About a week ago, I finished the first draft of my middle grade horror manuscript Nightmare Garden. I know. I like the title too. The beginning of my middle grade horror manuscript Nightmare Garden So what makes my words middle grade horror? Do I even know what I'm doing? Yes. Mostly. And these are all my opinions, for I'm no expert. I love reading middle grade, so why not write it? I wrote Nightmare Garden because my first adventure into the land of MG was so much fun. Well, fun...and painful...and frustrating...and fun. Middle grade, my happy[...]
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middle grade
0 We're celebrating middle grade horror this month. So I thought of middle grade me, and if you had asked kid-me if I liked horror, I would have said no. Maybe because Mom was all about the non-scary, about keeping us from things that she didn’t like. Maybe because Dad liked it, but being a not-so-talkative guy, there was never any discussion about it. But when I look back on my childhood, I did like horror. If Dad was watching some crazy, creepy movie, I watched it, the whole time knowing I “shouldn’t”. I had books I loved, only later realizing they were h[...]
I first learned of Katie Alender by fluke. I was in Paris on my yearly backpacking trip, holed up with a cold in a Hausmannized apartment in Montmartre, a few blocks away from the infamous Moulin Rouge. I'd chosen an AirBnB rental without much of a view, but the apartment had a hammock in my room, a comfy bed, and two sets of double-door balconies that, at the time, I thought were cute. Equipped with cheap French wine, a baguette, hard cheeses, and several delicious French pastries, I gave up on trying to be a tourist after my first bateau mouche trip down the Se[...]
Man oh man oh man. I have just finished THE BEST BOOK. And now you all have to hear about it because you're welcome. If you have not heard of the middle grade book The House on Creep Street by The Blood Brothers, you are doing yourself a grave disservice. I can honestly say that The House on Creep Street is the best middle grade book I've ever read and it's one of the best I've read this year in any genre. There are several millions of reasons why I love this book but here are a few of the main reasons that I wanted to read this book in the first place. It in[...]
