Middle Grade Ninja

Andrew Nehring and I discuss how he learned to improve as a reader and a writer with the aid of an inspiring teacher who helped him manage his dyslexia. And we chat about the publication of his multiple novels, including his newest, DAVID MASSIE AND THE HIDDEN UNDERWORLD. We talk about Skyrim and Elden Ring and also books, as well as tips for plotting around your antagonist, planning and writing a long series, working with Books Forward for publicity, my George R.R. Martin conspiracy theory, ghost stories, and so much more.

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Buy DAVID MASSIE AND THE HIDDEN UNDERWORLD by Andrew Nehring: https://amzn.to/3JkUJOL 

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2  

Andrew M. Nehring is the author of the Corrupted Light Chronicles and David Massie. Growing up he was always a very imaginative child who would tend to get lost in these worlds he created for himself. That passion for creativity never stopped, but grew as he got older. The idea for the Corrupted Light Chronicles was born out of world he created in his head, as well as the development of the world around him.   Andrew has finished his business degree from Northeastern University in the beautiful Windy City. When he is not writing, you will catch him in the ceramic’s studio, working out, or playing video games.  He is now writing full time once he has finished and move on into other facets of the entertainment industry.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/  

https://www.andrewmnehring.com/

Lucienne Diver and I talk about how she separates the writer part of herself from the part that’s a literary agent and why it’s important to do so. We discuss her novel, DISAPPEARED, the current state of publishing and how she’s sustained a successful career in it, what compels her to suspense fiction, ways of appreciating other writers without getting intimidated, the Knight literary agency, a haunted experience, the Salem witch trials, and so much more.

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Buy DISAPPEARED by A. Lucienne Diver: https://amzn.to/3vsL03L

Buy ALL TOGETHER NOW: A ZOMBIE STORY by Robert Kent: https://amzn.to/2JjsnpH

Lucienne Diver joined TKA in 2008, after spending fifteen years at New York City’s prestigious Spectrum Literary Agency. With her sharp eye and gift for spotting original new voices, Lucienne is one of the most well-respected agents in the industry. A lifelong book addict, she graduated summa cum laude from the State University of New York at Potsdam with dual majors in English/writing and anthropology. She thus came well-equipped for her work as an agent.  Over the course of her dynamic career she has sold over seven hundred titles to every major publisher, and has built a client list of more than forty authors spanning the commercial fiction genres, primarily in the areas of fantasy, science fiction, romance, romantica, suspense and young adult. Her authors have been honored with the RITA, National Readers’ Choice, Hugo, and Romantic Times Reader’s Choice Awards, and have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. A publishing veteran, Lucienne has superb industry knowledge, numerous editor relationships, and a keen understanding of the foreign rights market. She is a member of the Association of Authors Representatives, RWA, MWA and SFWA.  Lucienne Diver is the author of the Vamped young adult series—think Clueless meets Buffy—and the Latter-Day Olympians urban fantasy series, which Long and Short Reviews calls “a clever mix of Janet Evanovich and Rick Riordan”. Her favorite pull quote ever!  Her short stories have appeared in the KICKING IT anthology edited by Faith Hunter and Kalayna Price (Roc Books), the STRIP-MAULED and FANGS FOR THE MAMMARIES anthologies edited by Esther Friesner (Baen Books), and Faith Hunter’s Rogue Mage anthology, TRIBULATIONS (Lore Seekers Press). Her essay “Abuse” was published in DEAR BULLY: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperCollins).  Bella Rosa Books released her first two young adult suspense novels, FAULTLINES and THE COUNTDOWN CLUB, and she’s looking forward to the 2020 release from WordFire Press of her latest YA suspense, DISAPPEARED, wherein two teens struggle with the story their father tells about their mother’s disappearance versus their fears and mounting evidence.  On a personal note, Lucienne lives in Florida with her husband and daughter, the two cutest dogs in the world, and enough books to some day collapse the second floor of her home into the first. She likes living dangerously.

