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Poppy

How I Got There

Pop­py was pub­lished in 1995, which means it has been around for twen­ty-five years. Over the years it has been very suc­cess­ful, more often than not (read­ers tell me) as a read-aloud. As you might guess, let­ters such as the one above—only recent­ly received—are very gratifying.

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dysgraphia

Becoming a Writer, Part Two

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin Madi­son After a brief stint at Anti­och Col­lege, I went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin (Madi­son). There I had a dou­ble major, the­atre and his­to­ry. I was a B- stu­dent. I avoid­ed every Eng­lish class I could.  (If you haven’t yet read Part One of this essay, click here.) When in col­lege I

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typewriter

Becoming a Writer, Part One

I had nev­er heard of Bea­con Col­lege. It was found­ed in 1989 and was the first col­lege in the coun­try accred­it­ed to award bach­e­lor degrees exclu­sive­ly to stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, ADHD, and oth­er learn­ing dif­fer­ences. Their mis­sion: know­ing that giv­en the right envi­ron­ment, sup­port, and tools, all stu­dents can suc­ceed. It’s locat­ed in Lees­burg, Flori­da. I

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Old Granny Fox

Childhood Books

Sit­ting on my shelves are four books which some­how were saved from my child­hood. The old­est is Giant Otto, by William Pène du Bois. Otto was an immense dog, about the size of a house. He was quite sweet, but when he wagged his tail, he cre­at­ed some­thing like a hurricane. 

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Book without Words

A Chronology of My Historical Fiction

On Feb­ru­ary 11, at 2PM (Pacif­ic time) I will be giv­ing a talk about his­tor­i­cal fic­tion for the Cal­i­for­nia School Librar­i­an’s Asso­ci­a­tion.  Here is a list of all my his­tor­i­cal fic­tion with the dates in which the sto­ries take place. Unless oth­er not­ed the sto­ries take place in Amer­i­ca. 700   The Book with­out Words  (Eng­land)

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psychological thriller

An Odd Story

It was a good many years ago—I’m tru­ly not sure when but it may have been as long as twen­ty-five years ago—I had noticed that hor­ror stories—thrillers—were very pop­u­lar in the world of children’s’ lit.

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January in the Rockies

It being Jan­u­ary here in the rur­al Rocky Moun­tains at almost nine thou­sand feet up, it was cold: minus two degrees. Pure white snow lay upon the land at least three/five feet deep every­where. Skies were crys­tal clear and blue. All the same, my wife and I were dri­ving to town for our week­ly run

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The End

The End

A high­ly suc­cess­ful writer once told me, “I don’t start writ­ing a sto­ry until I know the last sen­tence of the sto­ry.” It worked for her. I have nev­er ever been able to do that. Well, not quite nev­er: The one time I did was for the fourth book in the Crispin series. Except, while I had that last line, I nev­er wrote the book. 

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juggling

Two Manuscripts, Two Editors

A cou­ple of days after 2020 Christ­mas I sent in two nov­el man­u­scripts to two dif­fer­ent edi­tors. No, this is not the result of being ambidex­trous and work­ing on two key­boards simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. It comes about because of the com­plex ways of pub­lish­ing. Let’s con­sid­er each book in turn. 

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