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GrowYourWriting Creator Interview: Sara Kruger, Children’s Picture Book and Middle Grade Writer
Hello and welcome to my new blog series, ‘#GrowYourWriting Creator Interviews’. My goal with this series is to shine a spotlight on kidlit creators and their fabulous projects and allow them to share their tips and tricks to grow your writing. Today I’d like to welcome picture book and middle grade writer, Sara Kruger. She’s been writing picture books on and off for nearly a dozen years, and actively querying for the last four years. One of her stories, Waiting for Faith, was featured in the winter 2023 edition of Little Thoughts Press and her MG micro fiction story, The Glitch, won third place in the 2023 Kids’ Choice Kidlit Writing…
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GrowYourWriting Creator Interview: Tara Trudel, Children’s Book Author and Songwriter
Hello and welcome to my new blog series, ‘#GrowYourWriting Creator Interviews’. My goal with this series is to shine a spotlight on kidlit creators and their fabulous projects and allow them to share their tips and tricks to grow your writing. Today I’d like to welcome our first participant, Children’s Author and Songwriter, Tara Trudel. Tara, can you please tell us how the idea for FRACTURED came about and a little more about your process as songwriter for kid’s books? FRACTURED combines my background in children’s songwriting, comedy, and musicfor kidlit. I wanted to write a family music album that was structured like a sketchcomedy show with elements like comedic characters, callbacks, and an…
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My first picture book ever written
Yesterday I visited my Mom in Pinon Hills, CA. We ate delicious organic plums from her local co-op and celebrated her soon-to-be born baby bull terrier puppies. We also rummaged around in old boxes and shared old memories. That’s when we found the picture book that started it all “Kimberly’s Time Machine”, written by 10 year old yours truly. This book single-handedly stirred up the creative-writing bug in me for years to come! I did all the writing and illustrations. I even went through revisions with my editor (teacher). The story was about a young girl who built a time machine to visit the future, and all the mishaps…
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Library Days: Mission Viejo Library
The return of summer means the return of library days for me. I always find them to be bustling with excitement. On my way inside I observed this beautiful mosaic butterfly. The tiles reminded me of tiny replicas of the delicious books that awaited me inside. Of course, I always make a beeline for the children’s section, specifically the picture book wall. I like to start by looking at the return cart. This way I can see what books fancy young readers. Today I picked five books from this cart to study. Ah … I just love devouring new picture books. It helps me improve my craft and reminds me…
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So Long Summer…Hello September!
So long Summer! This will go down in my books as the first summer I spent seriously devoted to writing! If I were an apple farmer I would say I had an abundant harvest this summer. Here is just a partial list of things I accomplished. ❦ I attended my first SCBWI Summer Conference. ❦ I joined a Peer Critique Group! ❦ I connected with another Children’s Writer in my neighborhood! ❦ I read 30+ picture books. ❦ I took 2 online writing courses. ❦ I wrote 4 new short stories and made progress on my Middle Grade WIP. ❦ I learned how to use a “twitter hashtag.” ❦ I…
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Storytelling with Pictures
Hello Blogging World! I have missed you. I have been busy writing, revising, reading, doing homework, catching up on life….and writing some more. Phew! Needless to say I’ve been busy. Today I took a break and did a little video-editing. Thanks to a helpful training session at the apple store, I am using iMovie to make a video of our family trip to Tahiti last year. Other than the blog writing I’m doing right now I did not do any writing for this project. I did however “tell a story through pictures,” which felt equally fulfilling. I tried uploading a video short of what I’ve been working on, but it seems…