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/

http://www.luciennediver.com/

https://knightagency.net/

Mat Heagerty, Sam Owen, and I discuss the process for their collaboration on their new graphic novel, LUMBERJACKULA. We talk about scripting and paneling, how they make creative suggestions for revision without overstepping, and how publishing with a larger traditional publisher differs from a small, independent press. We also discuss how they got their start in comics, how to encourage children without pressuring them, some favorite graphic novels, a haunted storeroom, Garfield as a Dune character, and so much more. 

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Buy LUMBERJACKULA by Mat Heagerty and Sam Owen: https://amzn.to/3NZSJMH 

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2  

Mat Heagerty is a comic book writer, rad dad, and all around chipper dude living in Boise, ID. Mat’s dyslexic, and struggled a bunch in school, but now he writes rad comics like 'Lumberjackula' (Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers), ‘Martian Ghost Centaur' (Oni Press ), ‘Unplugged and Unpopular' (Oni Press) and the forthcoming graphic novels... 'Jaywalker' (Oni Press 2022), and 'Indoor Kid' (Oni Press 2023).   Sam Owen is a freelance comic artist and character designer with a focus on making fantasy and science-fiction art geared towards young adults and kids. He’s also the artist for Lumberjackula, a middle-grade graphic novel coming July 2022 from Simon Kids.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/ 

http://www.matheagerty.com/ 

Lakita Wilson and I discuss how winning the 2017 SCBWI Emerging Voices Award and running a popular Instagram page set her on a path for publishing success as well as the launch of her newest novel, BE REAL, MACY WEAVER.  We mock James Patterson and talk about the current state of diversity in traditional publishing. She reveals her experiences with Root Literary, how teaching inspires her writing, how to write about racism in historical fiction for young readers that might just aid them in thinking critically, why that’s a good and necessary thing, her lifelong fear of dead celebrities, and so much more.  

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Buy BE REAL, MACY WEAVER by Lakita Wilson: https://amzn.to/3NTuWOi 

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2  

Lakita Wilson is the author of several novels and non-fiction projects for children and young adults, including What Is Black Lives Matter?, a part of the New York Times Bestselling HQ Now series; Be Real, Macy Weaver, a coming of age middle grade friendship story; and a few other secret projects she isn’t allowed to tell you about yet. Lakita was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland. A 2017 recipient of SCBWI’s Emerging Voices Award, Lakita received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is currently on faculty at Prince George’s Community College in the Education Department. Lakita lives in Prince George’s County, Maryland with her two children and Shih-Tzu.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/ 

https://lakitawilson.com/

Linda Epstein and I talk about her lifelong desire to be a writer and her journey from being a nurse to an unpaid intern for two years before becoming a literary agent and at long last arriving at the publication of her debut novel, REPAIRING THE WORLD. We also discuss the Emerald City Literary Agency, what a film and television rights agent does, how a literary agent seeks a literary agent, learning and teaching creative writing while being a literary agent, book promotion and launch strategies, grieving, empathy, self-publishing, and so much more.  

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Buy REPAIRING THE WORLD by Linda Epstein: https://amzn.to/3y1Psq5 

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2  

Linda Epstein lives in upstate New York. She writes fiction for children, teens, and adults, and poetry for adults. Linda has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from The New School and is also a literary agent at Emerald City Literary Agency. Her debut middle grade novel, Repairing the World (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster), will be on bookshelves in the summer of 2022. Find Linda online at lindaepsteinauthor.com, on Twitter @LindaEpstein and @lindaepsteinauthor on Instagram.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/  

https://lindaepsteinauthor.com/  

https://emeraldcityliterary.com/ 

Zetta Ellicott and I chat about her bestselling middle grade series, DRAGONS IN A BAG, and lessons learned writing more than 40 books for children (so far). We talk about how she envisions her success with a vision board and how she trains in puppetry, film, and other art forms to ensure she’s using all the parts of her brain. We discuss the importance of mirror books, how she learned to decentralize whiteness and decolonize her imagination, how she uses rage as fuel while remaining hopeful, why she’s going to Virginia where a book of hers has been banned, a mysterious ghost in a top hat, a possible flying saucer sighting, and so much more.  

