When you can’t keep up with all the new experiences in your life, it’s overwhelming, even when the experiences are good. 2023 was a year of acceleration--after the Pandemic, everyone seemed to be making up for lost time. We decided to take trains to an environmental conference instead of a quick plane trip. I’m going to be writing about this epic journey until I “use up” all this fresh inspiration. Come along and enjoy the ride! For me, slowing down is usually the fastest way to move forward.

The first student review for Trouble With Parsnips--a funny, fairy tale adventure for ages 9 to 12--comes from an amazing student in Japan.

In January, we had heavy winds for this area. They were impressive, but I think winds are much stronger in other, drier parts of the world. The trees here

Day 1 in our quest to get to a conference on the environment without breaking the environment.

Visit the rainforest, take a side-trip to the African savanna, or enjoy a snack in the beautiful garden!

I love living in Germany and sometimes I really need to find a book in English. I’ve decided to make a list of my favorite bookstores that offer English

My family and I visited the German Emigration Museum in northern Germany. The museum is in Bremerhaven, literally “Bremen’s harbor”, so there are ships, a

The Seven Kingdoms is getting all dressed up! New covers, new chapter header illustrations, and an inviting new paperback and hardcover size that fits

Every year on October 3, Germany celebrates the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, (literally, the “Day of German Unity.”) It’s the day when East and West Germany

Interior files for print books need to have embedded fonts, flattened files, and be saved in a print quality PDF format. Here’s how to address the print quality PDF challenge with your Mac and LibreOffice. You’re welcome!

On a recent trip to Cologne, I was surprised by this machine in the Neumarkt underground station. It lets library patrons check out and return mysteries and

Every year on October 3, Germany celebrates the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, (literally, the “Day of German Unity.”) It’s the day when East and West Germany

This huge fortress houses several museums and restaurants and a Youth Hostel, in case the family wants to try sleeping inside a fortress!

Thick as Thieves came out in 2017 (Yay! I read it twice in a row!) and I’ve been enjoying re-reading Megan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief series. She’s

On this hike, we walked for five or six hours and I got buckets of new ideas about the Fairy Kingdom. I think fairies could fit anywhere in the world and I’d

What’s the simplest solution?

The summer the first Seven Kingdoms Fairy tale came out, my brand-new middle grade book, TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS, took up the vegetable portion of my brain (I

When my older brother and I were 8 or 10 or 12 years old, Mom would turn off the Olympic Games because we got so down in the dumps about how little we had

Burg Rheinfels is the next stop in our Tour of the Seven Kingdoms! The Saffron Kingdom!

1. Did you ever have a reading buddy? If so, what did you like about it?Absolutely! My first reading buddy was my mom. We read together every night, and I

Multiplication tables for kids: How can you help your kids build fortress-strong skills? Are you looking for ways to encourage kids who are learning their times tables? Did you know that moving helps kids learn multiplication? These tips and a really fun video about the dreaded SEVENS times table popped up while I was researching for a magical adventure for kids ages 9 to 12: Under Pressure With a Squash: The Multiplication Problem. . .

The itinerary included the most important and accessible places in the story:

Writing jitters mean that what you are writing is making you nervous or uncertain. Jitters go away when you move to let the energy out. Then you can come back to your project, refreshed, and start again.

Years ago, when Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi published The Emotion Thesaurus, I scoffed. That would make everyone’s books sound the same, right? Wrong! Their newest book: The Conflict Thesaurus proves me wrong yet again and my work-in-progress is loving it.

How do you solve puzzles? Do you do the “easy ones” first? Working on my newest story this morning, it felt just like a crossword puzzle. Feel like cracking out your pen or pencil? Here’s a crossword puzzle for ages 9 to 12 based on the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales. Enjoy!