The YA novel I've been working on for the past year, All Good Children, has found its home with Orca Book Publishers. My editor loves it and sold it to her board and they're already asking if there will be a sequel. (And just so you know, my editor rejected other manuscripts in between Walking Backward and this new one.… Continue reading Hard Work Rewarded
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Coming Up for Air
Sunday night, I tied up my sneakers and called my younger son to hurry up for drum lessons: "Come on, Dallas, we gotta go!" Strange? Yeah. Because Dallas isn't my kid's name. Nor is it the name of my older son, my husband, dog, cat, nephew, neighbour, or anybody else I talk to regularly and… Continue reading Coming Up for Air
In Defence of Outlines
I’ve met so many writers who don’t outline. They say, “If I knew what was going to happen, I wouldn’t care enough to write the story.” Those words always make me feel odd and out of place, for I am not that way. I outline. My outlines are twenty pages long. Even before I outline,… Continue reading In Defence of Outlines
Always Someone’s Story
I'm halfway through scene-by-scene revisions on my novel. (These are the big revisions; I'll still have cutting and polishing after I'm done—it never ends). Saturday morning, I reread the revised 140 pages and grew depressed because the first few pages were dull, dull, dull. It gets good—it gets REALLY good—but it takes a while. A cover letter… Continue reading Always Someone’s Story
Stone by Stone
I am slowly but surely building a novel from my messy draft. Some days I only have time to edit a few pages - slim progress on what seems like an impossibly large job. But even pyramids were built stone by stone, so surely I can finish a book the same way. There are writers for whom editing is not such a huge… Continue reading Stone by Stone
Catherine Austen 