Some of my favorite writers' blogs...

One of my favorite writer's blogs for a breakout YA writer is Cindy Pon's, author of Silver Phoenix: http://cindypon.com/blog/

One of my favorite blogs of a well-known YA author is Shannon Hale's, author of Princess Academy and Goose Girl: http://oinks.squeetus.com/2009/05/born-in-the-bea.html

Evolution of a Novel

I started my first novel about five years ago. It was my teacher. The story took me into the world of characterization, setting, figurative language and at times a small bit of writers' block. When I first wrote the novel, my writer's group praised it and said what a great story it is. But I didn't realize this at the time, the novel was not even close to publishable. It needed to be fleshed out, more meat put into it, and setting and time frame issues resolved. Since then, I've added, deleted and changed several characters, and even the setting has changed in a few chapters. My fantasy world has come to life and I've begun to really see it. My characters have grown so close to me they feel like family. The entire novel feels like family, evil characters and all. After several drafts at a title, I've finally settled on my current working title. I like it and I think I'll keep it. More about that in later blogs. But for now, I work diligently to finish polishing it since an editor has asked for the full novel! Yay!

I dabble in illustrations and here's my first attempt at a draft of the cover. Hint: it's a fantasy novel. :)