-
Girls invent the neatest things!
I am continually amazed at the wonderful content the A Mighty Girl team comes up with, curating from all over the web but also adding in links to resources and additional information. They’ve become one of my primary go-to sources for great stories about girls doing awesome things all over the globe. This latest story […]
-
Dear World — about kids and science
Dear World: I want you to know that the effort required to get children, in particular girls, interested in science is really rather basic. Engage with them. Talk to them like they are real people instead of very small idiots, and answer their questions. Even using humor is fine, as the Australians have done (those […]
-
LEGO robotics and girls and awesomeness
This past fall I had the opportunity to coach a LEGO Robotics team through the FIRST LEGO League, aka FLL. In short, it was *awesome.* I coached a team of 7 girls, all Girl Scouts with the Girls Scouts of Northern IL, all fourth grade students at Da Vinci Academy in Elgin, IL. The Girl […]
-
Media and Design Club for Kids Meeting 2
Media and Design Club for KidsMeeting 2 Activity 1: Door InvestigationActivity Objective: Evaluate design choices by touring the school and counting the different types of door styles we encounter. Discussion: This was a hands-on exercise where we walked around the whole school and noted and counted the different door designs we saw. I had the […]
-
Media And Design Club: Meeting 1
I’ve started a Media and Design Club for students at my children’s school. It’s an idea that started out of a desire to get the kids involved with the creation of the school yearbook, which has previously been done by parent volunteers who are more time-constrained this year than usual. Rather than just doing a […]
-
How I wrote a novel in 20 minutes a day (and you can, too!)
I just wrote “the end” today on my middle-grade science fiction novel. I wrote it over the course of forty days, with a short break in the middle to finish a novelette that was burning on me (so forty non-consecutive days.) I’m somewhat astonished with this fact, as it didn’t feel hard. I’ve written four […]
-
Indie ebook publishing links and website recommendations
Independent Publishing Links and Website Recommendations I was asked to sit on an author’s marketing panel tonight with my writer’s group. We got together with a group that’s more focused on book marketing (our group is a “writer’s support group” – we talk about craft and do writing exercises and cheer each other on. It’s […]
-
CONVERGENCE – by Karen T. Smith, a YA Sci-Fi novel
Desperate for something new to read? My young adult (young end of YA, perfectly appropriate for most middle-grade readers) science fiction novel CONVERGENCE by Karen T. Smith is now available on all ebook platforms (amazon kindle, barnes and noble nook, smashwords for most other e-readers. Note: Kobo and Sony Reader distribution should be within the […]
-
Book Review – Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
I recently reviewed the book Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi, over on my mom blog – Suburban (in)Sanity. I really enjoyed this book, even though in general I’m tired of future-told dystopia stories. Hunger Games overkill I suppose. This one was fantastic, though, and kept me up late reading.
-
E-book Formatting Checklist
How to Format your e-book for independent publishing In formatting ebooks for independent publishing, I’ve found that the detailed information offered in the Smashwords style guide, while top-notch and something that EVERY indie publisher needs to read, is a bit hard to parse when you’re going through the routine of formatting another book/story for publication, […]