"Little Dead Riding Hood" by Amie and Bethanie Borst

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for having us here. *Waves!* We're still on cloud nine after all the excitement of our release of LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD yesterday.

You know things are going to suck when you’re the new kid. But when you’re the new kid and a vampire… well, it bites! Unlike most kids, Scarlet Small’s problems go far beyond just trying to fit in. She would settle for a normal life, but being twelve years old for an entire century is a real pain in the neck. Plus, her appetite for security guards, house pets and bloody toms (tomato juice) is out of control. So in order to keep their vampire-secret, her parents, Mort and Drac, resort to moving for the hundredth time, despite Scarlet being dead-set against it. Things couldn’t be worse at her new school, either. Not only does she have a strange skeleton-girl as a classmate, but a smelly werewolf is intent on revealing her secret. When she meets Granny—who fills her with cookies, goodies, and treats, and seems to understand her more than anyone—she’s sure things will be different. But with a fork-stabbing incident, a cherry pie massacre, and a town full of crazy people, Scarlet’s O-positive she’ll never live to see another undead day. Not even her Vampire Rule Book can save her from the mess she’s in. Why can’t she ever just follow the rules?

Add Little Dead Riding Hood to your Goodreads to-read list here.  Purchase LDRH at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite Indie bookstore!

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Today we'd like to tell you a bit about our plotting process. It's really not unlike the process most authors use. At least I don't think so. The only exception is that there are two of us tackling the project, not just one.

Plotting for us entails the use of:

• Markers
• Posterboard
• Scissors
• Post-it notes in multiple colors

Then we complete the following steps:

1. The first thing we do is we create an arc on our posterboard, kind of like an upside "U", to symbolically represent the story arc. We then label the top of the posterboard with the working title of the book.
2. Next, we create a key with our post-it notes across the bottom of the posterboard. The categories are typically, MC (main character), World Building, Plot, Theme, and Inciting Incident, to name a few.
3. We cut our post it notes in half, and while maintaining our color scheme to match our key, begin to fill out the strips of post-it notes. So, for example, if I'm using pink notes to represent the MC, I will write all my notes about the MC on pink strips of post-it notes. We will include anything and everything about our MC, from her favorite color, to her favorite food, to her worst moment, her fears, and her motivations. This helps us as we plot even more of the story because we can refer back to those notes.
4. After we've filled out as much information as we can, we put our notes on our posterboard/storyboard.
5. We continue to do this for every category until our posterboard somewhat resembles the vomit of a my little pony. Hey, no one ever said plotting was pretty!

Once plotting is complete, the real work begins. Writing!

About us:

Amie Borst is a PAL member of SCBWI. She believes in Unicorns, uses glitter whenever the opportunity arises, accessories in pink and eats too much chocolate. 

Bethanie Borst is a spunky 14 year old who loves archery, long bike rides and studying edible plant-life. She was only 9 when she came up with the idea for Cinderskella!

Little Dead Riding Hood is their second book in the Scarily Ever Laughter series. Their first book, Cinderskella, released in October 2013.

You can find them on facebook. Amie can be found on twitter, pinterest, and her blog.  

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We're having two great giveaways as part of our blog tour! The first is for a copy of LITTLE DEAD RIDING HOOD! So be sure to enter the giveaway by following the steps on the rafflecopter form below. 

THEN - as soon as you finish that, be sure to stop by my blog for a second contest! I'm having a SCAVENGER HUNT that you won't want to miss with lots of extra great prizes! All you have to do is make sure you enter the contest below first, then hop over to my blog and fill out the rafflecopter form there! Super easy!

See you soon! 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Note: It's been great having Amie share a bit about her and Bethany's writing process for "Little Dead Riding Hood."  I will be reviewing the book as soon as I find a bit of that ever-elusive spare time, and, once I've posted my review over on Amazon and Goodreads, I will tack it on to this post as well, so check back in a couple of weeks!

Emma Walton Hamilton's Just Write for Middle Grade course

picture from the Just Write for Middle Grade site

I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to take Emma Walton Hamilton's Just Write for Middle Grade course. Just Write for Middle Grade is a 14-week home-study course in writing Chapter Books and Middle Grade novels for ‘tween and pre-teen readers.

About the course (from the website):

"The Just Write courses are fun, focused and comprehensive. No fluff, no busywork – just extraordinary instruction and insight from a professional author, editor and coach who is totally plugged in to the contemporary children’s book scene and dedicated to the craft of writing for young people.

Of course, there are a lot of writing courses out there… some of them very worthy. But many are prohibitively expensive, others are outdated or feature less-than-impressive content, and some are way too complicated.

Emma’s Just Write Children’s Books courses are simple, authoritative and affordable.

Enroll in any one of the courses and you will learn the fundamental aspects of writing for children, pre-teens or young adults, including:

• Understanding the differences between chapter books, middle grade and young adult fiction
• How and where to find ideas
• Developing engaging and authentic characters
• Mapping a plot and identifying themes
• Writing evocative narrative, effective dialogue, and successful beginnings, middles and endings
• Special issues such as anthropomorphism, verse vs. prose and word play
• The keys to world-building
• Crafting compelling scenes and chapters
• Managing sub-plots and secondary characters
• How to edit your manuscript and more!"

 Please understand that I came to this course as someone who has been studying and researching all about chapter book and middle grade book writing for years already, so I already had a lot of foreknowledge about the subject.

Even with all of my pre-knowledge, I still managed to learn from the course and I found that Emma's course helped me to focus more clearly on where I was going with my story. At every stage of my writing, there were topics in the course to help me and remind me of the things I needed to keep in mind while writing.

It also helped me to admit that my story needed more work because it was not really chapter book material but, rather, with its slightly more complex storyline and subtle sub-plots, it needed to be expanded into a middle grade book. (On some level, I already knew this, but I was feeling lazy about re-writing the story. Emma's course helped me to admit what I needed to do.)

Included in the course are some terrific worksheets to help you work out your plot structure, character development and more. I had a little difficulty with saving them after filling them in (as my computer was new at the time and didn't include the right programs for saving after adding to pdf files), which meant I was unable to e-mail them to Emma for the certificate. (I'm still working on that.) But I still found the worksheets helpful.

I confess that I am a reluctant editor. I love the creating part of writing a nestory, but I balk and procrastinate when it comes to editing and revising a story and shaping it into something worth publishing. The section on editing helped me keep several key parts of the editing process in mind as I went through my story which helped to make it stronger.

I highly recommend Emma's Just Write for Middle Grade course for anyone wanting to write for the 7 to 12 year old age group.