Space City Scribes

 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, ...

By Margaret Lea Mel considers himself “a five-year-old at heart,” which drew him to picture books. But before picture books, he spent over 30 years as a scientist and professor of microbiology, and many years as a jazz singer and saxophonist. Over the past eight years, Mel has focused on honing his writing skills and establishing his presence in the literary world. He has attended conferences, self-published numerous books, and successfully pitched a children’s literature podcast. For the past two years, he has interviewed authors, agents, illustrators, publishers, and librarians on the New Books Network’s Children’s Literature Channel. You can access the podcast directly through his website authormel.com or through wherever you listen to podcasts.       Born and raised in Ottawa, Canada, Mel moved to Israel at age 18 to escape antisemitism. Now he feels at home, despite the difficulties posed by the current war. He notes that people continue with their lives a...

  By Margaret Lea                Author Katie Keridan spent the first part of her professional life as a pediatric neuropsychologist, working with teens and young adults battling cancer. While rewarding, this wasn’t her true passion, so she eventually followed her heart, despite her fears, and transitioned into full-time fiction writing.                While Katie has enjoyed writing scientific papers, noting that academic writing also has a story arc with beginning, middle, end and specific takeaways for the readers, she loves that fiction writing enables her to be much more creative with form and language.                She finds creating worlds and characters especially fun, and would enjoy hanging out in real life with her two protagonists, Kyra and Sebastian, if that was possible. As a neurodivergent individual, she strives to create character...