Author of over 400 Books for Children and Adults
Trash Mountain after I had been rereading a lot of Jane Austen and that voice was stuck in my head. Except, of course, this was a squirrel. I knew quite a bit about the war between the red squirrels and gray squirrels, mostly from British magazines and newspapers (I live part of the year in
I was asked (at a time when I was incredibly busy) by National Geographic too do a book of amazing (often heroic) animal stories. I said only if I could write it with my children, all of whom were well-published writers. They agreed. I made a list of fascinating animal stories, from the dog (& team)
This began as a short story in 1994 called “An Infestation of Unicorns” in my collection HERE THERE BE UNICORNS. Not my first foray into unicorns (that would be poems and a novel called THE TRANSFIGURED HART). Then I met the Zonderkidz editor at the Texas Library Association meeting and we hit it off.
Those dinos, they keep on going. And this one began because the editor asked for it. I made a dozen wrong tries until I got it right. She and I made lists of possible scenarios. And only then did I manage to get it right. Mark Teague’s pictures do indeed steal the show, and it seems nothing is going to
This began as a short story, Centaur Field, in a Bruce Coville anthology: HALF HUMAN, published in 2001. But I thought about it on and off for over ten years before I decided it should be a novel. Along the way, I wrote it set in modern times and then realized that the secret of a centaur born in a
I saw a photograph of a stone angel carving on an apartment building in Paris. The angel had originally been meant for a competition for a lighthouse but hadn’t won. Years later it was used for the building. You can still see it in Paris. That photo was the seed that started the story. I wrote th
I first met the editor, John Patrick Pazdziora as he was finishing his doctorate at St Andrews University in English Literature. My friend Debby brought him, his lovely wife Rebecca, and their amazing then two year old daughter Fern to tea at my house. We began a conversation about his work
This small art press limited edition (of 50) hand-bound books is for the serious collector. The book includes both published and unpublished adult poems in the faerie tale/fantasy genre. If you go to www.papaveria.com you will find ordering information
This How Do Dinos book was the editor’s idea, but I took to it with gusto–as did illustrator Mark Teague. How many times have those of us with children (or who are next door to neighbors’ children) seen toddlers through five-year-olds have massive meltdowns? All of us! And who could
My third book of adult poetry, first book of political poems, for the wonderful small poetry press Holy!Cow. I was hitting the right wing hard here, in a variety of poems, and developed a style for what I would later use in the poetry book I began in 2016 right before the traitorous Trump won” Before the Vote/After.