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Season 8, Episode 3: Award Winning Author Julie Sternberg

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This week we to talk Julie Sternberg, a middle grade author living in Brooklyn who writes charming stories about everyday kids.

Julie is the author of the best-selling LIKE PICKLE JUICE ON A COOKIE; its sequels LIKE BUG JUICE ON A BURGER and LIKE CARROT JUICE ON A CUPCAKE; THE TOP-SECRET DIARY OF CELIE VALENTINE series; and the picture book BEDTIME AT BESSIE AND LIL’S. 

Her books have received many accolades, including: LIKE PICKLE JUICE ON A COOKIE is a Gryphon Award winner and a Texas Bluebonnet Award finalist; LIKE BUG JUICE ON A BURGER is a Gryphon Honor Book, a Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards Nominee, and an Illinois Monarch Award Finalist; and LIKE CARROT JUICE ON A CUPCAKE was named An Amazon Best Book of 2014 for kids ages 6-8.  The JUICE series as a whole has been named to the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books’ Stellar Series List.

Before becoming a writer, Julie worked as a public interest lawyer.  She graduated from Princeton University with highest honors and holds a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

  • Julie’s middle grade novel Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie, which is book one of the JUICE series.
  • Julie’s mailing list! Join now and get “Really, You’ll Like These,” her list of ten fabulous children’s books that somehow never make it onto standard top-ten lists.
  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material.

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Season 7, Episode 6: School Visit Recap

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In this episode, we recap a school visit we did—in matching outfits—to a fourth grade class.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 7, Episode 6: School Visit Recap

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Season 7, Episode 3: Nora’s Foolscap Continued

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In this episode, Nora starts brainstorming some details to plan her story and confesses that wearing headbands makes her feel “elevated,” a feeling she shares with her protagonist.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 7, Episode 3: Nora’s Foolscap Continued

This week we brainstorm and work through some ideas in Nora’s story plotting—playing with the idea of time travel in different eras. There might be a climax that takes place in the kitchen at Hampton Court Palace!

Nora’s story planning so far:

Nora’s decided she’s writing an action story with time and space travel. Her main character (as yet unnamed) is a space fanatic and is reading a book about the moon landing, but her book disappears. She discovered her book has been erased from existence and that Martians have gone back in time to prevent the moon landing from ever happening because humans are planning to travel to Mars and are getting too close to being successful.

Here’s her Foolscap so far:

External genre: Action

External value at stake: Life and Death

Internal genre: Disillusionment

Internal value at stake: TBD

Point of View: Third person limited (will stay in head of main character)

Objects of desire: Wants her book back; want life to be exciting; wants space travel to work

Controlling idea/theme: Humans mess stuff up (tentative)

Beginning hook:

Inciting Incident: Protagonist’s book on the moon landing disappears.

Complication: It’s been erased from existence because Martians have traveled back in time to erase the moon landing

Crisis: Prog must decide whether to help against Martians

Climax: TBD

Resolution: TBD

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Season 7, Episode 2: Nora’s Foolscap – Part 1

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In this episode, Nora starts brainstorming some details to plan her story and confesses that wearing headbands makes her feel “elevated,” a feeling she shares with her protagonist.

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You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 7, Episode 2: Nora’s Foolscap

Nora’s story planning so far:

Nora’s decided she’s writing an action story with time and space travel. Her main character (as yet unnamed) is a space fanatic and is reading a book about the moon landing, but her book disappears. She discovered her book has been erased from existence and that Martians have gone back in time to prevent the moon landing from ever happening because humans are planning to travel to Mars and are getting too close to being successful.

Here’s her Foolscap so far:

External genre: Action

External value at stake: Life and Death

Internal genre: Disillusionment

Internal value at stake: TBD

Point of View: Third person limited (will stay in head of main character)

Objects of desire: Wants her book back; want life to be exciting; wants space travel to work

Controlling idea/theme: Humans mess stuff up (tentative)

Beginning hook:

Inciting Incident: Protagonist’s book on the moon landing disappears.

