Marianne Hering is the author of the Adventures in Odyssey Imagination Station book series for children ages 7 and up.
I just turned in a middle-school book proposal in which a uniformed guard gets too close to a fire and his bronze helmet melts, burning his face. That happens just before his body incinerates. It’s gruesome. I describe smells and screams and the ferocious fire that is waiting for more victims. (And yes, you guessed … More On Violence in Middle-Grade Books by Marianne Hering
While I was self-editing my first children’s novel in 1989 (gasp, yes, I hung out with Methuselah et al.), I consulted a great little book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to edit yourself into print. The wise authors, David King and Renni Browne, helped me look professional in many areas including dialogue and proportion … More Great Writing Isn’t Born—It’s Built Sentence by Sentence with Self-Editing