Rumblegut

Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts... I'm hitting the spirit world hard in August, with two new releases: Lost in Ghostville, a middle-grade humorous ghost story about a boy, his homemade ghost detector, and a ghost-napper. Winterbay Abbey is an adult ghost story I wrote with co-author, Davonna Juroe , and is set in an old, abandoned abbey in Maine, with dark secrets and a future as terrible as its past. Why all the ghosts, you ask? Well, we all have those times when we're trying to deal with loss, and both these stories helped me confront that, although in different ways. Ghostville does it by being funny, and heartfelt, as well as with robot dinosaurs and dino-poop. Winterbay is a bit darker and intended to scare. Combined, they gave me multiple ways to show the impact of ghosts, both their dark, and light sides. In either case, I hope you enjoy my expedition into the spirit world. Cheers!

Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts... I'm hitting the spirit world hard in August, with two new releases: Lost in Ghostville, a middle-grade humorous ghost story about a boy, his homemade ghost detector, and a ghost-napper. Winterbay Abbey is an adult ghost story I wrote with co-author, Davonna Juroe , and is set in an old, abandoned abbey in Maine, with dark secrets and a future as terrible as its past. Why all the ghosts, you ask? Well, we all have those times when we're trying to deal with loss, and both these stories helped me confront that, although in different ways. Ghostville does it by being funny, and heartfelt, as well as with robot dinosaurs and dino-poop. Winterbay is a bit darker and intended to scare. Combined, they gave me multiple ways to show the impact of ghosts, both their dark, and light sides. In either case, I hope you enjoy my expedition into the spirit world. Cheers!

Here it is! New cover for a  new book! This is the ARC cover for my new middle-grade ghost story, LOST IN GHOSTVILLE, due out Aug. 1 from Capstone .

I've known Jessica Young for about three years now. We belong to a critique group and every month she sends me a new piece of writing and returns the favor by struggling to read parts of my manuscripts. We've actually never met in person, but we've talked voluminously, including a two-hour conversation about quantum mechanics as it relates to story structure (yes, it was as thrilling as it sounds!). She's fun and smart and funny, and so are her books. Her newest,   Finley Flowers (Original Recipe)  has just been released, and it's fantastic. I've had the honor of reading Finley since Jessica first came up with the idea and I'm so happy to see it make its way into the world. It was a fantastic story idea from the start (and has the most awesomely named nemesis in all of kid lit, wish I'd thought of it) and has only gotten better through successive drafts. I'm eager to see if any of the joke ideas I tossed Jessica's way made it into print (none...

Author Mary Cronk Farrell tagged me to be one of the Next Big Thing Blog Hop authors. This traveling blog started in Australia. Each author answers ten questions about his or her work in progress and "tags" from one to five others to be The Next Big Thing. Many thanks to Mary for inviting me to participate .   I actually have two WIPs, so I'm going to shamelessly tell you about both of them.   Book one:   What is the working title of your book? My working title is FREELAND Where did the idea come from for the book? That's a bit of a story. Originally the idea was a takeoff from a manuscript I had just finished. I wanted to put my education, a PhD in History to some use, but not in as a straight historical fiction. I wanted pirates and weird steampunk technology, and came up with an idea about a brother and sister working as spies for George Washington during the 1790s. That got tossed around and reworked quite a bit. FREELAND is now set in an alternate...

Author Mary Cronk Farrell tagged me to be one of the Next Big Thing Blog Hop authors. This traveling blog started in Australia. Each author answers ten questions about his or her work in progress and "tags" from one to five others to be The Next Big Thing. Many thanks to Mary for inviting me to participate .   I actually have two WIPs, so I'm going to shamelessly tell you about both of them.   Book one:   What is the working title of your book? My working title is FREELAND Where did the idea come from for the book? That's a bit of a story. Originally the idea was a takeoff from a manuscript I had just finished. I wanted to put my education, a PhD in History to some use, but not in as a straight historical fiction. I wanted pirates and weird steampunk technology, and came up with an idea about a brother an sister working as spies for George Washington during the 1790s. That got tossed around and reworked quite a bit. FREELAND is now set i...

I love getting personal reviews more than anything. Here's a letter I received from a 3rd grader who read Roll Up the Streets!    Five stars!