Kurtis Scaletta's Blog

November is, as many people know, National Novel Writing Month, or "NaNoWriMo." It basically means you crank out a novel in 30 days, with a minimum length of 50,000 words, although I imagine children's book writers get away with shorter word counts.

I am not a NaNoWriMo participant, because although I've been known to write over thousand words in a day, there's no way I could do that every day for thirty days. The idea behind the contest is "quantity, not quality," but even without attention t...

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November is, as many people know, National Novel Writing Month, or "NaNoWriMo." It basically means you crank out a novel in 30 days, with a minimum length of 50,000 words, although I imagine children's book writers get away with shorter word counts.

I am not a NaNoWriMo participant, because although I've been known to write over thousand words in a day, there's no way I could do that every day for thirty days. The idea behind the contest is "quantity, not quality," but even without attention t...

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The first edition of what scary children's novel featured the cover text "Time is running out for Lewis and his Uncle Jonathan…."? (Enter Here)

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Here is this year's carved pumpkin, celebrating Mamba Point. Also me and my wife in our Halloween costumes. Fooled you, didn't we?

Happy Halloween!

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I said last week I'd post here and there about public domain texts, and it's nigh time I did. With Halloween approaching, I decided Edgar Allan Poe would be a good place to start, but ended up selecting a wonderful gem of a detective story over any of his famous horror stories.

The Gold Bug is a first-rate story that would appeal to fans of The Da Vinci Code for its puzzles and problem solving, and appeal to folks like me who like the idea of The Da Vinci Code but wanted it to be better. Poe i...

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I liked James Preller's blog entry yesterday about "boy books," and the example he posts of an atypical (and oddly touching) "boy book" about friends growing apart.

"Boy books" is an interesting topic to me, and one I should blog more about, but I find myself confounded by the topic. What are "boy books"? I mean, I write them, so I must know something about them, but at the same time, I'm not completely comfortable with the idea that boys and girls are supposed to read different books...

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I asked what kids book outsold The Lost Symbol, at least the week it was released. The answer is Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, the latest installment in the wildly popular book/cartoon hybrid by Jeff Kinney. I was going by this article, and realize now it only speaks to Amazon.com sales. I hope it was a fair question overall.

A special Halloween edition of trivia is coming next week.

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I draw a lot of inspiration from other books, especially ones that have gathered mold in the libraries of the world. The reason being, seriously, that all writers basically get their ideas from other books, but the further back you go, the more original you seem. Write a knock off of Twilight, and you'll make eyes roll across the literary agencies of America. Write a knock off of Varney the Vampire, and you'll look like a genius. Even if you get found out, because you're going back to roots a...

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Today is the first ever National Day on Writing, meant to celebrate and reflect on all the writing we do — from Tweets to Facebook status to emails to poems and novels. Find out more about the day here, or submit your work to the National Gallery of Writing.

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