So, I went to a lovely performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake by the Russian National Ballet Theatre this weekend. (In case you don’t know the story: the Evil Dude Rotbart has turned a bunch of Lovely Girls into swans. One night Prince Siegfried goes hunting with his buddies, sees the swans, falls for the Most… Read more »
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Nancy Drew and the Mystery of Why I Can’t Just Read a Book Anymore
Last summer, when I was struggling quite desperately to complete Fire (a writing lesson learned the hard way: think hard about the lives of your main characters before committing yourself to living inside their heads for two years. If their lives are sad/scary/strange? You’re in for a rough two years), I asked a couple friends… Read more »
“Control, Control, You Must Learn Control!”
Yeah, whatever, Yoda. If you can show me the use of trying to control anything in my life now that I’m getting a book published, I’ll knit you a little hat with two ear holes to keep your fuzzy little head warm on cold nights in Dagobah. You know that feeling of being out of… Read more »
This Revision is a Monster
I just spent two weeks writing a new first chapter for Fire, the prequel to Graceling. It was an agonizing process, one of the hardest bits of writing I’ve ever done. Today I gave it to my sister (always my first reader) for feedback. Here’s what she said after reading: “It’s not bad.” Yeah. So,… Read more »
The Blog Stops (or Starts?) Here
This site is a work in progress. You’re certainly welcome to read the posts I wrote prior to this one, but what you’ll find is that these are the posts meant to link up with the “quick links” on the side. Some of them are incomplete. Others, you may have linked to already. Continue at… Read more »
Contacts, Info, and Credits
There’s a lot of information on this page, including instructions for purchasing signed copies and how to write to me. Check out the red descriptors at the beginning of each paragraph. I am once again signing and personalizing books via my local indie, Harvard Book Store! I no longer live around the corner from the… Read more »
My Index of Frequently Asked Questions
The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the forest, his front feet well apart, his head on his side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” -from Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne … Read more »
My Books
“If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” -Toni Morrison Winterkeep is my latest release, and the fourth installment in the Graceling Realm series. As usual, I’m appallingly behind in updating this page, but it was released in January 2021 and… Read more »
My Writing Process
On the left, the writer hides from her writing, convinced it is out to get her. Seriously, writing is hard, and I am occasionally crazy. First, the nuts and bolts of my writing process: I write longhand. If you were to open to a random page in my notebook you would find so many cross-outs… Read more »
A Short Bio
“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis, and we’d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.” -William Styron Nonetheless, I am always a happy chucklehead when I take a dip in my telephone bathtub. So, here’s the… Read more »
