The Road to Authordom and a Giraffe Named Pete

I’ve heard a lot of advice about writing and the road to authordom. I listen to most, ignore a little, and manipulate the rest to suit my needs. But the truest and most helpful piece of advice I’ve ever heard was: surround yourself with the people you most want to be like. Seems like a [...]

Guest Contributor Michelle Ladner on the Appeal of Reading and Writing Young Adult Literature

Why YA? I’m in my mid-thirties. I read a lot of different kinds of books. But against the biggest wall of my dining room sits a seven-foot tall by six-foot wide bank of bookshelves. These shelves contain my Young Adult (YA) book collection. Most of them are some type of fantasy. They total three hundred [...]