April 2026 Master Class Registration Starts Saturday, March 7th!
How do authors promote their books effectively? During my thirty years of teaching, I had the privilege of hosting incredible authors in my classroom and school. I believe the ideas I’ve documented from their visits will help us as we plan our own author visits. ...
Out of the 62 animated films from the Walt Disney Company, only 8 are original ideas, and 2 of those were propaganda films made during WWII to help strengthen our relationship with South America. Everything else was based on either a book, mythology, poems, folk...
Do you ever give yourself a break from writing? I’m not talking about a hiatus where you take a long period of time away from your laptop or pad of paper and pen. I’m referring to a little transition break from one project to the next. Here’s what I mean. I just...
My favorite aspect of the self-publishing process is that I coordinate every aspect of the process from the initial idea to the printed book in my readers’ hands! And the most challenging part of self-publishing is…coordinating every aspect of the process from idea to...
Remember The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? Author Barbara Robinson penned the antics of the Herdman kids hearing the Christmas story for the first time. One of my favorite memories was watching twenty-two first-graders squeeze closer to her for a photo. As...
The Two Lives of Ezekiel Van Cleef is the greatest novel ever written by AI. Why? Because I helped write it. While this sounds arrogant, I think any novel that has 10% of the writing done by a human is better than any novel written 100% by AI. In fact, productivity...
Today we welcome a new blogger to our team. Jennifer M. Barnes is a retired kindergarten and first-grade teacher and will draw from those experiences in her upcoming posts. She is thrilled to be part of our blogging team and we're excited to have her! **** “So,...
5 ways to renew our wonder and creativity
For authors who are self-publishing, it is important to keep up with the changes in the industry so that you can make the best decisions for publishing and promoting your book. The best way to succeed as an author is to be informed about what options you have and how...
Young woman broadcasting in a studio, close up When I was nine years old, my sister and I pulled out our dad's cassette player and recorded our first radio show. I wrote the script and songs and we practiced before performing. We had a blast (or at least, I did. Hard...