In The Inventing Room

166 eyes stare at me from my home office wall. I’m not delusional. It’s nothing creepy. Our house isn’t haunted. It’s my family’s POP collection. POPS are plastic figures of pop culture characters from movies,...

I have a new idea for a story, and it’s deeply steeped in art. This week, I’ve been diving into research. Way back when (25 years ago), I graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, with a...

All towns have evidence of their history. Especially if you live in New England like I do, your town is bound to have a tavern, a one-room schoolhouse, or a white wooden church with a...

I spent last weekend at the New England Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference (NE-SCBWI) in Springfield, Massachusetts. I was lucky enough to be chosen to present two workshops, but along with shuffling...

Last fall, I became a college professor. That’s part of the reason this blog was rather quiet for a while. From September to December, I was fully immersed in studying required texts, drafting lectures, making...

As 2016 comes to a close, I find myself taking a deep breath. It was an adventurous year for me—I got an agent, I dove headlong into writing a new novel, and I started a...

A few weeks ago, I was thrilled to discover A Mighty Girl blog had listed one of my early readers, Robot, Go Bot!, among its 25 Books Starring Science-Loving Mighty Girls. I love that readers...

One of the perks of being a writer is that you can coin new phrases, put them out in the world, and hope they catch on... humpback moment: (noun) an unexpected wave of emotion Here’s...