Giving a Dead Manuscript Some Life

December 17th, 2024|Blog|

Rejection is an inevitable part of everyone’s publishing journey at every stage. And with rejections come “dead manuscripts”. Well, I’ve just decided to start giving my dead manuscripts some life (and some love) by painting [Read More]

Feeding Our Folktales to the Sea

October 14th, 2024|Blog|

Feeding Our Folktales to the Sea *

Volumes and volumes of Jewish folktales line my shelves. I imagine my great-grandparents, who I never knew, chanting them in foreign tongues. In my imagination, they add details, constructed [Read More]

Writing History While Living It

August 14th, 2024|Blog|

Writing history while living it summarizes my post-Oct 7 writing experience.

I recently sent revisions of my middle grade novel back to my agent. While waiting is associated with the initial query process, in finding an [Read More]

Seeing Stars and Other Benchmarks

July 24th, 2024|Blog|

Seeing stars in kidlit announcements is one more thing that was never explained to me. Stars are awarded by the major trade reviewers: Kirkus, School Library Journal, PublishersWeekly, The Horn Book. This is an evolving [Read More]

Researching Saliman’s World

May 22nd, 2024|Blog|

Every writer has a favorite (and least favorite) step in the process of creating a manuscript. For me, research is my clear favorite. Research starts the second after I have that ‘lightbulb’ moment. I love [Read More]

Working on any new projects?

July 19th, 2023|Blog|

When people ask me if I’m working on any new projects, I don’t always know how to answer this. Which also makes the question, how is your book coming difficult to answer too.

I’m always working [Read More]

Save the Cat and My Manuscript

December 11th, 2022|Blog|

My cat is fine. My manuscript isn’t. There are reasons for this. Here is goes…

I don’t outline. I don’t write character worksheets. I don’t plot. I don’t plan. I have no pre-writing system.

I write the first [Read More]

Business Cards

January 6th, 2022|Blog|

I held my debut picture book (Alone Together on Dan Street) in my hands and then also realized that it was on pre-order online! I’m going to have actual readers soon!

It might not seem obvious, [Read More]

  • Erica Lyons

My First Published Piece

January 3rd, 2022|Blog|

My debut picture book is out this March (Alone Together on Dan Street, Apples & Honey Press, March 2022) and this has been making me think about my writing journey. I recently found my first [Read More]

Once Upon a Quarantine

October 14th, 2021|Blog|

Once upon a time, I imagined that one day there would be a table at a favorite coffeeshop where I would sip Americanos and nibble on scones and write. I would then be able to [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

July 23rd, 2021|Blog|

It has been a few weeks since my last post. Ok. It’s been a month, but I’ve been busy with family and friends, the beach and eating. We all traveled to Israel to see my [Read More]

Coming Soon!

June 29th, 2021|Blog|

Alone Together on Dan Street, Apples & Honey Press, March 2022 (PB)

Counting on Naamah: A Mathematical Midrash on Noah’s Ark, Intergalactic Afikoman, 2022 (PB)

Signed with an Agent!

May 21st, 2021|Blog|

I think I’m meant to write one of those long ‘how I found my agent’ posts because I’m now officially represented by Caryn Wiseman of the Andrea Brown Literacy Agency!

I’m so excited to begin to [Read More]

Twitter on Publishing

March 5th, 2021|Blog|

If Twitter was actual publishing, I could confidently say that I’m extremely prolific, but, then again, it were life, I could say that I’m social.

For all the negativity that people associate with Twitter, and social [Read More]

Storystorm (Chapter 2)

February 20th, 2021|Blog|

Though January is long gone, Storystorm isn’t – at least for me it’s not. I have made additional copies of the pages I used in January and taped them into my notebook. While I’m still [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

February 15th, 2021|Blog|

Happy Lunar New Year! Kung Hei Fat Choi!

It was a strangely quiet, but beautiful holiday this year. With much of the city shutdown, we missed out on large scale celebrations, but we enjoyed some incredible [Read More]

A Year in Review

December 30th, 2020|Blog|

This year, there are plenty of things that I didn’t get done: deadlines that weren’t met, trips not taken, and occasions not celebrated. While it’s easy to focus on loses, I’d like to try to [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

December 3rd, 2020|Blog|

Four weeks have gone by that included a 2 week trip to Israel followed by a 2 week hotel quarantine. I’m making the most of my quarantine to finish polishing my middle grade manuscript and [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

October 23rd, 2020|Blog|

  • Exchanged another two chapters of my MG Historical Fiction with my critique partner.
  • Received one rejection on a piece I submitted to a journal last month.
  • Decided that NaNoWriMo is unrealistic because I will [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

October 17th, 2020|Blog|

As my computer dies a slow death, I have been in a rush to try to make sure that everything is saved somewhere. I can only work in about 10 minute spurts (battery runs out [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

October 9th, 2020|Blog|

It wasn’t the most productive week, but considering it was a school holiday for Sukkot and Mid-Autumn Festival anything that I accomplished was a bonus. The current news cycle didn’t help with focus either. I [Read More]

Text Message from Mom

September 21st, 2020|Blog|

Text Messages from Mom

 

I woke up today to three new text messages from my mother. We buried her in April, but apparently not her phone. 

“There’s a logical explanation,” says my husband, “Call your dad.”

“Why?”

“Maybe [Read More]

Shavua Shorts

September 11th, 2020|Blog|

Welcome to my first Shavua Shorts post.

Shavua is the Hebrew word meaning ‘week’. This is where I’ll list my writing progress for the week and sometimes also what I’ve read and am reading, a picture, [Read More]