With the World Cup starting up in a little over a week, it’s great timing on my newest release, National Geographic Kids EVERYTHING Soccer. While working on this book, I even interviewed Omar Gonzalez, a star defender for Team USA. Summary: Score! Finally, a book that explains everything about soccer—a favorite team sport played by… Continue reading Everything Soccer
Category: Misc Stuff
National Geographic Kids
This month I have two new books being released: Everything Dinosaurs and Everything Mythology, both published by National Geographic. The exciting part, for me, is that I grew up reading National Geographic Magazine. It’s how I learned about dinosaur fossils, exotic animals, and all the strange places around the world. National Geographic was part of… Continue reading National Geographic Kids
Friendship Poems
Since graduate school, I haven’t worked on a lot of poetry, other than dabbling here and there with cinquains. But earlier in the year I was asked to compose children’s poems to be included in several anthologies due out next spring. The first batch was for Trust, Truth, and Ridiculous Goofs—all poems about friendship. Below… Continue reading Friendship Poems
Raw (Live 2 Skate)
Just received author copies for my latest skateboarding book, Raw. It’s one of the initial books in the new Tony Hawk: Live 2 Skate series and also the story that prompted me to get back on a skateboard. A few too many years have passed since I used to bomb down the hill near my… Continue reading Raw (Live 2 Skate)
Treasure Island Kickstarter
So . . . my adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island is written, edited, laid out, and ready for the printer. Now I wait. Since I will have copies in hand later this fall, I’ve launched a Kickstarter project to help me with marketing. I’ll be working with a publicist, having cases of books… Continue reading Treasure Island Kickstarter
Live 2 Skate — Bombing (working title)
I just wrapped up my third book in the Live 2 Skate series, which is licensed through Tony Hawk and published by Stone Arch Books. The working title is Bombing, as the main character, Lei Tían, is a longboarder. She wants to impress upon her friends that longboarding is just as respectable as trick skating,… Continue reading Live 2 Skate — Bombing (working title)
Terry Brooks
Some of you may know the story behind the book (JRR Tolkein’s The Hobbit) that nudged me toward wanting to be a writer. While Tolkein may have planted the seed, it was Terry Brooks, and his Shannara trilogies, who nourished my aspirations. Yeah, I was big into fantasy when younger, and the genre still holds… Continue reading Terry Brooks
My Werewolf Movie Watching List
Or what I like to call research! One thing that helps me get started on a project is watching documentaries about the subject at hand, whether it’s Dinosaur Planet (2003) for a recent dinosaur book I worked on or Trouble the Water (2008) for something I wrote about Hurricane Katrina. A little TV watching is… Continue reading My Werewolf Movie Watching List
Cinquains
One of my publishers recently asked me to write a few children’s poems for an anthology on friendship, and there were specific forms that they wanted the poems to be written in. I was ecstatic to learn that one was a cinquain—that’s one of my favorite forms. I even have a twitter feed DaillyCinquain that… Continue reading Cinquains
Zombified — new release
Just received my copies of Zombified, book 9 (written by your truly) of the Tony Hawk’s 900 Revolution series, which was released earlier this spring. It may be hard to think about skateboarding here in Minnesota with the April showers coming as snow. But this story also has zombies! Summary: Once more beset by visions,… Continue reading Zombified — new release