So… you become a photographer because you love to take pictures. You start a community newspaper because you love to write. You coach because you love teaching kids. But like most dream jobs, there are lots of not-so-romantic duties that always come with the territory. And you soon discover how few hours you actually get […]
While my son, Justin, and I have been working on the 19th book of The Adirondack Kids® series of children’s books, a good friend of ours has just released his first! The Snowy Owl Caper was written by Mark Manske, a true expert on birds prey. For nearly twenty years Mark was a science teacher […]
If we were to title our main presentation when asked to speak, we would call it The 3 R’s: Reading, (w)Riting & Relationships. And that is not because Justin and I are both terrible at ‘Rithmatic! It is the third R that has been the richest and most rewarding during our near 20-year literary sojourn. […]
Among the most asked questions we receive when doing presentations has to do with where we get ideas for our stories and if we are worried we will run out of ideas. The answer to the first question is that we get our story ideas from a variety of sources. Among them? Personal experience. […]
One of the questions we are asked most often when doing presentations among adults is how to get a book published. That is a great question and with the stigma that for years was attached to self-publishing all but disappeared, the answer is not at all as clear as it once was. Last week we […]
the Road Again: 1 School – 1 Book Dates for our winter and spring school visits are filling up fast! We are also booking for autumn and winter of 2019-20 Among schools we are looking forward to visiting in early 2019 are Port Leyden and Glenfield Elementary schools; Hastings Mallory Elementary School; Kensington Road […]
It happens every year in Iceland when some 70 percent of the people who live there receive a physical book (no e-books) as a gift on Christmas Eve. It’s called, Jolabokaflod, and the way the tradition is described, people read their new books Christmas Eve throughout the night while eating chocolate or sipping a non-alcoholic […]
Meanwhile we are working on The Adirondack Kids® #19: Phantom of the Talus Caves. Our main distributor to retail outlets is North Country Books in Utica, New York and this week we were asked for a few sentences for the book description to put in North Country’s 2019 catalogue. Here it is: How the familiar […]
Throughout the nearly 20 years we have been writing our stories for children we have noted the consistent call from many who are influential in the publishing industry for books dealing with tough subjects and with characters to which kids going through various serious difficulties can relate. Our approach to storytelling from the very beginning […]
“How long does it take you to write a book?” “Where do you get all the ideas for your stories?” “Which book that you’ve written is your favorite?” These are among the most common questions we are asked by young students during one of our school visits. Then there are those business savvy students who […]