Writing

I was raised to not toot my own horn, which is hard when promoting a book, since, you know, that’s basically all horn-tooting.  So sharing positive reviews sometimes feels a bit like [...]

Thank you, Reese’s Reviews, for taking the time to read and review THE SECRET SIDE OF EMPTY! Here’s a snippet from the review, ‘Wow! When I got asked to review The Secret Side [...]

Here’s how Shooting Star Magazine’s review of THE SECRET SIDE OF EMPTY begins, “If you live in the United States, you have probably heard a lot about illegal immigrants. Maybe [...]

If you’ve had a baby or a wedding, do you remember the weeks after The Big Event?  When the presents had all been put away, the thank you cards written and all that was left was… [...]

It was such fun to participate in the Teen Author Panel at the Los Angeles Public Library Playa Vista branch.  First, Playa Vista, as something of a new community, is just absolutely gorgeous. [...]

Perhaps the best part of traveling somewhere new (and I know it’s hardly adventurous to go to another city in one’s own country and call that travel as if I’d visited remote [...]

Today I got one of the most touching reviews yet. It begins, “I won’t be surprised if The Secret Side of Empty wins a bunch of awards. Because, yep, it’s that good.” The [...]

An brief open letter to March 13th: Snowflakes, March 13th? Does that seem like the way a day that occupies the spot one week before the start of spring should be behaving? Well, let me tell you, [...]

Maria E. Andreu is the author of the Love in English (Balzer + Bray, 2021) as well as Julieta and the Romeos, (B+B, 2023) . Her work has appeared in Newsweek, The Washington Post, NJ.com, and the [...]

I am thrilled to announce that I’ve been asked to participate in the first-ever Hillsborough New Jersey Book Festival on Saturday, May 17th from 10 am to 3 pm.  Exciting! I will update the [...]

One of today’s reviews is at Tales of the Marvelous, where the blogger quotes L. Frank Baum in her right rail, “”Since I can remember, my eyes have always grown big at tales of [...]

Just a reminder that I will be on a panel in Los Angeles at the L.A. Public Library this coming Saturday.  If you’re in the area I’d love to meet you!  Click here for details. For [...]

Yesterday, dazed New Yorkers stumbled out of their gray caverns and wondered why their scarves and polar-quality mittens were suddenly so itchy.  Those of us in the suburbs wandered outside, [...]

I am honored to be part of an amazing community of young adult writers debuting their novels in 2014 (like I am!).  We call ourselves the OneFours and we spend lots of time on a list-serve [...]

Blog posts to promote books can take on many forms.  Sometimes bloggers give you a Q&A, other times they post a review of your book.  Sometimes they allow you to do what’s called a [...]

If you don’t yet have your copy of THE SECRET SIDE OF EMPTY, (gasp… why not?), you can enter to win one right now!  Open only until Thursday, this will probably be my last Goodreads [...]

I spent my book birthday eve last night at The New School in Manhattan being interviewed by a class full of writers. They asked interesting questions and will be writing pieces about the evening [...]

I am so happy to watch the reviews coming in and I particularly enjoyed this one on the blog Agster Thoughts.  The writer, Agata, shares her unique perspective of reading the novel as a fellow [...]

One of the cool things about being a new writer today is that you don’t have to travel to 20 cities to let potential readers know about your book.  A big thing in book promotion are [...]

My brain does this funny thing sometimes.   When I’m thinking  of something, my mind will offer up a song to go with it.  I will find myself randomly humming something to myself and wonder, [...]

I love book bloggers, have I mentioned?  They’re out there in the world talking about books just because they love them.  How awesome is that? It’s a lot of work to read books and [...]

This morning I woke up sluggish and I didn’t understand why.  I checked my phone and it said 8:00 a.m., around the time I usually wake up on a weekend, and definitely too late to feel that [...]

Yesterday it went up into the 60-degree range for the first time since about 1997. I took the opportunity to go nose around in my garden. While this may look like a garden only a mother could [...]

Last night I did probably one of the awesomest things I’ve done in my writing life so far: I went to my kids’ middle school and got interviewed by the principal in front of about 50 [...]

Here’s a tip from me to you.  Should you happen to buy a waver, one of those three-barreled curling irons that gives your hair wave instead of spiral curls, and should you find yourself so [...]

My mother is something of a luddite.  To put it in perspective, she got her first email address about a year ago.  Even when I was a kid, she was the throw-up-your-hands-at-this-machine, [...]

There are already used copies of my as-yet unreleased book available for sale on Amazon.  Ummm… what?  I mean, I know that Amazon started shipping a few days ago, but… what? The book [...]

It’s not that I was expecting that Amazon would name my debut YA novel a “Hot New Release in Teen and Young Adult Books,” since today marks ONE WEEK until its official pub date. [...]

I usually sit in an office.  Don’t get me wrong – I am very grateful for my job.  But from time to time it lacks a certain pizzazz.  And for a  pizzazzy woman like me, well, you know. [...]

When I was a teenager, IDs still were laminated pieces of paper, devoid of all the holograms and barcodes that make today’s harder to copy.  Times Square was also the wild west, full of [...]