It’s here! No, I’m not talking about Liam Miguel’s first day of kindergarten (that was yesterday) or Ethan Andrés’s first day of nursery school (that’s today). I’m talking about the official release of Out of Darkness, which has been … Read more

The Out of Darkness blog tour is underway! The September release of Out of Darkness is just a few weeks away, and I’m visiting some of my favorite blogs and online haunts. Here’s where I’ve been so far:

8/9: … Read more

I’ve been away from the blog for a good while now. I’ve gotten the occasional blogging fix over at www.latinosinkidlit.com, but I’ve missed having my own space for mulling over ideas big, little, and in between. The life of … Read more

Butterflies keep turning up in my work, as you can see even from the cover art (and titles!) of What Can’t Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly. Recently I saw a beautiful photograph on Flickr* that got … Read more

To help YOU go write today, I’ll share my number 1, go-to method of getting my style muscles in condition.

There is something to be said for having a shock-proof shit detector that can be turned “off” for the purposes … Read more

For me a first draft is like that impossibly slow climb to the top of a roller coaster… a roller coaster from hell that keeps getting higher and higher so that you spend WEEKS thinking, I’m almost there… I’m just … Read more

Anybody who’s remotely paying attention should know that I love Scrivener. I’m near evangelical about its virtues for everything from novel-writing to blog-touring to academic blah organizing. (Yes, my academic blahs need to be organized.)

But there’s something that … Read more

I’m in the middle of living something new: writing hungry.

I’ve always seen the idea of the starving artist as an unnecessary cliché, but I’m as close as I will likely ever be to living it. (I certainly hope this … Read more

Who else is thinking about race in fiction AND has battled evil garden invaders?

The answer is…. Justine Larbalestier* (psst, that asterisk means “see memorial footnote below”)! On her blog this week, she has a great post about handling race… Read more

You know about the segregation of black school children in the Jim Crow era, but do you know how it affected the Mexican American community?

For my third novel, I have done a lot of research about the experiences of … Read more