Space City Scribes

By  Margaret Lea    Adam Blackman, like many children's writers, began by making up stories for and with his young son. A specific incident about ten years ago further propelled Adam into the KidLit space. His Kindergartener son picked out pink, light-up, sparkly rhinestone shoes, but when he wore them to school, even in his progressive Brooklyn, NY neighborhood, several kids asked him why he was wearing “girly” shoes. Adam realized that KidLit was the perfect place to let kids know that everyone should have the freedom to express themselves and not be judged for it.        Adam has an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and worked as a non-profit bookstore manager for seven years. He began engaging with the KidLit community on Twitter after his son’s shoe incident, and he made connections there that led him to writers, agents, editors, mentors and critique groups. Adam stresses that community and networking, especially through SCBWI, can ...

 By Margaret Lea The longest work meeting in the history of the world (at least it felt that way to Kacy Ritter) was when, as a behavioral health professional, she glanced at her phone and saw “Deal Memo” from her literary agent. When the meeting finally ended, she opened the email and confirmed— Yes, she got a book deal... from HarperCollins!  This debut Middle Grade, THE GREAT TEXAS DRAGON RACE, was not her first novel. Previously, she worked three years on a not-to-be-named-here, self-proclaimed “horrible” YA work. After crickets querying the first novel, she attended a conference put on by Andrea Brown Literary Agency. There she discovered flaws in her first novel— the biggest being that it was not unique but too similar to other published works. She decided to start over with a new project. When finished, she queried this new novel for only three months before receiving two offers of representation. One agent loved the book as is. The other gave many editorial comments, ...