Reading, wRiting, and Roaming with Author Valerie Biel

Welcome to the 2022 Author Series. Here we will continue to share the knowledge (often hard-won) from published authors as they tell us what they wish they’d known before they published or what they wish they could tell their prepublished selves. Our February author is Sherrill Joseph, creator of the delightful Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries for middle-grade readers!

As a mother, grandmother, retired teacher, and now children's author, Sherrill Joseph has made kids her life. She wishes they ran the world. She believes it is incumbent upon every children’s fiction author to promote antiracism. The author created The Botanic Hill Detectives Mysteries series for tweenagers, for posterity, to stay connected to kids, and to offer to them characters... Continue Reading

Welcome to the 2022 Author Series! Here we will continue to share the knowledge (often hard-won) from published authors as they tell us what they wish they’d known before they published or what they wish they could tell their prepublished selves.

Our first author of 2022 is Jessica Marie Baumgartner. I was fortunate to meet Jess when we were both on a fantasy writing panel at the Untitled Town Book and Author Fest in 2018. Her positive energy was contagious. I love her writing and appreciate her blog (which you can catch up on here.) If you follow my book reviews closely, you may remember my review of her 2021 release... Continue Reading

The December installment of the 2021 Author Series wraps up our first year of asking published authors to share the advice they would give to their pre-published self along with what they wished they'd known before they published their first book. But this is not the end! I will continue featuring published author wisdom in this space in 2022!!

Author and literary agent Tina Schwartz joins us this month. I first met Tina as a fellow author, long before she began her agenting career, but back when she was negotiating her own book contracts. I'm guessing a number of my blog readers pitched their work to Tina at the UW-Madison Writers' Institute through the years. (Indeed, that's how I ended up joining Tina's literary agency as a client myself!)  

ABOUT TINA... Continue Reading

When I began my professional writing journey about thirteen years ago, I really didn’t know any other writers or publishing industry folks. Indeed, I wrote rather in secret that first year before attending my first writing conference, the University of Wisconsin Writers’ Institute. I’ve previously talked about how that conference changed my writing world—allowing me to find “my people” for the first time. I’m still connected with so many of those fine writers today, which is especially important now that the conference (along with the entire UW Continuing Studies writing program) is no more. I penned an ode to this conference here. But that conference was just the beginning of building a writing... Continue Reading