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The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

The Best Readers

Every once in a while, an adult (nev­er a child) asks me why I both­er to write for young peo­ple. The ques­tion is usu­al­ly asked with the impli­ca­tion that it must be a waste of time to write for mere kids.

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The Secret School

Writing a series

I may be wrong, but I think it was Ross McDon­ald (he wrote the high­ly suc­cess­ful Archer series of crime nov­els) who sug­gest­ed that if you intend to write a series, start off by writ­ing three or four of them, so you get, not just the sequenc­ing right, but the main char­ac­ters right.

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My best piece of writing

On the recent­ly viewed Ken Burns doc­u­men­tary on Ernest Hem­ing­way, he relates an inci­dent in which the writer, in Spain (I recall) asked his wife to bring a suit­case of his recent writ­ings to him. She was in Paris. The sto­ry goes that the suit­case was lost on a train, nev­er to be found. The

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What is my writing process?

One of the com­mon ques­tion writ­ers are asked—at least I am—is, “What is your process when you write one of your nov­els?” It seems like a sim­ple ques­tion, with a straight­for­ward answer. It is not.

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Crispin Cross of Lead

Aphorisms

One of my dic­tio­nar­ies defines apho­rism as a short pithy state­ment or max­im. I’m not sure if one can con­sid­er them a lit­er­ary form, but I delight in them. 

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bookcase closeup

A Room with Books

Con­sid­er the book­case. Here’s a quirk of mine: when watch­ing TV inter­views with impor­tant per­son­ages there is quite often a back­ground of book­shelves. Nev­er mind what that emi­nent per­son is say­ing, I’m check­ing the books on those shelves.

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True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Achieving the Pinnacle

A recent online review of one my books ref­er­enced The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle, as “the Pin­na­cle” of my writ­ing career. That book was pub­lished in 1990 and was my twen­ty-sec­ond book. Since that time—thirty years ago—I have pub­lished six­ty-one more books. 

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Catch You Later Traitor

Used Bookstores

By far most of the books I pur­chase are used books. It would be easy to say I do so because they are often cheap­er than new ones.  The usu­al truth is that I get them because I can’t find them any­where else oth­er than a used book store. Most impor­tant of all, I take great plea­sure in find­ing them. 

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Well Done

When is a book done? And well done?

When is a book done? Alas, nev­er. Yes, there comes a time when the changes I make are min­i­mal. That’s a fin­ish of sorts. Or there comes a time when I can’t bear to look at the pages again. That too, is a form of fin­ish­ing. Or, at least, pausing.

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