Songwriters have a saying which goes, basically, that you know when a song is good because you’re sure you’ve heard it before. That’s how I felt sometimes reading Alan Gratz’s League of Seven and its recently released sequel, The Dragon Lantern. It’s not that Gratz’s work isn’t original—far from it: it would be hard to […]
On Monday, August 3, we celebrated the launch of Tales of a Fifth Grade Knight at the Funkatorium in downtown Asheville, and I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who came for their support. If you haven’t already seen the pictures from the event on Facebook, here are a few of my […]
It’s hard to find books that will entertain and enlighten, but “The Secret Science Alliance” does both very well. First of all, of course, it’s an engaging read, with idiosyncratic artwork the equal of any YA or Juvenile graphic novel available today–and not because of gore or bathroom humor, either, but because the bright, detailed […]
Living in Asheville, I have the great good luck to live in a sort of cultural hub for western North Carolina. One of the things that makes it a hub is the Mountain Xpress, Asheville’s independent weekly, which I get to write articles for on occasion. Another thing is the fact that a slew of […]
An entire novel about Lois Lane in which Superman doesn’t make (much of) an appearance? Great idea, huh? And In Lois Lane: Fallout, Gwenda Bond has provided a genius execution of this idea, in the first of what looks likely to be a series from Switch Press. Much of the social media buzz about this […]
So here’s the story of how I got published In December 2013, I sent the first three chapters of Knight to an editor at Capstone Young Readers as a writing sample, attached to a letter asking if Capstone had any book projects they were hiring writers for. Before I could send the sample, though, I […]
