writes about war from a young person's view #bannedbyrussia
So excited to be launching book #3 of my Kidnapped from Ukraine
trilogy at a triple book launch with fabulous Canadian children’s
writers, Anna Rosner and her newest, Last Year with Maddie, and Lorna Schultz Nicholson and her newest, The Man in Motion! Hope to see you
there!
Thrilled to learn that KIDNAPPED FROM UKRAINE #1: UNDER ATTACK has been named a Winner of the 2026 NCSS-CBC Social Studies Books Award!
Here’s the full list.
The Notable Social Studies Trade Book Awards are an annual project of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the Children’s Book Council (CBC) running since 1972. This award list features K-12 annotated titles published in the previous calendar year that are exceptional books for use in social studies classrooms, selected by social studies educators.
Do a brainstorming exercise. Get a piece of paper and write down the
names of the two key players.
Ask yourself such things as:
What does this person love? Want? Need?
What bad habit does this person have?
What secret?
What shame?
Something that would make others hate them
Write all of this down on your bit of paper.
Now go to a fast food restaurant and get an application form (or two).
Try to fill the application out as if you were one of those characters.
You’ll be surprised at what they tell you.
Now think of the relationship between your two key characters. Think of
each of their wants/needs/loves. How do they interact? If one character
achieves a want/need/love, does that mean the other character loses the
same? That is a story.
Now set that all aside and write a simple scene with one of these
characters. Don’t try to do too much with it. Show the character
involved in a daily task. Give the character the opportunity to reflect
on things and react to things. It is what happens inside that most
counts, not the outer journalistic stuff. Readers want to step inside a
character’s head and live that person’s life for awhile. Your job is to
enable that.
Once you’ve written that scene, ask yourself “and then what happens?”
Write that. When you write yourself into a corner, try stepping into the
head of your other key character. Repeat.
I finished the first draft of Making Bombs For Hitler in February and I’ve gone through two substantive edits since then. It is scheduled to be published by Scholastic in 2012. That first draft took four intense months. The edits were easier, thanks to SB, my fabulous editor!
Many people are daunted at the prospect of writing historical fiction. Here are some suggestions on how to begin:
Do preliminary research of the era you want to write about and try to imagine yourself living in that time. Non-fiction children’s books are a great preliminary research tool. Also encyclopedias and textbooks. At this stage you just want to gather enough background to get the general lay of the land.
In order to come up with a premise for a novel, ask yourself: What would happen if…
Think in terms of a dilemma for a person in your historical era.
As an example, for my 2008 Armenian genocide novel Daughter of War, the question was: If you were pregnant by rape but survived a genocide, would you want your fiance to find you?
If you can’t boil your novel idea down into a question like that, it’s too unwieldy a concept.
Do an outline. I hate outlines, but it is amazing what you can pre-organize by doing a one or two page point form plotting of your entire novel.
Try writing a sample chapter or two. This will help you narrow down the point of view, as well as voice and tone.
After you’ve done the outline and initial chapters, do more research.
Do read memoirs, diaries, newspaper articles, recordings, interviews, maps, city directories of your era. Look at photographs. If people are still alive, talk to them.
Do not read novels set during your era. If you do that, you may unconsciously pick up inaccurate bits, or you could unwittingly copy the author’s style or turns of phrase.
Try to get opposing points of view of the same situation. As an example, when I was researching Daughter of War, I consulted both Armenian and Turkish memoirs, as well as those of missionaries and medical personnel of the time. Inter-library loan and abebooks.com are great resources for this sort of item.
Over-researching is great procrastination technique. Not only do you waste time, but you’ll also be tempted to use everything you learn, which makes for a very boring novel.
I like to do commando research — ie — only as much as I’ll need for the next 20 pages or so. When I dry out, I do more research.
Now start writing!
Think in terms of scenes. You don’t have to write the story in order. I like to start with the scene that is most vivid in my imagination. As I write each scene, I decide whether it comes before or after that first one. As the writing continues, the story develops like raindrops forming a puddle. Don’t worry about sticking to your outline. Let your characters take you to new places.
Goal one is to get the first draft finished.
Set yourself a schedule. It might be to write one new page a day, or maybe to write just one new paragraph a day. I like to write one scene a day. Butt in chair (or feet under tread desk) and get those words out. Don’t get up (or get off) til your goal is achieved.
Don’t give in to excuses. The most lame one is that you’re too busy to write. Writing can be done in a steno pad while waiting in line at the grocery store or watching your kids play baseball, or on the subway. My favourite writing place is at an airport.
Do not keep going back to page one in an attempt to make it perfect. That is just a procrastination technique. First drafts aren’t supposed to be perfect.
Once you finish your first draft reward yourself!
It is a huge achievement to be able to write The End. Go to the movies, Eat chocolate. Drink wine.
Let that first draft cool off for a couple of days before looking at it again. Once you’ve given your brain a chance to clear, print your draft and read it aloud, carefully, a few pages at a time. You will be amazed at what you can catch when you speak your words and read them on paper instead of the screen.
There are many more steps to revision, but that’s another post.
Loved visiting with grade 6-8 students from Bond Academy in Scarborough ON yesterday. We talked about learning challenges, what makes an interesting story and my Kidnapped from Ukraine trilogy. My favourite question was a writers’ craft one: how do you fix it when you know the whole story that you’re writing but there are blank spots and details that need to be filled in.
My answer? I said that I hate to break it to you, but what you’ve got there is an outline, not a story. And then we discussed what goes into knowing your character and their world.
Another great question was what does it mean, being banned by Russia!
Another one? Why do you write?
I had an urge to do an earth toned pysanka, so the flower pysanka on the left is dyed with Ukrainian Eggcessories’ all-Canadian Maple Syrup and Okanagan wine. Getting the yellow vivid can be a challenge, so for the pysanka with the pinwheel, I just dabbed on the green for the sunflower leaves with a cotton swab instead of immersing the egg. That kept my Canola Yellow bright. The background on that pysanka is actually from a final dip in purple dye to brighten up my blue.
One xl, two small, the rest quail.
These cute little quail eggs don’t always take dye the way that I’d like them to, so creating the two pysanky with mallard ducks was more of a challenge than I anticipated. I was looking forward to the contrast of the mallard’s bright orange beak/feet and the rich green head and dark body. But then, what to have as a background colour? The deep wine colour of the body made any bright blue I tried go mottled, so I did what I always do at a time like this — reach for the purple! It took, and looks almost blue. So mallard ducks in water. Ha!