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Buy DRAGONS IN A BAG by Zetta Elliott: https://amzn.to/3y89a4V 

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2 

Zetta Elliott is a Black feminist writer of poetry, plays, essays, novels, and stories for children. She was born and raised in Canada, but has lived in the US for over 25 years. She earned her PhD in American Studies from NYU in 2003; she has taught at Ohio University, Louisiana State University, Mount Holyoke College, Hunter College, Bard High School Early College, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her poetry has been published in New Daughters of Africa, We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, the Cave Canem anthology The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Check the Rhyme: an Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees, and Coloring Book: an Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by Multicultural Writers. Her novella, Plastique, was excerpted in T Dot Griots: an Anthology of Toronto’s Black Storytellers, and her plays have been staged in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago. Her essays have appeared in School Library Journal, The Huffington Post, and Publishers Weekly. Her picture book, Bird, won the Honor Award in Lee & Low Books’ New Voices Contest and the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers. Her young adult novel, A Wish After Midnight, has been called “a revelation…vivid, violent and impressive history.” Ship of Souls was published in February 2012; it was named a Booklist Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Title for Youth and was a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. Her YA novel, The Door at the Crossroads, was a finalist in the Speculative Fiction category of the 2017 Cybils Awards, and her picture book, Melena’s Jubilee, won a 2017 Skipping Stones Honor Award. She received the Children’s Literature Association’s Article Award for her 2014 essay, “The Trouble with Magic: Conjuring the Past in New York City Parks.” She is an advocate for greater diversity and equity in publishing, and has self-published numerous illustrated books for younger readers under her own imprint, Rosetta Press; 3 were named Best of the Year by the Bank Street Center for Children’s Literature, and Benny Doesn’t Like to Be Hugged was a first-grade fiction selection for the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Dragons in a Bag, a middle grade fantasy novel, was published by Random House in 2018; the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) named it a Notable Children’s Book. Its sequel, The Dragon Thief, was named a Best Middle Grade Book of 2019 by CBC Books. Say Her Name, a young adult poetry collection, was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in January 2020; A Place Inside of Me was published in July 2020 by FSG and was named a Notable Poetry Book by NCTE. She currently lives in Evanston, IL.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/

https://www.zettaelliott.com/

Aisha Saeed and I discuss her career and her newest middle grade novel OMAR RISING, a companion novel to AMAL UNBOUND. We chat about the difficulty she had submitting to traditional publishers and how that led her to seek out other diverse authors and the founding of WE NEED DIVERSE BOOKS, which is a movement that gives us hope even when the world seems disparaging at times. We also talk about the pressure of writing about Wonder Woman in DIANA AND THE ISLAND OF NO RETURN, advocating for children in education and as a writer, Unsolved Mysteries, flying saucers, and so much more. 

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Buy OMAR RISING by Aisha Saeed: https://amzn.to/3bcufCl

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2

Aisha Saeed is an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of books for children. Her books, including the middle grade novel Amal Unbound (Penguin), the young adult novel Yes No Maybe So (co-written with Becky Albertalli), and the anthology Once Upon Eid (co-edited with S.K. Ali) received multiple starred reviews. Amal Unbound was selected as a Global Read Aloud for 2018 and was the winner of the South Asian book award. Her picture book, Bilal Cooks Daal (Simon and Schuster) received an APALA honor. Aisha is also a founding member of the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books™.  She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her family. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram via @aishacs.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/

https://aishasaeed.com/

Hilde Lysiak and I chat about her new memoir, HILDE ON THE RECORD. As she’s just now 15 years old, presumably it’s the first of many, though she’s already led a very interesting life that’s the subject of the Apple TV series, HOME BEFORE DARK. We talk about how Hilde started her first newspaper at age 7, investigated a local murder at age 9, signed a deal for a 4-book series at age 10, won the Zenger Award for Press Freedom at age 12, and became the youngest person in U.S. history to deliver a commencement speech for the graduating class of West Virginia University’s Reed School of Media. We also discuss ghosts, naturally.

