It is an oft-repeated complaint: there’s no YA featuring guy heroes. It’s not true, of course, but it sure can feel like it. If you haven’t read Lisa Nowak’s books and you like guy main characters, you are in for a treat. She writes ’em funny, gutsy, and with lots of heart. I LOL quite a lot reading Lisa’s books. Today, I’ve got a character interview with the girl in her latest book DEAD HEAT just so that you know she writes great girl characters, too. But the book really is about a boy. Read it and find out! Seventeen-year-old Jade lives with her grandparents, is a scholarship student at an exclusive prep school, and finds herself inexplicably attracted to Alex, the hero of Dead Heat. Fortunately, he feels it, too. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Okay, Read more…

In the September/October issue of the SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Bulletin, there’s an article devoted to an issue faced by all writers choosing a path of self-publishing: What can these authors do to vet their books? The article mentioned two new-to-me paid reviewing services (grubstreetreads.com and blueinkreview.com) and suggested that the use of either service might benefit an author looking for that exterior stamp of approval. Depending upon where you sit in your self-publishing journey, the $99-575 which such services charge for reviewing can look like a lot of money. For myself, I thought of it as a cost on the order of what I might spend to attend a conference, something I budget for several times a year from my writer income. While I haven’t used either of those new services, I have used two Read more…