I thought I’d take a blog post to talk about ideas and where they come from. I’m reading On Writing by Stephen King and the passage about how he came up with the idea for Carrie really resonated. King talks about how in college, he had worked as a High School janitor and was fascinated…
And I’m back! It’s been a while since my last real blog. But I have a good excuse! Two excuses! A cute excuse, even! First, back in December, I had a baby! He’s a very cute almost four-month-old now. It’s quite a thing having two children (I also have a four-year-old daughter). I’m amazed that…
Go on, No Safety. You deserve that cupcake. I’m thrilled to announce that No Safety in Numbers has been chosen as a 2013 Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)! I am so honored to be included on this list! Here is a description of the list from the…
This week, the Los Angeles Review of Books published an essay on the dearth of role models in modern YA literature showing a healthy path from boyhood to manhood. The author points to 19th century literature, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as providing the kind of role models for this path that we currently lack….
Today is the start of National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it is exactly what it sounds like: A group of writers, both professionals and amateurs, who come together to support one another in writing a novel in a month, and that month is this month—November….
I had the pleasure of visiting Ms. Bradunas’s class at the Our Lady of Hope/St. Luke School in Baltimore, MD this past Tuesday. We talked about The Storm, the first book in the Dogs of the Drowned City series, the real-world inspiration for the story, and how I created a dog’s eye view of the…
This week, I thought I would take on the YA-is-super-dark-and-isn’t-this-a-sign-teens-and-YA-authors-today-are-evil/morbid/violent/etc. argument. This issue crops up again and again in the media, like here and here. It came up in my FastCompany interview. And yes, there is a lot of heavy stuff in YA literature today. But is this a sign of change, or are YA…
I am starting to feel like a normal person (well, as normal as possible for me…) again after a rather hectic period of editing Book 2 of the No Safety in Numbers trilogy, No Easy Way Out. I am so excited about this book. I wish I could give it to you right now! Alas,…
Happy Thursday! I am working away on the final revisions to No Easy Way Out, the sequel to No Safety in Numbers, and thus have few thoughts outside of That Line Could be Tighter and What Happened Here? But I have perused some random things on the interwebs while working and they felt weirdly relevant…
If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right. – Henry Ford I write this blog in response to a commenter on an interview I did for FastCompany. The commenter called the story of my switch from the law to writing a “rubbish story,” suggesting that I…
Dayna Lorentz is the author of the DOGS OF THE DROWNED CITY series (Scholastic) and NO SAFETY IN NUMBERS (Dial).
I write because I have to; I write because I love to; I eat cupcakes because they’re there.