I wanted to take a moment to welcome a new writer to the M&O family: welcome aboard Suzanne Warr (http://www.suzannewarr.com./)!!!

Suzanne caught my eye with a funny, middle grade adventure story about ninja chickens---honestly, she had me at ninja chickens (love!) and when I could see how talented of a writer she was on top of that it was a no brainer. Yay!

Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying Summer so far and keeping cool.

Check out Adventures in YA & Children's Publishing's feature: Seven Agents Talk About the Most Common Submission Mistakes where I am one of the agents giving insight.

It's a wonderful blog that has many great articles and resources for writers. I'd recommend following them!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

First off, Agent Tips: From Querying to Accepting an Offer is now up on the blog. Check it out! I plan on doing more "Tips" articles like these from time to time. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Second, congratultions to Ed Young and Barbara DaCosta--Nighttime Ninja (Little, Brown, 2012) won The Children's Choice Book Award for Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year!!

Here's a list of winners: http://www.cbcbooks.org/sub-news.php?id=1005#.UZJWn76045x.twitter

Ed accepting the award: http://instagram.com/p/ZRUlw3RvrQ/#

Lastly, I had answered one of the questions from my first post, but thought I'd showcase it here for those who are interested:

Hi everyone! Thanks for your questions. I'm seeing many of you are asking about MG and the difference between it and YA-both tone-wise and theme-wise.

Think of YA as a PG-13 movie and MG as a PG movie. For middle-grade there's rarely any swearing, if so it's very minimal, no sex, minimal violence (of course there will be action scenes and people can die, but there wouldn't be any graphic description of the violence or blood/gore). There is darker MG, but it'd perhaps be more creepy or eerie than terrifying/distrubing. MG is generally age 8-11, so these are young children.

To answer GKByrne, 13-15 is in the YA age range. I wouldn't consider that MG, although something for 12-13 is on the cusp so that could have cross-over appeal. Middle grade romance is usually more "puppy love"--they sit together at lunch or hold hands once, maybe a kiss on the cheek, but it's generally very "tame." 

I wanted to take a quick moment to welcome three wonderfully talented ladies to the M&O family:

Jamie Gehin
Hilary Harwell
Rachel Pudelek

So excited to be working with you!

Welcome to the first ever Neverending Stories blog post!

This blog is the place to get information on conferences I'll be attending/events to meet me at and contests I'm judging as well as what I'm currently looking for, and interview/question sessions with my clients. 

I plan on doing the occasional post where I'll cover topics such as querying, finding the right agent, creating engaging first pages, tips on revising, social media presence etc. 

I also will give you the opportunity to ask me questions directly and make suggestions for topics you'd like to see me cover. I'd really like this to be a fun, interactive place for writers!

On the sidelines, is a post with tips on querying Agents. I look forward to sharing that with you soon!

In honor of the first post, I'd love to hear from you: What's a topic within children's publishing you'd like to see me cover?