When it comes to young-adult fiction (or YA, as it’s known in the industry), the subgenre often seems synonymous with “edgy.” Over at Pub(lishing) Crawl, Mandy Hubbard lists a bunch of boundary-pushing topics broached by big YA books in recent years. They include kidnapping, war, suicide, and a whole bevy sexual taboos. Now, I don’t […]

“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 […]

After reading Laura Peterson’s glowing review of The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, I found this video introduction by the great Malcom Guite to be entirely delightful. I hope you do, too!