FAQ

Who is your literary agent?
I am represented by the amazingly enthusiastic Eric Smith of P.S. Literary. I blogged about how I became a client of his here.

How did you get published?
I published my first book, SPOOKYGIRL: PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR, after winning a publishing contract with a Penguin imprint in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult fiction. You can read more about SPOOKYGIRL’s road to publication in this series of blog posts.

Will you blurb my book?
I’m happy to consider doing so if time allows! I focus mainly on traditionally published YA contemporary, queer YA, and YA paranormal/horror. Reach out to my agent via his info on my contact page, and we’ll see what we can do. My chronically strained eyes prefer physical ARCs, but I can usually handle digital as well.

MAMMOTH is about paleontology. Are you a paleontologist?
I’m not, but I’ve loved the subject since I was a kid. While researching MAMMOTH, I worked with several paleontologists and trained at an in situ Ice Age dig site, the Waco Mammoth National Monument in Texas. I learned how to dig and prospect for fossils and how to rinse and screen-pick sediment from dig sites. MAMMOTH is full of the paleo goodness over which I geeked out in Waco and Austin.

ERMAGERD, MERMERTH

What are you working on next?
I’m currently revising SO WITCHES WE BECAME, which is scheduled for publication in Summer 2024 from Little, Brown and Company. SWWB is queer feminist YA horror inspired by hurricanes, toxic bro culture, and the power that comes from giving one’s trauma a voice. It’s the darkest story I’ve ever written, and I can’t wait to share more about it.

How long does it take you to write a book?
It depends. Drafting MAMMOTH took several months because I had so much research and learning to do along the way, and then it went through some extensive revisions because the rough draft was a trashfire (as rough drafts often are). SPOOKYGIRL was my 2007 NaNoWriMo project, so I wrote the rough draft in a month and revised it over the following few months. SO WITCHES WE BECAME also started as a NaNo project in 2018; I then revised it several times between then and 2022.

Do you write adult/general fiction as well as YA?
Yes! I haven’t published any adult novels yet (maybe someday!) but most of my shorter works fall into adult territory.

When will the next SPOOKYGIRL book be out?
Dutton was not interested in developing SPOOKYGIRL as a series. However, I have enough notes for a trilogy, and I’d love to find a way to get the rest of Violet’s story out there someday.

Got a question? Visit the Contact page and ask away!