Falling In
I think probably one of the most common kid fantasies around is the one about stumbling onto a hidden world. Everyone loves the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis for that very reason. A few years ago I decided I wanted to write a book about a girl who discovers a school beneath her school (I thought this up while dropping my son Jack off at his school on a rainy day, the exact right sort of day for imagining such a thing). Thus, Isabelle Bean was born.

It took me a long time to figure out the story. I’m not much of a fantasy reader (though I love The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander), so it took me a long to figure out the rules. For instance, when you fall into a whole new world, what’s happening in the world you left? Does anybody know you’re gone? Does time stop when you’re away?

I loved writing Falling In because it was so different from other books I’ve written. Because it wasn’t a first-person narrative, I could play around more with the narration and the language—I didn’t have to “stay in character.” Will I write another book like Falling In? I don’t know yet. Stay tuned!

The Kind of Friends We Used to Be
The Kind of Friends We Used to Be is the continuation of The Secret language of Girls, with Kate and Marylin now in seventh grade, sort of friends and sort of not. I wanted to know what was happening with the two of them, so I sat down and started writing, to find out. Now I’m getting letters and e-mails from readers asking me if I’ll write more about Kate and Marylin, and the answer is most definitely yes. I have to know what happens next!

Shooting the Moon
This was actually my husband’s idea. I was looking around for something to write about, and he suggested I write about a girl who was an Army Brat—that is, a kid whose mom or dad served in the U.S. Army. He figured that since I’d been an Army Brat myself, I’d know a thing or two about the subject. At first I didn’t think this was the greatest idea in the world, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

It was fun to write about the way I’d grown up—like answer the phone “Col. O’Roark’s quarters, Missy speaking” (Missy was my childhood nickname) and some of the places I’d lived, like Fort Hood, Texas. Although what happens to Jamie and her family didn’t happen to mine (my older brother was much too young to serve in Vietnam—he wasn’t even a teenager at the time), I took a lot of my Army Brat experience and made it Jamie’s.

Dovey Coe
I wanted to write a book set in the mountains of North Carolina, way back in the day, because I love everything about the mountains–the music, the folklore, and the arts and crafts. I started with a vague idea of writing a story about a girl and her brother, and then one day this voice came into my head and said, “My name is Dovey Coe, and I reckon it don’t matter if you like me or not.” The rest is history.

Where I’d Like to Be
I got the idea for writing about a girl in foster care after volunteering in a group foster home very much like the one Maddie lives in. I was interested in writing about friendships that are made under difficult circumstances. At first I thought Maddie and Murphy would be good friends, but as I wrote the book that started to change. I realized that Murphy was a person with a lot of secrets. It’s hard to be good friends with somebody when you don’t know the whole truth about who they are.

The Secret Language of Girls
When I was nine, my family moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. The first person I met was a girl named Suzie, who I immediately wanted to be best friends with. As it happened, another girl moved to our neighborhood about the same time I did, and she also wanted to be best friends with Suzie. I guess Suzie liked the attention, because for the next two and a half years, she would be best friends with Virginia for awhile and they’d give me the silent treatment, and then she’d turn around and be best friends with me, and we’d give Virginia the silent treatment. Finally, sometime around sixth grade, Virginia and I realized that we had much more in common with each other than either of us had with Suzie, and we became friends with each other and a whole group of neat kids who were smart and liked books.

Chicken Boy
I started writing Chicken Boy when I lived in the suburbs of Raleigh, NC. North Raleigh is one of those places that just won’t stop growing, but driving around you’ll see little pockets of leftover rural communities tucked in between the subdivisions. I was interested in what it would like to be a country kid who goes to the school with kids who have no idea that people who say “yes ma’am” and “y’all” still exist. So the character of Tobin McCauley was born, and his story grew out of that triggering idea.

Phineas L. MacGuire … Erupts!
My son Jack really likes to read, but since he’s only seven, he’s too young to read most of the books I’ve written. So I decided to write one I thought he and his friends would like, and since he’s pretty interested in scientific matters, I decided to write a book about a kid who’s a serious scientist. It was fun for me and Jack to try out the experiments that Mac (aka Phineas L. MacGuire) does in the book. Look for more Phineas L. MacGuire books to come!

Phineas L. MacGuire … Blasts Off!
and Phineas L. MacGuire Gets Slimed
More adventures with Mac! It’s been a lot of fun for me to work on this series, because I’ve learned so much—about volcanoes, slime mold and outer space, just to name a few things. When I sit down to write, I never know what’s going to happen, and Mac, Ben and Aretha always manage to surprise me.