Complication: It’s been erased from existence because Martians have travelled back in time to erase the moon landing

Crisis: Prog must decide whether to help against Martians

Climax: TBD

Resolution: TBD

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

Season 7 Begins! Nora is writing a story!

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This season 12-year-old Nora is going to write a short story using all of the story structure principles we’ve been discussing for the past year on the podcast. We discuss how to start story planning. Follow along and write your own story!

And Not got her first haircut since second grade.

You can also listen using any number of podcast platforms and apps including Spotify, Breaker, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts.

Show Notes:

Season 7, Episode 1: Nora Starts Story Planning

Things we mention (or forget to mention) that you should check out:

  • Story Grid for all things related to the 5 Commandments.
  • More information on the four-act structure can be found at Storyfix.com.
  • Our mailing list! Sign up today and you’ll get cool subscriber only perks like bonus material.

And, don’t forget, you can now, buy, read and enjoy my book: The Cat, the Cash, the Leap & the List. (And leave a review when you’re done, pretty please.)

Disclosure: By the way, all of these links are affiliate links, so if you buy something, you pay the same, but Nora gets a few pennies for her big 8th grade trip fund.

How A Dollhouse From The Jazz Age Is Inspiring My New Novel

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I just started draft four of my newest novel.

And it’s an excellent reminder that when you sit down to do the work, the muse meets you there.

The story structure is in place and my excellent writing group composed of two pro editors confirmed it’s solid. This draft will be all about going deeper with the characters and refining the POV and backstory for each of them.

Here are the main players:

Martha Fitzgerald at 15—You may remember 10-year-old Martha from The Cat, the Cash, the Leap and the List.) She’s still Martha, she knows what she wants and is determined to get it. She wants to be a grown-up already. And an artist. But now, her hormones have kicked in and threaten to overcome her innate good sense.

It feels a bit risky to use the pre-pubescent character from my middle grade novel for this book—which is shaping up to be either young adult or just plain adult. (This will be a book for you instead of your middle graders.) But I’m respecting my initial instinct. I wanted to write a novel inspired by the movie Rushmore (directed by Wes Anderson) but with the main character as a girl who goes to Waldorf School instead of a boy who goes to an exclusive prep school. When I started imagining the story and the character, I immediately knew it was Martha.

Mateo Alano—Mateo is the new music teacher at Martha’s school, and the subject of her hormonal surge. But his intentions couldn’t be more honorable, even if he doesn’t always know the best way to deal with Martha. He plays guitar and hails from Spanish. Does any young woman stand a chance?

Evelyn Shepherd—Evelyn is a new teacher too. She teaches handwork: knitting, sewing, crochet and the like, which is an important part of the Waldorf curriculum. And she befriends Martha, who’s acting as her assistant this year. Evelyn is still very young, just twenty-five. And her professional and personal boundaries are not yet fully developed, to put it kindly. She admires and cares about Martha, and tries to keep her out of trouble, but ends up being the cause of Martha’s broken heart.

I’ve really been struggling to come up with a title for this book. But yesterday after working on Chapter 1 of the new draft, a word dropped out of the sky and straight into my head that is helping me understand Martha more and that I believe will guide this draft: Pastiche.

Martha is imitating what she thinks adults are like. And, as a budding artist, she’s imitating the style of those she admires. She needs to come into her authentic self, and her authentic age.

I’m thinking Pastiche is the title of the book. 

Which lead me into some research on art and artists for Martha imitate. 

And here’s who I found: Carrie Walter Stettheimer (1869–1944) who created an amazing replica of the Manhattan apartment she shared with her feminist sisters (one was a painter and one was a writer and they all eschewed marriage) and that served as a salon to Jazz Age luminaries like Marcel Duchamp, Carl Van Vechten, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

There was already a gigantic dollhouse in the story, but this is helping me see how Martha got the idea and what types of things swirl around in her head.

I’m now down a beautiful rabbit hole and can’t wait to see where it all ends up. You can read more about the Stettheimer sisters here.