Ramona My huge thanks go out to Ramona -- a seven-year-old reader and Daisy Dreamer fan, who drew me her very own comic featuring Daisy. What a treat.  ¶ 1:38 PM 0 comments   

  Break time Daisy Dreamer is going to have one heck of an adventure in the pages of Chickadee at the start of 2007. It will be out of this world!

And now, I'm out of this office for a holiday. See you when I get back!  ¶ 7:00 PM 0 comments   

  Can't I just make things easy? This week I am writing the first draft of the Daisy Dreamer adventure for the January/February 2007 issue of Chickadee. (It always feels funny writing stories for winter in the middle of summer. Yesterday one of my kids joked that I was probably writing a story now for "November in two years.")

I am proud of the fact that we have Daisy turn into interesting and unusual creatures. Sometimes she becomes a dog or a cat, when that makes sense, but not too often. The only trouble with unusual and interesting creatures is that it can be very hard to find information about them. And when you do get neat facts to use, sometimes it's hard to write about them in a way that's fun, exciting, and easy to understand.

So you would think I would learn and pick a nice easy animal. But no. Now, as I say, I am writing the January/February story, and Daisy is turning into the most unusual creature she has ever been. Stay tuned  ¶ 11:23 AM 0 comments   

  Learning from Deborah Ellis Do you know Deborah Ellis? She is the author of many books for kids. The most famous ones are a series of three that happen in Afghanistan. They're called The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey, and Mud City.

I just spent a week with Deborah Ellis. She was giving workshops on writing books for young adults, and I was lucky enough to be one of the people who got to learn from her. One thing I love about being a writer is that I am always learning more -- and Deborah was a great teacher. (If she reads this, she probably won't like it that I'm calling her a teacher, because she didn't really teach like a school teacher does. She talked a lot, we listened, and we learned from her. That's the best kind of teaching, I think.)

I am writing a book for young adults (or older kids), and Deborah really helped me a lot with it. I'll post more about it when I get closer to being finished my first draft.  ¶ 11:46 AM 0 comments