“It was a dark and stormy night.” Everyone knows that cliché’d opening sentence, but I’ve always kind of enjoyed it. Cliches generally exist because they’re somewhat effective at what they’re trying to do, and therefore get overused. And a storm really is a great way to start a story! Storms are dynamic and interesting; they […]

How would you describe a picture book in its most basic form? If you’ve read enough of them, you’ve probably picked up on the standard 32-page format; usually full-page illustrations, sometimes a double page spread with the picture spread out across the middle fold. You start at the beginning, turn the pages from right to […]

“What if…” said Mandy to herself, “what if I pretended this cottage were mine? I could sort of adopt it. Who would know? Who would care? Nobody lives here. I’m sure of that, now. And somebody needs to take care of it. And oh, I could take care of it.” She sprang to her feet. […]

If I were to create a grab-bag of elements that I thought would endear the Story Warren audience to a particular tale, and then randomly choose some and start to write, it’s certainly possible that I would come up with something like this: a middle-grade novel in which girl moves overseas with her family to […]