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Buy HILDE ON THE RECORD by Hilde Kate Lysiak: https://amzn.to/3HjTqil 

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2  

Hilde Kate Lysiak, American journalist and founder of the Orange Street News, has been profiled by the New York Times,  NBC Today and The Washington Post. She’s interviewed former First Lady Michelle Obama for The National and is the inspiration behind AppleTV+ mystery series Home Before Dark.  Oh yes…and she’s only 15. Hilde has brazenly shared news stories with the world since she was only seven, and now she’s putting the spotlight on herself in a poignant, coming-of-age story Hilde on the Record: Memoir of a Kid Crime Reporter (Apr 19, 2022; Chicago Review Press). Appealing to tweens, teens and aspiring young journalists, Hilde's story may also intrigue those familiar with her father Matthew Lysiak, best known for his investigative reporting for the New York Daily News and comprehensive account of the Sandy Hook tragedy, Newtown: An American Tragedy. 2022 marks ten years since the horrific event. 

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/ 

https://orangestreetnews.com/  

Kristin Ostby and I discuss how she grew up a reader and daughter of a librarian who went on to edit for Penguin Random House and rose to become a senior editor at Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers before becoming a literary agent with Greenhouse Literary. We talk about why she made that change, the types of projects she’s looking for, how writers and agents can make an editor’s job easier, how to grab an agent’s attention, how she evaluates authors on social media and over Zoom calls, her communication style, using humor as a crucial tool in dramatic fiction, writing for the official Mad Libs, and so much more. 

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Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2 

Kristin Ostby represents authors of middle grade and young adult fiction, as well as picture book author/illustrators. She is primarily seeking voicey, character-driven middle-grade as well as literary and contemporary young adult fiction. In particular, she is looking for stories with unabashedly intersectional overtones. As the daughter of a librarian and a businessperson, it’s really no wonder Kristin wound up in the book business. Kristin moved from Michigan to New York to begin her life in publishing at Penguin Random House and rose to become a senior editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. In her sixteen years as a children’s book editor, Kristin had the joy and pleasure of editing children’s book legend Tomie dePaola; New York Times bestselling authors like Stuart Gibbs (Spy School) and US soccer star Alex Morgan (The Kicks); and award-winning creators including Daniel Miyares (Float), Jessica Lawson (Nooks & Crannies), and Heather Vogel Frederick (The Mother-Daughter Book Club). She also edited the mainstay bestseller I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy and Elizabeth Baddeley. Kristin loves guiding authors and illustrators toward their best work and advocating for them in service of building successful, sustainable artistic careers. Kristin lives in Brooklyn, New York.  

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/  

https://kristinostbyeditorial.com/  

https://www.greenhouseliterary.com/  

Lindsay Eager and I have an in-depth discussion about writing and publishing and her newest middle grade novel, THE PATRON THIEF OF BREAD. We talk about her time working as an intern for a literary agent, leaving one literary agent for another, how she wrote about a protagonist of a different ethnicity than her own in HOUR OF THE BEES (and why she’s not interested in doing it again), how she committed to writing, getting away with a lengthier wordcount in middle grade, getting over a fear of ghosts, and so much more. NOTE: During our discussion, the sound occasionally dropped out of our connection, so I’ve edited around those dead spots while preserving most of what was said.

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Buy THE PATRON THIEF OF BREAD by Lindsay Eager: https://amzn.to/3kU6Abc

Download BANNEKER BONES AND THE GIANT ROBOT BEES for free: https://amzn.to/2XyTyG2

Lindsay Eagar lives in the mountains of Utah with her husband and young daughters. She has a BA in English from UVU and is now working towards her BS in History. Lindsay is a classically trained pianist and an un-classically trained rock guitarist.

http://www.middlegradeninja.com/

http://lindsayeagarbooks.com/