by Pam | Oct 16, 2019 | Blog, Book News
Does that ever feel good, especially for a novel that took a year to write, and threw me for a loop several times! (If I were a quitter, I’d have quit on it. But I’m not.) It’s titled In Hiding and is a wilderness-survival young-adult tale....
by Pam | Oct 15, 2019 | Blog, Books
I’m humbled and honored, and doing a little happy-dance! 😊 It’s official as of today that my young-adult novel Stowaway is one of ten in Canada nominated for a Red Maple 2020 fiction award. I’m also tickled that this is my third nomination (for...
by Pam | Sep 29, 2019 | Blog, Writing Tips
I’m often asked my favorite books on writing craft (fiction), so I’m going to list them here. They’ve been of great help to me, and I urge writers of any level to embrace them. There are a whole lot of bad books on writing craft out there, so enjoy...
by Pam | Jun 19, 2019 | Blog
This past weekend I was honored to host the fifth annual CWILL-BC writers’ retreat on Mayne Island, British Columbia — for members of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators of B.C. Instructor Ellen Schwartz was highly popular and did a wonderful...
by Pam | Jun 6, 2019 | Blog, book review
by Pam Withers Individuals can’t do much about so-called global warming. Experts have to fix it, right? Or industries, or government, or whomever. I mean, sure, we can change our incandescent light bulbs to energy-efficient ones, but seriously, how effective is that...
by Pam | Jun 5, 2019 | Book News
“This is an accomplished and riveting novel, beautifully written and researched by a writer secure in her craft.” Read the rest of the review here.
by Pam | Apr 25, 2019 | Blog
“The teens I write for now are going to be politicians with Twitter accounts tomorrow. If some of our leaders read books about black kids as teenagers, we wouldn’t have to say Black Lives Matter — it would be understood. If they read about Latino...
by Pam | Apr 17, 2019 | Blog, Writing Tips
Imagine being able to instantly increase your writing ability tenfold! All you need is ten toy soldiers on your desk. Okay, that’s a silly metaphor, but imagine if you had ten toy soldiers, each labelled with one of the following writing tips. Now go through your...
by Pam | Mar 29, 2019 | Blog, Writing Tips
When your writing gets stuck, it’s kind of like being a turtle upended, or like your wood-cutting axe hitting a knot in the wood. Frustrating. But this latest round of being stuck on my in-progress young-adult adventure novel, I wasn’t really frustrated....
by Pam | Mar 20, 2019 | Blog, Boys' LIteracy, Literacy
Share of adults (15 and older) in the world with basic skills to read and write: In 1800, 10%. In 2016, 86%. “Half the increase in child survival in the world happens because the mothers can read and write.” Worldwide between 1950 and 2016, the infant mortality...