NOVELS

I think novels are my favorite books to write, because you live with them for such a long time and get to know the characters so well that they become almost real to you. Once an idea for a novel pops into my head, I will spend months just thinking about it, imagining the world my characters will walk around in, thinking about the type of people my characters are, how they will react to the situations they will encounter, etc.. By the time I sit down to write, the story is pretty much ready to pour out, or rather, the first draft is ready to pour out, and then the work really begins. Think of it like a sculpture. When you want to sculpt something, you first take a big lump of clay and shape it loosely into the thing that you want it to become. Then comes the real sculpting, the smoothing, shaping, bringing out the fine detail, until at last you can look at the work and think, yes, that is what I want say with this piece of art. In writing, this means revising and revising and revising. Before computers (yes, I’m that old) it was really difficult to revise because, when you changed something, even one sentence, you likely had to type the whole chapter over again. Back then I would revise a manuscript two, maybe three times, but now, with the help of technology I am constantly revising. Every time I sit down to write I start by looking back over what I wrote yesterday, and revising. And then, once the whole story is written, and I have the big picture in front of me, I start revising again. Anyway, you get the picture. Visit my WRITING page for more details about the writing process, and click on the titles below to go to Amazon and read more about them. Brand new for 2023 is SCAREDY CAT, the story of a twelve year old city girl who has to face down her fears in the back woods of Maine. Also, new for 2023: THE LIBERTY POLE, originally written as a serialized story for the Boston Globe and later syndicated in newspapers across the country, THE LIBERTY TAKE is a Revolutionary War tale about three unlikely young heroines on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Finally new for 2023 is the completely revised re-release of A PLACE TO CALL HOME, which received the following awards when originally published: *1995 American Bookseller Pick of the Lists! *1996 American Library Association Notable *1997 IRA Teacher’s Choice, and *2000 & 2001 Popular Paperback for Young Adults.

Read about all of them and the upcoming TESS- A Dog’s Tale on my NEW page!