Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to Rose Martin, the host of PBS’ Writer Around the Corner, about my latest book, Bone’s Gift.   (Click the photo to go to the episode.)

BTW, We’re sitting in the Alexander Black House’s (aka, Blacksburg Museum) exhibit about coal mining in the New River Valley. The community (Big Vein) in the series is loosely based on the mines and communities in the McCoy area. In fact, my grandfather and his brothers worked in some of those mines, one of which was really called Big Vein. My great-grandfather ran a store next to the tipple. 😉

Next week, these fine blogs will be hosting / talking about BONE’S GIFT and giving away prizes!

Monday, April 9

• YA Books Central

 

Tuesday, April 10

• Ms. Yingling Reads

 

Wednesday, April 11

• Unleashing Readers

 

Thursday, April 12

• The Brain Lair
• Genrefluent

 

Friday, April 13

• Always in the Middle

 

 

Are you a teacher or librarian? Do you run a book club? Or are you an avid reader with 19 friends?  Then you just might want a classroom set of my new middle-grade novel! (That’s 20 copies, btw.)

To enter, you can subscribe to my newsletter, comment below, follow me on Twitter, tweet about the contest, and/or like my Facebook page.  (See options in Rafflecopter widget below.)  The more options you pick, the more chances you have of winning. The contest begins February 26th and runs through March 31st.

Good luck! Happy reading!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Author copies of my new middle-grade novel, Bone’s Gift, came yesterday!

Aw, the smell of freshly printed books. It’s the smell of dreams, heartache, and hard work. It’s the smell of believing in something even when others don’t.

You see, I started thinking about this story, this world many, many years ago. I wrote different versions, never quite completing them, trying to get to the heart of what was calling to me about Bone’s world, the place my mother and her family grew up. But I wasn’t really ready to write the story. I wasn’t a good enough writer yet, among other things.

So I wrote some other stories–even got some of the published. In fact, I wrote a series of YA science fiction books. After that, I revisited Bone’s world, first with a short story, “The Jelly Jar.” That worked, so I started writing the novel. I felt like I was ready to write it finally. As I wrote, I had that feeling that there was something good there. I’ve learned to trust that little feeling. Excited, I sent the draft to my agent….um, my first agent.

She did not get the story at all! Admittedly, I was crushed–but I still believed I had something, even if it needed some work. So we parted ways. And then I had to go give a talk about taking risks in your writing life! Oy.

Long story short, I found an agent–and eventually an editor–who saw what I saw.  (In the meantime, I also panicked a bit and went back to school to get a Masters in English so I could teach! ) Hopefully, the story is good, and readers will see what we saw, too.

Author copies!!! I really enjoyed writing this one. It’s all about weird and wonderful discoveries–often by accident–from ‘hobbits’ in Indonesia to zombie-ant fungus to the cryovolcanoes of Enceladus.

The publisher of Dramatic Discoveries (12 Story Library) creates awesome companion websites for all of their books. Each has links, news stories, photos, videos, and even Twitter feeds about things mentioned in the book. Here’s the one for Dramatic Discoveries:

http://www.12storylibrary.com/…/unbel…/dramatic-discoveries/