“You are not the future I wanted. I can’t believe the same stupid shit is still happening. I wanted you to be better! Be better!” I wait for it, you know. I wait for that minute, that second, when I will become tired of dystopias. And sometimes it comes to me in a flash. Sometimes…
What, exactly, is the ever-elusive “middle-grade” novel? Oh sure, that seems like an easy question, doesn’t it? It’s a novel written for middle-school audiences. But middle-school isn’t even the same everywhere. In my community, middle-school is seventh and eighth grade only. This is a great example of the larger question: where does “middle grade” fiction begin anyhow? …
Welcome to 2012!! The blog lives! Sorry for the absence – I just went through one of those periods when I couldn’t quite get a blog to come out the way I wanted. I was still reading and tweeting away, but blog just wasn’t happening. One of the things I love the most about my…
There comes a moment when you’re reading Harry Potter when you stop thinking about Quidditch, about quaffles and beaters and chasers and bludgers, and you just know it. Which is not to say that, suddenly, you have every single rule figured out and know exactly what’s happening in every second. It’s that you just accept…
Cole is a nice guy. And Alex is lucky to have him for a boyfriend. He’s a sports star and charming and likable; he encourages Alex’s poetry and thinks she’s special and he’s not afraid to pursue her or embarrassed to let her know how much he likes being with her. Loves being with her,…
As most of you know, I LOVE CANADA. Oh, how I love Canada. (Canadian publishers and libraries looking for employees: hit me up.) The past two years I have spent my annual long vacation in Toronto, attending the Toronto International Film Festival and wishing I lived there. I spend a lot of time waiting in…
I use fiction as a way to interpret my life and survive my hurts I was going to try to get to that, like, eventually. I was going to make a bunch of big grand allusions and metaphors and then, ta-dah, I would reveal it all cryptic-like. Ooooh, everyone would marvel I see what she…
Flash Burnout by L.K. Madigan won the 2010 Morris Award. As most of you reading this blog probably already know, the Morris Award is, and always will be, dearly close to my heart, as I just finished my first ever selection committee work on the 2011 Morris Award Committee. I heard, first-hand, the way the…
The DUFF: the designated ugly fat friend. The one girl in a group that’s just not “as pretty” as the others. DUFF: it’s a “real” thing, you know. You can look it up on Urban Dictionary, where it’s been an entry since 2003. The DUFF, the girl in any group who’s just not as pretty,…
This was life in Gentry — going to school every day, blending into a world where everyone was happier to ignore the things that didn’t fit, always willing to look away as long as you did your part. Otherwise, how could they go on living near their neat suburban lives? When I was little, all…
