agenty stuff, authors, conferences, I like, nitty gritty, querying, recent
Last week on Twitter, some agents got to talking about pitch sessions at writing conferences. It was a good discussion with responses that pretty much echoed the others: While we love attending conferences and meeting writers, pitch sessions themselves are ineffective...
by Michelle | Jul 31, 2015 | agenty stuff, authors, craft, I like, MSWL, querying, reading, recent, storytelling, writing
“It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise . . . to such an extreme that no-one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages that convulsed the ghost of José Arcadio Buendía with...
by Michelle | Jul 25, 2015 | agenty stuff, authors, chapter books, diversity, I like, illustrations, kidlit, MG, MSWL, picture books, querying, recent, social media, writing, YA
Once again #MSWL day is upon us. For the uninitiated, #MSWL is a Twitter hashtag that agents and editors use to indicate the kinds of manuscripts they’d like to see in their query inbox. These include a variety of genres, age groups, subjects, ideas, characters,...
by Michelle | Apr 15, 2015 | agenty stuff, authors, kidlit, my authors, picture books, reading
If you haven’t heard, Ashley Evanson’s forthcoming HELLO, WORLD series of board books are so freakin’ adorable. To illustrate why, I present my niece two-year-old Ava as she reads from PARIS: A BOOK OF SHAPES. Pre-order yours now! Amazon:...
by Michelle | Oct 20, 2014 | authors, blogging, Michelle's books, rant, reading, respect, reviewing, social media
Some Necessary Context In recent years there have been a number of brouhahas involving book bloggers and amateur (in the sense of not being professional) book reviewers. You can see a post I wrote about three years ago that addresses several of these kerfuffles. Note:...
by Michelle | Apr 14, 2014 | agenty stuff, authors, nitty gritty, rant, respect
The other day Shannon Hale (who I adore and who is one of the most giving authors I know) wrote up a post called I Am Not Accessible about how she just doesn’t have time to respond to emails from readers. There are so so so many things I would like to do that I...
